Florence Henderson was longtime pre-race Indy 500 performer

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 9:11 p.m. ET

foxsports

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) The president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is remembering actress Florence Henderson as a ''lovely lady'' who sang nearly two dozen times during Indianapolis 500 pre-race festivities.

The Indiana-born actress best known as Carol Brady on ''The Brady Bunch'' died Thursday in Los Angeles at age 82.

Speedway President Doug Boles said in a Friday statement that Henderson had a passion for the ''special moments'' leading up to the command for drivers to start their engines for the annual race, held each May.

Between 1991 and 2015, she sang ''America the Beautiful,'' ''God Bless America'' or ''The Star-Spangled Banner'' 23 times during pre-race festivities. She was grand marshal for this year's race.

Henderson was born in the small southern Indiana town of Dale, the 10th child of a tobacco sharecropper.