Lots Of Flames And A Long-Lost Trophy Marked Cincinnati’s First Automobile Race

Toward the end of 1951, a customer walked into the East Hills Plating Company in Bellevue, Kentucky, with a box full of old silver items for repair, replating and sale. Among the assorted objects, proprietor George Grainger spotted an impressive and substantial trophy cup of solid silver. It was engraved for presentation to one Emmet P. Gray by the Cincinnati Automobile Club. Mr. Grainger contacted the Automobile Club and Joseph R. Gardner, the current president, arranged to purchase the antique curio.The next issue of the Auto Club’s magazine, Motour, carried an article about the cup and about the 1901 race at which it was presented. The article noted that almost nothing was known about the recipient of the cup. Curiously, one reader knew quite a bit about Emmet P. Gray, because Mr. Gray himself, now living in Bethel, Ohio, happened to come across that particular issue. He called the Auto Club, which arranged a ceremony to present again, more than fifty years later, the cup to its…