A Young Bride for the Victor

October 10, 1919 - Wichita, Kansas

 

            There was a lot of local newspaper publicity leading up to the automobile races at the West Side Racetrack on this date that the winner of a special match race between automobiles driven by Dick Seip of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and Mark Jenkins of Des Moines, Iowa would receive the hand of Miss Marian Weurst of Parsons, Kansas in holy matrimony.  (One source states that the young lady’s surname was “West”.)  Cold weather caused the races to be canceled though so Mr. Jenkins and Miss Weurst received permission to be married before a large audience between performances of a musical program that afternoon at the Wichita Forum.  Before he would perform the ceremony though, Rev. Bruce Griffith had the couple publically assure those assembled that they were not making a mockery of the institution of marriage and that the whole story about a bride for the winner of the automobile race had been cooked up by a publicist to generate more interest in the races.  Miss Weurst then stated that she would not have married Seip anyway for two reasons:

            (1)  She was in love with Mark Jenkins whom she had been engaged to for more than a year.

            (2)  Dick Seip was a already married.

            Dick Seip then stood up and told the assembled that what the couple had just said was all true.