Memorial Day weekend in Indianapolis is always special. 

As a boy I attended the Indianapolis 500 with my uncles and cousins. As an adult I provided charter and school bus transportation to the race. I remember attending the 500 Festival Parade while providing transportation to the Southport High School band.

I have great memories of going to the track for qualifications with my dad. It was so much fun to jump in our car head to the track as soon as he got home from picking up milk from dairy farmers. 

If my uncle didn’t come from Knoxville, Tennessee, to attend the race, I always listened on the radio. 

It was so exciting when the race was televised locally on WFBM (now RTV6) in 1949 and ’50. The years that I lived in California and later in Michigan allowed me to enjoy the Indy 500 on television without the delay. I got spoiled.
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My wife, Lyn, and I were invited to listen to Carly Brooke sing Saturday night at the Stacked Pickle in Greenwood. Carly, 16, has been singing country music for several years and has performed at the Marion County Fair for nine years. She sang the national anthem for a Colts game a couple of years ago. 

She and her family lived in Beech Grove for a long time. As her singing career continued to blossom, they decided to move to Nashville, Tennessee, where Carly routinely performs.

Because the Stacked Pickle was so crowded by the time we arrived, the only open tables were at the other end of the room from where she was singing. 

When Carly took a break she stopped and talked with us for a few minutes and asked about her good friend Stuart, our therapy dog.

Since our table was so far from the performance area, I felt that on occasion that Carly might need to know that we were being properly entertained. So when she sang a song that Lyn and I were familiar with, we felt compelled to sing along. I think I did a bang-up job with “Me and Bobby McGee.”

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I have been out in my little office for a while now and it is Sunday afternoon. I turned the radio on to listen to the Indy 500. Moments after the national anthem was performed, I heard the Stealth Bomber flying over our neighborhood. Stuart and I rushed out to catch a peek. Very special.

I just got invited to join some friends at a pub where the race will be shown via satellite. 

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I’m back. I met Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Cosby and Mr. and Mrs. Tim Smart at Schneider’s Pub on Meridian Street. We enjoyed a great lunch and exchanged some stories, and we even watched the race on occasion. 
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I hope everyone had a special Memorial Day. The best place to enjoy Memorial Day is Indianapolis. 
Shonk is a 1960 graduate of Southport High School, a ’63 grad of Indiana Central College (now the University of Indianapolis) and a retired bus driver from Beech Grove Schools.

I watched the royal wedding Saturday morning. My wife, Lyn, and I enjoyed watching the morning crew from WTHR broadcasting from England all week. They had some great stories and interviews. 

I really enjoyed the singing cab driver, Aiden Kent, who has been a taxi driver in London for more than 20 years. He once found several CDs in the back of his cab. After listening to a few of the Frank Sinatra CDs, he decided that he wanted to learn to sing. You can look him up on YouTube. I learned that he will be performing in Las Vegas later this year. He plans to take his cab with him, but he isn’t going to drive it all the way.

And to make things even better, my coffee was brewed to perfection, and Stuart, our therapy dog, sat on my lap most of the morning.

Later in the day I watched qualifications at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I know that things have to change, but I was a bit confused Saturday. My memories of qualifying are that there are two weekends. The first day establishes the pole winner, and the last day was known as Bump Day. This happened when the field was full and unqualified cars could qualify and bump the slowest car in the field.

Now there are only two days of qualifying.

Saturday was Bump Day. Years ago there were many more cars entered than would make the field of 33. This year there were only 35 cars, so only two cars wouldn’t make the race. 

It was interesting to watch the teams scramble to get a car ready to try to re-qualify. The end of qualifying had always been 6 p.m., but for some reason it was 5:50 p.m. That confused me and one of the teams.

The nine fastest cars from Saturday competed Sunday for the pole and their placement in the front three rows. So, at the end of the last day (formerly known as Bump Day), the pole winner was decided. 

I have always been an avid listener of the Indy 500 on the radio. Back in the late 1940s and early ’50s, my dad had a country pickup milk route. He drove to farms and loaded 8- or 10-gallon cans of milk onto his truck and drove them to the dairy to be processed. The 1949 and ’50 races were locally televised on WFBM-TV (now WTHR). I remember watching part of the races in one of the buildings at the Polk Milk Co. when we were unloading the milk.

After that it was only live on the Speedway Radio Network. If I wasn’t going to attend the race, I listened to it on the radio. Because I was familiar with the track and the drivers, I could close my eyes and envision the race as the announcers called it.

Mark Jaynes, a Southsider, is the current chief announcer for the IndyCar Radio Network. He is the sixth “Voice of the 500” for the network. He follows a great group of announcers who held that title: Sid Collins, Paul Page, Lou Palmer, Bob Jenkins and Mike King. 

Another Southsider who spent several years calling the race on the radio was Tom Pedan, chief announcer for WIRE Radio. He and his family lived about six blocks from us, and his son Mark, was in my high school graduating class at Southport. I once purchased a car from Mr. Pedan.

I’m sure on Sunday I will be doing something like cleaning my car or garage while listening to the race on the radio. 

Shonk is a 1960 graduate of Southport High School, a ’63 grad of Indiana Central College (now the University of Indianapolis) and a retired bus driver from Beech Grove Schools.

I have written several times in this column about how close some of my former classmates from Southport High School are. 

We hold an annual class reunion, and there is a monthly breakfast, which is normally a guy thing. We always hold it at the same place because this helps us to not forget the location or get lost. 

There is also a monthly lunch. It is attended mostly by ladies and is held at a different restaurant each month. On occasion a guy or spouse of one of the ladies attends. I have occasionally attended for a few years.

Sometime ago I was invited by Barbara Wilson-Cooke, Sharon David and Donna Emmons-Lafollette to have a Bloody Mary before the luncheon.

Our last lunch was May 2. I knew that Sharon was going to be absent because she was in Louisville hanging out with her granddaughters. I have met one of those young ladies, and I was sure that Sharon had her hands full. I had talked with Sharon on the phone and she had been shopping with Donna. Sharon had forgotten to take a box out of Donna’s car. She had asked Donna to pass the box on to me since we live close to each other and I could get the box to her easily.

When I met up with Donna and Barbara at the restaurant, Donna handed me a small plastic bag with a box inside it. I told them I had cleaned out my car’s trunk in anticipation of a huge box. We got a good laugh out of that.

A nice-size group attended the luncheon, and it’s one that we probably won’t forget. Two days later I began getting phone calls, text messages and emails informing me that Donna had suffered a stroke and was in serious condition. 

Donna’s family, her friends and lots of former classmates banded together with many prayers. One week later we learned that Donna had quietly passed during the night.

I’m glad her family had some time to quietly spend with her before she died. I was told that Donna never regained consciousness. I sent her a message, and I was told that it was delivered to her. I guess her family got a small chuckle out of my message.

I know this has been a difficult couple of weeks for all of Donna’s family and friends. I don’t think that I have ever had a meal or spent quality time with a good friend or a family member and two days later be informed of such a terrible change in their health and their passing.

We sure are going to miss Donna at next month’s luncheon. 
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Shonk is a 1960 graduate of Southport High School, a ’63 grad of Indiana Central College (now the University of Indianapolis) and a retired bus driver from Beech Grove Schools.