Swing low, sweet chariot....Carroll Shelby, shown here during his racing days, may soon be buried.
More than two months after his passing, legendary racer and raconteur Carroll Shelby is close to finding his final resting place – or, more accurately, resting places – as his widow and children settle the bitter dispute that had Shelby’s body held in a Dallas morgue since his May death.
The dispute centered around questions about who actually had the final say in the disposition of Shelby’s remains. His children claimed to have had a signed directive that would have split Shelby’s remains between them and a burial plot in East Texas, where he was born. Shelby’s sixth wife and widow, in turn, insisted she had power of attorney and that the document used by his three children was a forgery.
Authorities in Dallas, where Shelby died, had suggested they might consider bringing charges in the case considering the potentially criminal claims being made. But a settlement appears to sidestep that possibility and allow the one-time chicken farmer to finally be put to rest. It calls for the body to be cremated and the ashes divided between his four survivors with one additional portion of the remains set aside for the burial plot.
“Both sides have agreed to immediately halt the litigation involving the burial of my husband, and he will soon be laid to rest,” said Cleo Shelby in a statement that said, “an out-of-court settlement was confirmed…in the dispute over the burial of the late Carroll Shelby.”
Cleo Shelby’s spokesman, Ross Johnson, later noted that “20% of the remains will be buried in the family plot in Leesburg, Texas.
Despite an apparent agreement, Patrick Shelby, one of the three children, cautioned that the settlement was only verbal and the necessary papers had not yet been signed, however he told reporters, “We want to get my dad in the ground.”
One of two sons — there is also a daughter — the younger Shelby suggested that there may still be some negotiations underway over details of the estate. The disposition of assets has, according to some sources, been a complication in the ongoing dispute.
Both sides are under pressure to lock a settlement down by Thursday, however, when a Dallas court was to hear the arguments in a civil trial.
Carroll Shelby died on May 10 at the age of 89 having remained active until his final weeks. Shortly before his death his Las Vegas-based Shelby American announced the name Shelby GT1000, a custom-tuned version of the Ford Shelby GT500 making 950 horsepower in street trim and 1,100 in the track package.
A sickly child, Shelby eventually recovered enough to become a flight instructor in World War II and then become a race car driver following his discharge from the service. But ongoing health problems forced him to give up that career and shift his focus to designing and building high-performance vehicles such as the Shelby Cobra and a long series of Shelby-badged Mustangs.
A wily entrepreneur he launched a variety of different ventures – more than occasionally kicking up a storm of controversy in the process. Shelby tried his hand at raising chickens, operating safari tours and even selling a mix to make his well-reviewed chili recipe.
Ironically, despite his long life he had ongoing health problems almost from birth. He ran his final races sucking on a nitroglycerine tablet to stabilize his heart. Shelby often joked there wasn’t much of his original body left after a series of transplants. In fact, he was America’s longest-living heart transplant recipient, having undergone the tricky surgery in June 1990.
The specific timing and details of Shelby’s cremation and burial have yet to be released.