Doyel: The story behind Indy 500 driver Jigger Sirois' deathbed donation to help stuttering kids
Gregg Doyel- Indy 500 driver Jigger Sirois, who stuttered most of his life, left a small fortune in his will to help stuttering kids like he'd been in the Region – but swore me to secrecy until he died.
- Jigger, known by hardcore Indy 500 fans for his ill-fated attempt to qualify in 1969, stuttered since a terrifying incident when he was 3. He beat it with therapy at age 65. He died last month at 91.
- Jigger told me about his pending donation in 2022, when I called to write about that 1969 race, but wouldn't let me write about his gift until he died.
The voice from the grave is earnest and old-fashioned, like something from Depression-era rural Indiana. Which it is. Before he became an IndyCar driver – before his name became synonymous with the bad luck lurking each May at the Indianapolis 500 – Jigger Sirois was born in 1935 in a town of 500 in Lake County, the northwest corner of The Region.
Jigger died last month at age 91, but his voice lives on. There is irony there, and beauty, because for 60 years Jigger hated the sound of his voice. He was ashamed of it, the way it would start and stop, over and over, until he’d finally get the words out. He never gave up, though. That wasn’t Jigger’s way.
Jigger’s voice is on my phone, saved in a message. It’s from June 14, 2022. I’d written a column about him that May, about his luckless legacy at the Indy 500, so unbelievably unfortunate in 1969 that the folks at Indianapolis Motor Speedway put his name on a gold-colored trophy shaped like a shot glass – the Jigger Award – and presented it every year to the most hapless driver in the field.
Jigger was calling that day, asking for a copy of the May 26, 2022 IndyStar, insisting he'd reimburse me for postage and any other costs – “I’m not trying to be a freeloader here,” he said, “because I realize there's a charge for back copies” – and then, at the end, reminding me of the deal we’d made one month earlier.
“I’m just overjoyed with what you’re going to do in the future,” Jigger told me in the voice mail, the one I’ve saved for more than four years, leaving unspoken the particulars of our deal:
That he would let me write about the final beautiful gesture of his grand life, but only after he died. He didn’t want the story – this story, the one you’re reading – published while he was still alive: He was going to leave a sizable amount of his estate to two children’s hospitals, including Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital at Ascension St. Vincent in Indianapolis, to fund fluency programs for children who stutter.
Then he signed off, the last words Jigger Sirois ever spoke to me, ending his voice message the way he always finished our phone calls.
“Have a green flag day.”
That was Jigger. And here’s the thing you should know about that voice, the one we’re hearing from the grave:
It didn’t stutter. Not once.
Doyel in 2022: Jigger Sirois lost 1969 Indianapolis 500 pole, won racing immortality
'Keep your pencil handy'
Jigger was 3 when the tornado ripped through Shelby.
They were in a parked car, Jigger and his family, rocking back and forth and looking out the window as the wind ripped the roof off a nearby chicken house.
“The air was full of not only feathers, but chickens!” Jigger was telling me in May 2022. “The essence of it – with my mom and everyone screaming incessantly and loudly, you can understand – something happened to my undeveloped brain. I’m told I returned home without saying a word, and for three days I was mute. Never made a single sound. My older sister said I could speak normal for (age) 3 prior to that, but when I resumed talking, I stuttered.
“They didn’t know what to do with it.”
This was Depression-era rural Indiana, remember. Treatment for stuttering? There was no treatment. Only shame.
“I thought there was something deep, dark and mysteriously wrong with me,” Jigger’s telling me in May 2022, by speaker phone from his home in Williamsburg, Va., where he was a pipefitter welder for Standard Oil before retiring in 1996.
“I say there was something wrong with me,” Jigger continues, “and my wife is smiling at me across the table.”
He’s talking about Juanita, the love of his life.
“There still is!” she says, and everyone’s laughing.
“She has a quiver of zingers!” Jigger says.
He laughs easily at himself now, but it wasn’t that way when he was younger.
“I was from a small town of 500, and I was the only kid who couldn’t talk,” he says next. “I wouldn’t take anything now for not being a stutterer, because it’s given me something to do with my life.”
Jigger pauses. Our call is over. Well, almost.
“Keep your pencil handy,” he says. “If I can add one small snippet to this dissertation.”
Then he tells me what happened in the schoolhouse.
'I’m going to help kids who stutter'
Leon “Jigger” Sirois never did tell me how much he left to those two hospitals, here in Indiana and Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters (CHKD) in Norfolk, Virginia.
“It’s not right to mention the sum total of money,” he’d told me in May 2022. “It’s not good social practice.”
I’ve since learned the amount, but there are only two reasons Jigger let me write this story – to let families know where they can find help for their stuttering child, and to spur others to give – and if he wanted the final sum kept quiet, we’ll keep it quiet.
But put it this way: When Jigger informed the folks at Peyton Manning Children’s Hospital of his plans, he received a thank-you call.
From Peyton Manning.
“He was so down-to-earth and genuine, just calling to say thank you,” Jigger told me. “I told him, ‘Well, that’s what I’m going to do.’”
Jigger had been saving since he was 15, since that incident at school. It was one of those one-room schoolhouses, everyone learning together, and the teacher asked students of all ages to stand by their desk, one by one, and read aloud from their book.
And Jigger couldn’t do it. Like they were leaving his mouth and running into a brick wall, his words kept stopping short. And then his world fell apart.
“The teacher got so frustrated with me,” Jigger says, “and this is verbatim, it’s indelibly etched in my psyche. He says, ‘Leoooooon I can’t understaaaaand why you have such difficulty talking and reading. Your brother and your sisters were good readers and talkers!’
“I was so ashamed. But that day walking home, there was no self-pity. I made a vow – this is actually my thought as I walked home: ‘A 15-year-old who stutters shouldn’t have to feel like I do today.’ Then there was a pause in my thought patterns, and I decided when I get older, I’m going to help kids who stutter.”
Whether it was his earnings from his job at the refinery in Whiting, Indiana, or his winnings as a racecar driver – he was inducted into the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame in 2013 – he set aside what he could and let it grow. Along the way he and Juanita purchased 30 packets of self-help stuttering therapy and mailed them to the three largest public libraries they could locate.
“Many families today even with the internet don’t have the finances to afford clinical therapy,” Jigger told me in 2022. “But they can go to the library and use those resources and it helps them overcome stuttering. The three largest would be Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, so we sent 10 packages to each one of those, which results in hundreds of sub-libraries also having access. Each packet only cost $50, but in our hearts we knew we were helping.”
Jigger and Juanita kept setting aside money over the years, and lived frugally in Whiting and then Virginia, where he was transferred to the Standard Oil refinery in Yorktown in the late 1970s. In the latest annual giving report from Ascension St. Vincent, which lists its top donors in tiers, the top tier is reserved for those who’ve given more than $250,000. That list of about 50 names includes many you’d recognize from the local sports scene: Manning, Irsay, Simon and Lucas (as in Lucas Oil Stadium).
Plus these two donors with IndyCar roots: Roger Penske – and Jigger and Juanita Sirois.
“I’m lucky to have the wife I have, Miss Juanita, who never once complained about the way we saved for this,” Jigger told me. “We’ve had a condo for 35 years. The building needs repair. It’s gone so downhill, I wouldn’t be surprised any day to wake up in the morning and I’m out in the woods in a tent!”
When Jigger and I spoke that day in 2022, he and Juanita had a 1994 Camaro and 2004 Buick LeSabre – cars he kept fixing.
“People see me pull up in my LeSabre,” he said, “and they wouldn’t believe I once passed A.J. Foyt in the Astrodome in a midget car.”
Jigger Sirois solved his stuttering, wants to help others
To see him pull up in his LeSabre, people wouldn’t have believed Jigger Sirois nearly won the pole at the 1969 Indianapolis 500.
He was the first to attempt qualifying on Pole Day after pulling lucky No. 1 from the hat, and he’s three laps into his four-lap qualifying run, averaging a modest 162 mph, when it starts raining. On pit road Jigger’s tiny, one-car team has a decision to make: Finish the run, post a number and see how it stands up – or wave the yellow flag, negating the run and preserving his right to try again for a faster number. His team waves the yellow flag, ending the run just as it starts pouring.
Qualifying is rained out that day, but here’s a rule to know from 1969:
Only qualifying attempts made on the official Pole Day would be eligible for the pole. Had Jigger been allowed to complete his run, he’d have posted the only time of the day. He’d have started the 1969 Indy 500 from the pole.
Instead, he went out the following Sunday with the rest of the field, starting from scratch, and posted another modest 162 mph. That would’ve stood up as the 26th fastest in the field, putting him in Row 9, next to Bill Vukovich II, but his crew thought he could go faster. They sent him out for another run, erasing his posted qualifying time.
And on the first lap, Jigger’s engine blew up.
He tried to qualify again from 1970-75, but never made it into the field. The Jigger Award was born.
IndyStar on your phone: Get a personalized reading experience in the IndyStar app
“Without the experience at the Speedway,” he told me in 2022, “there wouldn’t be any sports writers calling me when I was 87. Honestly, I was just another guy that didn’t qualify fast enough if you want to look at it realistically. It hurts, but that’s racing.”
That’s Jigger.
So is this: He was 65, still stuttering – resigned to it – when he and Juanita attended a cocktail party at the College of William and Mary.
“This woman came up to us,” Juanita was telling me recently, a few weeks after Jigger had died. “He had trouble introducing himself, and this lady – whether she had had too much wine or she just thought she was being funny – she says, ‘Oh ha, you don't even know your name!’
“He was so embarrassed that he decided then and there he was gonna try and find some help.”
Jigger enrolled in a 21-day residential program in Roanoke, Va., where for three weeks he spoke into a tape recorder, at shopping centers and finally on the phone to therapists.
“He was the only senior citizen,” Juanita says.
Jigger came home a changed man. No longer stuttering but still motivated to help, he offered himself up as a public speaker.
“Most states have hearing language and speech convention,” Jigger told me in 2022. “I’ve been the keynote speaker in nine states, and at the Missouri resort Tan-Tar-A – hold onto your pencil – there were over 1,000 people seated.”
It was nearing the end of our call that day in 2022, for real this time. I’d been holding onto my pencil for more than an hour, jotting down one beautiful, astonishing fact after another. To this point we’d not discussed the timing of the story. I’d called him planning to write about the most famous aspect of his story – about the Jigger Award – but switched gears to the real truth of Jigger Sirois: His victory over stuttering at 65, and his determination to help others defeat it at a younger age than he had.
Jigger had one more thing to say.
“I’d like you to hold off – and I’m serious about this – until I pass,” he told me that day in 2022. “After I pass, you’ll be able to be write a powerful fundraiser to help children who stutter.”
Jigger passed on Sept. 23. Here’s how you can join Jigger and help children who stutter.
Checks can be made to Ascension St. Vincent Foundation at 250 W 96th St., Indianapolis, IN 46260 (memo: The Sirois Pediatric Fluency Fund) ... or to CHKD at CHKD Philanthropy Office, PO Box 2156, Norfolk, VA 23501-2156 (memo: Sirois Fluency Success Fund).
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel onThreads, or onBlueSky and Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar, or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar. Subscribe to the free weekly Doyel on Demand newsletter.