A True Pioneer of Stock Car Racing, Bill Blair won three Grand National Races during his racing career – Mount Vernon Speedway in 1950, Lakewood Speedway in 1952 and the Daytona Beach Race in 1953.
He was born in High Point, N.C. in 1911, one of seven sons to the Honorable John Blair who served in the House of Representatives of North Carolina and owned the Clover Hill Farms Dairy in north Guilford County. He grew up delivering milk to families in High Point and was known for leaving milk on the doorsteps of families that could not afford milk for their children during the depression. During his retirement years, people would drop off fish, fruit and other items at his house because they remembered him leaving milk at their homes when they could not pay for it. Bill had a side business delivering “cough medicine (moonshine)” and spent one Christmas Eve in the Martinsville, Va. slammer after being caught hauling 125 gallons of “cough medicine” back to North Carolina.
He always loved speed and especially the ’39 Ford and would challenge anyone for a race to see who had the fastest car. He and his wife Lucille raised three daughters and one son, Bill Blair, Jr., who followed his dad around the tracks. Blair watched as the High Point Speedway, a one-mile dirt track, was being built in 1939 across the street from the dairy and that began his racing career.
Before the war, he ran three races at High Point Speedway, one at the Charlotte Fairgrounds and one at Langhorne, Pa, where he finished second to Lloyd Seay. When the war started all the tracks shut down and Bill spent several years in the Baltimore shipyards building battleships for the war effort.
After the war, Bill started racing again and in 1947, he and his brother built their own half-mile dirt track called Tri-City Speedway and promoted the races. He was a friend with Bill France and sanctioned his first race at Tri-City with France’s first organization, NCSCC, the forerunner to NASCAR. When France was promoting races in the area, he would be a regular under the big oak in the Blair backyard talking racing.
He was one of the original racers to go with France when he formed NASCAR and he raced at the first Strictly Stock NASCAR race at Charlotte in 1949, in which he lead 144 of the 150 laps that he completed and was several laps in the lead when an errant pit stop derailed him and his possible chance of winning the race. He ran the initial events at Bowman-Gray Stadium, Occoneechee-Orange Speedway, Martinsville, North Wilkesboro, the Southern 500 at Darlington plus a list of other tracks. He ran six of the eight races in the inaugural season and finished fourth in the points, leading 325 laps of the 613 laps he ran that year in the Strictly Stock Division. He raced against all the Atlanta racers, including Seay, the Flock Brothers, Raymond Parks and was good friends with Red Vogt.
He ran just a few races after the ’53 racing season and retired in 1956. Until Bill France passed away he always invited him to come to the Daytona Race and provided a room and tickets for him. Blair passed away in November, 1995.
For banquet information, contact Linda Reeves at 386-767-3929.
