INDIANAPOLIS (WISH)- A book about the life of Indy car driver, Bill Vukovich, has been published 65 years after being written.

Vukovich won two straight Indy 500 races, easily, in 1953 and 1954.

If not for some bad luck and tragedy, he could have won four straight.

In the 1952 race Vukovich was leading with just eight laps to go, when a steering malfunction cost him the race.

And then after his two straight victories, he was cruising to a victory in 1955 before getting swept up in a bad crash on the track that took his life.

During this same time Angelo Angelopolous, one of the best sports writers the city of Indianapolis has ever known, was making a name for himself.

Angelopolous had started writing a book about Vukovich in the late fifties, initially it was suppose to be published and released in the Spring of 1960.

Angelopolous was a 1940 Butler graduate who took a job with the Indianapolis News right out of college.

He interrupted his career after Pearl Harbor was bombed and became a Navy pilot.

He was assigned to fly over the bombing sites in Japan near the end of the war.

It is believed the radiation he absorbed led to a diagnosis of leukemia in 1955.

He died in 1962, at age 43.

His illness could have played a role in the book never getting published.

Angelopolous and his wife never had any children, so eventually the unpublished manuscript wound up in the hands of his nephew Pete Kirles.

Pete kept it in a closet for decades until about a year ago when Mark Montieth learned of the manuscript and Kirles loaned it to him to finish the publication.

Montieth added a prologue and epilogue to the book, and rearranged some chapters to modernize the book a bit.

And now 65 years later Angelopolous’s book is available.

You can find the book on Amazon and many other bookstores.