R/C Unlimiteds is sad to report that one of the legends of unlimited hydroplane racing, Bernie Little, passed away on the 25th of April, after complications from Pneumonia.

Bernie Little was a fixture in unlimited hydroplane racing for over 40 years. He won more season championships (22) and races than any owner in the history of the sport. He brought Anheuser-Busch into their first ever venture in sports marketing with the Miss Budweiser in 1964.

Many people have differing opinions on Bernie's influence on the sport, but no one can say that anyone has put more effort, or achieved greater results into making Unlimited hydroplane racing a professional racing enterprise.

Bernie once explained the budgets and detail with which the Miss Budweiser team was run as not so much as a personal ego trip, but that the team and he represented Anheuser-Busch. Anheuser-Busch does everything with the objective of being the best in the world. When you represent them, you need to do everything you can to properly represent them.

On the other hand, Bernie was also tremendously competitive and had a huge ego. Traits he would gladly acknowledge to anyone who was close enough to listen. He was driven to succeed on the race course, as well as in all of his other endeavors, be they business, family or involving his friends. He was a man of great integrity, but he would do everything he could to make sure that he got the results he wanted.

Bernie was also a great friend of RCU. He was responsible for Budweiser sponsoring the club for more than five years. When asked why he would push for sponsorship of a model racing club some 3,000 miles from his home, Bernie showed that it was "people" that motivated him. "Well, I met that man in your club, Roger Newton. He seemed like a good man and he was a straight shooter. I like straight shooters and I liked what you guys were doing so I told Anheuser-Busch that you were good people and they should support you. And they did." Almost every year Bernie would make the trek over to the Columbia Park Lagoon to watch the models race during Tri-Cities race. Unfortunately, we, the model Budweiser teams, could never bring him a victory. Just last year we ran into Bernie at a restaurant the night before the model race. Asked how the mini-Miss Budweiser would do, he was told that things were going good and we would do the best we can. "Not good enough!" exclaimed Bernie, "The Budweisers are here to win!!" The man was competitive!

On a personal side two incidents stand out in my mind as the kind of man Bernie Little was. The first came during one of the Seattle races in the late 1980's. The Miss Budweiser was in the lead when the final heat was prematurely stopped. In those days the final had to be re-run if it didn't go all five laps. Preliminary heats would be considered complete if 2/3 of the laps had been completed. Bernie was insisting on the television that the race had gone 2/3 of the laps and the Miss Budweiser should be the winner. After about five minuets of Bernie exclaiming that the Bud should be the winner, Mike Fitzsimmons finally read Bernie the rule book where it said that the final had to go all five laps. Stunned, Bernie took a few seconds to regroup and then just said "Well, then I guess we'll just go out and win it again." Which of course they did.

The second incident showed much more deeply Bernie was devoted to taking care of people. It was in Dallas at a race in 1994. Bernie was involved in one of the formal evening functions for the race when a man, obviously down on his luck, somehow got someone to bring Bernie out of the affair to speak to him. The man wanted to tell Bernie how he felt that the local AB distributor had somehow mistreated him with regards to some signs the man had made. Rather than do what probably any other sports personality would have done, tell the man that he, Bernie, just raced the boat and really had nothing to do with the local distributor. Bernie took down all the man's information and promised to see what he could do to help the man out the next day. Bernie took the time to help this man, whom he had never seen before, feel important, and tried to help him out.

Those two incidents taught me a couple of lessons about life, about respecting people and about having the integrity to acknowledge when you were wrong, yet not let it stop you from accomplishing your goals.

Bernie Little was a hell of a man. We hope that he is winning races in the afterlife too. He will be missed by RCU, by the hydroplane community and by the human community.