This is a ten year old story, published in 2002 on the occassion of my former employer and friend, the late Paul Sawyer being inducted in the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame, the fifth inductee with a tie to motorsports. I never tire of reading accounts about one of the two men I most admire that I ever met in racing (the other being Bud Moore). What fascinates me is reading how it was done back in the day. Paul was always opinionated, also, and he doesn't hesitate to nominate his "best driver" list. I hope you enjoy a brief look at how one of the few racing folk in Virginia cracked the entry list of an institution populated with stick & ball athletes.
Sawyer: Man Ahead Of His Time
April 26, 2002
By AL PEARCE
Daily Press
Paul Sawyer was there before the beginning. Before there was a NASCAR, he was promoting stock car races by schlepping around, nailing signs to trees and telephone poles.
"I'd drive in on Sunday, sell tickets from a suitcase, pay the purse and my expenses, and put any leftover money in the suitcase and hit the road,'' he said Thursday. "It went like that for years. When racing started getting bigger, it got bigger a little at a time. Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would get this big.''
Sawyer predates radio and TV. He was there before message boards, NASCAR.com and Winston Cup Scene. He was there before luxury coaches, private jets and PR flunkies. He was racing before racing was cool.
Friday night in Portsmouth, he gets his due for a job well and truly done. His induction into the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame is the latest lifetime achievement award he's received in recent years. "These things come out of nowhere when you're old enough to have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel,'' the 85-year-old great-grandfather said.
"The Buddy Shuman award; the Meyers Brothers award; the NASCAR Founders award; the RPM Award; an honorary doctorate from the University of Richmond. But this one really floored me. How it happened to me, I don't know.''
Sawyer is the Hall's fifth motorsports-related inductee. Deceased drivers Joe Weatherly, Curtis Turner and Wendell Scott are in, along with 83-year-old powerboat legend Henry Lauterbach. Sawyer hopes the late Clay Earles of Martinsville Speedway, owner/driver Glen Wood and drivers Sonny Hutchins, Tommy Ellis and the late Ray Hendrick eventually make it, too.
The honor comes a week before 100,000+ fans gather at Richmond International Raceway for the Pontiac 400. When Sawyer became involved in the late '40s, he was happy with 100,000 fingers and toes at his races. But times changed, and he was smart enough to change with them.
"One thing about me was that I could see the handwriting on the wall,'' he said. "I knew how to keep up. I hated to pave Richmond (in 1968), but I saw the end of dirt-track racing. And that's why I spent all that money to rebuild the track in 1988. Once I did that, I knew it would always have a date.''
Sawyer helped guide racing through its '50s infancy and '60s adolescence. He was a player in the '70s, when racing reached beyond its grasp. He became a force in the '80s by turning the half-mile State Fairgrounds Raceway into a three- quarter-mile showplace. He rode the wave that carried NASCAR to unprecedented growth in the '90s.
Finally, deep into his 80th year and financially set, he felt the time was right. In December of 1999 -- about 50 years after getting into racing -- he sold RIR to International Speedway Corp. "I don't have to do this,'' he said at the time. "But I don't want to go into debt again. I went into debt to my eyeballs to build this, and I don't want to do it again to add more seats.''
As for his "best-ever'' lists: "Curtis was the best dirt-track racer I ever saw,'' Sawyer said. "Junior Johnson was as good on dirt as he was on asphalt. Fred Lorenzen was great on asphalt, but he looked like a monkey climbing a flagpole on dirt. Joe. Fireball. Richard and Lee. Bob Welborn.
"Man, there's been so many great ones. Today's drivers would be lost on dirt. Those old-timers would run circles around 'em.''
The Tadlock racing family in Norfolk exposed Sawyer to racing in the 1930s. After World War II, Sawyer began his career as a car builder and eventually became a track owner. In 1955, he and driver Joe Weatherly leased the Fairgrounds Raceway in Richmond. In 1968, Sawyer paved the half-mile dirt track. The once-modest 6,000-seat track eventually became the 112,000- seat, three-quarter-mile Richmond International Raceway.
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"Any Day is Good for Stock Car Racing"
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM
