Don Murphy was working as an aerospace artist at the North American Aviation plant near LAX in 1953 when he heard about an upcoming company-sponsored Soap Box Derby competition open to children of employees.
The Manhattan Beach resident was disappointed to learn that the father-son activity had an age limit of 12, which meant that his son, 10-year-old Donn, was too young to enter.
That got Murphy to thinking that there must be an alternative to the full-size, expensive soap box derby racers, something similar that younger children could participate in.
He’d had fun building miniature models as a boy in LaPorte, Indiana. What if Donn and his fellow members of the 55-member Cub Scout Pack 280C in Manhattan Beach built and raced small wooden cars they’d build together with their parents instead of the larger ones? They would still use gravity, but, with the use of five-foot-high, 32-foot long wooden tracks sloping downward, races could be staged almost anywhere.
He took the idea to local Scouting leaders, and they expressed great enthusiasm. They hammered out a set of rules for the cars: they all had to be made from the same type of wood (pinewood), be no longer than 7 inches, no wider than 2 ¾ inches, and weigh less than 5 ounces.
With the help of sponsorship from North American, they designed uniform kits for building the models that would be issued to every participant. They contained four plastic wheels, four nails and three blocks of wood from which the cars were to be crafted without the use of power tools.
The scouts and their parents also built the first Pinewood Derby track at the Manhattan Beach Scout House at 1617 N. Valley Dr. in Live Oak Park, which had just opened a year earlier in 1952. (The local scouting community currently is trying to raise funds to build a new scouting center on the site.)
The original 31-foot track was fashioned from wood; later tracks would be made from metal. It had a battery powered finish gate whose sensors would trigger a light bulb to come on as the winning car passed over them at the end of the race.
Leaders passed the car-making kits out at the scout meeting on April 17, in advance of the first-ever Pinewood Derby to be held on May 15, 1953.
The Manhattan Beach Scout House filled with excited parents and their children on the night of the big race. The track worked flawlessly as cars raced in three categories: ten-, nine- and eight-year-olds. Den Chief Daniel Hoffman’s car ended up the big winner.
More importantly, Murphy’s idea had turned into a big winner. It spread quickly through Cub Scout circles, with packs first throughout the South Bay, then farther afield introducing the competition. The City of Los Angeles Parks and Recreation Dept. even introduced it as a citywide event in its parks for youths in 1954, just a year after the first Manhattan Beach races.
The need for the kits increased exponentially, especially after the official Boy Scout magazine Boys Life ran a detailed article on the Derby in its October 1954 edition.
The Boy Scouts of America wanted to take the program nationwide, and it did so after securing Murphy’s approval. In early 1955, national scouting officials contracted with Beta Crafts, a firm in Brunswick, New Jersey, to produce official Pinewood Derby car kits nationwide.
After that, the competition essentially became a part of Cub Scout life, with competitions held at packs throughout the country. Over the next 50 years, Beta Craft would sell about 100 million of the kits, which cost $3.50.
As for Murphy, he left scouting after his children outgrew the program. By giving his idea over to the Boy Scouts without any claims on ownership, he never made a dime from the program.
But you can’t always measure life by money. In 1997, Gary MacAulay, the current scoutmaster in Murphy’s former Manhattan Beach pack (now named Pack 713), tracked down Don Murphy at the house had moved to in Torrance and knocked on its door.
After talking, it turned out that Murphy had no idea how large and far-reaching his Pinewood Derby had become. MacAulay invited Murphy back to the Scout House to preside over Derby events, and the resulting publicity brought Murphy renewed attention.
He even had a walk-on role in the movie comedy “Down and Derby,” a 2005 film about the phenomenon Murphy had started 52 years earlier.
Don Murphy died at 90 of pneumonia on July 1, 2008.
MacAulay summed Murphy’s life and ambitions up best when he told the Daily Breeze’s John Bogert at the time of his death:
“For Don it was never about money, it was about fathers and sons. He was an old-style gentleman, a thoughtful and kind man who was delighted that the boys were still racing and still enjoying themselves.”
And they still are.
Sources:
Daily Breeze archives.
“A Fascinating Look at the History of the Pinewood Derby,” by Brian Wendell, On Scouting website, Jan. 21, 2019.
Easy Reader archives.
Los Angeles Times archives.
Manhattan Beach Senior & Scout Community Center website.
“Pinewood Derby History Started with the First Race in 1953,” by Joe Gargiulo, PinewoodPro.com website.
Torrance Press Herald archives.
