Ellen Zitzlsperger
by Patt Buell
Published October 14, 2004
I would like you to meet Ellen Zitzlsperger (aka Ellen Wilson and aka Ellen Doctor). Ellen is the webmaster for nrsccahistory.com. She designed and hand coded the site and is hosting and maintaining it as a gift to the NRSCCA. Ellen is self-taught in web design and she must have had a good teacher, because she and the History Team were awarded the Woody Dunn Trophy for year 2003 for their work on the History Website.
But let's go back to the beginning ...
Ellen ran her first rally when she was a junior at Westside High School (1968). She told me about one of the more memorable rallys she ran in the late 1960's which was put on by the Corvette Club. It was called The Polish Possum Pornography Rally. Honestly, it had nothing to do with either possums or pornography. Why was it named that? Who knows! The event had a huge turnout of well over 100 cars and they had to hold the start while they printed more instructions. It was held mainly on dirt roads. Both having 100 cars turn out for a road rally and running on dirt roads are unheard of these days! She remembers this event because one of the Corvettes on the rally side-swiped a horse, and the rally cars were held up while they shot the horse. She says "They should have shot the Corvette too!"
She was introduced to the SCCA at the Sunray DX Sports Car Spectacular rally which was part of a whole weekend of activities. Ellen said "This is when I met Pat Woolery (now Patc Henry). I ran the event as a driver with a navigator that a year later fled to Canada to avoid the draft (during the Vietnam war), and we finished 2nd in Guest Class. I still have the trophy. I was invited to attend the next SCCA meeting to pick up the trophy and the members made me feel very welcome." Around that same time she also met Denny Skaanning and and then Denny introduced her to Patt Buell.
"Back in the early 1970's you needed two sponsors to join the club, and believe it or not, my sponsors are still Nebraska Region members. They were Pat Woolery (now Patc Henry) and Jerry Doctor. I guess SCCA thought they were more elite in the old days", she says with a laugh.
"In 1970 I joined the SCCA so that I could work the paddock gate along with Sue Scholtz (now Sue Peplow) at a race (the Falstaff Classic) at Mid America Raceway in Wentzville, Missouri. The race was put on as a cooperative effort by St. Louis and Nebraska Regions. The smell of Noxema still reminds me of the horrible sunburn I got that weekend!"
"I ran Solos and Rallys in the early 1970's in an Opel GT and crewed for some of the race teams at Mid America, Hutchinson and Hallet. Then I let my membership lapse for a few years. When I joined again in 1977, Patc Henry declared me 'club secretary for life' (kind of one of those Chinese curses like 'May you live in interesting times.') ... and I have been hanging around with this crazy group of car enthusiasts ever since."
Through the years, Ellen has won a lot of trophies. (She says she's won more trophies than she can count.) And, she has owned a bunch of cars.
Her first car was yellow with black stripes, a 1968 Opel Rally Sport (she says it looked like a bumble bee on steriods), then came a blue 1970 Opel GT (the Corvette Club gave her an honorary membership because they decided it was a Mini-Vette), and then followed a white 1965 Mustang, an aqua (ugly color!) 1964 1/2 Mustang convertible, a dark blue 1970 MGB-GT, a 1960 Lotus 18 Formula C (which had been many colors, and when researched, it turned out it was a Formula Junior that was once one of Graham Hill's backup cars but was never actually driven by him) and a gold late 1960's Pontiac that was used for towing the FC.
Then came a gold 1972 Corvette (which was badly damaged in the 1975 tornado and cost within $1,000 of the original purchase price to repair), a silver with flat black hood 1976 Camaro Rally Sport, a dark brown with gold pinstriping 1977 Fiat X1/9, a blue 1981 Subaru station wagon, a white 1986 Honda Civic (which had the stuffing beat out of it on multiple Divisional and National rallys), a white 1989 Mustang convertible (which had the stuffing beat out of it on autocross courses), a black 1982 Camaro, a black 1991 Camaro Z28, a silver 1989 Chevy conversion van, and a black 1991 Jeep Wrangler. The '91 Jeep earned the dubious honor of being the car she owned the longest.
Ellen's favorite Solo II memory was during the time when John LaRandeau and Don Knop (notable F Stock competitors) had been trying to teach her the fine art of autocrossing in her 1989 F Stock Mustang. "We were at a local event, probably Ak-Sar-Ben, and I had just finished what felt like a particularly good run. John and Don came over to congratulate/coach me and I was sitting there shaking like a leaf, completely unable to get my helmet off. While I was still regaining my composure (and fighting with the helmet strap), John told me that if I got any closer to the times he was turning in his 1970 Camaro, he would retire." She still thinks that "Hearing John LaRandeau say that was better than winning a Divisional Championship!"
Ellen has held several offices in NRSCCA. She was secretary for several years, editor several years, assistant RE once, and on the Board of Governors in 1979 and 1980. She was the registrar for several Divisional Solo II Championship events held by Nebraska Region in the late 1970's, 1980's, and early 1990's.
Ellen was a Class "A" Divisional and National caliber road rally navigator when teamed with driver Jerry Doctor. One year, as the story goes, they ran the Daniel Boone Rally in St. Louis (a National rally) and spent the night before the event seriously praying for rain. If it had rained, which of course it didn't, Ellen and Jerry both claim that they might have ended up third overall by virtue of being one of only three four-wheel drive vehicles entered. The Daniel Boone is a rally that goes places "where no car has gone before" ... literally fording streams and wandering along roads that dwindle down to nothing more than a dent in the tall grass.
Ellen participated in SCCA events into the early 1990's. But in the mid to late-1990's she gave up her passion for driving when building websites became her driving passion.
In March of 2003, Ellen and Dave Zitzlsperger, Mark Ross and myself (Patt Buell) put together the History Team and started gathering articles from the old newsletters, old photos, and any other information we could get on the Region's history.
At first we were just going to submit the history to the newsletter for publication during the 50th Anniversary year, but we soon discovered there was too much good stuff we had unearthed for the Notes to print and still have any room left in it for current articles and results. The next idea was to put together a book. That idea was dismissed as too costly and, even then, it wouldn't all fit in just one book.
Ellen was the one that suggested the NRSCCA history website, and we have come to the conclusion that this is going to take more than a year, maybe five or even ten, and just maybe it won't be completed in our lifetimes. But we will keep going and keep having fun as long as we can ... and hope that one of the younger members will take over when the time comes.
And as they say "The Rest is History."