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"My Experience with Donald Healey" Bill Moseley"
Bill Moseley with DMH, 1984
Healey restored to original specs, 2001
I was very fortunate to know Donald M. Healey in 1984. I was a Navy Commander stationed in Washington, D.C. on Presidential Support duties. One afternoon I returned home to Bolling AFB in dress Navy whites and received a phone call from my friend, Bruce Phillips, owner of Healey Surgeons. He asked me if I wanted to "come over and see Donald Healey." I asked if he had a movie or something and Bruce replied, "No, he's sitting right here." Of course I immediately zoomed right over, in uniform, with my '64 Healey Mk III. There, all by himself, was DMH, in person, just sitting there in a long sleeved white shirt! He had only recently arrived. I had some experience with the Royal Navy and didn't call him "Sir Donald", as some others did, he told me. His title, Commander of the British Empire" wasn't officially "sir". I walked up the street and bought him a cup of coffee and we really hit it off. It turned out that we had an important commonality... not the cars, but aviation. DMH went to great lengths explaining how much trouble he had keeping his Sopwith Camel in the air during WW1. (I don't remember how old he said he was but he was just a teenager.) He often had to find an open place to land the plane, crawl out to make repairs and then back into the air. I asked him how he survived the war (as so many did not). He related that "everyone on the ground shot at everything in the air...great sport" and said the fire probably came from the British. He took a hit, crash landed, and said that wounds received and hospital time probably saved his life.
At the time I hadn't read a lot about DMH and asked the same dumb questions... such things as, "What do you suggest about the rear main leak?" His reply was, "They all do - we designed them that way". I had only bought the car in '81 from a Marine Major who worked for me here at N.A.S. Pensacola. (When I finished Navy Aviation Officer Candidate School in the later '60's and my first tour of duty, I sold my Lotus Elan S-2 and Lotus 26. After a string of British cars, no Healeys, I just moved on.) He mentioned that he was flying out to California to visit Carroll Shelby (CS). I didn't know that CS drove for him. He said that "Carroll drove so hard that he would bend the accelerator pedal". I asked why CS didn't use the Healey to build the Cobra. I recall that he said that he told CS that he really didn't want to go through all that and recommended the A.C. company to him. I told him that I knew that Stirling Moss drove for him and he related Stirling's dedication and professionalism but mostly that he really knew how to party.
He gave me the book which was written by Geoffrey Healey, Austin Healey - The Story Of The Big Healeys (1978, Dodd, Mead & Company New York). DMH leafed through it and made comment on the pictures (he said his favorite car was the frog-eyed Sprite). On page 117, he saw a photo of himself with Count Aymo Maggi (the driving force behind the Mille Miglia) seated in a 1958 Sprite. DMH became curiously reflective and told me how much he missed the late Count Maggi, whose castle-like facilities in Brescia were put at his disposal. When the Sprite came out, Count Maggi was kind enough to put his considerable weight behind its presentation. I am looking at my prized book right now. DMH took it from me and wrote, "To Bill, Wishing you many more happy 'Healey' miles."
This led to Geoffrey... I told DMH that, " I saw Geoffrey in the early '60's at Sebring. He wasn't too hard to miss because of his giant mustache. It wasn't something that everybody had back then." He thought that was funny and related that the mustache was because of a scar that Geoff received when he was a small boy playing cowboys and on his front porch. Geoff was shot in the mouth by a home made arrow! DMH also said that "Geoffrey runs the racing". (At the time I didn't know that Geoffrey wasn't his only son.) I asked him what became of the streamliner in which he set a world record on the salt flats. He said, sort of off hand, that all the salt just corroded it away.
DMH wanted to see my car. I was a little hesitant because I had done some "non-issue" things. I found that DMH was an innovator, not a museum curator. If he liked something, he would say so and the reverse if he didn't. For example, I had a pair of plastic rear view mirrors mounted flush on the car and painted to match. He commented that he would have used them but couldn't get that sort of thing back then and had to settle for the ones he did use! Same for my Dupont Garnet Red paint, which he liked; "We used whatever we had". I asked him if he would like to sit in my car and he said, "Why, I believe I should" and climbed in. I asked him if he wanted to drive it and he said, "I can't reach the pedals". Fortunately I had my camera and made several photos of him, with a great smile, seated in my Healey.
What an interesting man, indeed. I have to mention that he and my dad's father would have passed as twins! The more I read and find out about him, the more fascinating and interesting he becomes. I find it hard to believe that the polite, friendly, happy man that I was privileged to know was all of those great things!
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