Eventually, I became the Division Personnel Manager for the Wilson Lady Wrangler Division, consisting of six manufacturing plants and 2,800 employees. It was the largest Wrangler Jeans division.
I was a race fan when I got to Wilson in 1970 and was fortunate that the city had one of the country’s finest dirt tracks, Wilson County Speedway. Within a season, I was somehow a part owner/sponsor of a Limited Sportsman car at that track.
As Division Personnel Manager, I spent some time involved in corporate recruiting for Industrial Engineers on the campuses of North Carolina State University in Raleigh and East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. It was on such a recruiting trip in the fall of 1980 with our chief recruiter from corporate headquarters in Greensboro that I was asked if I might have an interest in managing a NASCAR stock car racing program for our new special events department.
I quickly said yes and after several interviews became Manager of Wrangler NASCAR Special Events in late 1980. Our driver, a young Dale Earnhardt would win the Winston Cup Championship that year following his previous season’s Rookie of the Year honors. All race fans know the rest of the Dale Earnhardt story. For me, it was the opportunity of a lifetime and one that I parlayed into a career in motorsports.
The big downside to the racing job was leaving behind the numerous friends, mostly Wrangler Jeans employees, I had made in ten years in Wilson. A really special friend was Eston Smith, a man who befriended me on my first day with Wrangler in 1970. He was 17 years my senior. It was his obituary I saw Monday and his Memorial Service I shall attend in Wilson on Friday.
Eston was the first Wilsonian to invite me home for dinner with his family. I would do that numerous times. I also ate lunch and accompanied him and his lovely wife, Anna out to dinner many times over the years.
Eston was not a race fan and neither were many of my associates. However, I was able to successfully convert many of them. The highlight of Eston’s conversion was that for two consecutive years – in 1971 and 1972 – he volunteered as our designated driver from Wilson to Darlington, South Carolina for the Southern 500, each time expertly and safely chauffeuring (and shepherding) our group of six.
In 1971 we took the big burgundy 60s Pontiac Bonneville belonging to Dennis Page and actually slept in the car (sort of) on Sunday night – those were the days when the Southern 500 still ran on Labor Day Monday. I, of course, was the expert in our group – having attended my first Southern 500 in 1966.
In 1972, Eston decided to drive his own car to Darlington with our same group of six. That car was his shiny, black Buick Electra 225 – nicknamed “Black Beauty” and well known around Wilson. In 1972 we also purchased a tent for sleeping the night before the 500.
Our two year Darlington group was an eclectic one. Jerry Jackson, our plant manager in Bethel, North Carolina was part Cherokee Indian. We called him a “Hacksaw Indian.” Rudy Strickland ran our pattern department and was married to the director of the mental health facility. The aforementioned mentioned Dennis Page of Green Pond was one of our short haul truck drivers. Charles Nester was an industrial engineer from Hillsville, Virginia and owned both a new BMW, as well as a beautiful 1964 General Motors Daytona Metal Flake Blue Chevelle. Charles had just personally rebuilt a 396 cubic inch motor for the Chevelle in the parking lot of his apartment complex.
Our seats at Darlington were always in Robert E. Lee’s Paddock, coming off turn 4 in Row 17. The camping area just outside the Paddock was operated by the Darlington Volunteer Rescue Squad and it was to that area that Eston drove us and stopped both years. In 1972 we had the extra chore of a tent to pitch.
Eston was a social animal who always wanted to make sure I was well versed in the art of the opposite sex. The office ladies at Wrangler had nicknamed him “Sexy Daddy” and he always made sure that young recruits got important lessons.
One lesson Eston always taught was called “G – U – E.” The letters stood for Go Ugly Early. As he explained it to us young single boys, it never hurt anything to be nice to ugly women. In fact, his advice was to seek out the ugly women first in any social establishment and be nice to them. Just in case there were no pretty women to be found at the end of the evening, you had already made friends with numerous other females.
Conversely, Eston had different advice to me when I became Division Personnel Manager and hired employees who would work for him. “Dave,” he said, “If you have a choice between hiring two comparable ladies – one pretty and one ugly – what is the harm in hiring the pretty one?”
On our Darlington trips, Eston was the social director. In those days at Darlington there were numerous bands up on flat bed trailers playing all night. We learned how to walk over a sea of Blue Ribbon cans between bands.
In 1972, Eston staged the “World’s Ugliest Human” contest at Darlington. Folks walked all around the camping area and recommended various participants to the judges. In a twist of fate, our own truck driver, Dennis Page was awarded the title. We couldn’t tell him until Labor Day morning when he came around.
It was Eston who found a Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket for us to shave in at Darlington on race day morning so we’d look well groomed after a night of partying. It was Eston who drove us home after two days of carousing in the days when there was no Fayetteville bypass and somehow we would be on a two lane U.S. Highway #1 passing the South of the Border complex on the North Carolina / South Carolina line. He got us all back to work safely for Tuesday morning in those Southern 500 trip years and Wrangler Jeans continued to be made and we finally got them on Dale Earnhardt.
To my knowledge, Eston never attended another race after the 1972 Southern 500. Jerry went with me to Martinsville and Rockingham and then was killed in an auto accident in late 1972. Charles and I went to Wilson County Speedway together.
Charles would be transferred away, but Eston, Dennis and Rudy would be ushers in my 1973 wedding. The last time I saw Dennis he was working for Kodak in Kingsport, Tennessee. I got him a pit pass at Bristol to meet Dale. I lost track of Rudy. After I was married, Eston’s wife taught my wife’s baby sister high school home economics.
The last two times I saw Eston were when we returned to Wilson for the funerals of my wife’s mom and dad. Now my wife and I shall return there Friday for his. How I wish I had kept up with my old friends. That old adage about old friends being the best friends isn’t far off.
Come Friday, we’ll wave the checkered flag for another old friend who has completed the race and reached the finish line. I hope there are some folks at the memorial service who will enjoy some Darlington stories.
