- Will you consider this?

You're a young boy with humble beginnings in Central Illinois, raised by a single mom in Creve Coeur.

You go on to become a Marine, then work as a lineman for the phone company, you sell cars, even sell dealerships, and you race cars and you set land speed records.

You know most of the right people and have a huge heart.

I'm Christine Zak-Edmonds, and my guest today is my friend John Bearce, next on "Consider This."

(upbeat music) He is truly one of a kind and seems to have boundless energy.

Back in the day, you could see him more than 80 times a week on local television.

as the Price Leader.

He's a man who has done either a little or a lot of everything, and to this day, he still really knows how to get things done.

Please welcome my friend, John Bearce.

- Thank you.

- Good to see you.

- Thanks for having me.

- Well, it's great to see you, and you have your purple tie and your purple flower.

And let's start with that.

Why the flower and the matchy-matchy tie?

- Well, the flower kind reminds me of spring, a new beginning, and every year, if faith will tell you that a new beginning and a new rising and looking for unity in this country, looking for some great things to happen, specifically in Peoria.

So it's just a reminder for me.

- We'll get back to that, specifically in Peoria.

Your mom was a single mom and you were born in the Lewiston/Canton area.

- Lewiston.

- But raised in Creve Coeur.

- Yes.

- And we spoke, she never knew that you were necessarily hurting.

Your mom was a performer and you were on war rations.

- Well, it was called relief in those days and maybe food stamps today or whatever, I don't know, and she was so proud, that it was World War II surplus.

This was the late 30s and then into the 40s.

And after World War II, when we were at that time on relief, the cans were green, camouflage, et cetera.

And she would have me wrap the cans in newspaper and put them in the garbage so the neighbors didn't know we was on relief.

Very proud, right.

(chuckling) - And they really had no idea probably.

- I didn't think I was poor.

- Good for you, good for you, and you still aren't.

So then you grew up, you were running with a crowd, and you could go either way because your mom was busy trying to make a living.

But you decided to fudge a little bit and join the Marines.

- Yeah, I had some friends that had some run-ins with the law and some federal stuff.

It was serious.

But I don't know what it was, Chris, but I knew the difference between right and wrong.

And my mother never laid a hand on me or we didn't have big discussions about what's right and what's wrong.

I just knew what was wrong.

And I thought when I was a sophomore in high school, I decided that I might wanna join the Marine Corps.

And fortunately, I did.

I had to fib about my age and tell my mother I was gonna be stationed in East Peoria, 'cause that's where C company, the century battalion at that time, the reserve unit was stationed.

But I did.

And fortunately with reserve time and regular time, I served almost 10 years in the Marine Corps.

- And then, well, with your reserve time, you were also able to get a couple of jobs here and there.

- That's right.

Well, when I got out of the Marine Corps regular, I stayed in the reserves and became a lineman for the telephone company in Pekin, Middle States Telephone Company.

And I don't know, I didn't have... My father and mother divorced when I was three years old, so I didn't have really a mentor to look up to or say, "What should I do?"

Mom knew some things.

But I went to a grocer, Charlie Moss, that I worked for during high school stocking shelves, and I said, "I need to have a job."

He said, "Well, there's a new Ford dealership in Peoria.

Why don't you go talk to them?"

So April 1, 1953, my mother drove me over there because my car was out, and I went to work there.

Stayed 12 years, went through all the chairs there, became a manager, and then ultimately in '64 was able to buy my first dealership in Milwaukee.

- And that's an interesting story because you had no money.

- I did not.

- [Christine] Or you didn't have a lot of money.

You had a nest egg.

- I had very little.

- (chuckling) So, how did you do it?

Ford came through for you.

- Well, it's an interesting story, but Ford Motor Company didn't wanna lose its managers, and I was a manager in one of the Ford stores.

So therefore, when I decided to try to buy one of my own, they didn't investigate in the beginning how much money I had.

They thought that I had enough money to buy one, which I didn't.

(Christine chuckling) And I think the good Lord was guiding me is the only thing I could say.

But anyway, they did supply money, and it was $264,527.14.

- 14.

- I'll never forget it as long as I live.

That's what I had to borrow.

- That's amazing.

And then you ended up having to pay it back.

- I did, but the ironic part, 93 days later, we were broke.

So I had to borrow it all over again, went back in and got it going again, which we did.

And then ultimately five years later, I sold it in 1968 and bought the store in Washington.

It was my first one in Peoria.

- Came back to Central Illinois and replaced yourself, so as to speak.

- Right.

- In between, well, you got married before you went to Milwaukee.

And Nancy was quite a character, his wife, his late wife.

She knew exactly how to push your buttons and get you to do what you needed to do.

- Well, she was the smartest, one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life.

In 53 years of marriage, we never had an argument, because first of all, she wouldn't argue, and second thing is once she said, no, she had never in 53 years ever changed her mind.

So therefore, I knew exactly.

But fortunately too, Chris, and I'm sure you've had this happen, you found a vocation that you really liked.

I had a great home life, but she allowed me to work.

And in those days it was 70, 80 hours a week.

And it wasn't I had to, it's because I wanted to.

- You loved it.

- And therefore she was able, we had three lovely children and she raised the children basically, but she told me where I had to be at certain times, the important things, our family dinners, et cetera, et cetera.

She was the greatest mate I could ever find.

- The glue to the family.

- True.

- So the best story or one of the best stories that I know is when she needed to get one or all three of the girls someplace, and you had her car.

- I sold her car, and she called me and she says, "John, you were supposed to have a car here at 10:00 and it's 9:45 and I don't have one."

And she says, "If I don't have a car in the next 15 minutes, I'm gonna go buy one and it will not be from you."

- And that worked.

- And she would do it.

(both laughing) - And she would, because she knew how to get results from you, right?

- Exactly.

- Right, and then, okay, so you also... You didn't know, you know you loved cars, you know you loved selling cars, but you didn't really have a goal.

When did you finally come up with your goal?

- Well, when I first started selling cars, there was a thing and it still is in existence, a Dale Carnegie sales course.

And I decided to go to that and I did.

And during that time, one of their basics that they ask you to do is write down a goal in life.

Well, I was living the dream.

I didn't think I needed anything more than what I got.

But anyway, he finally coerced me into doing it.

And I took that, wrote it down, put it on my wallet, and every time I'd bring my money out, I'd look at my goal in life.

I put it on the sun visor of my car, and every time I started my car, I'd pull the sun visor down and read my goal in life.

Well, that almost becomes an obsession with you.

And then I made myself do the right things.

I did the right readings.

I did the right schools.

I did everything that I could possibly do to prepare myself to become a dealer because of that goal in life.

And if I hadn't written it down, I doubt very much if I ever would have become a dealer.

- Interesting.

And you owned and sold how many dealerships?

- Nancy and I, when I say that, because she was, the little bit of success we've had, I'd say 70% of it was due to her.

But whenever you buy one of those, most of the time the wife has to sign on it also.

They will have your children sign if they could.

(both laughing) At the same time, we bought and sold 14.

- And that's amazing.

And really a lot of the dealers who are still around Central Illinois came through you.

- I was fortunate to have...

I think any business that prospers has to have good people, and I was blessed with outstanding people.

We had a rule, we really didn't hire anybody that had been in the car business before, 'cause we had a certain policy plan or procedure where we wanted to train them our way, which we did.

- And that you learned, excuse me, through Dale Carnegie.

- Well, it was part of it.

- A lot of it.

- Part of it.

Part of it was theirs, part of it was ours.

But the big thing was that in 25 years, 11 of my people that worked for me became dealers or general managers.

That's something you can't put on my paycheck.

- [Christine] Yeah, that's a record.

- 'Cause some of them are ultimately successful and they're doing great philanthropic work.

They're also doing great work with boards around here in the city and in the Tri-County area.

- And that's important to you.

- It is.

- Because you get out of town, you don't have that in-town support.

- That's right.

- Right.

So, racing.

Now, you have raced all over the place.

Did you like cars before racing or did you like racing before selling cars?

- I think it was salt and pepper.

It was together all at the same time.

I always loved automobiles, so that helped the vocation part of it.

I just got reading about some things and I read about the Bonneville Salt Flats, if you believe that, in "Hot Rod Magazine."

So I called them and I said, "Hey, what'd you gotta do?"

And he said, "Well, you gotta do this, this, this."

So anyway, we built a car, and never before had been there in my life and went to the Bonneville Salt Flats.

The earliest part of that time was in the '70s and it took me 10 years, but then ultimately we set five world land speed records.

- [Christine] How fast did you go?

- The fastest, these are production cars where it's really probably more dangerous than professional in this regards.

Being a production car, I couldn't have a roll cage.

So therefore if the car went over 2 1/2 times, it's on top of my head.

So you do not want to get this car upside down.

- [Christine] And you never did?

- I never did.

I had one crash is all, but it was minor.

But it was exciting.

The fastest we went was 182.

We own all the records for production cars 145 miles an hour and down.

- That's amazing, too.

How did Nancy feel about you going that fast without that protection?

- I'll tell you one quick story.

I'd call her about five o'clock in the evening, and when she'd get upset with me, she'd call me big shot.

And she said, "How are you doing?"

I said, "Well, Nancy, this car scared me half to death.

It's floating," and it did.

Because we couldn't have spoilers, the car would start to raise at about 140 miles an hour and it would move around on a racetrack.

And I said, "It scared me to death."

She says, "Well, big shot, who put a gun to your head and told you to go out there and do that?

Why don't you come home?"

Click.

(both laughing) - Okay, see, she knew exactly what to say, didn't she?

She was something.

Well, then another race that you were involved in was the Trans Amazon, and that's an interesting story in itself.

- I got a call from Dr. Gregg Stoner, who is the Peoria County Medical Director at the present time, and Gregg was asked to go as a doctor and as a driver.

And he called me and says, "Could you build me a car?"

And I said, "Sure," 'cause I had raced the Baja 500 also.

So we did build a car and I got interested.

So I said, "Why don't we build two of them and I'll go, too?"

So, we did it.

We raced from Cartagena, Columbia, the top of South America, to Buenos Aires, 9,800 miles.

And that's from 70, 80, 90 degrees in the jungle.

We crossed the Andes four times at 13, 14,000 feet.

And that was 15, 20 degrees.

- How was that on the... Is that the carburetor?

I mean, did you have to adjust it as you went?

- We had to rejet it, but we didn't because we used an automatic transmission.

We had fuel injection, so we didn't have to rejet it.

But it was dangerous.

I mean, you were looking at 8, 9,000-foot drops and a single little path to get a car through, and lost, didn't know where we were at.

But unfortunately, we had an accident, and my co-driver was critically injured and was off work for almost a year, but he was able to come through it.

But it was the world's most dangerous race, they say.

And we had three people that lost their lives in that race.

- You also ended up in jail down there, too.

- I did, and you don't wanna get in one of those jails, because I hit a sergeant in the Chilean Army head on, put his wife and a child through a windshield, and he was rather upset.

And if you're in a country where they have the guns, they make the rules.

So, they put me in jail and they were gonna charge me.

But I had a doctor that came in and bargained for me.

Probably four times I would go in and sign a paper.

I didn't know what I was signing 'cause it was in Portuguese.

But anyway, I started to leave, and he said, "You're gonna be able to leave."

And he says, "I would like for you," I'd wanna go back and say thank the colonel for letting me out, he says, "Lazarus, just keep walking.

He could change his mind."

So I was only 50 kilometers to the Peruvian border, so he took me to Peru, because it happened in Chili, and the Chileans hate the Peruvians, so they wouldn't extradite me.

And we moved the car across the start/finish line the next morning, and I caught him about three o'clock the next afternoon.

- How long did that take?

- 26 days, 130 cars, and there was 43 finishers, and we ended up 13th.

- So that was good.

You were proud of it.

Did you ever want to do it again?

- I was proud I was alive.

- (laughing) I guess, in that situation.

- It's a great diet though.

I lost 19 pounds in 26 days.

(both laughing) - Yeah, when did you get to stop to eat?

Or how did that work?

- Well, they were supposed to have food dumps and all.

It's a very long story.

Needless to say, it was not the smartest thing I ever did in my life.

- Okay, big shot.

- But it was a great race.

- (laughing) All right, well, that works.

And then you also, well, you love the Indy 500 and you go over there.

How many years have you been doing that?

- '66 was the first year we were there, and we got involved with one of the cars and we still are with the family, Eddie Carpenter, car number 20, a nice young man.

We got started with Eddie when he was 16 racing midgets and got to know his family very well.

And in fact, I'm gonna leave tomorrow and we're gonna go.

And I hope Eddie does well.

He has three cars involved in a team now, three cars, and it's fascinating.

There are gonna be 130,000 people is all.

Now it's the world's largest spectator race, largest spectator sport.

- Right.

- Last year before the COVID, we had 320,000 people there for that Indy 500 race.

So, they're gonna allow 130,000 this year.

So we're excited.

This week will be the Grand Prix, which is a road course inside the road course, inside the Speedway.

- Right.

- But it's a wonderful place.

It's a spectacle.

- Have you ever been down in the pits during the race?

- Oh, that's where I live.

- Okay, all the time?

- Well, all the time we're there, we spend most of our time in the pits, because fortunately, we're able to get near the car, and so you can see what's happening at that time and some of the fuel things that they're doing.

You just get so much fuel, and if you don't use the fuel stops right or if you're using too much, you're gonna run out of fuel and you're gonna lose the race not because you're not fast enough, it's because you don't have enough fuel.

- [Christine] Yeah, because you run outta gas.

- It's interesting.

- I know about me running out of gas, (chuckling) and I don't even do the racing.

Well, that's a fun story in itself, and you got to know Tony Hulman as a result of all that.

So that was longtime friendship.

- Yeah, Tony George was his grandson, and I wanted to drive a sprint car, and I was quite a few years in age at that time, and nobody's gonna let me drive their sprint cars, I was too old.

So I called a guy named Jimmy Sills in Sebastopol, California, and I said, "I'd like to drive a sprint car."

He said, "Well, what racing have you done?"

And I told him about the Baja 500 and the Trans-Am, and I drove up a car in Milwaukee to Stanguellini Formula Junior, which is an open wheel car, like an Indy car, but much slower.

And he says, "Oh, come on out.

We can put you right in a car.

It's not a problem, you'll be able to do it."

So I sent him my licenses and he checked me out.

And out there was Tony George, the owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at that time.

And he said, "What are you doing here?"

Because I was 30 years older than everybody in the class.

(Christine laughing) I said, "Well, I'm gonna drive a sprint car."

He said, "You're kidding me."

I said, "No, I'm gonna drive."

So anyway, we did, we did 100 laps, he and I both did, and he was a little faster than I was, to say the least.

But anyway, he had a jet.

So he says, "Well, you live in Peoria, we'll take you home."

And I said, "Boy, that'd be cool."

Well, anyway, long story short, they decided to stop and ski for a while, but the jet took me home, dropped me in Peoria, went on back to Montana, picked him up, skiing.

We developed a long-term friendship after that.

- What fun, what fun.

You have so many good stories like that.

You knew Mr. Shelby from the Shelby Mustang?

- I was a Shelby dealer in 1964.

I had the distributorship for Shelby and Shelby Cobra for the state of Wisconsin.

And I raced a GT 350 a few times for him also, and I run a hill climb here in Peoria with a 427 Cobra and owned a bunch of Cobras of my own, which are the collectibles today.

We sold that car in 1966 for $4,950.

The least you could probably sell one for right now is probably 1.8, 2 million.

- Incredible, wow.

- But only 900 of them were built.

- So therefore- - Not too many of them.

- Therefore, yeah.

All right, so real quickly, tell me about your experience with sports medicine and your interesting story in Cuba.

- Well, there was a great orthopedic surgeon here in town, Bernie Cahill, and Bernie and Stan Albeck and Pete Monacan and myself, we were kinda the exec committee of Great Plains Sports Science, and Bernie was the orthopedic.

Bernie, by the way, reduced knee injuries in high school football 41% by having them do a certain exercise before training started.

- Participating, right.

- Very talented guy.

And he got the idea that we should bring the Olympic weightlifting team to Peoria.

He found out that if you could build one of these training centers in a smaller community, if you take a young man or a young woman and put them in Chicago and coming from open overcoat, Alabama, they don't do very well.

But in a town of 100, 150,000 people like Peoria, if we could build a smaller training center, and he decided that an Olympian, one of the biggest assets they have is vertical jump, because the Olympic weightlifting is much different than just normal weightlifting.

Well, we wanted to have to get that, we had to go before the Olympic Committee and lobby against 15 countries.

And they were having their meeting in Santiago, Cuba.

- [Christine] And this was what year approximately?

- That would be late '70s, I would guess.

I can't remember exactly.

But anyway, Pete was busy, Bernie was operating, Albeck was coaching basketball.

I'm the car dealer.

(both laughing) I had a pass.

So anyway, they sent me to Cuba, and I lobbied against 13 countries and I won it.

And we got the Olympic training team to come to Peoria.

But on the way back, I wanted to get back, so I got into Havana, and there was a basketball team going back and forth from Havana to Miami every night for practice because they wouldn't allow them a regular practice.

And I wanted to get outta there, and because it was just kind of unusual, in Cuba I wasn't able to sit in a regular airport.

I had Olympic credentials, but I couldn't sit in the airport.

They put me in a room by myself.

I had nothing to drink.

I wouldn't drink anything but Coca-Cola, because of being pasteurized, et cetera, et cetera.

It was a very unusual, sometimes scary experience.

But fortunately, we did.

And in that (indistinct), we won the gold medal, Peoria did.

- Because these kids knew how to train correctly.

- Right.

- Interesting.

All right, so we're gonna circle back now to what you foresee Peoria becoming, what we're capable of.

You're a self-made man.

You've done it and that's a good message.

You can come from little or nothing, and as long as you keep your nose to the grindstone, you can build yourself, you can build a future.

- Just a side note there.

It really takes three things to be successful, and when one of these things are missing, I found the person failing.

You need a faith, you need somebody.

I don't know too many people, I, I, I, and then I think you need help.

You can't smoke too much, drink too much, eat too much, exercise too much, work too much.

It has to be in moderation.

But if one of those things are missing, you don't.

But coming back to Peoria, we right now are shifting gears a little bit.

I know I just saw H Wayne Wilson on this station interview five or six doctors about the comprehensive cancer center that they're proposing here and what UnityPoint is doing with mental health and et cetera.

And collectively, if we could get all of our, and the University of Illinois School of Medicine and then the Ag Lab...

Penicillin was probably almost developed right here in Peoria, so if we would take there's 70 or 80 PhDs there, take some of those and put in with the healthcare with the Jump Simulation Center at OSF, the Children's Hospital, UnityPoint, all of these people coming together and collectively building, and then the proton cancer machine that's coming with radiation with Dr. Jim McGee, all of that put together, we could shift gears here and have probably, and with research too, you have to have research with that, we could have a Mayos of Illinois, really.

And I believe it's moving in that direction, and I believe that if all of us get behind that, even with the engineers that Caterpillar have at Mossville, and engineers be able to come together and build the simulated heart or a simulated kidney.

- 3D, right.

- And operate on it in that aspect before you really get into it, that's all happening right now in Peoria.

So we are blessed, we really are.

And with all of the medical community together, I think that could happen.

- Well, the potential is here, you're right.

And shift from Caterpillar, because the numbers used to be so great for Caterpillar and they've dwindled somewhat.

But our biggest employers here really are medical employers.

- And if you think about that, it's pretty steady.

They don't have too much peaks and valleys.

And when you are helping people, and believe me, Caterpillar helped people, I'll tell you, they were one of the best friends that Peoria ever had, and still are in many aspects.

But at the same time, when you are... And St. Jude, my gosh almighty, what an organization that is and the good that they're doing, and if you look at my involvement with Easter Seals, when you look and the doctor tells you, "This is the diagnosis for your child," it might be cerebral palsy, it could be muscular dystrophy, it could be spina bifida, and then when they say that your child has cancer, you can't imagine what goes through that family.

I don't know, fortunately, I have healthy children.

But at the same time, when that happens, if we have that kind of people and that kind of organizations here that can solve those problems, and a lot of the children don't really have to go to Memphis today.

They can be operated on and served very well right here at Peoria at St. Jude.

- We're a gem, we're a gem.

I would like to thank you very much, John Bearce, for sharing your story and some of the fun stories that you've experienced in your life, and there's a lot more, so we might have to bring you back.

- Thank you.

- But anyway, thank you very much.

Thank you for joining us on "Consider This."

And I hope you enjoy your day.

(upbeat music)