Tom Higgins' Scuffs

Hail To The Chief--And The King

  It was billed as potentially the grandest Fourth of July in Daytona Beach history.

  That day in 1984 far exceeded the billing, producing one of the most memorable races I witnessed during 40 years of covering NASCAR.

  With the approach of each July 4th, what happened that Independence Day 22 years ago continues to revive a thrill.

   The scene was Daytona International Speedway.  The event was the track's Firecracker 400 classic, a race immensely popular with fans because they not only got to enjoy high speed action, but Daytona's famous beaches and other summertime attractions as well.

   Making the proceedings even more special in '84 was the fact that President Ronald Reagan was flying to Florida from Washington on Air Force One to attend, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to watch a race in person.

   Me and most of the other wretches of the press headed for the speedway much earlier than usual to avoid what we knew would be a massive traffic jam created by the presidential visit.  As expected, the president's trip to Daytona Beach brought along scads of Secret Service personnel.  They understandably established security checkpoints to screen everyone entering the track.

   Metal detectors, like those used at airports, were in place at each gate.

   The president was to watch the race from the tower suite of NASCAR's founder, Big Bill France.  The suite was located adjacent to the press box.

   This meant that everyone with access to the tower underwent very extra scrutiny from the G-men.

    

   

 

   We reporters had to go through four checkpoints, including one at the base of the stairs.  There, an apologetic agent required us to remove laptop computers from our bags for a fourth time.  And this time we had to take them apart!

   I pled that I barely knew how to turn the computer on and off, much less dismantle it and then reassemble the contraption.  The agent was sympathetic, but handed me a small screw driver to remove the laptop's cover anyway.

   "After all this," I told pals after eventually reaching the press box, "the race is going to be anti-climactic."

   Wrong!

   President Reagan gave the "Gentlemen, start your engines!" command via radio from Air Force One while in flight.  He arrived after the race began, dropping in on what evolved into one of NASCAR's all-time greatest shows.

   As the president watched the cars go by in a blur at almost 200 mph, I was able to have a little fun in the press box.

   A journeyman driver named Ken Ragan happened to come down pit road with his car spewing smoke, which trailed in a big, white plume.

   "My God!" I yelled.  "Ragan has blown!"

   All the media people within earshot chuckled.  But four Secret Servicemen stationed in the press box jumped from their seats and glowered. 

   Looking back, maybe I shouldn't have done it.

   Nevertheless, the race continued to build in excitement.  With only 20 of the 160 laps remaining on the storied 2.5-mile speedway, superstars Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough were locked in a stirring duel.

   At stake for King Richard, a seven-time series champion, was a triumph he would treasure for the rest of his life--a 200th and final victory at NASCAR's top level, where he would continue driving through 1992.

   Adding to the drama was the fact that Petty was a Republican member of the commission back home in North Carolina's Randolph County, and he had played a big role in getting the GOP's Reagan to come to Daytona Beach.

   With two laps to go the car of rookie Doug Heveron flipped wildly into the grassy area near Turn One, bringing out the yellow flag.  Since leader Petty and the second place Yarborough already had passed the flagstand, they were free to race all the way around the track.

   Both drivers were aware there was no way the race would be restarted, so whoever got back to the line first would be the winner.

   Down the backstretch three-time series champion Yarborough pulled an aerodynamic slingshot, at which he was a master, and surged into the lead.  However, Petty rallied hard and drew abreast of Cale in Turn Four.

   As the two thundered into the trioval homestretch they scraped sheet metal, spewing sparks and smoke.  Their cars appeared welded together, with Petty on the inside groove and Yarborough on the outside.

   Just before the finish line the cars parted slightly and Petty's Pontiac spurted ahead a bit to edge Yarborough's Chevrolet by mere inches.

   An estimated crowd of 80,000 gasped at what they had just witnessed.  So did President Reagan.

   Even the veteran, savvy Yarborough was swept up by the thrill of the sensational shootout, and when he came back around the track he drove down pit road.  Cale thought the race had been back to the checkered flag.  However, a lap under caution remained to be run.

  Frantic shouts and waves from his crew sent Yarborough back onto the track, but by now he was relegated to third place.

   Thus developed one of the greatest, most amusing trivia questions in NASCAR history: Who finished second in the 1984 Firecracker 400?  The inclination is to say Yarborough because of the unforgettable photographs and TV footage of he and Petty charging to the line side-by-side.

   However, the correct answer is Harry Gant, who became the runnerup when Yarborough confusingly went to pit road.

   Moments after taking the checkered flag, Petty stopped at the gate under the flagstand and was escorted through an ecstatic swarm of fans upstairs to meet President Reagan.

   "It blowed the president's mind that me and Cale could touch like that at 200 miles an hour and maintain control," Petty, near tears, said after meeting Reagan.  "I can't say how much this means to me.

   "During that last green flag lap, I didn't have an idea what I was going to do.  It was a circumstance where Cale would act and I would react."

   President Reagan likened the courage of Petty and Yarborough--and the other drivers as well--to that of the country's founding fathers.  It was heady stuff to have unfurled at any time, but especially so on Independence Day.

   It will remain special for all time in NASCAR lore, for American history transpired that day in 1984 that isn't likely to be repeated:

   Petty's car of red, white and blue was destined for enshrinement in the nation's greatest museum, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington.

   But there was much, much more beyond this.

   For almost certainly the only time it ever will happen, a county commissioner upstaged the President Of The United States.      

Sea Lions, Suits And Sears Point

   California, here they come!

   Once again NASCAR's Nextel Cup "tourists" are heading to the San Francisco area for Sunday's Dodge/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Speedway, a road course formerly known as Sears Point Raceway.

   Visiting the beautiful, vibrant "City By The Bay" never could grow to be grindingly routine--as some stops on the schedule have become--but traveling to 'Frisco isn't as exciting for the racing teams as it once was.

   Certainly not as thrilling and filled with great expectations as in June of 1989, when NASCAR took its main show to Sears Point for the first time. 

   Even the tough ol' Intimidator himself, Dale Earnhardt, admitted to being a bit giddy.

   I was pumped up, too, and recall most of that memorable week fondly and well.  Look back with me...

  Seventeen years ago few of the drivers and team owners had planes, so they generally flew commericial airlines like the crewmen and we wretches of the press.

   So practically everyone waiting at a gate at Charlotte's Douglas Airport to board a morning Piedmont Airlines flight to San Francisco early in race week of '89 had a NASCAR connection.  The cast of drivers in the crowd included Geoff Bodine, Ken Schrader, Dave Marcis, Derrike Cope, Alan Kulwicki and both Labontes, Bobby and Terry.

   Finally the man who was to pilot the 727 across The Rockies to Northern California came sauntering down the concourse.  It was none other than Piedmont veteran Loren Edwards of Mooresville, Earnhardt's next-door neighbor on Lake Norman.

   I knew Loren through Earnhardt and approached him.  I told Loren of my interest in geography and history and asked him to point out places and things of interest along the way.

   "You've got it," Loren said with a grin.

   Did I ever, I was to learn shortly.

   I shared a row of seats with my media pal, Steve Waid, and old friend Mike Hill, then a key crewman on the Junior Johnson-owned team fielding Terry Labonte.

   We'd only been airborne a few minutes before the mischievous Loren made an announcement from the cockpit.  "Tom, we're passing over Gastonia," he said with a cackle.

    Names of lots of other towns and rivers and mountains and even creeks and villages were to follow.

    Meanwhile, the flight attendants had begun to serve beverage "refreshments."  Gallons of 'em, it seemed.  A rollicking party was in progress at 35,000 feet.

    Loren continued to be a dutiful tour guide, announcing points of interest.

   A driver's wife approached me.  "Higgins," she ordered, "go up there and get him to shut up!  I'm trying to take a nap!"

   How she planned to sleep with so much laughter and tinkling of glasses going on was lost on me.  Besides, I was rather enjoying Loren's information, following along with a U.S. Atlas I'd brought on board.

   Everyone strained to look out the windows when Edwards advised that we were descending into San Francisco on a path that took us directly over the incredibly beautiful Yosemite National Park.  We oohed and ahhed at the sight of the great waterfalls and the magnificent rock mountain, Half Dome.

   Finally, we touched down in 'Frisco.

   R.J. Reynolds Tobacco was NASCAR's major sponsor in those days through the Winston brand, and RJR executives had planned an important press luncheon at Fisherman's Wharf.  So the drivers and the media headed there.

   The day was bright and cool, and the breeze coming off The Bay invigorating.  The Wharf was alive with color and entertainers, and tourists gawked to watch sea lions sun and fight on the docks below.

   Earnhardt made sure he got a window seat in the restaurant so he could continue to watch the sea lion activity as the press event continued.  Every little bit something would happen that made him burst into laughter.

   Most of the drivers, dressed spiffily, were asked to say a few words.

   All were gracious and expressed appreciation at finally getting to race near a city as great as San Francisco.

   The local media was impressed.

   Said one TV sports anchor on his newscast that evening:  "We were expecting two-fisted drinkers" like from NASCAR's rough and rowdy old days.  "What we got instead is a group of dedicated pros in double-breasted suits."

   However, drivers Bill Elliott and Terry Labonte said it was going to take "the double-fisted, daredevil-like, white-knuckle driving style" of those old days to do well on the 2.52-mile, 11-turn Sears Point course in the hills of the wine country.

    Earnhardt agreed.

   "It's a much tougher track than the old Riverside road course in Southern California or Watkins Glen in New York," he said.  "Someone is going to be off course somewhere around it all the time."

   Added accomplished road racer Rusty Wallace:  "The track is dramtically different than we're used to.  There are a couple hairpin turns.  The shift points are different and you're never wide open for a long period of time.  The places to pass are very different than what we're used to, and the uphill/downhill stretches of the track are extreme."

   Said Davey Allison:  "Racing at Riverside was like driving on a superhighway.  Racing at Watkins Glen is like driving through the country.  Racing at Sears Point is like trying to drive real fast on those twisting one-lane streets in San Francisco."

   Sure enough, several drivers experienced trouble in practice and qualifying.  Both Jimmy Means and Michael Waltrip flipped their cars.   Many others spun or otherwise got off course, including Terry Labonte and Geoff Bodine, among the favorites to win.  Kulwicki had so much repeated trouble in one turn than the speedway's corner workers nicknamed the spot "Kulwicki's Korner," somewhat to the non-amusement of Alan.

    During time trials the top three starting spots went to Wallace, Mark Martin and Elliott.  Not coincidentally, the trio and their teams had gone to the trouble and expense of towing their cars all the way to California from North Carolina and Georgia to test at Sears Point.  Wallace was timed at 90.041 mph, Martin at 90.023, just two-hundredths of a second slower.

   A rash of wrecks continued to be predicted for the 300-kilometer, 187-mile race.

   Said former driver-turned-team owner Buddy Baker: "Fans are going to see a show they won't believe.  I got on top of one of the hills above the track to watch one of the practice sessions and saw four cars scratchin' and diggin' off course in the sand and gravel at one time."

   "They're going to run out of brake pads and paramedics," wrote one pessimistic reporter.

   Tthese prospects, along with it being the NASCAR major league's first-ever visit to that section of the country, led to an assured track record crowd.  A whopping 45,000 tickets were sold in advance.  Sears Point's previous biggest turnout was 36,000 for a Camel GT race in 1986.

   Wallace led the first 10 laps, then Ricky Rudd, an equally accomplished road racer, took control.

   Rudd was to lead all but three of the remaining laps in the 74-lap event.  Midway of the race Rudd had built a lead of 8.75 seconds and many in a throng numbering 53,000 were murmuring that maybe this form of motorsports wasn't so marvelous at Sears Point after all.

   Just when it looked as if Mark Martin might mount a challenge to Rudd, a freak incident victimized him in he pits.  Martin stopped for fuel only, but a substitute tire changer got excited and loosened the lug nuts on the right rear.  As Martin roared back onto the track and started up a hill toward Turn 2 his car spun out of control and turned over in a ditch.  Martin crawled out and sprinted several hundred yards back to his pit to find out what had gone wrong.  The car was uprighted and Martin eventually rejoined the race, finishing a disappointing 30th.

   Shortly after the Martin drama unfolded, a yellow flag enabled Wallace to close in on Rudd and the race was on.

   It became exceedingly exciting during a hectic final four laps, with the two seldom more than a car length apart.  They rubbed sheet metal at least three times.

   On the 71st lap Wallace pulled almost abreast of Rudd in the Turn 7 hairpin, taking an outside line.  Rudd, not about to give up the lead, crowded Wallace into the grass and sped on.

   "I knew Rusty was going to make a run at me at that spot, the turn they call 'The Keyhole,'" said Rudd.  "But I had no idea he'd get up that far.  I gave him that corner coming in, and I took it back coming off.  What does Dale Earnhardt say?  'That's racing.'"

   Wallace had no complaint.

   "I got alongside, but Ricky drove the line it took to win," said Rusty.  "There's nothing wrong with a move like he made.  I probably should have made my move stronger.  When I got off the pavement for that little bit, it let Ricky get away some and from  there I was just trying to hold my line hoping to catch up.  But Ricky had too strong a car and he deserved to win."

   Rudd got the checkered flag 1.1 seconds ahead and the crowd got its money's worth, never mind that for all the predictions of disaster, there were only three cautions for 16 laps.

   "This track tests your road racing skills to the max," said Rudd.  "I enjoyed racing on it, and I think the fans enjoyed seeing us and our big cars race on it.  I can't say enough about the crowd's enthusiasm.

   "I hope we come back and make racing here a tradition."

   Ricky Rudd and Rusty Wallace and several other stars in that inaugural Sears Point race are now retired as drivers.  But, just as Ricky wished, NASCAR appears to have lost its heart to San Francisco and continues to return there about this time every year.

       

    

Long Race The King

   I've never heard a volcano erupt.

   However, I imagine the sound relatively is somewhat like that which thundered over Michigan International Speedway on June 15, 1986.

   Twenty years ago the track's spring 400-mile NASCAR race fell on Father's Day, just as it will this coming Sunday.

   Secrets seldom are kept very well in NASCAR.

   But the plan for starting the Miller 400 touchingly surprised all but a few people.

   The speedway's public relations official, Marti Rompf, had arranged for Richard Petty's daughters--Sharon, Lisa and Rebecca--to give the traditional command for the drivers to flip the ignition switches in their cars.  A nice touch, made even more appropriate since their father, the sport's winningest, most famous driver, was making his 1,000th start on NASCAR's major level that day.

   But when the sisters stepped to the microphone they didn't say "Gentlemen, start your engines."  At least not right away.   

   Instead, they said, "Daddy, start your engine!"

   Only the engine in Richard Petty's famed No. 43 began rumbling.  The motors remained silent in the other 40 cars lined up on pit road.

   It took a few seconds for the fans in the crowd estimated at 66,000 to sense the significance of what was happening.

   Then, they began to stand, applauding and cheering ever louder as only Petty's engine to continued to run.

   After a minute, the Petty sisters gave the order for the other drivers to start their engines.  The cheering was so loud the girls barely could be heard.

   I have covered NASCAR racing in some capacity since 1957.  The tribute to Richard Petty, his sport's acknowledged "King," at the Michigan speedway in the beautiful Irish Hills remains the most spontaneous, sincerest outpouring of affection that I have seen and heard in all those years.

   Recollection of it still raises goose bumps.

   King Richard retired as a driver at the end of the 1992 season with 1,184 starts, 200 victories and 126 poles, all records.  He won NASCAR's biggest race, the Daytona 500, seven times, still another record.

   He ran 307,836 laps and led 52,194 of them.  These, too, are records.

   Even among all these accomplishments, Petty rates that Father's Day in Michigan two decades ago high on his list of favorite memories.

   "I didn't do worth a flip in the race," he recalled recently.  "I ran pretty good early, and thought we had a chance to win and make it sort of a story-book deal.  Then I lost a lap because of an unscheduled pit stop and couldn't get back up there to contend."

   Petty finished 13th.

   Even so...

   "I look back on the day and remember it as a pretty emotional thing," he continued.  "After mine and Lynda's girls said 'Daddy, start your engine,' the crowd got swept into it and even with my helmet on and the motor rumbling I could hear the people cheering.

   "It'll always be special to me." 

   

Bud Moore, An American Hero

   Young Bud Moore roused from a fitful sleep and decided to step outside for a breath of fresh air.

   What he saw in the dim light of dawn was so astonishing that it created a baseball-sized lump in his throat.

   In every direction, stretching to the horizon, there were ships.  Thousands of them.  Battleships, cruisers, destroyers and landing craft.

   Walter "Bud" Moore, a self-described "country boy" of 19 from Spartanburg, S.C., was aboard one of the latter.

   He remembers his ship vividly.  "LCI 149," he says.

   He remembers the date and the events surrounding it just as clearly.

   The date: June 5, 1944, sixty-two years ago.  The event, looming just hours away: D-Day, the Allies' invasion of France's Normandy coast.  The history-changing  "Longest Day" of World War II, the beginning of the drive to free Europe from the German Reich of Adolf Hitler.

   And Bud Moore, destined to become one of the top team owners in NASCAR during a racing career spanning five decades, was going to take a very active part in the battle.

      

   "I was in the 90th Infantry Division, 359th Regiment, D  Company, First Platoon," Bud, now 81, recalls with justifiable pride.   "I was a corporal.

   "We were attached to the Fourth Infantry Division, and we had boarded the LCI at Liverpool, England.  We moved only a few hundred yards from the dock and anchored.  We were told that a force was being assembled for an exercise assault somewhere on the English coast."

   During the night of June 4-5, LCI 149 began moving, but after a while stopped.  The ship was at anchor again when Bud stepped outside and saw all those ships on what he correctly assumed to be the English Channel.

   "I rushed back below and told my buddies, 'Boys, this ain't no exercise!  It ain't no dry run!   This is the real thing!'" remembers Moore.

   "Within a few hours a PT-Boat pulled alongside and these officers came aboard the LCI.  They pulled out this big map and informed us that tomorrow is going to be D-Day.  Our outfit's orders are to assault a place on the French coast code-named Utah Beach.  The attack was just a few hours away.

   "We didn't know exactly what to expect when we went in, but we figured it was going to be bad.  For years the Germans had been fortifying the Normandy coast.

   "At five o'clock on the morning of June 6 the front of our transport went down and we were off.  The ramp opened up 200 yards short of dry beach and we stepped out into shoulder-deep water.

   "I was a machine gunner.  I had a tripod for a 30-caliber machine gun on my back and it weighed 51 pounds.  My pack weighed 30-to-40 more pounds, so the going was tough.  I stepped into a hole that the German artillery--which was zeroing in on us--had blown in the ocean bottom.  I was in water over my head, and I thought I was going to drown.

   "But I swam a little bit and found footing.

   "About that time a boy near me got hit and just disappeared.

   "Finally, I got to the beach and right then I realized what war was all about.  It's crazy.

   "I had just turned 19 and here someone I'd never seen was trying to kill me.  My folks had raised me right, and I thought I was a decent human being.  I couldn't imagine shooting someone or having them shoot me.

   "But on that beach I realized those Germans in front of us were going to kill us unless, by God, we shot them first.  You learned pretty quick what it took to survive."

   Bud Moore sighed.

   "A lot of fellers got hit, some of them my buddies," he continues.  "We felt it was awful, and it was.  We had about 200 casualties.

   "Before long we found out the first wave at Omaha Beach, just up from us, had been pinned down and practically wiped out.  There were 4,000 casualties at Omaha Beach, and it made you wonder what would have happened to you if your outfit had gone in there."

   Nowadays, Moore generally prefers to evade specifics about the slaughter he witnessed on D-Day and during the weeks following as the battle for Normandy raged.

   "We had a job to do and a lot of good men died doing it," he says.  "After a time, you got immune to it."

   However, 22 years ago, on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, Moore spoke openly of the personal pain he experienced in combat.

   "Once I left my machine gun during the early days following the invasion to join a pal in his foxhole for some K-rations," Bud said in 1984.  "After a little while I went back to my position.  I hadn't left him for a minute when an artillery round scored a direct hit on his foxhole.  I never saw any part of my friend again.  It was like he never existed."

   Moore also recalled during that interview of 22 years ago "The Big Push" of July 3, 1944 when American planes dropped personnel bombs "thick as rain drops" on a 10-mile strip near Periers, France.

   "Right after that, Gen. Patton broke through, made a hard right and hemmed in the Germans on the Cherbourg Peninsula."

   Bud Moore hemmed in some Germans of his own in December of 1944 during the Battle Of The Bulge.

   "We were attacking a little town that we had swapped back and forth with the Germans about five times," he recalls.  "My platoon leader ordered me and this kid driver to take a Jeep with a 30-caliber machine gun on the hood up this trail and check out some houses near patches of woods.

   "We saw this German soldier run into a wood hut.  I sprayed the building with a couple of bursts and the tracers set it on fire.  A white flag waved and the German came out.

   "We loaded him on the hood and took him with us.  A little bit further along we saw two more German soldiers sprint into a rock house.  We took heavy fire from the house, and I returned it, blowing out the windows and doors.  They showed a white flag, but wouldn't come out.

   "The kid Jeep driver spoke a little German, so we sent the one we'd captured in to tell the others if they didn't surrender we'd call in artillery and blow 'em off the face of the earth.

   "The Germans started coming out.  They kept on coming.  And coming!

   "When we got them all lined up we had 15 enlisted men and four officers.  We'd captured the area headquarters.

   "We started marching 'em back.

   "My commanding officer said, 'Boy, what in hell was all that shooting over there?'  I said, 'Well, we was having a little trouble.'

   "He said, 'Where did all these Germans come from?'  I said, 'We happened to get them out of a building over there.  You only sent two of us and we had to capture a whole army.'

   "It was funny afterward. But we were lucky." 

   Moore was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service and promoted to sergeant for his outfit's continuing fight across France, into Germany and on to Czechoslovakia.

   En route, he got a second Bronze Star, with clusters.  He had been on the front lines nine months and 14 days without being evacuated or being hurt seriously enough to miss combat.

   "I guess it was bound to happen," says Bud.  "We were pulling into an abandoned complex, which I think had been a hospital.  We got into a heck of a fight.  I took three slugs in the left thigh."

   These wounds brought the first of five Purple Hearts that Moore eventually received.

   Bud's outfit was near Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, meeting a Russian force, when he learned of Germany's unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945.

   Victory came 11 months and two days after Moore and thousands of other Allied soldiers fought their way ashore on the beaches of Normandy.

   Bud left Europe for home on Nov. 1, 1945 aboard the USS Excelsior, named for Excelsior Mills in Union County, S.C., not far from his Spartanburg home.

   He has never returned to the European battlefields.  He was tempted to go for the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994, but his team was racing in a Winston Cup Series event at Dover Downs in Delaware, and Bud felt obligated to stay with his crew and driver, Lake Speed.    

   "When racing is your livelihood, you have to be there," he explained.

   Officials at the Dover track held a touching ceremony to honor Bud in '94.

   Seven of the many drivers who had wheeled Moore's cars took part, including Bobby Allison, Buddy Baker, Brett Bodine, Geoff Bodine, Dale Earnhardt, Ricky Rudd and Morgan Shepherd.

   Bud, a member of several motorsports halls of fame, is a NASCAR pioneer.  He started fielding cars in 1950 and continued to "go racing" until 1999, when he sold his operation and retired.

   Among his other drivers through the decades were Fireball Roberts, Darel Dieringer, David Pearson, Cale Yarborough,  Darrell Waltrip and Joe Weatherly, all hall-of-famers.

   Moore was the crew chief for Buck Baker's NASCAR championship run in 1957.  He owned the cars that Weatherly drove to titles in 1962 and '63.  Bud took a NASCAR Grand American championship in '68 with Tiny Lund as driver, and a Sports Car Club of America Trans-Am title in 1970 with Parnelli Jones.

   His colorful career includes some significant accomplishments.  Dieringer won Darlington's Southern 500 in a Moore-fielded car in 1966.  Buddy Baker won three straight 500-milers at Talladega Superspeedway for Moore in 1975-76, and in 1978 Bobby Allison drove a Moore-owned machine to victory in the Daytona 500 and the National 500 at the track then known as Charlotte Motor Speedway.

   Overall, NASCAR credits Moore with 63 wins and 43 poles as a team owner on what's now the Nextel Cup level.   

   Several years ago, just prior to a Firecracker 400 on July 4th at Daytona International Speedway, an event which had a pre-race show based on the military and patriotism, Bud heard an announcer ill-advisedly say that "the drivers are getting ready to go to war."

   Bud winced and shook his head.

   "That man doesn't know what he's talking about," he said.

   "Racing ain't war...Real war is hell on this earth."