For more than 40 years, Ed Klotz has been a tireless volunteer for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, including driving as fast as he can inside the environs — but not in a race car.
His transportation of choice is a more slow-moving golf cart, which he uses to get celebrities and media members to destinations inside the sprawling downtown Long Beach grounds surrounding the race track.
For the past 15 years, Klotz has been director of the Dan Gurney Media Center. His multiple duties have included transporting hundreds of media members and celebrities around, including movie star Cameron Diaz, who graduated from Poly High School; NFL Hall of Fame quarterback John Elway; Star Wars creator George Lucas; and Roger Daltrey, founder and lead singer of the rock band The Who.
“Ed has been one of our hardest working volunteers for so many years,” Jim Michaelian, president and CEO of the Grand Prix Association of Long Beach, said Saturday, April 15. “He does a terrific job for us.”
Michaelian was with me and Tom Bray, a senior editor with the Southern California News Group, at the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center on Saturday — Day 2 of the Grand Prix — to present Klotz with the Allen Wolfe Spirit Award for his years of volunteer service during the Grand Prix.
The award is named after Allen Wolfe, the late motorsports reporter for the Press-Telegram who was known as the “Dean of Reporters” covering the Grand Prix.
When Chris Pook first proposed having a race on the streets of Long Beach in the early 1970s, there were skeptics, including Wolfe. Wolfe, who had a sense of humor, wrote in the Press-Telegram in 1974, the year before the first race: “Can a city whose athletic tradition is steeped in lawn bowling, checkers and day boats out of Belmont Pier find true happiness as a mecca for international Grand Prix racing?”
In 1975, Wolfe got his answer — when thousands showed up for the first Grand Prix race in Long Beach.
Wolfe was hooked.
And so, he developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the race, so much so that the Grand Prix Time became known around the Press-Telegram’s newsroom as “Allen Wolfe Time.” After covering the first 23 Grand Prix races in Long Beach, Wolfe died of a heart attack during the week leading up to the race in 1999. He was 51.
Wolfe had a congenital heart defect when he was born, weighing 4.5 pounds and spending the first month of his life in an incubator. His twin brother died two days after his birth.
Wolfe didn’t let the heart defect slow him down as he became an avid golfer and skier. He graduated from Millikan High School, Long Beach City College and Cal State Long Beach. Wolfe started his career at the Press-Telegram when was 17 as a part-time employee answering phones in the sports department.
Wolfe has been recognized by the American Auto Racing Writers and Broadcasters Association at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway “for his dedication to increasing the coverage of motor sports.”
Klotz, meanwhile, is a native of Long Beach who was born on Dec. 19, 1942, in the former Seaside Hospital, which was replaced by Long Beach Memorial Medical Center. He graduated from Wilson High School and attended Long Beach City College and Santiago Canyon College.
One of his first jobs in the 1960s was helping build a wood mock up of a DC-10 for McDonnell-Douglas before production started. After that, he spent 20 years as a refining and marketing employee for Texaco in Wilmington and six years with Boeing, manufacturing planes in Long Beach.
Klotz said he attended the inaugural Grand Prix as a fan.
“I’ve always loved racing and fast cars,” he said. “I went to races at Lions Drag Strip in Wilmington and Riverside International Raceway.”
He lives in Huntington Beach now and is active there with the city’s Community Emergency Response Team.
Klotz applied for the Grand Prix volunteer group, the Committee of 300, in the mid-1970s. But, he said, he had to wait a year and a half because of a long waiting list of people wanting to join the prestigious organization.
“When I finally got in, my first assignment was helping out in the grandstand area,” Klotz said. “Then I did anything I was asked to do before I became director of the Media Center.”
While this is his last Grand Prix as the Media Center’s director, Klotz is not leaving the Committee of 300.
“I will still be around to help out when and wherever I can,” he said. “Sandra Ma (his successor) will do a great job. I love the Grand Prix. My time as a volunteer has been challenging at times, but it has always been exciting, satisfying and fun.”
Wolfe, a modest reporter, would have been embarrassed by having an award named after him — but he would have been proud of the award going to someone like Ed Klotz.
Source: Orange County Register
Be First to Comment