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Indianapolis Star

44 years in Turn 3: Death of Indy 500 photographer leaves void at IMS

INDIANAPOLIS -- The photos were placed neatly beneath the glossy, plastic sheets buried among the pages of a nondescript, worn album that Bob Ruddick kept tucked away inside his Muncie home -- a sequence of devastating, brilliant photos of the horrific 1982 Indianapolis 500 qualifying crash that killed Gordon Smiley. It was a harrowing, gruesome accident, a fatal flip that happened when Smiley's car slammed into the wall as he was coming out of Turn 3 during a warm-up prior to qualifications. The car burst into flames, became airborne and Smiley was thrown hundreds of feet. He died instantly from the massive trauma. "It was the most devastating crash in Speedway history," the Indianapolis Star reported May 16, 1982. Everyone at the track was grief stricken. Ruddick never talked about the heart-wrenching images he had captured of that sad, historic moment in racing. His graphically-detailed photos of the crash that killed Smiley were never published. His son Matt Ruddick had no idea his father had taken those Smiley photos -- or many other photos in that album -- during his 44-year side job as a freelance photographer at IMS for the Indianapolis Star. He knew his father spent the month of May at the track, using up all his vacation days from General Motors in one fell swoop -- not to relax but to spend weeks roaming the grounds where the engines roared with a camera in hand. "Some of those photos, he never showed anybody. He didn't really talk about that a whole lot," said Matt Ruddick. "He always saw that as, 'Yeah, I got it, I did my job. Nobody needs to know anything about that after that.'" As Ruddick spent all those years at the track, he never wanted to stand out. He wanted to be in the background. "It was very like an old news person way of thinking. You don't insert yourself into the story," said Matt Ruddick. "He never said that, but it was very obvious that's what he was doing." Ruddick may not have talked about it much, but his passion for what he did came through to everyone around him, like osmosis, Matt Ruddick said. And that passion for his beloved part-time gig came through again in a very emotional way last May when Ruddick was in a hospital bed fighting Stage 4 lymphoma. He was desperate to be at IMS, but doctors told him he was too sick to shoot the Indy 500. "They told him, 'You don't need to be going out to the track again this May,'" Matt said. "Which was certainly disappointing for him." Even fighting cancer, Ruddick made it back out to the Speedway two months later to shoot the Brickyard 400 in July. He got one last race doing what he loved most. "I never saw Bob without a smile on his face. It was clear that he loved what he did, and he radiated that joy to everyone around him," said Max Gersh, senior visuals editor for IndyStar. "He was always willing to help others. He forgot more about the track than I'll ever know, and he was always happy to share that knowledge. "The month of May will not be the same without him." When Ruddick died in January, the people who loved him at IMS started talking. They started talking about May. They knew this May and this Indy 500 would be different without him around. "There will be a void," said Jimmy Dawson, who spent more than 50 years as a track photographer and was a good friend of Ruddick's. "He had 44 years in. That doesn't just go away without notice." Ruddick was just a tiny boy when he caught the racing bug from his dad, Jackie, who was on the IMS Safety Patrol, known in the modern-day era as "yellow shirts." Ruddick went to his first race when he was 2. "Dad really kind of grew up at the Speedway," said Matt Ruddick. "He grew up there, really in every sense of the word." As a young man, Ruddick even dipped his toe into racing a bit at local street stock cars races. And in the early- to mid-1970s, he followed in his dad's footsteps and worked as a "yellow shirt." But his real job was as a machine repairman at GM, which he started shortly after graduating high school. Then one day, he picked up a camera and started shooting races in Indiana and Ohio -- sprint cars, midgets, anything with speed. Ruddick would go around to different tracks with his racing photographer cohort Dawson, who also worked at GM. And before long, the two were getting noticed for their photos. It was Dawson who first landed a job with the Indianapolis Star as a freelancer in May 1970. Not long after, The Star needed someone else and Dawson recommended Ruddick, who quickly won the job, in part, because of his stellar photographs and, in part, because of who he was. "Bob was a super nice gentleman. I never knew him to drink or smoke or anything. He enjoyed racing," said Dawson. "But he was an excellent photographer and just loved the place." Through his years at the track, Ruddick earned an unofficial nickname among fellow photographers. "Ham salad." He would pack a cooler filled with ham salad sandwiches, enough to share with other photographers. Ruddick was even known to stuff a sandwich in the pocket of his shirt and sneak it out to eat while he was shooting in Turn 3. He was also known to hand off a spare camera to his son, instilling a legacy that would live on after he died. For Matt Ruddick growing up, everything revolved around racing. If it was a Sunday, there was a race on TV. It didn't matter what else was going on. "The race is on. And he's either sitting in the chair watching it or he's out mowing the grass," said Matt. "But he's coming in between the front yard and the back yard to see who's leading, see what's going on." It didn't matter what kind of racing it was. NASCAR, IndyCar, sports cars, motorcycles. And then each year, when the month of May would hit, racing would become Ruddick's whole life. For each day of practice, Ruddick would get up at 4 a.m., sometimes 3 a.m., on his vacation from GM. He had a 90-minute drive to the Speedway from Muncie and wanted to be there early to get parked before the public gates opened. In later years, he became a mentor among fellow photographers because Ruddick knew, seemingly, anything and everything about IMS. "I recall at least at one photo safety meeting, they were going over what you could and couldn't do. Where you could and couldn't be," said Gersh. "They said, 'If anybody out in Turn 3 had questions or needed help, talk to Bob.' He was who they trusted to make sure everyone stayed safe out there." Ruddick had a lot of long days at the track, but never once was there a complaint from him, only love of the hallowed grounds of IMS. "There are days when it's hot. It's exhausting. There's a lot of walking around," said Matt. "And when I think about that and I think about what dad did, which was if there were cars on the track that day, he was there. It's pretty incredible." When he was a boy, Matt would ride down to IMS with his dad. Before Ruddick would go out to shoot in Turn 3, he would give his son a camera and Matt would go stand on the hill and shoot from behind the fence. Years later, when Matt became a credentialed IMS photographer, he realized just how engrained his father was at the Speedway. "I'm walking around in the garage and the media center and everybody knew who he was," said Matt. "There was not a stranger to Bob Ruddick at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway." Yellow shirts, race car drivers, team members, IMS president Doug Boles, gift shop workers, fans -- Ruddick knew all of them by name. And they knew Ruddick by name, too. Ruddick wasn't just a photographer. He was a mainstay at the track. And after he retired from GM nearly 20 years ago, he took on another job at the Speedway. "Dad was not somebody who liked to sit around. He needed something to do," said Matt. "And I don't think to any of our surprise, it was a pretty easy hire for them." The IMS museum hired Ruddick as a bus driver at first. Soon, he started giving tours as a guide. "He learned all the ropes. I think he worked everywhere there is to work at the Speedway except the souvenir shop," said Dawson. "And he might have done some of that when the ladies wanted to go to the bathroom. He might have even worked in the gift shop." Martie Gray, guest service manager at the museum wrote a Facebook tribute to Ruddick after his death. "Bob was more than just a co-worker. He was a cherished friend and an integral part of our team," Gray said. "His unwavering commitment, positive spirit and compassion made a lasting impact on all of us." It was heart valve issues that first sent Ruddick to the hospital. That's when doctors discovered a spot on his lung they suspected might be cancerous. From there, Ruddick was in and out of the hospital for tests and treatment, but he still made it to IMS last May for his 44th year shooting at the track. Those long days were soon too much for him, and Ruddick started having extreme fatigue. He went back to the hospital just a few days before the Indy 500. That race in 2024 would be the first he had missed since 1980. While Ruddick made it back to IMS to shoot the Brickyard 400, his health quickly declined in the following months. He died Jan. 11 with his family by his side. As his family prepared for Ruddick's celebration of life, they started sorting through all those photos. Ruddick with A.J. Foyt. Ruddick in just about every nook and cranny there was to be found at IMS. Ruddick always smiling at the Speedway. Ruddick waving from Turn 3. "My mom found all these photos," said Matt. "It was incredible." When the newly-renovated IMS museum opened in April, Matt and his mom went because they wanted to go and partly to honor Ruddick. Inside the Penske gallery, chronicling all the years that a Penske driver had won an Indy 500, Matt discovered a front page Indianapolis Star photo his father had shot of the 1981 Indy 500 Danny Ognais crash. "And I looked at Mom and I was like, 'Hey, you might want to come over and look at this,'" Matt said. "Yeah, we weren't expecting that. Dad's photo on the front page of the IndyStar." Matt Ruddick now knows that's not the only photo his dad took quietly and without fanfare, never talking about it, just doing his job at the place he loved where the engines roared. There would have been a part of Ruddick that would have been happy to know an article was being written about him for his years of unwavering service at the Speedway, said Matt. "There probably would have been a part of him that also was like, 'You know, you're wasting paper space on me.'" After all, Ruddick knew just how precious newsprint was. His photos had graced the pages of the Indianapolis Star for decades. "He did it because he loved it," said Matt. "It's as simple as that. My dad loved it."