Charles Randolph “Chuck” McCain, whose Alfa Romeo “Keenan Wynn Special” was featured on the cover of VR’s October 2009 issue, was shot and killed by an employee of his Tucson, Arizona, business on April 2. Mr. McCain was 61. Curtis Bunton, the 67-year-old live-in caretaker of the property on which McCain’s Glas-Tec Inc. is housed, was charged with first-degree murder by the local police and taken into custody at Pima County Jail.
In 1967, at the age of 18, McCain moved to Southern California and went to work for famed Corvette racer Doug Hooper. Upon hearing of McCain’s death Hooper remarked, “Chuck came to me straight out of school and didn’t really know much about cars. But he was a hard worker and just the nicest guy you ever wanted to meet. He came out to the track with us and I think that was how he got bitten by the racing bug.” McCain eventually became an accomplished mechanic and began racing himself. Over the course of the next 40 years of his life, McCain would race everything from Formula B and Formula Ford to dirt track and stock cars. In more recent years, he took up historic racing in any one of his vintage formula cars, as well as taking on the restoration of the “Keenan Wynn Special” Alfa Romeo, which had been languishing in the Arizona desert.
In a tragic twist of irony, a number of years ago the big-hearted McCain came across a down-on-his-luck Curtis Bunton and, wanting to help him, offered him a job as a live-in caretaker at his fiberglass manufacturing company. Sadly, on April 2, Bunton became angry that McCain would not drive him to a doctor’s appointment, so while McCain sat drinking coffee with his employees, Bunton walked into the break room and shot him. A truly unjust ending, for such a warm and genuine man—he will be sorely missed.
McCain is survived by his wife of 29 years, Jill, their four children and five grandchildren.
