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^ CITY OF HOPE Public Relations Dept. 208 W. Eighth St. Los Angeles, Calif. 90014 (213) 626-4611 (Hank Brown) (Suggested Column Material) Auto racing driver Rodger Ward and Bernard "Boom-Boom" Geoffrion, who made hockey history with the Montreal Canadiens, will be two of the eleven athletes honored at the Fourth Annual Sportsmenfs World Awards to be held June 27 at the Sands Hotel, Las Vegas. The World Awards banquet and honors ceremonies, at which the golden 'Victor* statuettes are presented to outstanding champions of the past, is sponsored by the Sportsmen's Club for the City of Hope Medical Center, a medical and research complex dedicated to patient care, research and education in catastrophic diseases. Athletes honored at this gala event have been chosen by a National Selections Committee composed of leading sportswriters and sportscasters across the country. Ward, whose driving career spanned 21 years, is a two-time winner of the famed Indianapolis 500-mile race, the victories coming in 1959 and 1962, the years in which he also won the national driving champion- ship. Ward drove his first race in a midget auto program in 1946, but soon graduated to all other forms of racing cars and won his first major title.?╟÷ the AAA National Stock Car crown -- in 1951. It was in the championship cars,' however, that he earned the most fame. Ward was the U.S. Auto Club's all-time point leader at the time of his retirement, following the Indianapolis race of 1966. Experiencing one of the most outstanding and successful careers that auto racing ever witnessed, Ward won more than a half-million dollars in prize money at Indy alone, not counting the numerous victories scored on tracks nationwide. His Indy victory years, 1959 and 1962, were the big ones for the curly-headed driver who earned the nickname, "Ambassador of Auto Racing," due to the great love he has for the sport. Rodger drove in fifteen Indianapolis races, fourteen of them consecutively. From 1959 to 1964, he placed first (1959), second (i960), third (1961), first (1962), fourth (1963) and second (1964). (more) 3-33