Humpy "P.T.Barnum" Wheeler

   The preacher was delivering a "hellfire and brimstone" sermon to his congregation on May 27, 1984 at a small church about two miles from the race track then known as Charlotte Motor Speedway.
   "Lord," yelled the minister, "give us a sign that everything I've said is true."
   At that very moment a loud explosion thundered over the rolling hills of the N.C. Piedmont, creating such a concussion that the chuch shook and its  windows rattled almost to the point of breaking.
   I'm told the frightened flock spoke in tongues for the next two hours.  And that if some poisonous snakes had been available, they would have handled them.
   But the big boom wasn't Heaven-sent.
   It was triggered by artillerymen of the U.S. Army's famed 82nd Airborne Division from Ft. Bragg, N.C.  The paratroopers, reenacting the Invasion of Grenada the previous October, had fired a howitzer as part of the pre-race show leading to the World 600 that afternoon.
   I can't vouch for the veracity of every part of the tale about the preacher and the "tongues."  But I have no doubt the church shook and the windows almost popped.  The blast came very close to taking out the big panels of plate glass fronting the track's press box.
   Trace the incident to H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler,  the speedway's president/general manager and a promoter without peer in NASCAR, or any other sport, for that matter.

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   Because of Humpy's grand imagination and drive to entertain fans, the Memorial Day weekend shows prior to the 600s through the years have featured various branches of the Armed Services, and every one of them has been a dandy.  The military used their appearances to encourage enlistments, and it worked.
   I recall a year when it was the Air Force's turn at the track now named Lowe's Motor Speedway, where Kasey Khane won a Coca-Cola 600 thriller last Sunday night.  The Air Force was going to show off much of its arsenal in flyovers, including a low-level pass by the new B-1 Bomber.
   I happened to mention the appearance of the B-1, which was being kept secret, to a high-ranking editor at my "alma mater," The Charlotte Observer, and he went ballistic.
   "They're wasting taxpayer money to provide Humpy and Bruton Smith (the track owner) a free pre-race show," he fumed.  "We going to editorialize strongly against it!"
   I urged him to talk to Humpy first, and he did.
   After Humpy explained the recruitment angle and said the planes were going to be in the air anyway on training missions, the editor changed his mind and even came out to the race, in large part so he could get an up-close look at the B-1.
   When the plane appeared, the spectators packing the grandstands first gasped in surprise, then started cheering.  The sleek, lethal-looking aircraft made a slow second pass, coming in over the third and fourth turns.  Upon reaching the first and second turns, the pilot took the plane straight up toward the clouds.   Fire flamed from its engines, which emitted a deafening roar.
   It was a spectacular sight and sound.
   When I got home after filing my stories that night, my daughter Heather, then 15, was waiting.  She had been setting in the Turn One stands with friends, right under where the B-1 nosed to the sky.
   "Daddy, after what I saw today, when I turn 18, I'm joining the Air Force!" Heather proclaimed.
   She didn't, as boys became more popular than B-1s.
   These recollections, and many, many others came pouring back to mind a few days ago when Humpy Wheeler, 69, announced his retirement from the speedway after 33 years on the job.  He conceded that a series of disagreements with Smith led him to leave his post.
   "I'm not going to quit working, it just won't be at this place," said Wheeler, who is immensely popular with both fans and the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series competitors.
   Already, major companies are lining up to hire this smart, talented man who became know as the "P.T. Barnum" of racing.
    Barnum, for those who might not know, was the showman of a century ago whose name continues to be revered.  As in Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus. 
   Yeah, that Barnum.
   Lowe's Motor Speedway's loss of its "Barnum" is some other organization's immense gain.
   For 22 of the years Humpy was at the track, from 1975-97, I wrote about him and fished with him from the cold waters of the Great Smoky Mountains to the marshes of the S.C. Lowcountry on the  Bohicket River.  This was before taking early retirment myself after 34 years with The Observer.
   A journalist phoned me a few hours after Humpy confirmed his departure from Lowe's Motor Speedway, where he played such a major role in transforming the facility into the Taj Mahal of motorsports.  The writer wanted a sampling of my favorite Wheeler anecdotes.
   I've written these before, but on this occasion they're worth repeating.
   The plan for a pre-race show before a fall 500-mile Winston Cup Series event in the 1980s was Humpy's most outlandish.
   After a dazzling array of aerobatics, a stunt pilot would fly upside down over the crowd in salute.  His route would be from Turn One to Turn Three.  After turning the plane upright, the pilot would dive into a deep gulch that existed at the time behind the third turn--out of sight, as if his aircraft had gone down.  Simultaneously, a huge dynamite charge would be set off in the gulch, creating an explosion, fire and smoke.
   There'd be every appearance that the plane had crashed.
   Ha!
   Not quite.
   The pilot would pull up and, still out of view of the grandstands, fly up the ravine behind Turn 4.  He'd  circle back, buzzing the grandstands again.
   "It'll be an incredible trick," said Humpy.  "People will talk about it for years."
   Ed Clark and Eddie Gossage, Humpy's associates on the speedway management team at that time, were horrified.  Clark now is president of Atlanta Motor Speedway, Gossage heads Texas Motor Speedway.  Both tracks are owned by Smith.
   "I remember telling Humpy, 'What it'll be is an incredible disaster,'" said Clark. 
   "And I remember saying , 'There aren't enough doctors in the Carolinas to treat all the heart attack victims we'll have,'" added Gossage.
   Wheeler went through with the air show, but eventually changed his mind about its "grand finale,"
the fake crash.
   "I really doubt Humpy would have gone through with something as brazen as that," said Clark.  "Not even if Eddie Gossage and I hadn't spoken out against it.  I feel that suggesting it was his way of shocking us and making us think of alternatives.
   "But with Humpy, you never know."
   For years Wheeler harbored thoughts of a pre-race show idea even more preposterous perhaps than the plane-crashes-in-gulch proposal.
   He envisioned fans arriving at the speedway on race morning to see a huge glass tank filled with water on the grassy area between the start/finish line and pit road.  In  the tank would be a large shark.
   The promotion was to be called "Man Vs. Shark, One Must Die!"
   "I figured on talking Moon Huffstetler, the marathon swimmer from Gastonia, into going into the tank and killing the shark," said Humpy.
   "I thought Ed Clark and Eddie Gossage were going to choke when I suggested that."
   Clark remembers clearly the conversation that ensued:
   "I told Humpy, 'Moon will have no chance against the shark.  Moon will die right in front of thousands of people.'
   "Humpy said, ' Well, we'll get some of that strong, space-age metallic material and make a suit to protect Moon from any bites.'
   " I said, 'Moon will drown.'"
   Gossage opposed the idea on another point.
   "I told Humpy that the animal rights people would have us for lunch," said Gossage.  "I said, 'There will be demonstraters carrying signs all over the place.'
   "Humpy slapped his desk and said, 'You're damn right there will be demonstraters.  And if there aren't, you better hire some!'"
   Through the following years Humpy continued to dream of  "producing a 'Jaws' show of some kind."
   Alas, now that he has left the track, we're very, very, very unlikely ever to hear a fan at Lowe's Motor Speedway scream, "There's a shark in that water!"