I met Al Withrow in maybe 1983 or 1984. There weren't a lot of black people involved in motorcycle racing, and Al was one of probably only 4 or 5 black racers that participated in races conducted by the Midwest Cafe Racers Association (MCRA) in that period. Al started racing, as far as I know, with his Suzuki GT750, a snarling three-cylinder two stroke that had a reputation of being an evil handler - "flexy flier" was an uncomplimentary nickname they earned. Al's bike was a converted streetbike as opposed to one of the rare racebikes that Suzuki produced for Formula 750, and, with its breathed-on engine, his bike fulfilled all of the expectations, both positive and negative, of such a machine, being as fast as anything in a straight line, but difficult to handle in the curves.

Al showed up one day at "the slab," the stretch of road outside East St. Louis where informal and highly illegal drag races were held. Riding the Suzuki without the benefit of lights, mufflers, or even, I seem to recall, a license plate, Al proceeded to quickly blow away everything that would run against him. While that performance was not too surprising to those who appreciated the work that Al had put into that machine's engine, the audacity of riding the machine like that from Granite City was what most impressed me.

Al retired the "water buffalo" and moved on to later model Suzuki's. His primary mount became a 750 four-cylinder, a quite competent machine and supposedly much better handling than the old two-stroke. Unfortunately, one race weekend at Mid-America Raceway, the MCRA's home track at the time, was to spell doom for Al. He crashed with another bike but suffered only a hand injury which didn't prevent him from riding again. Perhaps it should have. In a subsequent race he fell while at or near the front of the pack. One of the following machines, a full-race Kawasaki KZ650, ran over his neck. Al was taken to the hospital in a coma. He never regained consciousness and died a couple of weeks later.