ITS BEEN LESS than a year since Jeff Gilder, a former race car driver from northeast Tennessee who now lives in Myrtle Beach, embarked on a little project.Wanting to connect todays racing fans with drivers of old and help draw attention to the financial needs some of the old-timers face, the 53-year-old Gilder started the racersreunion.com Web site.The site contains still photos, videos plus audio and video interviews with retired race car drivers from decades gone by. Built in a social networking format, racersreunion.com encourages fans to comment and the site often draws comments from some of the old drivers themselves.Gilder appears to have tapped into a popular market.After drawing a few hundred page visits the first month, those numbers grew many times over in a few months.Now, the site has 3,307 registered members who populate the message forums and peruse racing history. Membership remains free.In a Nov. 16 post on the site, Gilder wrote how amazed he is that all this grew from the link he sent to 15 friends once he had the site started in its formative stage.The drivers of today did not create their destiny, Gilder wrote. There would be no NASCAR without the sacrifices of the sports veterans. My ultimate vision for racersreunion.com: Recognize the sports veterans and use the recognition we gain to help the guys who need it.The site continues to add new features.Racersreunion Radio is on the site, featuring interviews conducted by Columbias Jim Seay. A weekly live radio show is in the planning stages, Gilder said.Gilder and his son, Dustin, travel to events where drivers are appearing in public to record as many interviews as they can.On Nov. 8, they traveled to the old Occoneechee Speedway in Hillsborough, N.C. One of the premier tracks in NASCARs early days, it closed to racing in 1968. The track site fell into disrepair, covered by undergrowth, until it was purchased in 1997 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.Today the track site is a park with walking trails and historical markers revealing its past.Earlier this month, it was the site for 18th annual banquet of the Old Timers Racing Club. With several old drivers in attendance, plenty of coverage from the event is available on racersreunion.com.The site is also currently conducting a trivia contest where winners can snare tickets to racing at Bristol (Tenn.) Speedway.
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Founder/Creator - RacersReunion®
updated by @jeff-gilder: 12/05/16 04:02:57PM