Evansville-Native Fired Up Fans For The Indy 500

This is the latest installment of Tri-State Treasures.

“Lady and Gentlemen start your engines.”

With those famous words, the starting grid at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway comes alive. In 1978, Mary Fendrich Hulman took over a tradition her late husband, Tony Hulman, started decades earlier.

Born in Evansville in 1905, Mary was the daughter of Cigar Company President John H. Fendrich.

Remnants of the family forturne are still present with the Fendrich Cigar Company building, still standing, behind Willard Library, in what now houses Berry Global.

Vanderburgh County Historian Stan Schmitt says Mary was also born into another famous local family.

“Mary’s great grandfather on the other side of the family was John Augusta Reitz. Who was the big lumber king here. The Reitz Home was his home. So Mary grew up knowing the Reitz Home when it was still a house,” Schmitt said.

Mary’s knowledge of the home and the decorations inside, would later aid historians after the property was converted into a museum in 1974.

“She remembered where everything was in the house. She had items and paintings from the home. So she came in there, and could tell them oh this room had this type of material. So she supplied them with things and original items for it,” said Schmitt.

Just a few blocks away at 827 S.E. First Street stands the Fendrich home where Mary grew up. In 1926, Mary would meet a wealthy Terre Haute businessman named Tony Hulman.

Hulman’s properties extended from Indianapolis to Terre Haute, with several more in downtown Evansville.

Schmitt says the couple’s marriage at Assumption Church in Evansville was described at the time as “the” wedding of the century.

“This is one where cars were parked for blocks. You had hundreds of people showing up. You had special police out. The Fendrick home on first street to guard all the gifts.”

In 1945, the Hulman’s paid $750,000 for a dilapidated property on the westside of Indianapolis that we know today as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

Mary and other family members questioned the potential of the property, but apparently “father knows best”.

After 30 years of rebuilding the world’s greatest race course Tony Hulman died in 1977.

Although her husband coined the phrase for drivers to start their engines – it was Mary who would continue the tradition.

“Lady and Gentlemen start your engine.”

But Mary’s first attempt at the command wasn’t without controversy.

“She said ‘Lady and Gentlemen Start Your Engines’ but their was a problem with the microphone at the time, and what most people heard was just Gentlemen Start your engines. She didn’t realize it had happened until after the race. And Janet Guthrie only heard what other people heard, and she was outraged. That it had gone backwards that she had been thrown in with the guys again.”

The mishap angered Guthrie, but the two would make up at the victory banquet. Mary continued her duties with the speedway until her death in 1996.

Even though the couple who saved the Indianapolis Motor Speedway are gone, what they started in Indianapolis still gives fans an extra thrill Memorial Day weekend, and their name and legacy lives on through several structures in Evansville.