The average US male lives to be about 75, and if he’s lucky has one or two interesting stories to tell at the end. Ed “Isky” Iskenderian passed away last month at the remarkable age of 104 and packed enough living and hot-rod innovation into that time to fill up about a hundred lives.Last Sunday at the Lions Automobilia Foundation in Southern California, about 500 family, friends, and fans of Iskenderian gathered to celebrate the great man’s great life. “I bluffed my way into the cam-grinding business,” Isky says in a documentary that ran ahead of the tribute. “I amazed myself that it all happened, and I got to be a part of it.”It did happen, and he was a big part of it. He said in the doc that he got started in the business after he had ordered a Winfield cam but the wait for it was five or six months. So he bought a used cam-grinding machine and went to work. Soon his cams were the hot setup for drag racers, sprint cars, IndyCars, and just about anything that had valves that needed to open and close.“I used ’em when I was just a hot rodder on the street,” said Big Daddy Don Garlits, who would ultimately become the most innovative drag racer the world had ever seen. “I used a 1007 B, a Chrysler cross-flow cam and the 5-cycle cam.”Garlits recalled when he first heard from Iskenderian.Big Daddy at the mic.“I had just gone 166 mph (in the quarter-mile, setting a record). Someone answered the phone in our shop and said, ‘Ed Iskenderian is on the phone.’ I picked it up and he said, ‘Hi pal, how are you?’”Isky called everyone “Pal,” maybe because he spoke to so many people he couldn’t remember everyone’s name.“Do you need any parts?”Garlits became one of the first sponsored drivers, a practice Isky helped pioneer. Soon Garlits was going even faster, even in an engine running on almost pure nitromethane, which tended to overheat things and blow up blocks.“Ed figured out to leave the overlap (the length of time both intake and exhaust valves are open) longer to cool the engine with the intake mixture. You could run 98% nitro and run all the way through the traps without any problem. Today, it’s still the same thing.”That was Isky’s 5-Cycle cam, which added a “5th cycle” to the other four—intake, compression, power, and exhaust—of a normal four-stroke. He had many other innovations, including roller rockers for higher revs. Don Prudhomme and Silvia Pink, Ed Pink’s widow.“Now you know why this guy is so (darned) hard to beat; he’s brilliant,” said Don “The Snake” Prudhomme, the next speaker. Prudhomme also got sponsorship from Isky Cams, and not just cash. “In ’58, we got Isky 5-Cycle T-shirts, and we were the (bee’s knees),” Snake said.Isky was one of the first, if not the first, to introduce the free T-shirt giveaway as a marketing ploy. It worked, of course, like seemingly everything he did.“I loved the guy,” Snake said. “He was great. He was a racer.”Packed house at the Isky memorial at Lions Automobilia Foundation in SoCal.“Ed was a gearhead,” said land speed racer Al Teague, who set a record at over 400 mph at Bonneville. “But his ads were something else.”Teague held up an early Isky ad. It showed Isky and Einstein—and they were arguing. Another ad showed Isky and Uncle Sam marching side by side; over their shoulders were not rifles, but camshafts: “Good for your car, Good for your country,” it said.Teague described being at a race when a rainstorm hit and into his truck jumped Ed Iskenderian, seeking shelter. For the duration of the storm, about 20 minutes, Teague recalls, Isky worked at unravelling a big wadded-up ball of used duct tape. Storm over, Isky had produced a straight strip of the stuff a couple of feet long.“Here, you’ve got a piece of tape you can use,” Isky told him. He was a child of the Great Depression; he never threw anything away.SEMA President Mike SpagnolaIsky was also the first president of SEMA, which started out with 100 exhibitors at the first SEMA show but has since grown to a $53 billion industry, according to current SEMA president Mike Spagnola, who also spoke. The current prez recalled meeting the first prez when he, Spagnola, was a teen buying a cam at Isky’s shop. There, behind the counter, was Iskenderian himself.“I thought I’d met Elvis,” Spagnola said. Elvis even showed the young Spagnola the correct way to install the cam.“It (the aftermarket) is now a $53 billion industry,” Spagnola said. “When he started out, Ed just wanted to sell five camshafts a day, figuring if he could do that, he could make $100.”He wound up making a lot more than that. And making a lot of friends, too, 500 of whom showed up at the Lions Automobilia Foundation last weekend to remember their friend and hero.