Nice trip report Bill. Thank you for sharing this. I will pass along to
the "other British car group"...Triumphs.
> ----------
> From: Wm. Severin Thompson[SMTP:wsthompson@thicko.com]
> Sent: Thursday, October 30, 1997 4:06 PM
> To: Healey list; vintage race list; british-cars@autox.team.net
> Subject: visit with Roger Menadue in the UK (long)
>
> To all,
>
> First off, thank you to all that participated in the "Mechanic's
> Prize"
> donations. For those that hadn't been following along, Roger Menadue
> was
> the Experimental Department Chief Engineer for the Donald Healey Motor
> Co. Roger's task was the construction of all Healey race cars and
> prototypes. He built over 30 cars that raced at LeMans.
>
> He constructed a car (Nash Healey) on 2 weeks notice in 1952 that
> finished 3rd overall behind 2 Mercedes. Somehow, even though he and
> his
> assistant were awarded the "Mechanic's Prize", he never saw the prize
> money... so we came up with it (without interest) 45 years later.
>
> Roger's 85 years old now, still quite active and in good health. He
> lives in Penryn, at the south of Cornwall in the UK. A few miles to
> the
> west is the Atlantic, and a few miles to the east is the English
> Channel. Roger lives in a small trailer on the modest property owned
> by
> his daughter Gay. She and her husband Neil live in a small granite
> cottage, originally built in the early 1800's. Mining in Cornwall was
> an
> important industry, and cooincidentally, the name Menadue means 'black
> rock" which exactly describes the granite that's mined there.
>
> I arrived there Saturday early afternoon, via the train from London.
> Roger met me at the station. He took me on a sight seeing tour of
> Falmouth, the port town at the base of the Fal River. We had a late
> lunch, then drove over to Trebah, the waterfront estate that Donald
> Healey once owned that is privately owned, but accepts the public to
> view it's extensive gardens. We had a pint there at the pub.
>
> We went back to Gay's cottage for a Cornish dinner. Prior to dinner,
> we
> went out to the cinder block shed that serves as Roger's workshop.
> He's
> always tinkering with something, or has some project going. His latest
> was fabricating a vent system that would draw outside aire from the
> garage for the wood burning stove, rather than the already heated
> inside
> air.
>
> After dinner, Roger got out the scrapbooks and we told stories and
> watched videos into the night.
>
> Sunday AM, we departed for Perranporth, the town on the Atlantic side
> for more sightseeing, then to the train station in time for the 11:00
> AM
> train.
>
> One of the stories that Roger loves to tell is the fact that he never
> used a torque wrench ever in his career. He always torqued things "by
> feel" and never trusted the reading of a torque wrench. So, imagine
> his
> dismay one year when he won the Mechanic's Prize at LeMans and was
> awarded a gold plated torque wrench. He never used it!. It's been
> rattling around the bottom of his tool cabinet for years. The plating
> is
> faint, corrosion started here and there. He insisted on giving it to
> me.
>
> One of motor racing's unsung heroes, Roger Menadue.
>
> WST
> Team Thicko
>
>
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