THE BOBBY EAST STORY
By: Pat Sullivan – Sprint Car & Midget Magazine
Even in the most difficult moments, and there were many, no one foresaw this story ending this way.
For many, the tragic news began with muffled and confusing telephone calls among friends. This was predictably followed by scraps of information shared on social media.
For Bob and Janice East, a fun trip to New York City with their grandson, Charlie Dean Leffler, was shockingly interrupted by a call from the Hendricks County Sherriff’s office. It was then they learned that their son had been fatally stabbed while pumping gas at an Orange County, Calif. convenience store.
Soon thereafter Trent William Millsap, described by authorities as an armed transient, was shot and killed by police as they attempted to serve an arrest warrant. The East family learned their 37-year-old son was the victim of a random act.
There is much to unpack when considering the too-short life of Bobby East. He accomplished a great deal during his relatively short racing career. The wins and the championships that were accrued will lead to his enshrinement in multiple Halls of Fame. The numbers simply do not lie.
Then there are the other chapters in his biography that are marked by personal struggle, pain and a quest to carve out a life that was manageable and satisfying in a unique way. For the family, the decision to allow others a glimpse behind the curtain was not easy.
As Janice East recently noted, “Bobby isn’t here to defend himself.”
That’s a curious statement unless you traveled the journey alongside him. He was undoubtedly misunderstood by some, and when his issues and challenges crept into the public eye, he and his family were easy targets for armchair psychiatrists and family therapists.
In the face of this painful loss, it would be so easy for all who loved him to close ranks and try their best to move forward. However, there were far larger issues at play, and in the end, Bob and Janice knew their son’s story should be shared. The reason is simple. In their heart, they knew that there were important lessons for others to hear, and thorny issues the motorsports community must confront.
Bobby East was born in December 1984 in Torrance, Calif., but spent his formative years in Indiana. After settling in the Hoosier State, Bob East established Beast Enterprises. He became one of the most renowned constructors in the country. One of the most public-facing aspects of East’s motorsports activities was shepherding a successful fleet of midgets owned by California’s Steve Lewis. It was a heady time.
For young Bobby East, it meant regularly rubbing shoulders with some of the greatest racers of our generation. Bob and Janice tried to discourage their son from participating in the sport. It was a losing proposition. Once he started down that path, one key personal trait quickly emerged.
“He was just so intense in everything he did,” Janice recalled, “and it really didn’t matter what it was.” To illustrate, his mother remembers getting the call that her eight-year-old son had ran into a pole while playing basketball at school. It was not a simple playground mishap as the collision knocked him cold. This incident carried greater significance as time went on.
To no one’s surprise, when Bobby East began racing quarter midgets, he was a hard-nosed and fearless competitor. Because of his ability, he was tabbed to test a new car built by industry leader Bob Nervo.
“They had built this bigger faster car, and when he was testing, it bicycled a couple of times,” Bob East recalled. “He did not slow down, and when he crashed, he hit his head on the wall. It was typical because he gave 100 percent every time he raced.”
As a result of the impact, a bone fragment lodged between discs in his back, requiring surgery. Unfazed, Bobby could not wait to get back behind the wheel.
Bob East faced a dilemma. Because of his talent and resources, he could easily put his son in top-flight equipment and then perform his magic with the wrenches. That’s not the path he chose. Bobby East’s next move was to a Kenyon midget, which is, for all intents and purposes, a spec car. This was a conscious choice because it was one way he could assess his son’s abilities. There was one more critical decision. He also decided that Bobby should shoulder the burden of working on his race car.
“When he got a Kenyon car, I didn’t touch it,” Bob East said. “I wanted him to understand just how much work racing was. When he was working on the car, I would hear him yelling and throwing tools, and it was so hard not to go out there and help him. But he had to learn on his own, and he did. It was clear that this was something he really wanted to do.”
Proof of Bobby’s ability came as the wins began piling up. There was no room for haste. His progression up the racing food chain would be steady and purposeful. The elder East thought it was important for his son to race on dirt and pavement and on a wide variety of tracks. Soon it was clear that the internship was over, and the time had come to sign in with the USAC National Midget series.
On July 11, 2001, Bobby passed Tracy Hines and Kasey Kahne at Illiana Motor Speedway in Schererville, Ind. to become the youngest winner of a USAC National event. When the season concluded, he was an easy choice for rookie-of-the-year honors. Bob East did not realize it at the time, but his son’s success would cause him minor headaches along the way.
As Bobby excelled, drivers in the Lewis camp complained he was receiving extra attention from his father. The problem with that theory is that Bobby was the one who worked on the car. He was savvy inside and outside the cockpit. A perfect example came at the imposing Phoenix International Raceway. Dave Darland had taken a team midget to practice on the fast one-mile oval but could not find speed. Bobby hopped in the car and quickly reported the gears were upside down. He was only 16 years old.
Shortly thereafter, Dan Davis, who led the motorsports operations for Ford Motor Company, suggested it was time to put Bobby in the famed Lewis “9” car.
Bob East pushed back, but it was clear that young East possessed the talent to become a champion. When the time was right, Bobby East moved center stage on the team. Despite unrelenting scrutiny, he proved equal to the task. In 2004, he captured the USAC National Midget championship, winning seven races, including the Belleville Midget Nationals, the Hut Hundred and the Turkey Night Grand Prix.
With the help of Ford, Bobby East dipped his toe in the NASCAR waters in 2005. In 2006, he ran a robust slate of dates in the Truck Series with Wood Brothers Racing. He competed in 23 of the 25 races. The following year, he devoted attention to the NASCAR Xfinity Series, taking the green flag 10 times for owner Clarence Brewer. Disappointment soon settled in. His parents strongly felt that, in his early days, the teams were more interested in the support Ford was offering than they were in developing a young driver. It was complicated.
The Easts acknowledge Bobby may have lacked all the extra skills necessary in NASCAR racing. “He wasn’t a schmoozer,” Bob East said. “He didn’t like going to autograph sessions or sponsor meetings. He was just in the wrong era.”
As well, East was used to winning and accepting anything less was difficult. “It was hard on him,” Bob East said. “When you have a goal and you think you are going to make it to the top and you don’t, it is hard. You have to be with the right people and timing is everything.”
If there was a ray of hope, it came when he returned to the Truck Series with team owner Jack Roush. In seven races, he scored a pole at Indianapolis Raceway Park, started in the top-five on three occasions, and nailed down two top-10 finishes.
Not neglecting his short track roots, East won the Night Before the 500 midget race at Indianapolis Raceway Park. He still knew how to win. Bobby East then won both the midget and Silver Crown features during the November Copper World Classic at Phoenix International Raceway. Joining him on the victory stage was Roush who proclaimed East to be his guy. It sounded great, but in the end, the relationship was over. East’s NASCAR dreams had died on the vine.
Shortly thereafter, Bob and Janice recognized some troubling changes in their son’s attitude. At first, Bob attributed much of it to the entire NASCAR experience. In retrospect, his mother feels there were signs of depression by the time Bobby reached his 20s. He had trouble sleeping, while drinking and the use of pain pills also became a problem.
When the depth of his issues became clear, the possibility that he was self-medicating was also considered. However, when it came to racing, he could still put it all together. Over the next three years, Bobby scored wins in all three USAC National series driving for longtime family associate Terry Klatt.
Then he got a real break. He had already proven that he could win in the big Silver Crown cars, and when he joined forces with Tony Stewart Racing, it was a perfect marriage. Taking advantage of his opportunity, he won the series title in 2012 and again in ’13.
While it was difficult to come to terms with, at the time, Bob East began to understand that something was very wrong.
“I could just tell,” East said. “He was a happy kid, and then suddenly, winning did not seem to matter. When you win both ends of the Copper World, you should be on top of the world, and he was like, ‘Oh well, that’s nice.’”
While that was puzzling, when he told Tony Stewart Racing team manager Jimmy Carr that he was going to walk away from the sport midway through the 2014 season, the alarm bells went off.
“When you quit a ride like that, and you are on the top of your game, that says something,” East says, “But I saw little things. Sometimes he would be off sitting on a four-wheeler all by himself.”
After discussion, Bobby East committed to finishing the season.
“I knew he wanted to get to 50 national wins, and in his last race, he sat on the pole and finished third,” Bob East said. Still, he remained steadfast in his decision to retire. It was a mystery to all concerned. Then, in one revealing conversation, Bobby finally told his father, “You don’t know what I am going through. I don’t want the pressure.”
True to his word, he walked away from racing. He found jobs in fast food restaurants and other tasks that he deemed easy. He was a steady worker but had little ambition to do much more.
Were other drugs involved? The Easts don’t know for sure.
Then, at one point, Bobby decided to move to California, and when he returned, things were clearly very wrong. It was the first time the family began hearing Bobby talk about hearing voices, and he began to share what can only be deemed delusions.
In one scenario, Bobby felt someone in California was controlling him through the voices. It was distressing for everyone. At one point, he asked his mother in desperation, “when will they stop?” There was no answer.
Janice eventually got Bobby in front of mental health practitioners. The diagnosis was schizophrenia, and certainly, the presence of auditory hallucinations pointed to this. As matters deteriorated, the Easts tried to get their son to enter a hospital for treatment. He not only balked at the suggestion, but he also bolted for Miami.
When he was prepared to return to Indiana, the family made it clear he must enter treatment as a prerequisite for living in their home. He finally agreed. The medication he was prescribed made an impact. The voices abated and he once again found work and stuck with it.
Unfortunately, a common issue crippled his recovery. He hated how the drugs made him feel. There was also little else to hold on to. Recalling the time, Janice East says, “He would go to work and come home and go to sleep, or he would want to drink. And he wanted to go back to California.”
At the first chance to break away from mandatory treatment, that is exactly what he did.
Bobby had some awareness of the severity of his situation, and he tried to get a handle on his problems. He sought help at the Betty Ford Center and first participated in the residential program and then lived in one of the associated therapeutic communities. As a part of the treatment regimen, his parents spent a week at the center taking part in programming for families. He enjoyed his time there. However, when he was discharged, Bobby East chose to remain out West.
Janice East had faced the anxiety of watching her son rocket around high-speed race tracks, but it paled in comparison to this. Whether he was technically homeless at times is hard to say. Sometimes he stayed with family, other times he found a place with people he met on jobs and couch surfed. He sold security systems at one point and an associate reported that he was good at it.
Still, East called his parents regularly and was always up to date on the progress of Indianapolis sports teams. Out of character, he repeatedly told his parents that he loved them. It made a deep impression. “I can still hear him say that” Bob East said, with his voice crackling.
It was not the life the Easts envisioned for their son. One day he was racing on the grandest stages in American motorsports, and then he was moving from one part-time job to another without a permanent address.
The bottom line was that their son was an adult and he reported that he enjoyed his lifestyle. His wishes were dramatically driven home at the 2021 Turkey Night Grand Prix at Ventura Raceway. Bobby jumped at the chance to attend the race and joined his family at the hotel.
It was a pleasant visit. Janice East took the opportunity to buy new clothes for Bobby and all felt he would return to Indiana with them. Not so. It soon became apparent that he had no intention of leaving, and in the end, asked the family to drop him off in town.
Bobby East could see the look of heartbreak on his parents’ faces, but simply told them, “It’s not as bad as you think.” Then it ended on July 13, 2022, when efforts to revive him were unsuccessful. To outsiders, it seems to all hang together. Mental illness, alcohol, some drug use and rootlessness. It is the right combination of factors that puts one in harm’s way. The Easts think differently. As the family struggles to understand, they have tried their best to put the puzzle together. Their once happy child suffered a dramatic turn in personality.
There are straightforward ways to understand this. Serious mental illness is commonly recognized in the period between adolescence and early adulthood. It can emerge in people raised in the best of circumstances with loving parents and with all the resources in the world available to them.
When it comes to East, the symptoms were there. Still, something did not add up.
While Bob East originally pointed to the change in his son occurring after his stint in NASCAR, he now thinks things began to turn earlier than that. In 2003, Bobby was driving a Silver Crown car at Phoenix when a brake caliper fell off his mount. The result was a nearly head-on impact with the wall. Bobby was taken to the infield care center where Dr. Henry Bock treated him. His behavior during the examination was so outrageous and belligerent that he wrote a letter of apology once he returned home.
The problem is Bobby East did not remember a thing about the incident. Then in 2009, East had another heavy crash at Salem Speedway. While he was not unconscious, he was severely shaken up and suffered a concussion.
Beginning with an incident on a playground at the age of eight, the family can point to four separate episodes of significant brain trauma that occurred during Bobby’s life.
The question is obvious. Were his challenges a function of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy? It is entirely possible. The brain remains the great unknown and mental health diagnoses lack precision. Bobby East could easily have suffered from schizophrenia and much of his behavior is consistent with the label. Yet, trauma, whether physical or emotional, impacts the brain and subsequently behavior. It is a complicated matter to sort out. We will never have the complete answer.
In the greatest of irony, the East’s wanted an autopsy completed to see if their son, in fact, had CTE. Unfortunately, because he was a homicide victim (and the case is still technically open), this could not be done within the needed timeframe.
At the time of his death, the family received many inquiries from programs such as the Today Show and Good Morning America. They refused them all.
“It became a circus,” Janice said. “They were all very nice, but we did not want to do that. It was not about us; it was all about making a big deal about the District Attorney out there releasing people.”
However, the Easts believe the overall message must be shared. Concussions are serious injuries that take time to heal properly. Slowly, the motorsports community, like other sports entities, is beginning to take this seriously. It is late in coming and protocols must be established and followed.
If this story can prompt the racing community to take action, it may prove to be Bobby East’s greatest contribution to the sport. His racing legacy is secure. On the track, he was brilliant. He notched three USAC National championships and 48 victories. While some may not truly understand, he also did the best job he could to manage a difficult personal challenge. Despite his mother’s fears, he does not need defending.
The Easts will go forward as best they can. It will never be quite the same. For a time, Bob would return home every hour to be with his wife. “I didn’t want to be very far from him, and at some point, I realized I cannot live like this,” Janice said. “I went back to doing my old stuff, although I did go back to the races too soon. I went one night, and I had to go home.”
She also knew her husband was struggling. “If he didn’t have his racing, I don’t know,” she said. “I could see there were times where he was ready to explode.”
For Bob, racing provides focus and purpose, but there are difficult times ahead.
The Easts did the best they could. There are no manuals to guide folks through times like these. Like all parents in similar circumstances, they rehash things they did and decisions they made. “I wish I could have kept him safe,” Janice East said, displaying the anguish of a mother. Similarly introspective, Bob East admitted, “When you look back now, you see things and wish you would have done things differently. I would be mad, and Janice would console. I would think, how can you have worked up from quarter midgets, win in everything you got in and then just basically throw it away? I just did not have the compassion for that. I wish I would have told him I loved him more.”
One can understand his father’s feeling. But make no mistake about it — the love was there.
“We spent so much time together as a family and he and I together,” Bob East said. “I can never forget kneeling on one knee in a quarter midget race and putting his visor up. It is unlike any other sport because it was just me and him eye to eye.”
These are memories that will sustain the family now. Bob East admitted he still talks to his son at times. That’s understandable. There is also a constant reminder of his son’s presence. A family friend gave the Easts a memory wind chime. Every time it rings, Bob simply says, “How are you doing buddy?”
