Tobacco, Cigarettes and Racing - Some Fascinating Reading

You may notice that I often make comments when the subject is the former sponsorship by Winston of various NASCAR endeavors. Often times I happened to either be around folks making those decisions, was friends with them, worked hand-in-hand with them on promotions or later worked outright for former R.J. Reynolds executives and was party to many insider conversations about how things "really" happened in the early days of Winston NASCAR sponsorship.

I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, which city leaders used to rightly promote as "The Cigarette Manufacturing Capital of the World." Operations run by Phillip Morris, American Tobacco, Liggett & Myers, P. Lorrilard, Brown & Williamson and United States Tobacco Co. produced more cigarettes in a single day than the combined totals produced in and around Winston-Salem, Durham and Reidsville, North Carolina. Just a fact. Every autumn, Richmond was home to the National Tobacco Festival and the renowned Friday night Grand Illuminated National Tobacco Festival parade.

Before any of us ever heard of a Winston or any other filtered cigarette, former New York City hotel bellhop "Little Johnny" would stand at the start/finish line of the Richmond dirt track dressed in his maroon hotel uniform and make his famous "Call for Phillip Morrisssssssssssss!" I was at the Myrtle Beach Sheraton at the National Motorsports Press Association Convention in January 1981 when Richmond promoter, Paul Sawyer told RJR's Ralph Seagraves that races were being staged at his track before Winston came around and that they'd be racing in Richmond after Winston was gone. As much as I loved Paul Sawyer, I wish he'd have been wrong on the second part of his statement.

Winston did so much, especially behind the scenes that most will never know to promote NASCAR and its cigarette sales, of course. NASCAR Weekly Racing has never recovered from the loss of Winston sponsorship and marketing expertise.

My father was born in Danville, Virginia, home to the largest tobacco market in the "Old Belt." He lived for a short time in Columbia and Lake City, South Carolina as a small boy. He retired from Liggett & Myers Tobacco Co. in Richmond at age 55 after 38 years of service making Chesterfields, L&M's & Lark cigarettes. As purchasing agent, he was the last employee on the Richmond payroll, charged with disposing of all the cigarette factory equipment when the company closed its Richmond operation. I have autographs of television personalities like James Arness who were brought to Richmond as Grand Marshal of the Tobacco Parades.

Between my junior and senior year of college, I worked as a computer programming intern traineeat the Computer Operations Center of Phillip Morris, studying FORTRAN & COBAL computer languages and hating every minute of it. I did receive all the free Marlboros I could smoke, though. My dad considered me a traitor, but I turned down a full time job after college and instead went to work for the Wrangler Jeans folks (Blue Bell, Inc.) in Wilson, North Carolina - the world's largest bright leaf tobacco market. I could not get away from tobacco. When the local farmers made their sales, they headed down to Darlington for the Southern 500.

In 1980, I had the opportunity to interview with the President of Wrangler Domestic operations and his head of advertising for the Wrangler brand to become Manager of Wrangler NASCAR Special Events and our new sponsorship of Dale Earnhardt.

Robert. M. Odear, Jr. was the Wrangler president and a brilliant strategist. While heading up marketing for Hanes Corp. in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he had helped invent the concept of packaging women's pantyhose in little plastic eggshells (L'eggs) and distributing them in grocery stores and drug stores, just about closing down the hosiery counters at department stores. His advertising manager at Wrangler was Jack Watson.

Before coming to Wrangler, Odear had been Winston Product Manager for RJ Reynolds and Watson his Winston Brand Manager when Odear and his cohorts took a man named Ralph Seagraves off the streets selling cigarettes in Washington, DC and made him Manager of Special Events for the new Winston NASCAR sponsorship program. By the way, when the first Miss Winston, Marilyn Chilton married my later boss Odear, she then opened the modeling agency in Greensboro that furnished every other Miss Winston until the sponsorship ended.

In 1999, the Winston-Salem Journal newspaper published a huge work in daily installments titled LOST EMPIRE - The Fall of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Three reporters spent over a year researching the huge endeavor. Thank goodness the complete work exists on line still.

I would encourage every single one of you to read the chapter titled KING RICHARD MEETS KING TOBACCO (Chapter 13) .

Fascinating stuff will be found. That's my future boss at Wrangler, Bob Odear (we called him Charlie-Bob) who comments to the press just before the first Winston 500 at Talladega, "We wouldn't be doing this if we didn't think we were going to make a buck."

Odear was a Louisville, Kentucky native who died several years ago in Nashville. He had a passion for bird watching and founded a company that booked worldwide bird watching expeditions. On Friday and Saturday while we headed to the Pocono racetrack, Odear and the President of our New York ad agency would rise at dawn to bird watch in the hills of White Haven, Pennsylvania.

Because of Odear and Watson being in on the original Winston sponsorship, I made numerous visits to Winston-Salem to confer with Dan Henley and T. Wayne Robertson on joint promotions. Sometimes we took Winston money to produce items that they were prevented by law from doing. I let the RJR Special Events Department use our Wrangler printing presses in Greensboro (unknown to any of the R.J. Reynolds brass) to avoid red tape in Winston-Salem. Pretty interesting to see Winston Media Guides rolling off the presses right behind blue & yellow Dale Earnhardt stuff. As they say in the movies, "I know stuff I'd have to kill you over if I told you."

It was always fascinating to visit RJR corporate headquarters and see Ralph and T. Wayne and Dan and Wes Beroth in business suits instead of red & white attire with ball caps.

When I sometimes make assertions about how things happened regarding Winston NASCAR sponsorships, it's because I was party to a lot of discussions and information. Enjoy.

Here's a neat little 1971 pre-race publicity tour story about the first ever Winston 500. Winston's Odear, as I've already told you married the Miss Winston in the story and then went on to head up Wrangler Jeans. Roger Bear in the story later left Talladega to go to work for Odear at RJR, before many years later opening his own marketing company that handled sponsorships for Junie Donlavey.

Ironically, former RJR guy Grant Lynch now heads up Talladega. It has been a very tight-knit community for many years. T. Wayne Robertson of RJR named Odear the Grand Marshal for the 1981 Winston 500 in his first year at Wrangler Jeans. Odear gave this command to the drivers, " Start them mothers !"

See story link:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1817&dat=19710512&id=GhYfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=GJwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5380,2189617

This notation was published in the Princeton University News at the time of the eclectic Bob Odear's passing:

Robert M. O'Dear Jr. '59
Published in the Mar. 23, 2011, issue

Bob died April 7, 2010, at home in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Bob came to Princeton from University High School in Lexington, Ky. He joined Quadrangle Club but left at the end of sophomore year to assist his family. He graduated from the University of Kentucky and Harvard Business School. He then began an eclectic career in business.

Bob gravitated to Winston-Salem, N.C., where he started out in the cigarette business (he was quick to note that this was before the Surgeon Generals report). He then moved into the hosiery business as a marketing vice president for Leggs. His employment required several moves, and in 1981 he was living in Greensboro, N.C. His marketing expertise led to his involvement in promoting the Winston Cup, a forerunner of NASCAR, and being an early backer of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt. At the time of his death he was working on a book about his experiences in this milieu.

Following these more conventional occupations, Bob then started a birding tour company, Observ Bird Tours, leading groups throughout the West to places such as Colorado, Texas, Minnesota, and Manitoba.

Divorced a few years ago, Bob is survived by a son, Robert M. ODear III.

The Class of 1959

God Bless, RJR and the Winston Brand for all it did for NASCAR. I still refer to it as the Winston series and nothing chaps my behind like someone referring to so and so, a 7 time Nextel/Sprint Cup Champion! It's just so inaccurate. Just refer to them as NASCAR Cup Champions and do away with this hocum garbage. I can guarantee those trophies they have say Winston on them. As they should.

Found this piece of racing history, but don't know exact date or race it was given outto the Richmond International Raceway race fans during the 90's.

Caution! Don't Let Government Wreck Winston Cup Sign-Up Card ( 3 3/4in. x 5 in.)

Carol, I couldn't agree more with your statement.

You can drop it down to other NASCAR Series, also. For instance, Richmond's "Terrible Tommy" Ellis won the 1981 NASCAR Late Model Sportsman National Championship - the final year for that series, before the creation of a touring Budweiser sponsored series that became the Busch Series and is now the Nationwide Series.

In 1988, Ellis won the Busch Series National Championship.

Those two NASCAR National Championships don't make him a two-time Nationwide Series champion, but he is a two-time NASCAR National Champion.

When Les Richter replaced the dethroned Bill Gazaway (a lousy NASCAR move in my humble opinion) as NASCAR Vice President for Competition, Richter went on a vendetta to make the NASCAR national touring series seem less southeastern. He created an "Official Hometown List" for drivers that we were to use in all media materials. It didn't look good for 95% of the drivers to have their hometown listed as Charlotte or Mooresville, North Carolina.

But Richter went to extremes to enforce his list of approved driver hometowns. God bless the announcer or track pr person who mentioned Dave Marcis living in Skyland, NC. NASCAR wanted him listed as Wausau, Wisconsin.

Jeff Gordon was listed as from Pittsboro, Indiana, though he was born in California. We needed a Washington state driver, so Derrike Cope was from Spanaway, Washington, not his birthplace of San Diego, California. This went on and on. If a driver's family ever lived in a state where NASCAR didn't have a current series driver listed, that's where he suddenly was from.

There really was a NASCAR issued approved hometown list to use. Absurd. And so it went and so it goes.

Another thing that Winston did was go to great efforts to build and promote the images of individual drivers. In fact, one of Odears' mandates to his original team of folks at Winston was the need to create "Heroes of the Sport" as he called them. Greensboro journalist, Bob Moore was hired by RJR to help accomplish that task and researched background on all the different series drivers and then planted news stories for national distribution about the different drivers who began to have known personalities to the fans. This was a tremendous boost to NASCAR.

I'm all for calling a Winston deal a Winston deal. I think, also, that a track's race from twenty years ago shouldn't be called by the present race name.

I remember those, Dennis.

One other note about Bob Odear, the late Winston Product Manager and Wrangler Jeans President.

Shortly after I departed Wrangler in Greensboro, NC in early 1984 to become Motorsports Coordinator for Dallas-based Southland Corporation and its 7-Eleven/CITGO/Chief Auto Parts racing programs, Odear was asked by the Greensboro City Council to chair a study commission charged with developing a plan to improve / redevelop downtown Greensboro. This downtown included the historic F.W. Woolworth lunch counter that was site of the first sit-in protest against segregation.

When Odear was called on to make his report before City Council and the assembled print and electronic media, he issued the following report:

"We have decided that the best way to improve downtown Greensboro is to burn it down."

That was the full report. To my knowledge he was never again asked to serve in any capacity for /by the City of Greensboro.

It twas a good article Dave. And even though I don't smoke, and think it's bad, Winston was the reason that Nascar was so popular....it's really gone to the dumpster since they got out of it. Why did Winston leave anyway? Did the supreme court finally rule against them, or not making money anymore....or what?

Tobacco companies were legislated out of sports marketing, Cody.