The Justice Brothers
The Justice Brothers were born in the tiny eastern Kansas
town of Paola, into a family of six children. Lawrence Milton, known as “Zeke,”
was born on March 12 1920 and youngest brother, Edward Ray, arrived fifteen
months later on June 12 1921. Growing up, the boys and their older brother Gus,
born in 1916, were obsessed with automobiles and speed. First the brothers stripped
down an old Whippet before they built their own midget racer. The brothers terrorized
the local residents and probably themselves with their high speed exploits in
their home-built machines.
It seemed inevitable that the Justice Brothers would have to
head to California to pursue their speed dreams. First Ed drove west on Route
66 in his Ford sedan and soon found work in the flight test department of
Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica. Before long, Ed sent word home to Kansas that
he had found Zeke a job working in millionaire playboy Joel Thorne’s Burbank race
car shop. Unfortunately, Gus had
suffered crippling injuries in a 1936 automobile accident and remained in
Paola.
When World War Two came, Ed enlisted as an aircraft mechanic
with the Eighth Army Air Force stationed in England, while Zeke worked during
the war at Thorne Engineering building precision aircraft parts. The foreman of
the Thorne Engineering shop was none other than Frank Kurtis, who later hired
Zeke as his first employee when he struck out on his own to build race cars.
Ed
later also joined Kurtis-Kraft Inc. and the brothers helped construct many of the
nearly 500 midget race cars K-K built during the post-war midget racing boom. Some of which were sold as kits, and Frank
Kurtis was too busy to take on repair jobs, so the enterprising pair opened
Justice Brothers Race Car Repair and Fabrication in Glendale California to assemble
Kurtis-Kraft midget kits and repair damaged Kurtis-Kraft race cars in their off
hours.
Once while Frank Kurtis was out of town on business, Ed
convinced Zeke to help him incorporate standard aircraft fasteners for the
first time on a midget race car being built by Kurtis for NMARHOF member “Bullet”
Joe Garson. The pair attached the body panels using Dzus spring-loaded quarter
-turn fasteners, and while Frank Kurtis was reportedly unhappy at first, the
Justices sold him on their innovation which became the standard in race car
fabrication.
The brothers somehow found the time to build their own
midget race car, and after just one outing at the famed Gilmore Stadium, sold
the car for a $2,500 profit, which they used to invest in a Florida-based oil
business. Justice Brothers Inc. went on
to sponsor the Kurtis-built 1950 Indianapolis 500 winner driven by Johnnie
Parsons, Red Byron, the first NASCAR champion in 1949, and were the first
sponsors of drag racing legend “Big Daddy” Don Garlits.
Although we lost Gus in
1983, Zeke in 2001 and Ed in 2008, the Justice Brothers Inc. automotive chemicals company
continues to grow under the leadership of Ed’s son, Ed Justice Junior, who is
also a noted motorsports photographer, historian, broadcaster and publisher.
