Facing one of several crossroads that would arise in his racing life, he ended up getting the help he needed.
“A guy named Gary Grahn came and asked if he could help out,” Stevie said. “And if it wasn‘t for him I probably would not have been able to race anymore. Gary was the savior for me. He took me to all the midget and sprint car races when I was a kid, and you can‘t find a better guy.”
It was clear that Reeves had talent. In fact, by this point a man named David Michaels had asked permission to put him in his A Class car. Stevie was younger and, by default, weighed far less than his competitors, a situation that caused a fair degree of consternation among other parents.
“I could miss the corner by three feet,” he said, “and drive right by them because I had so much speed. Back then nobody else who did it was so young, so the parents were raising hell and had a big meeting. They said I was too young, but it was a big stink because I was smaller and had a big weight break.” Still it was here that he developed a competitive edge. He recalls a race when only he and Stanley were left standing and, given their intense desire to win, they actually crashed each other.
There was a point in time when Reeves and Stanley would walk to school together, but when the helmets went on the friendship took a backseat.
“We were kids,” he says. “And we were serious, and that‘s what we wanted.”
It was a different world than today, and there was no real way Reeves was going to step into any other kind of race car until he had crossed his 16th birthday. That day came and went, and now he was aged out of quarter-midget racing and out of the sport, period. It was one of the most miserable years in his life.
Once again, his grandparents came to his rescue. They mortgaged their house and helped him buy a sprint car. If he didn‘t recognize the irony of this decision, his father certainly reminded him. It wasn‘t a rational choice, but one that highlighted the love of grandparents for a grandchild.
He purchased his sprint car from southern Indiana‘s Jerry Shields, and it turned out to be one of the last cars Stevie‘s father had built. He spent a year getting into top shape, and then signed in to compete with the All Star Circuit of Champions at Paragon Speedway. It was going to be a tall order as it was, but on top of it all the pits were absolutely jammed.
It was a memorable night, in part due to the aftermath.
“I couldn‘t even get out of the car at the end of the race because I was so tired,” he recalled. “The next week was Bloomington, a non-wing show, and I won the fast heat. I think I beat Greg Staab and Randy Kinser, but it was the same deal. I ran something like 60 races that season and at the end of the year we sent everything back to get reworked. Then I found out that I had parts missing out of the power steering pump, so I had no power steering the whole year. I didn‘t know it. Everybody just told me sprint cars were hard to drive. Not only was I pushing the fluid one way, I had to pull it back the other.
”The next year when it worked properly, I over-drove the car, so we had to put caster in it.”
Reeves would master the sprint car but was forced to survive the old-fashioned way. He had found work in a machine shop with former Indy car racer Frank Weiss and was soon building parts for projects like the Buick Indy car engine program and Alfa Romeo.
It was vital experience and Weiss was extremely supportive of Stevie‘s racing program.
Anything he won he put back in the race car and, in the end, his operation had to support itself. He had also assembled a bit of a crew. Gary Grahn was still in the fold, as was Brian Hornick, known to all to this day as “Cuz.” In addition, Greg and Jeff Grahn were also on board. They would compete in Indiana and with the All Stars, and when on the road Jack Hewitt would lend support because he appreciated a gang of kids trying to make it all work.
Jeff Grahn would go on to become a winning crew chief at Indianapolis and guide several championship efforts, while Hornick‘s most recent accomplishment was serving as a mechanic on Takuma Sato‘s 2020 Indy 500 win.
Unfortunately, everything was momentarily derailed as he suffered a serious accident at Ohio‘s Millstream Speedway.
“Something broke on the right front,” he said. “And I got upside down. I was just sitting there and a guy hit me. It broke my neck and jaw on both sides, and tore muscles in my back.”
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