Charley Hexom

By Jerry Boone

Reprinted courtesy of the Oregonian

I think my favorite Charley Hexom story was when he qualified in 1986 to race for a Sports Car Club of America championship in Atlanta.

He didn't have much money. No tow rig. No trailer. No race crew.

So he loaded his extra tires in the back of his race car and drove solo across the country, eating fast food and sleeping at roadside rest areas.

He raised a lot of eyebrows when he got to Road Atlanta and the first thing he tossed out of the car was a wheelchair. When he was ready to leave, the first thing to go in was a third-place trophy.

You don't have to be a racing enthusiast to be humbled by Charley, who every day still proves the return on life is proportional to your investment in it.

Charley wasn't born a paraplegic. He became one in 1970 when he crashed his motorcycle the night before graduation from Aloha High School.

"I was driving more on beer than brains," he admitted.

His friends found him and the wreckage. Charley never walked again.

He spent too much energy trying to find someone else to blame, only to realize he was both the cause of and solution to his handicap. Life was going on and he could be a spectator or a participant.

That's when he began restoring vintage airplanes and flying them with the hand controls he designed and built.

Then it was race cars, equipped so his callused fingers could fly over the hand brake, clutch and throttle controls as he balanced his car at the edge of adhesion.

On the track -- as in his life -- he asked no favors.

One year he lost a season title on the last corner of the final race of the year, but only after trying to bunt the first-place car out of the way.

He was the first handicapped SCCA driver to qualify for a national competition license, after winning both local races and championships at Portland International Raceway.

He caught the eye of Dave Wolin, head of the national Mitsubishi race team, who signed Charley as a driver.

"I had always raced front-wheel-drive cars," Charley recalled about his first time in a Wolin car. "So here I am, on a track I've never seen before, in a rear-wheel-drive car that's half-again bigger than anything I've raced and with twice the horsepower.

"But hey, I'm a team driver so I better impress the boss."

And he did. By parking it backwards in a dirt berm. Upside down.

Charley went on to race for Wolin around the country, including a trip up Pikes Peak during the annual hill climb.

"It all went pretty well till I got near the top," he said. "We never considered that the higher you get the thinner the air becomes and the less vacuum the engine makes. And the hand controls were vacuum-operated.

Back home, he and his wife, Darla, shared a race car. It was the only one at PIR with both race numbers and a handicapped parking sticker on the sides.

His success inspired other handicapped drivers to compete.

What Charley learned on the track he put to use in business. He left a job managing an auto body shop to begin Performance Mobility, which equipped vehicles for people with physical limitations. It tackled anything from motorcycles to Kenworth big rigs.

"We don't have to treat handicapped people like baggage anymore," he said.

Then he helped develop a program at PIR to show handicapped drivers how to control their vehicles in bad weather.

In 1997, he sued in federal court to make Oregon stop charging for handicap parking permits. It wasn't the $4 fee, it was the principle. The fee is gone.

Charley lost a race he couldn't win. Cancer is coursed through his body and eventually took its final toll.

Those who knew him mourn Charley's loss. Those who didn't might mourn that loss as well

Read John Brewer's Eulogy for Charley

Read Charley's memorial