PASSION Driving race cars PROFESSION Nuclear physicist, retired HOMETOWN Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.

Harold Flescher
Speed Demon

When he’s driving 240 kilometers per hour around winding turns in national 
auto racing competitions, Hal Flescher says he feels one thing: total peace.

“When you’re going that fast, you feel calmer than you’d think,” he explains. The 66-year-old IEEE Fellow has been in more than 400 races since he began competing in 1961.

In 1960, Flescher and his friends attended a race on Long Island, New York. “We all said, ‘We can do that,’” he recalls. “I was the only one who did. I picked up racing rather quickly.”

Flescher joined the Sports Car Club of America, took required driving classes at two SCCA schools, and began competing. The SCCA is a 
national motor-sports organization that holds more than 2000 amateur and professional races each year, including autocross events (low- to medium-speed races with one car on the track at a time) and road rallies (timed events with speed limits and checkpoints). SCCA members compete in regional and national 
races for sponsorships, trophies, and other prizes.

WORK IN PROGRESS To become a winner, Flescher substantially modified his current car—a 1962 Austin-Healey Sprite. That’s where his tech background came in handy.

“The essence of winning is to have a car as perfect as it can be—it’s like a scientific experiment that you’re always working on. It’s just never perfect,” he says. “Modifying a car involves many aspects 
of scientific work, such as design, 
development, manufacturing, and vendor management.”

By day Flescher was a nuclear physicist and engineering manager for Raytheon Co., in Waltham, Mass., but by night he prepared his race car for weekend competitions. He sometimes worked extra hours during the week to make sure he had his weekends free to race. “I never let my work get in the way of my fun,” he says.

Today, Flescher has more than 100 wins under his belt, including a 1995 SCCA National Championship. He has placed second in National Championship races five times since then.

Although he’s had some pretty bad accidents in his nearly 50 years of racing—he once broke his sternum in a head-on crash into a wall—he says he doesn’t plan on slowing down anytime soon, either on or off the track. He also sails, flies airplanes, skis, and owns a river barge in France. But his main passion will always be racing, he says.

“What I love about racing is that you get into a rhythm when going around the track, and it’s like dancing at high speeds,” he explains. “I’m going to keep racing for as long as my skills hold up…and then I’ll pick up another sport.”

PASSION Writing adventure novels PROFESSION Professor of engineering, part time HOMETOWN Bozeman, Mont.

Don Pierre
Teller of Tales

After writing technical articles for much of his career, Don Pierre has taken his writing in a different 
direction. The 70-year-old Life Fellow published his first historical adventure novel in August, Yesteryears Western Trek.

The self-published book depicts the coming of age of a young man named Joey on his journey across the western United States during the 1860s. Parts of the story are written as a diary of Joey’s wagon-train adventures on the historic Bozeman Trail, which ran from Wyoming to Montana.

“I’ve always been interested in writing a novel. I’m quite an avid reader—especially when it comes to Westerns,” says Pierre, who has a collection of more than 200.

INSPIRATION After retiring in 2000, Pierre joined a creative writing group for seniors and attended its weekly meetings. For years he’d been reading books on how to become a fiction writer, but the group gave him the motivation and support he needed. His first non-technical book was an autobiography. In 2001, he came across a two-volume set of historical books that inspired him to take his love of Westerns to the next level. Journeys to the Land of Gold [2000, Montana Historical Society] featured excerpts from 33 journals written by people who traveled the Bozeman Trail in the 1860s.

Fascinated by their real-life adventures, Pierre began brainstorming ideas for a novel. He used a lot of what he learned from the journals in his novel, which includes aspects of the Gold Rush, the Civil War, and the telegraph replacing the Pony Express.

It wasn’t  long before he had the plot figured out. It took him a month to outline what each chapter would cover, and then he spent two years writing. He had trouble finding a suitable publisher, so he published the book himself.

Now that his first novel is on the shelves (it sells for US $10), he doesn’t plan on stopping. “I’ve got a few ideas in mind for more,” he says.

To buy a copy of Yesteryears Western Trek, e-mail Pierre: pierre_don@ieee.org.