By BOB SHRALUKA
WZBD.com
When Sunday’s winner of the Indianapolis 500 climbs out of his car he will be handled a bottle of milk by a one-time Heritage High School student with ties to Decatur and Bellmont High School.
Ashley Thieme Stockwell will be presenting the traditional bottle of ice-cold milk as she represents the Indiana division of the American Dairy Association and its nearly 700 dairy farm families.
Each year the Indiana organization selects a veteran milk presenter and a “rookie” to do the honors.
Stockwell served as the rookie at last year’s 500, with Abbie Herr, and this year steps into the role of the veteran.
The rookie hands a bottle of milk to the winning driver’s chief mechanic and team owner while the veteran hands a bottle of milk to the winning driver.
Brian Rexing, an Evansville dairy farmer, is this year’s rookie.
“On race day, you get this escort into the track,” Stockwell recently told WANE-TV. “When we get in there, there are people everywhere … the feeling is so electric. It’s hard to not be excited to be there.”
Stockwell’s father is Todd Thieme, assistant principal and athletic director at Southern Wells High School.
Todd, former assistant principal at Bellmont High School, is the son of the late Leonard and Judy Thieme, longtime Union Township farmers.
Stockwell and her husband, Kyle are part of a Stockwell family-owned dairy farm which milks 750 cows and farms nearly 1,100 acres near Hudson in Steuben County.
They are the parents of four children.
TRADITION: According to Indianapolis Motor Speedway history, the milk tradition began with a simple request. When Louis Meyer, the first three-time winner, captured his second Indy 500 in 1933, he asked for a cold glass of buttermilk to quench his thirst. Yes, buttermilk.
Three years later, Louis repeated the win and was photographed drinking his buttermilk.
For the next two decades, the Milk Foundation presented milk to race winners off and on. But in 1956, the late Tony Hulman, owner of the Speedway, made the bottle of milk a permanent part of the Victory Lane (now Circle) celebration.
The drivers are polled before to the race for their milk preference in the event they are the winner. The choices are between skim, 2% or whole. Buttermilk is not an option today.
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