Member Profile: Billy Noonan

Billy Noonan driving the T-2 Lil Miss Hillwinds, a 1977 Sooy cabover 1200cc class Hydroplane at Wheeling, West Virginia in 2001. Photo © F. Peirce Williams

By Craig Fjarlie

Billy Noonan has been involved with boat racing his entire life. He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1954. He competed in Inboard racing for 10 years and worked as a referee for about 40 years. The following profile of him is based on an interview conducted at the 2026 Madison, Indiana, Regatta, where the APBA Gold Cup race was held.

Billy Noonan at the 2026 Madison Regatta.
Craig Fjarlie photo

“Believe it or not, I was almost born right here in the Madison pits,” he says. “Back in 1954, the race was held in October. Mom and Dad were officiating. Mom was almost five months pregnant and they thought she was going into labor, so they rushed her back to Louisville. It turned out to be false labor and I wasn’t born until November 1.”

Billy’s parents were active in racing before World War II. “Dad actually got involved with the old two-seaters, with Marion Cooper and Soupy Ciconett, some of the old names from the river races. That was like 1936. Got right back in it after the war.” Their involvement was through the Mississippi Valley Power Boat Association. “My mom and dad put on a major power boat race in Louisville, Kentucky. It was for the Calvert Cup. A lot of famous people raced there,” he says, clicking off their names: “Chuck Thompson, Bill Cantrell, Buddy Byers, Bill Sterett, Salt Walther. Jim Kropfeld was the last one to win it. George Babcock in Record 7 came all the way from Seattle to race because my dad sent him a letter and invited him. He actually was from Louisville originally.”

Before Billy was old enough to attend a race, his father made a significant historical contribution to the Madison Regatta. In 1957, Bill Muncey was driving Miss Thriftway down the front straightaway when the boat had an accident. Billy’s father filmed the mishap with a 16 mm box camera that he had purchased during World War II. He captured the only known photos of the incident. “He drove back to a Louisville TV station and gave them the film,” Billy explains. “They processed it and showed the accident on the evening news.” The film has since been digitally preserved.

The first time Billy went to the Madison Regatta was 1963, when he was nine years old. “I remember the new Green Dragon (Miss Bardahl). My favorite,” he recalls. “I was born into a racing family. I didn’t have a choice.”

The Noonan family’s involvement was primarily with Limited classes in Region 6, but they also were involved with Unlimited races. “Went to the ’63 Gold Cup in Detroit—Dad was the referee there. He was the assistant referee on Black Sunday in Washington, D.C. Ron Musson was my idol. He had the new boat there. I had drawn a picture of it and I was standing on the deck with Ron Musson and asked him to sign it. He said, ‘Billy, I have to get ready to go out and race; we’ll do it after.’ Never came back. Dad probably lost his two best friends that day, Don Wilson and Ron Musson. That was tough. I lost interest for a couple of years.” (Rex Manchester also was killed that day in 1966 – Ed.)

Billy’s interest returned and he started racing in 1975. “I drove 266, 225, A boats, mainly 2.5 Stock, and 1 Litre.  Never drove a 7 Litre. First boat I drove was a 280 called the Zig Zag. Doug Sewell from Louisville owned it. It was extremely fast on the straightaways but, of course, it was a conventional and in the ’70s, the cabovers were taking over. We were very fast, but we just couldn’t turn with the cabovers. I’ll never forget—I was 15 maybe. Took it out on the Ohio River and I thought I was going 150 miles an hour. When I came in, Doug yelled at me, ‘You’re going so slow you probably burned the motor up.’ I thought I was flying. I actually took my rookie test in ’75 in that same boat. Then I was asked to drive a Sooy 145 that a guy in Cincinnati had just built from a kit. I drove that and several other boats. Didn’t do very well; we didn’t have a lot of money. We ran mainly the regional races. Then Dick Sooy asked me to fill in for his driver, David Shaw. David was a schoolteacher and couldn’t make all the races, so I filled in for him and we won everything in that boat. I won the ’78 Summer Nationals in Decatur, Illinois. That was my 15 minutes of fame.”

In 1982 Billy had a bad crash. “My driving career wasn’t a long one. I actually had a serious accident the same day Dean Chenoweth was killed.” (Chenoweth died while qualifying for an Unlimited race in Tri-Cities, Washington – Ed.) “That’s when I thought, maybe this isn’t for me. I could have been hurt really badly. I basically stuffed the boat. The front end disintegrated. I was lucky. I wasn’t hurt, but I thought about it. I actually stopped driving in 1984.” Billy wanted to remain involved with racing, however. His older brother, Mike, suggested he should start refereeing. Mike was already an experienced referee for Inboard and Unlimited races. “I always say Mike set me up—Mike and Paul McKee. They were the referees for Region 6. Mike talked me into taking my referee’s test and they trained me for a couple of years. Then Paul and Mike said, ‘We’re going to Unlimiteds full-time, so the Region is yours.’ So, they turned it over to Don Melillo and myself. We became the region referees.”

Billy excelled at refereeing. “By 1992 I was the APBA chief referee in Inboards. I did the Nationals, I did Valleyfield for 13 years. That was quite an honor,” he says, adding, “That’s like refereeing the Indy 500, I guess. People ask me, ‘How many races did you do?’ 300, maybe more—I never kept track.”

In 2008, Billy began refereeing Unlimited races. He has special memories of a race in Hawaii. “I got to go in ’95. Rick Sandstrom couldn’t go because of his business. I got the call and went to Pearl Harbor; that was pretty nice. I was the tower ref. When I was full-time with H1, that’s what I did. I got to be chief referee at the 2013 Gold Cup. I enjoyed running the tower because I got to work with the committees. Going to Seattle for the first time, going to Tri-Cities for the first time, and San Diego. Who doesn’t like San Diego? But probably top of the ladder is Qatar. I got to go the first three years to Qatar. I’ll be honest: I wondered why we were going over there. In 2009, 9/11 was not that long ago. I was just a little apprehensive. I didn’t know anything about Qatar, had no idea what to expect. It turned out to be the trip of a lifetime, other than the 14-hour plane trip. I met a lot of neat people over there. It’s not the Middle East that you think of when you see it on the news. You think the worst. You don’t really know what some of those countries are like. I didn’t get to go the last two years because I had surgery; I missed it.”

At the end of the 2024 season, Billy decided it was time to stop refereeing. “You get yelled at; you get called a lot of names. I took it for a long time, but I just wasn’t having any fun. I always said ‘If it gets to where it’s not fun, I’ll quit,’ ” he explains. “We were in Ohio at the last inboard race of the year in the region. That was the last race I was going to referee with Don Melillo. I had already told Don I was stepping back. A rookie owner and driver from Michigan with a 350 team, Alex Manga, asked me what I was going to do. I said, ‘I don’t know. I’m just going to come to the races when I can.’ He said, ‘We were just talking and I want you to join the team and be my radio guy.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that would be cool, Alex, but I’m on Social Security. I don’t make a ton of money, I don’t have a payroll pension, I can’t afford to travel all over the country. I’ll do the ones I can, but I can’t commit to all season.’ He said, ‘Could you do it if I paid all the expenses?’ I said, ‘When do you want me to start?’ He said, ‘Can you do it tomorrow?’  So, yeah. “

Manga, who has a long and storied career in motorcycle racing, owns the E-8 Monster Energy boat. “This is his third year, and he’s already won two National Championships,” Billy says. “He ran as a National Mod the first year. A 350 can step up and run.  He did that so he could get more seat time. He went to enough races and got enough points to where he won the high point title. Then last year we made a conscious decision to go for the E-1 title and we got that. Our season almost came to an end last year, at the second-to-last race. We basically destroyed the boat; it had a hull failure. We believe the spar broke, which is the part that holds the boat together in the front. The right sponson dipped and he nosed it in. It was a violent spin and it basically destroyed the whole inside of the boat. Bert Henderson rebuilt the boat for us. It was a Bergeron hull, now it’s basically a Henderson with a Bergeron center section and cockpit.

“Alex had some injuries to his back and neck, and a concussion, from that. He didn’t really know until he got home. He has kind of stepped down a bit. Jeff Bernard is our driver for now—probably one of the best. Mike and Mark Weber are helping us a lot. They’re giving Alex a lot of knowledge about the sport. George Kennedy is building us a new rudder. We definitely need a new rudder to be right up front. We’re really fast; it’s just a handful in the corners right now.” Billy marvels at the direction his life has taken since he stopped refereeing. “If you had told me this was going to happen, I would have said there’s no way. It happened just like that, you know? I had officially retired from officiating and at the last race, opportunity knocked. What’s the old saying, one door closes and another one opens? Here I am now, back racing again and having a blast.”

Noonan with Jimmy Deel at an APBA awards ceremony. Ray Dong photo

Noonan (R) manning the radio in 2008. APBA photo

Billy looks back on his life in boat racing, both as a driver and referee. He has strong opinions about what is going right and things that could be improved. “I was part of the H1 full-time crew. Sam Cole was the chairman. Mike (Noonan) was the competition director/chief referee. Ted Grange was the pit manager, the operations guy. Along with a few others, we were the officiating team. I called it the A Team. To me, from 2008 to 2014, we had something going. We had seven, eight races. Then Sam was told to step down. My brother was fired for the third time by the Unlimiteds. Believe it or not, he kept going back. I always wanted to smack him for that. But you know what? He’s doing what I’m doing now. We’re both on crews, and he’s happier than he’s been in a long time. Neither one of us misses the officiating. We can’t walk away from this. I’m not saying there was a reason we were let go. Somebody didn’t get their way. But the Ratchfords and Darrell Strong, they’re trying. I think Jonathan Abbott is an excellent referee. He’s probably the best thing that happened to H1. There are some people in the sport that think we need to run a three-tiered series, which would be 350, Grand Prix, and Unlimited. They all run the same weekend at all the big races. That’s what we’re pushing for, and we’re pretty close. We’d like to do that.”

Inboard Chairman Dutch Squires presented Billy Noonan with the Bruce Broussard Exceptional Service Award in 2011. Ray Dong photo

Billy firmly believes boat racing needs to bring more young people into the sport. “I’m not slamming the Midwest and the East Coast, but the guys in Region 10 know how to do it. We went to Black Lake and Pateros last year and it was amazing. Everything those guys do at those races is about the kids racing an outboard and moving them up. No one out here does that. To make this sport continue to grow and survive, we’re got to get the kids involved. No one on this side of the Mississippi cares about doing that. At least if they do, they haven’t shown it to me.”

Billy Noonan at a 2008 APBA meeting. APBA photo

Billy is a strong proponent of bringing J outboard classes to Inboard events. “Even the K Pro,” he adds. “They’re there every weekend with the Inboards. Look at Carson Kelly. It’s incredible. He’ll be in an Unlimited, I’m going to say, in four or five years. Same with Grant Liddycoat. If you don’t get kids started early, they’re going to find something else to do. It’s the only way you’re going to get people to embrace the sport, grow with it, and stay with it.”

Noonan with Larry Lauterbach at an APBA meeting. Ray Dong photo

Billy has several special memories of his years in racing. “I have a great family. Mike, I don’t know what I’d do without him. He has bailed me out of more than one scrape. I guess that’s what big brothers are for. They always say the youngest is the rebellious one. I guess it’s true. It took me awhile to figure it out, but I think I got there. Two years ago, I was inducted into APBA’s Honor Squadron. That was a great honor. When the first person who nominated me told me, I said, ‘Don’t waste your time, I’ll never get in.’ I got in the second year, so that was a little humbling. Then winning the championship ring last year…” Billy wears that ring proudly.

The Noonan family has been a moving force for racing in the Ohio Valley. Through good times and hard times, they have kept it going. Billy, Mike, and their parents have made valuable contributions for decades. We can’t thank them enough.