A couple of stories here about John Luther that I always thought were funny...
While getting our tech inspection done in the T-6 class at Reno in '94, we, along with everyone else in the T-6 class, would try to insure the tech commitee that "we've not done anything to the airplane since last year's races."
As we were saying this, John Luther had just shut down Texas Red after his arrival to Stead, with the airplane looking not much different from the photo of it in the post above. It was then that the tech commitee guy said, "You know, every year, darn near every racer out here tries to convince me they haven't touched their airplane since last year's races and that it's exactly the same...but John Luther is the only one I believe."
Then, in 1995 I believe, we heard a heck of a racket as Texas Red was taxiing up to the ramp area, again, after his arrival to the races. When he shut it down, we all noticed that the engine cowling had come loose and had creeped forward into the propeller!
If I remember the story correctly (the details may be a bit off here), John told us that the engine was hydraulic locked when he went to leave and he took the bottom cowling off to get to the lower cylinders to drain them. He apparently got side tracked or something during the cowling's installation and he forgot to tighten it up all the way, resulting in the looseness. So, everyone rallied behind John to find him a new piece of cowling and a new propeller, since they had gotten pretty torn up in the process. I'm not sure who's it was, but he was able to borrow someone's cowling, while at the same time, borrowing one of our race props (I crewed for Fred Johnson and Gene McNeeley at the time). Now, the funny part about this is that Texas Red now had this cobbled up engine cowling with a borrowed race prop that frankly didn't perform too well on our airplanes, but for whatever reason, he went faster, and ended up beating us with our own parts!
(If you take a close look at the picture of the airplane in the hangar, above, you'll see that it still had the borrowed engine cowling on it......which I believe John just ended up purchasing for himself.)
Anyway, it wasn't until a few years later that I'd heard he'd been injured severely in a crop duster accident. I sure hated hearing that about such a neat guy and fun competitor.
Gary
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You're right as usual, Neal. I can't believe I forgot about John Luther. I wonder what his condition is after his paralizing crop duster crash many years ago? 
