The Winner Who Walked Away

"My defenses were equal to the shock of his death," says Hill. "They were strained to the utmost, however, by the funeral. There were three services. The first was held in the Trips' castle near Cologne. A funeral mass was said and then a procession formed outside. It was raining, yet none of us wore raincoats or carried umbrellas. We walked a mile to the Trips' church. The pace was set by an old, old woman, dressed in black and carrying a symbolic brass lantern. There was a band, also dressed in black, which played Chopin's Funeral March. The casket was carried on Trips' personal Ferrari, an open model. It, of course, had to be driven very slowly.

"At the church another mass took place—this one was sung. Then the procession re-formed to go to the cemetery, perhaps another mile away. It was raining harder. The Trips' family chapel is situated on a knoll in the cemetery. The procession stopped at the foot of the knoll, eight of us clambered up the rise, slipping and sliding in the mud with the heavy casket. The last service was held and poor Trips was finally entombed. I have never experienced anything so mournful as that day."

During the first five years of his retirement Hill lived the kind of reclusive life to which he had grown accustomed during bachelorhood. Except for a maid and manservant, he was alone. Each day began like the one before. His manservant, Coakley, would knock on the bedroom door and, without waiting for a response, enter carrying a tea service. Coakley would deposit the tea service on the table beside the bed in which Hill slept. Oblivious to his sleeping master, Coakley would say "Good morning" and move to the window. He would fling apart the curtains, at which sound Hill would open a malevolent eye. Coakley would look out at the morning, sigh, and no matter what the weather—sun or smog—make the same response, "Well, Master, another dull day," and depart.

If Hill's life was no longer as stimulating as before, it was not dull. He immersed himself in activities. Some, like his piano rolls and antique cars, he had pursued while racing; others he had come to later. He undertook vigorous routines of weight lifting and calisthenics. He became an omnivorous reader of everything from medical books to East of Eden to articles on extrasensory perception, heredity and the continuity of human experience. He formulated labyrinthine theories on such topics as sleep ("An impossible reconciliation can exist in one's mind that amazingly can be smoothed over by sleep") and life ("a continual bleeding off of frustrations") and, naturally, death. He decided that death was a transcendence to a new state in which the dead become part of the cosmic unity of all creation, past, present and future.

Hill's most fascinating new toy was introspection. He used it unsparingly on himself in the hope that with enough time and distance, he would understand his past and his obsession with racing.

"If racers have one thing in common," Hill says, "it is a blind compulsion to race that transcends everything else. Such a man is turned on by the possibility that he is doing something that could kill him. It's an outlet for people whose lives and selves were inadequate. They try to put order and meaning into their lives by imposing their will on something potentially chaotic. A racer believes he makes his deadly machine safe. He plays God. He is one of the Blessed. His sport must be deadly so that in competing and surviving his skill takes on mystical qualities. The best way to anger a racer is to tell him his skill is just reflexes, eyes, an ability to see at 100 frames per second while the rest of humanity sees at 50 frames. They don't want to hear that. They want to hear that they are mutations, that they have a mystical gift transcending anything other mortals have. They prove they are blessed by surviving the ultimate challenge. It elevates them. The clich� is that racers have a death wish. Nothing could be further from the truth. They don't want to die, they just want the possibility of death. It's their way of reaffirming life, their life. Of course, the best way to reaffirm life is not to race at all. I couldn't say that until I quit."

On June 5, 1971, Philip Toll Hill married Alma Varanowski, a 33-year-old California divorc�e who had an 11-year-old daughter. At the time of his marriage the bridegroom was 44 years old and a previously confirmed bachelor with a manservant who would shortly be given his notice. "I never thought I'd get married," says Hill. "I had seen what happened to my parents."

Hill's decision was influenced by an incident at once familiar to Hill and yet so different from any he had experienced. "Alma's father had died," says Hill, "and they had the funeral in their house in Phoenix. They had been displaced persons during World War II, and had fled Germany and the Nazis to settle in Arizona. They lived a kind of pioneer life. Her father, who worked as a laborer, built his small house with his own hands. You could see where he added a room here, and later, a bathroom there. It was a simple, beautiful house. At the funeral Alma's mother sat by her husband's casket while mourners passed by. They were mostly these big, truck-driver types who'd worked with her husband. They were crying and she was consoling them. She hugged and kissed these guys and, I remember, amid the tears there was laughter. She threw her arms around me and kissed me and I kissed her. I couldn't believe I did it! It was something I would never do. My family did not touch, never expressed affection like that. But here is the thing I will never forget. The casket was open and she was sitting beside it. You could see him lying there as if he were sleeping, and all the while she was greeting mourners she was absentmindedly stroking his forehead, soothing him in a way I will never forget."

Alma Hill, a striking blonde with a hearty, expansive nature, says, "Marriage was quite traumatic for Philip. After all those years! When Derek was born, Philip decided that the house had gotten too small and so he was going to sell his piano rolls. He didn't have to sell them. It seemed to be a symbolic thing."

"I had spent years acquiring them," says Hill. "I had the finest collection in the world, but when the baby came I impulsively sold them. I catalogued them for the new owner and one night I got this terrible panic. It was like racing—I was painting myself into a corner so I couldn't go back."