Former Barstow legend remembered

Can you imagine, a well known business legend once walked through the halls of Barstow High. Former Barstownian graduated at the age of 15 and went on to be a success. He was just like every other Barstow kid, chasing and hunting rabbits.

Debbie Pfeiffer Trunnell, Staff Writer

Barstow to many is the best place to stop in the desert between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. It's also the town where a boy named Robert E. Petersen honed his lifelong fascination with automobiles while working side by side with his Danish immigrant father. That passion lasted a lifetime for Petersen, who went on to found Hot Rod and Motor Trend magazines and the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. "Hot-rodding became a national passion because of his magazine," said Dick Messer, his longtime friend and director of the automotive museum. "He was responsible for more people flunking out of high school because they took Hot Rod magazine to class instead of textbooks," he added with a laugh. The man largely responsible for the evolution of the hot-rodding culture died March 23 after a short battle with neuroendocrine cancer. He was 80. Petersen was born in East Los Angeles in 1926. After his mother died of tuberculosis when he was 10, he was raised by his father, Einar Petersen, a mechanic who worked on heavy equipment for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. When he graduated from Barstow High School at age 15, the principal told him he would never amount to Petersen proved him wrong. At age 16, he moved to Los Angeles, where he found work as a messenger boy at MGM. He soon became a glamorized gofer who escorted starlets to events and planted tips about stars in the ears of gossip columnists. Following service in the Army Air Corps as a reconnaissance photographer during World War II, he went to work as an independent publicist. After rubbing shoulders with guys who raced hot rods on dry lake beds in the desert, he was instrumental in creating the first hot-rod show at the Los Angeles Armory. To help establish the event, he launched Hot Rod magazine in January 1948, hawking the magazine at local speedways for 25 cents a copy. Motor Trend, a more upscale publication for production car enthusiasts and dozens of other titles including Rod and Custom, Skin Diver, Dirt Rider and Teen soon followed. He also headed a variety of other businesses, including ammunition manufacturing, real-estate development and aviation services that each reflected passions he had. At age 37, he married model Margie McNally, and the couple had two sons. In 1975, both boys died in the crash of a small plane in the Rocky Mountains during a Christmas skiing vacation. Petersen never spoke much of the tragedy, but in its aftermath he became supportive of many organizations for youths. He served as president and chairman of the board of the Boys and Girls Club of Hollywood and was a member of the National Board of Directors for the Boys and Girls Club of America. He was also active in numerous children's charities and was a member of the Los Angeles City Library Commission. Outside of Hollywood and the publishing world, he was an avid big-game hunter. His love of hunting started in Barstow, when he would shoot jackrabbits with his .22 rifle. Later in life, he went on safaris with heads of state, recalled Messer. The chairman of the board of Petersen Publishing Company, who was declared one of America's wealthiest men by Forbes magazine in 1994, was considered a visionary by those who knew him. "He had a way of seeing things before they happened," said Messer. "For example, he sold his publishing company at the peak of the publishing market in 1996, knowing what lay ahead with the Internet." In that same decade, he envisioned turning the old Orbach's department store at Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles into a museum that would pay tribute to the automobile. And in 1994, the 300,000- square-foot automotive museum named in his honor was opened. "The museum wouldn't be what it is today without him," said Messer. "It is now his legacy." Petersen is survived by his wife. His funeral Mass was celebrated March 29 at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City. Friends were asked to drive their cool cars to the Mass. The Petersen Automotive Museum will also celebrate Petersen's lasting gift to the world at the annual Cars and Stars Charity Gala on May 10.