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O'Brien Harley-Davidson's War Eagle

Let the race begin (part 1)

Pucket’s Harley-Davidson 1953

I'm Jesse J. O'Brien, son of pro football hall of fame Jesse C. O'Brien who played against The Hall of Fame Jim Thorpe in college and with him in first pro football game on old checkerboard field. Our dad played tackle and got a whopping $10.00 a game. Dad also formed the first Quantico Marine football team in 1915.

My brother Dick raced sprint cars and motorcycles. He made it up to Junior or what we use to call yellow plate but never made it to Expert. Dick never made it past the seventh grade but he did get a GED in the Navy during WWII. He knew engines and had one thing very few people had, design originality. In 1949 he built me an airplane pylon speed ship with swept forward wings, which we raced on a 60-foot length wire. You heard me right, swept forward. Other racers thought it was crazy then, until I broke the record at 160 mph. I never saw a swept forward wing again until last year when Russia introduced the Foxbat Mig 34 which will out fly our F-16.That same year he built a sprint car with a Chevy six flat head he converted to an over head cam engine.

It was March 1953 and that meant Daytona Speed Week. I had my first motorcycle, a H-D 165cc single cylinder two-stroke. A friend of mine Clyde Denzer, who would later become Dick's assistant at the H-D Race Shop, also had a 165. We were the first Pucket's H-D race team and this meant that we got to ride our bikes from Orlando Florida to Daytona, race them on a 1/8 mile short track and then ride them back home. We did not win that day. The Monday after Speed week I told my dear beloved sweet brother I wanted to RACE! As a sweet loving brother he answered back. "What and chase fly's around your fanny-hole?”… Dick was 15 years older than myself and, when I was 12, I took the carbs off his racecar the day before the race and hid them until he bought me a hamburger, coke and a moon-pie. My mother saw to it that I got to live, and thanks God for mothers!!!

Back at Pucket's Dick took me to the junkyard at the back of the shop and said, ”there is your race job, you little fart. Understand this, I will build the engine and you will build the bike for short track and road racing at night, not during working hours. You will paint the bike yellow and black, the Pucket's racing colours, I'll tell you where and when to race, you will see to it that the bike is tested and ready to go two days before the race, you will gunk, wash, polish the bike Monday night, the day after the race”. Dick was saying in his own way that he was the Light, Truth and Way into the winner’s circle but what he didn't know was that, in future times, another man would say the same words back to him that he said to me.

H-D Florida's Wrecking Crew 1953 to1957

This was not just racing, it was war and to say this, you have to understand the times we were in and the people we raced for. My brother and Luke, a one-eye race tuner working at Pucket's, were WWII veterans. Luke lost his eye when his tank took a hit. They didn't like the Germans and hated the Japs (and put the British somewhere in-between...).

If they hated, we hated because we followed our heroes. My brother lost some of his best friends in war and you think that, in time, the wounds would have healed but they didn't and it went on until 2003 and even then, 20 years after leaving H-D, he was saying the Japs were out to destroy the factory and his beloved dirt track racing XR-750...

There were three areas we launched out attack and the first was Drag Racing and the only success was Big Bertha, a 90cu in nitro dragster that turned the 1/4 mile in 10.25 seconds. The rider was Charlie Winslow, all 110 lbs of him. Bertha's two biggest challengers were a 40 cu in nitro Triumph built by Kulan out of Jacksonville, Florida, ridden by Allen Bealey and the other was Don Garlet and his swamp rat. Inch for inch we could not beat the British bikes in Drag Racing. With Don Garlet it was an on going battle. He first came at us with a Ford Flat Head then a twin Ford Flat Head and again with a Lincoln V-12. In 1957 he put his brother’s Chrysler V-8 in a sling shot dragster and that's all she wrote as he broke into the 9-second bracket and Bertha was retired (it now it rests in Harley-Davidson's Milwaukee Museum).

Second area of racing was ½ mile flat track and TT racing. One person took care of it, Herb (Stinky) Groves, racing a H-D 750 Flathead, and he won all the State Championships.

Third area was lightweight short track and road racing on 165cc two-stroke singles. Dexter Champbell and myself handled this. My brother got most of his ideas from Kekifer who was the engine designer for Mercury Outboard. Kekifer's secret research facility was in St Cloud, Florida.

In war there was no such thing as cheating so we made it that way in Motorcycle racing. We raced in AMA and the FMA (Florida Motorcycle Association) Kekifer showed us the tricks on two-strokes then Dick would build it and have the Harley-Davidson Factory to catalogue it as a H-D accessory so it would be legal.
The last stage of road racing was my 55 cu in Flathead KHK which won the 40 cu in OHV/55 flathead cu in class both in 1955 and 1956.

1957: The bottom drops out of Pucket’s Harley-Davidson

In fall of that year Dick informs us he has been offered a job as director of racing at the H-D motor company. I decided to quit racing and got married, later I went to work for NASA. Charlie Winslow got married and went to work near the space agency. Herb (Stinky) Groves went to work for Macon H-D in Georgia. Dexter got killed at ½ mile dirt track in Savannah, Georgia.