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August 19, 2022 3:00 am
On this episode of Our American Stories, Caleb Bailey shares his family’s story of hope and redemption after the loss of his father at 10 years old. As a part of its 100th anniversary celebration, Ford wanted a new supercar to showcase its heritage and future. Jon Elfner brings us this new Ferrari-slayer's story through the eyes of industry legends Neil Ressler, Scott Ahlman, and Mark McGowan.
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Time Codes:
00:00 - Raising Children In The Midst Of Tragedy
23:00 - Ford v. Ferrari II: The Making of the Ford GT
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This is Mrs. our American stories. The show where Americans the store and the American people. Next we have a story from a young man named Caleb Billy. Caleb is from California and recently moved to Asheville, North Carolina work your he is sharing his family story beginning with his dad from a very young age wanted to be a firefighter. My dad wanted to be a firefighter so bad when he was a kid that he said his backyard on fire just to the fire department would show up. He was so excited to see them and you know my poor grandma was just like I don't know how to explain this to you and then it's funny.
Fast forward a few. There are some years later and he is a firefighter. He had a heart for serving others in that capacity, but when I was born 10 days after I was born, my dad, Joseph DP was killed in the line of duty as a Los Angeles city firefighter. He was a captain and had been on the job for a while. At that point he was responding to a structure fire early in the morning. It was a pet food factory and as him and his crew were fighting it. They decided to exit the building because it structures, collapsing and so he got a signal from one of the emergency devices. There that they use. If any of them are you lost or trapped or anything in the set off at signal and the rest the crew will go and find them and help them out and one of his crewmembers dropped his and that's what set it off. So, actually, no one was really in danger. But they didn't know. So he went back in to find that member and so while he was in. She walked to the room where the roof collapsed and knocked his face mask off so he was no inhaling of the smoke toxins and stuff and then an oven in the building actually exploded and blew out and knocked him out of that point.
So his crewmembers were close behind and in came and found them in. You know, drag them out. By the time they try to do CPR and rushing to the hospital. He was Artie gone at that point so my mom received the news that morning, Mike Hilliker, who is the chaplain was the one who told my mom about my dad. She's told me a few times about what was going through her mind when she got the news obviously brilliant things you've lost your breadwinner of the family. You don't have any finances you lost a father, two sons, and possibly most important of all, she lost her soulmate misses her husband married for years and he was just gone and now they had to figure out life and that's that's a dark place to be its place from most people give up. Especially realizing that these two little boys of yours have a lifetime of hurt and hardship ahead of them. Because of this, so they went to the hospital and many people from her church were there many people from the fire department and surrounding stations as well were nearby and supporting her. It was the first fatality on duty that the LA city fire department had seen in a long time years, maybe decades. Not sure the actual number. So it not only shook those of us who were close to my dad but just everyone in the department incident is really dark time for LA city and so yeah that's that's where we stood in February or March 1998.
A family barely getting started as a family and other just ripped apart and it's it's a pretty hopeless situation when you look today anyway you cut it, it's just tragic and sad your stories like this all the time about people on different people deal with those things differently. My mom could've given up and felt no hope, which I'm sure she didn't many points but she didn't give up. She resolved to raise her two sons to love on them regardless of what the next 10, 20, 30 years brought and whether or not her husband was there alongside her.
So yeah all that. Like I have said you can read about all that online all those reports are on LA city firefighter websites and the incident reports and you know the background on my dad, but a lot happened after that and you won't read about those online but they're the biggest parts of the story so the first one is my uncle Robert DP who was Joe's brother. He was similar to Jehovah. In a lot of ways they're both just always up to no good and pulling pranks and doing rowdy things, but in terms of his faith in his morals he couldn't have been more different.
He hated everything about the church and the Bible and Christianity. No matter how much his brother presented to him and pleaded with him about it he wanted nothing to do with it and my dad would pray at night.
My mom told me, Lord, please save Robert, whatever it takes, even if it means taking my own life would you save him, and we kinda laugh a little bit that sometimes say careful what you pray for, but they got the news of my dad dying and my uncle was driving to the hospital and he remembers his parking his car and turn the car often looking up just saying I got my attention and Susie walked in a building he saw something that you don't see in these situations very often. There was the love of the church, love of family love the fire department all surrounding my mom and overwhelmed and you know it, and it was something that stood out and was different than what he'd experienced in his life and so I spent the next few months asking questions and wanted to know what it was that the Joe believed know what was this faith. He asked one of Joe's friends from church will ever see my brother again I got. I want to see them.
No a few months later he accepted Christ and started attending church regularly and wanted to not only live on his brother's legacy, but more importantly to know the Savior that is his brother did and you're listening to Caleb Bailey tell the story of his father.
His mother and his father's brother and how he and his family built with a great loss. A great tragedy when we come back for more of this remarkable story about faith, love, and so much more here on our American story.
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The results reduce stress and more volume and less time to treat yourself and your hair by searching Conair natural texture on Amazon.com to bring out your best texture with the infinity Pro natural texture styling system today and we returned to our American stories we been listening to Caleb Bailey share his family story. Caleb's birthday had died when he was just 10 days old in the line of duty as an LA firefighter through this tragedy, Caleb's uncle Robert came to Christ. Caleb's mother was left young widow Caleb and his older brother Luke were left fatherless back to Caleb for the rest of the store. So then life goes on for our family just two boys and a mom trying to make it by hand. One of my mom's friends had a mutual friend named Kevin Bailey who was also firefighter the fact that she thought my mom would want to marry another firefighter's crazy, but it worked and introduce the two of them at a Super Bowl party and they hit it off, that was Kevin Bailey and I can talk your ear off about Kevin Bailey. He had been working for a while and was single living in Southern California. He was looking to get married and was blown away by my mom story. In fact, before he had met my mom at that Super Bowl party.
He had heard her speech added firefighter event him regarding my dad's death and she was blown away. He was just like because she spent the whole time just giving the gospel in here. Here she was in front of hundreds of people in LA city and she was just giving the gospel and he was like what that's that's different.
Apparently the two little rascal. She was dragging along her side didn't scare them off so he went on some dates with her.
It speaks a lot to his character that during that time before there even married he would be coming over for dinner he would be watching us if if my mom had some events need to go to your babysit us when I had pneumonia as in the hospital at your old he was there supporting my mom take care of me and hang out with my my older brother Luke, obviously, might my dad was interested but based on the fact that he stuck around my mom and and mean Luke and says he is dating Mary kinda went to our pastor at our church and said hey look I don't know what the next step would be your house in that step would be, but I think I want to marry this woman and my pastor just looked at him and said hey you either fish or cut bait. She's got two sons and the sons need dad and she needs a husband's point so you better make a decision and so I guess my dad went with the fish. Instead of cutting bait and married my mom in 1999 July and adopted me and Luke, so he was now my mom's husband and our dad and people asked me sometimes. You know was ever anywhere points your upbringing just kinda like dealing with your stepdad and try to navigate that kind of the power dynamics are parenting models and all those things and I just tell them he was my stepdad leg legally he was my my legal dad and it wasn't just a legal obligation either the way he raised us made it really easy to be his son because he was a great father. They had two more sons my my younger brothers Brock and Ryland, so we had four boys in our house and it was chaos all the time but nothing really surprise my mom at that point. After all she'd been through so my dad retired from the fire department in 2010 or 2012. I can remember preachers 10 a man on his crew. Glen Allen actually died that year responding to a fire hazard roof collapsed on a building and my mom said a you that's enough. You know I can't.
I can't be going to bed every night with you at the station and knowing that that could be you and I'll go through all this all over again.
I'm sorry retired after 30 years on the department. They've been present very active in our lives. So six months back I moved from California to Asheville, North Carolina, saw uncle Robert is one of the few family members of Joe that we been in close contact with you made quite an effort after everything happened still be around to to support my mom to love on me and my my older brother to spend time with us and I actually visited him this past summer on my way down in North Carolina. They live in Nashville Tennessee and so II spent time about five hours. That first night there just kinda hearing stories about my dad hearing kinda what went down on site of the incident which is kind of a huge moment because I hadn't heard those things for a long time and not for bad reason. I mean I just never asked my mom you really want to bring up those things unnecessarily. If I were her I would really want to revisit that situation a ton columns I want to be consider in that sense and it wasn't of the utmost importance that I knew about some of those things, but my uncle didn't mind talking about it so we talked to some of those things and then he told me he had the actual original tape of the funeral. There are couple funerals. Actually, that the LA city fire department did one and then Grace Community Church held another one the most impactful things about that that he was watching my mom. Naturally, my eyes were just kind directed towards her just kinda seen how she dealt with it. My mom so sweet and so emotional to both the highs and the lows so she gets the most excited about our achievements and accomplishments, but she cries variously to I was just expecting her to be in a pool of tears during this video and that I kid you not. The whole time I watched it she was crying once she had her two sons with her and she had to be strong for them. Obviously she was pretend like nothing happened. Deep down her heart was being ripped out. There's a whole range of emotions from overwhelming support of all these people being here for the service and then the reality of her husband being dead and yet she stood there and welcomed all the hugs welcomed all the love in the condolences for people around. There's one little clip where they cut in and it's close in.
She's holding my my older brother Lucas to that time and she's pointing out things on the fire truck fire truck and is just like here she is facing the biggest moment of her life.
The biggest tragedy of her life right in the face and she's raising her son at the same time and knows that that's going to be the next rest of her life is doing that regardless of what happens and she was strong in that and she's continued to be strong even if she's emotional. She is a crack to know she she has been joyful all throughout our upbringing, even when a lot of it wasn't joyful so yeah even talk inserts the eye doctor today as yesterday was the anniversary.
24 year anniversary so stalking her today and I told her people always ask me how I process through that situation. I pray for you. What's difficult about it and that's understandable.
But the reality is there's not much grief and no obviously in that time at the moment there was, I was too young to really experience that the only motion that I feel is just being overwhelmed seen the Lord's kindness in providing through all that and she said that's exactly how she feels.
Which says a lot because she was the one that you know bore the brunt of what happened and yet today, not 24 years later she saying that's not sad it's only like incredible but happened there so much redemption in the midst of all that like if I were to playing that out from 1/3 person perspective I be like they have a happy life is a family. Nothing that happens. Okay, that's cool, that's great.
That would be good situation and then the Lord says no I'm in a take the husband out of the picture. In your court. What the world that's not only a bad idea.
That's the worst possible idea. Like that's complete opposite. What are you thinking and then he goes through that, to save his brother in and through that, to provide another dad for this family. They're going to get more people to their family and those that whole family will know me as result and praise me and then they're going to tell the story to hundreds of thousands of people in the future and those people know the story now.
Yeah, your whole thing with the family being happy and complete everything that special, but this is something different. He can redeem those things that are broken.
Way better than we can in a terrific job, a beautiful job on the production by faith and a special thanks to Caleb Bailey sharing his story.
My goodness, his mother comes office one heck of a star.
He was the breadwinner was the father of two sons lost her soulmate and had to figure out life, he said he could have given up, but she didn't. Caleb Bailey story his family story here on our American story.
We continue with our American stories and up next. The story from John Elfman is a high school history teacher in Illinois who wants to introduce us to an incredibly special American car carrying on a celebrated tradition years. John this the unmistakable sound of American V-8 muscle the Reds the hearts of young and old alike. For some the feeling has been with them since childhood. But for a lot of Americans thrill high RPM VH is new in the introduction came for many with Hollywood hit film Ford versus Ferrari, the movie tells the story of how the mid-1960s, Ford Motor Company decided to get into racing with one goal for our Goliath tortuous 1964 Ford set a goal of being Ferrari in the most famous endurance race 24 hours of them took a few tries but after three years of race with the Ford GT for did win and it would continue to when leaving Friday for the next three years at Lamont and how do they do it. The supercar called the Ford GT 42,003, four, decided to take on Ferrari a second time. Believe updated version of the same car but this one would be available for the public's bill for Junior, chairman of the Ford Motor Company, announcing the return of the Ford GT at the 2002 Detroit auto show.
I give you the return of the GT 44 have decided to build a show car for the 2002 Detroit auto show. The thing was an absolute hit.
It was really a hip. That's Neil Roessler Ford. He's a legend does work with for performance cars since the 60s holding just about any job you can think of at the company that involves cars going fast. You became a vice president at Ford, 1994 when he retired in 2001, but he continued to do work with Ford on special projects. One day while at the Ford headquarters bumped into bill for Junior. I felt some hands on my shoulder and I looked up and was bill for Junior who was the chairman of time and he said, so we got to show car in the tort show that's going on right now. It's just taken the show by storm. People say I should put in production.
I don't even know if I should might be thinking, why was that even a question. But the thing about show car is there really road writing the show car was really a three-dimensional picture. It made a lot of noise, which would've driven more than 5 miles an hour looks great but was in the car before Junior could think of a lot of reasons to not put the Ford GT in the production. This project would be expensive and the project might fill.
Furthermore, the Ford Motor Company wasn't known for these kind of projects people thought of Ford. My thought reliability.
Nicely built trucks will be sporting Mustang for GT was something entirely different spider that afforded one very big reason to build this car. There were about to celebrate an anniversary here made America the Ford factory celebrating its 100th birthday for his rouge factory means keeping your eyes on the future.
Looking at the past will keeping arise in the future. That's what the Ford GT project was all about and that's why bill for decided to go ahead with production of the Ford GT. According to Neil Roessler. There was another reason for needed a project like this. We needed some to talk about. We were little bit light on the product at the time building a modern version of the Ford GT 40 was a chance to rebrand the image of the company or his insiders at Ford would say polish the blue oval is to capture the imagination, both of the magazines and newspapers and the prospective buyers so Ford made a lot of it, but it came at a time when we needed to have something made of it before Junior asked Neil Roessler to come back to Ford for one more project.
Meal specialty was racing finishing this coming time for the Centennial celebration. It was gonna be a race. We had to have a finished car in June 2003 because that was going to be the Ford Centennial celebration, which was a major blowout. Ford Centennial was good to be huge for do the event was an opportunity to highlight how Ford Motor Company could been a consistent thread in the fabric of 20th-century American during the century, Ford invented the consumer car in the form of the model T during World War II. They quit making cars built airplanes, tanks and jeeps which were vital to winning the war. After the war, Ford reimagine the sports car for the postwar generation. As a result, Americans not only drove the car to work but in the Ford Mustang. They look cool doing. Of course they dominated endurance racing in the 1960s with the Ford GT 40. Each of these cases forwarded attempted to moonshot something that seems nearly impossible, and in each case they'd succeeded the reissue the Ford GT in 2003 was a chance to do that again and remind people that the Ford Motor Company was woven in the fabric of America building three production level cars before this event will that was good to be tough. 16 months. That's the amount of time. The team had to build a car, basically from scratch, we had less than two years from the start to get the finished car is ready, design, develop, test and develop a supply base factory up we didn't have a car. We didn't have location T we didn't have any suppliers lined up all we had was a dream, given his background in racing Neil do exactly what he would need on this team to make it work. We would obviously have to form a very small core team that I was interested in having guys who'd been involved in moderation and reason for that is if you're an engineer in moderation and most of all your concern with timing and there's never enough time in racing because as the old saying goes, the race starts.
The only question is whether you're there so you started to assemble a team made up of a lot of people cannot. A professional racing primarily. I would always tell people that I do is help make the cars go faster. The corners that's voice. Scott Allman is one of the first engineers, the Neil chose to help build the car.
Scott was the profile the kind of person you wanted on his team was in my motorsports department. Instantly I think two years with the body real steamed in Ohio.
Scott is island my vehicle and I was roller team.
Rachel was to help figure out the best set up for early drivers at some of the fastest racetracks in the world you last got to be part of the design team Scott. There were a lot of good reasons to question GT 40 was Scott's favorite car love this car so much that before the program started the Ford GT 40 was his screensaver and don't tell me buddy this but all of Scott's passwords included GT 40 in some way, despite his love for the GT.
Scott knew this was going be nearly impossible. The normal programming nearly 3 years with almost 3 times and all people versus our 14 months with wonder pressure on the design teams can be immense and the challenges of finishing this current time, they were real. Despite these problems, Scott really wanted to work on this graph in a car accident just just the style of the car.
The beauty of the car is my favorite car in the world to be easy. We obviously only had time for one pass design and develop and didn't have time to fix anything. It was it was going to be what I was when he was introduced. A guy named John Colletti, the director of engineering. The score she said to me said well we have no time, no budget will people no choice blocking the team Allman. All that was absolutely right on time and was the only problem at the beginning all we had was with the body.
Anything underneath was not done where to start from scratch in the early days of the program.
Scott didn't think this job could get done deal of my experience of working 70 to hundred hours a week deadline every single week in racing in the car and then NASCAR the scene seemed really insurmountable and possible before didn't see it that way.
The eyes of the company. Hieronymus they were expecting us to succeed is not going to work and you been listening to the story of the making of the updated version of the Ford GT celebrating. Of course, not just the hundredth anniversary of Fort itself, but remembering the remarkable feat of producing one of the great racecars of all time before GT 40 only come back. The story of the Ford GT 2.0 back with our American stories and were continuing with the story of the Ford GT and it's really incarnation. In his John Helfand. Ford Motor Company had its hundredth anniversary coming up in July 2003 and to mark the occasion. They wanted to do the impossible wanted to build a supercar in the image of the Ford GT 4050 Ferrari in the 1960s Le Monde license just want this car look good. They want to discard before just like to have 30 years earlier. Dennis Neil Ressler. The project director we pick pass our image cars, a Ferrari 360 after nearly 30 years.
Ford was going to take on Ferrari again this time selling a supercar beating Ferrari, the makers of the best supercars in the world is no guarantee given the extraordinary time pressures that were placed on this team. This project was different than anything. 40 done before, at least since 1963 Neil's decision to pick people who been involved in professional racing was essential to completing this project. Dennis Scott Allman, one of the chief engineers on the project. We would say racing is you have to unload fast. Basically, the car has to be fast.
As soon as we unload because we have so little time before we race was the same same kind of mentality same mindset the same importance on the 4G program because we didn't have time to enter it. Had to get it right the first time. According to Scott a lot of people within four didn't even think this project would be a success backed away, there is almost no one who thought that we would achieve the performance at the cost were supposed to achieve it at and within the timing short amount of time was certainly a challenge but it also created an unexpected opportunity for the team executives not directly attached the program begin to back off and the team got an enormous amount of room to operate in the way that they wanted.
So beyond just not having to have meetings for meetings.
We didn't have all this tracking and checking that would go on typically afford and everybody trying to understand your status of every element of design. Every part of the timeline we didn't have this tracking and checking that allow the team to operate more like a racing team. The Ford Centennial in June 2003 was race day.
We had have three production level cars ready for the Centennial reviewing the Ford Centennial is a race day.
All these engineers with racing experience really became comfortable with the process know there was to be any real race they saw the Ford Centennial as the starting line.
When you do racing you can't show up late. That's more per gallon. She was a test driver for the program. It's like you have to get it done and show up at the start line though as you wait for you if you can't make it there to leave without you and Neil Ressler felt the same way.
We really don't have time for one design iteration. There was definitely not gonna be time to go back and fix things so they had to work the first time that mentor be plenty of long nights in this program. So my first all-nighter on the program was two weeks in, I think he was working on the tire design we all went home now 7 o'clock at night and head home course back in at seven in the morning and there still Scott because Scott needs to get this thing done by spending all-nighter and is wearing the same clothes the next morning when my manager came in and he looked at me did a double take is like you stay here all night and I said yeah he said were not doing that on this program and I said what choice do we have met became the mentality of the 30 person team works in the next 14 months getting the car ready quickly. Now that the team developed the model.
No churning, no churning came from our director John Colletti and really it was an important aspect of the program that once a decision was made and pretty much every decision was big on the Ford GT. Once a decision was made. It was not revisited unless there was really a major issue was like racing. We had race day. We can push back the deadline does Neil Ressler put together a team that was used to the pressures of the deadline, they did get the car spilt in a few months. The first prototype was ready to test drive for sale first drive by right hand in development guys in the first prototypes there are really quite happy with how the car behaved right out of the box. This car was an eye-opener.
Doesn't take long to realize that this car is going be good. Making the car an extension of the driver was the goal you knew the car was so good because you didn't think about the car would just go where your mind put it, and it was like your brain was hardwired to the vehicle.
It just did what your brain said to do.
It was so effortless. There is excited about the car and it was just so different than what they had experienced before. First level prototypes after one lap.
We knew this was going to be really good car didn't have any problems. Nothing has worked is just rewarding. It is actually intoxicated is almost always like a drug that exceeded what they had experienced in the past, but far this thing is going to be something it's to be something very special. First try was a huge success. Later, the team needed to push this card with limits. That's why they went to Italy's Nardil ring I really was insisting that that the top speed start of the two. I wasn't interested in anything that was going to 199 we had to have something that would go over 200 we could do that anywhere in America.
The only place we could go was not. I think it's unlike an 8 mile oval or something another ring is a famous test track in Italy designed for high-speed testing speed records of all sorts of miniature DiNardo meal knew the team could push the 4G teacher with limits.
There is flat football five. Dennis test driver Mark MacGowan was going to drive the Ford GT to its limits. The first time we ever got one of these cars over 205 miles an hour was in Italy to track all DiNardo. I can still hear the instinctive cell left on the floor for team members now course after 15 miniature gasoline go through eating down the gas in 16 minutes. By the way testing at DiNardo ring was an extraordinary success drove that car around 8 mile ring of 212 miles an hour team knew what they had in the Ford GT. They were excited to get some of the automotive magazines to review the car the program where a track on the Western Michigan called Ginger meant car driver was invited to come out and drive the car after all that work production and testing the day of reckoning arrived, they show up with a Ferrari 360 Street Dahlia Holland, second District Ali was the race version of the 360 mode. This wasn't the kind that they were trying to be. This is the much faster car before I produced that car was specifically meant for running on at the racetrack for 14 months.
All the targets have been based on the mode tapestry Dolly the Ford GT compared to the straight out. We didn't know we didn't have one of those to compare against. And so you know we weren't sure that they tested anyway against the Ford GT what the current driver and motor trend in letter track have to say first place. Ford GT.
It wasn't even a kind to make this a real challenge. The supercar price. GT narrowly edged a Ferrari Lane change track second plan are more easier to drive hard Ferrari 36 was the quickest in the street of the Ferrari sleep for GT passed his test with flying colors. Beaten Ferrari, there is still one thing waiting for them.
Race day the Ford Centennial do they make it.
You bet they did for was so excited about the sky that they bought a Super Bowl commercial to brag about. This is the one place car for an entire company.
In fact, you give a speech to the entire team at the celebration just before the car was introduced. As you know I'm at the end of my career for me.
This will likely be the highlight of my career. You guys, you will remember until the daily Ford and after that be my dream car. This is all I wanted you is an incredible program from start to finish, for sure. It was is a lot Me there. What what other job with anybody else want. It was the car to work on. It was deftly a finical highlight of my as far as I can tell everyone who was on the program regarded as the highlight of their career and I regret that we myself redundant to deliver the car to the starting line for the Ford Centennial celebration could be in for Ari by treating the project like a race team meeting just recast history. They ended up creating a modern-day classic that became for Ford Motor Company pace car for a new generation and a special thanks to John Elfman. Digging in on that story and it's a classic American classic, and my goodness.
We got to hear from test driver Mark MacGowan Scott Allman and Neil Ressler legends in the business a Great American car story. The second version of the Ford GT.
The updated version. The improver that story on our Americans