For a teenage boy in 1966, life was often a hair-raising adventure, an orgy in sensory overload. The Beatles and the Beach Boys permeated the soundtrack of our lives, and if you were a kid interested in cars, well, heck, there was no better time ever.
So it was for Mark Butcher, now 67, who in June 1966 was the son of an Air Force supply sergeant living in Europe. Butcher was and is enthralled with cars, race cars in particular, so he was beyond ecstatic when he and his two brothers found themselves at Le Mans, the 24-hour French auto race that inspired a major Hollywood movie in 1971 starring Steve McQueen and a new one that opened in Dallas on Nov. 14.
The 2019 entry is Ford v Ferrari, which IMDb.com describes thusly:
“American car designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles battle corporate interference, the laws of physics and their own personal demons to build a revolutionary race car for Ford and challenge Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966.”
The new movie deals specifically with the legendary ’66 race, which Butcher spent a sleepless, albeit life-changing night to witness in person.
Born in Leesburg, Texas, Carroll Shelby graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1940 and died in Dallas in 2012. Matt Damon is cast as Shelby, and a slimmed-down Christian Bale plays his cunningly clever driver, Ken Miles. Critics say one of the best performances is turned in by Tracy Letts, who plays Ford czar Henry Ford II, who wants badly to beat Ferrari, so much so that he can almost taste the motor oil. Ford had tried but failed to buy Ferrari. So, for the spurned executive, losing at Le Mans was not an option.
Like a teenager counting down the days to a Taylor Swift concert, Butcher eagerly awaits the moment when he can lean back in a theater seat and have Ford v Ferrari teleport him back in time, to Le Mans, 1966.
He and his brothers hail from San Antonio, but Butcher now lives in Cloudcroft, N.M., so with eager anticipation, he drove to Alamogordo on Friday night to see Ford v Ferrari, which he proclaims as “excellent.” And sure enough, it brought back a flood of memories. On the day of the race, Steve, his youngest brother, was 8. Middle brother Robert was 13. And Mark was 14. (Today, Steve lives in Lancaster, and Robert lives in Abilene.)
As much as anything, Butcher remembers the noise, which he describes as deafening — for 24 hours. But the American car carried its own special sound, one he’ll never forget.
“The Ford GT 40 Mk [Mark] II’s had such a distinctive, deep-throated roar, compared to all the European entries,” Butcher says. “The European cars had higher-revving and much smaller displacement engines. The Ferraris, in particular, had a much higher-pitched sound to them.
“When you go to races like that, you’re watching race cars that are cutting edge,” he says. “There was nothing like it that we had ever been to or heard about in the states. It affected me profoundly. I’ve stayed interested in this stuff all my life since then.”
He even used his lunch money growing up to buy magazines like Road & Track, Butcher says. “That’s what makes my interest in all this over the years so strong. How many Texas boys do you think were at Le Mans in 1966?”
