Racing History Minute - September 20, 1964

How different things were in the world of stock car racing in 1964. All those 49 years ago. As Bobby Williamson stated in the radio show Tuesday night, it was 1963 when "America lost its innocence" with reference to the assissination of the President and all that came after. But for this date in 1964, things in the racing world revolved around a .9 mile dirt track in Hillsboro, NC (Hillsborough), known as Orange Speedway.

Twenty-eight cars entered the event on the superfast dirt track with the hairpin turns. David Pearson would start his Cotton Owens Dodge on the pole with a speed of 89.28 mph. Jimmy Pardue in the Burton-Robinson Plymouth would start second, Doug Yates in a year old Plymouth third, Richard Petty in a Plymouth fourth, and Cotton Owens in a Dodge securing all five top startng positions for the Mopar guys.This would be the second race for the long retired Owens who returned to competition at Richmond six days earlier so he could teach his main driver (Pearson) the proper way to make pit stops. Owens won the Richmond event. He stated he entered the Hillsboro event because it was another chance to "have fun on dirt".

David Pearson led the first 46 laps with Richard Petty taking over on lap 47 but Richard would only hold the lead through lap 53 when Ned Jarrett took over. Ned led for two laps and it was then Pearson again. Pearson appeared on his way to victory when the rapid Dodge broke a fan belt forcing David to pitand he was unable to return to the track. Ned picked up the lead at that point and led until the checkered flag waved on lap 167, completing the 150 miles at a speed of 86.725 mph. Who finished second? That old man, Cotton Owens,who was one lap in arrears but nevertheless a second place finisher.

On a sad note here, second place starter, Jimmy Pardue, was running well but had several unscheduled pit stops which dropped him to 13th in the final rundown. It was two days later that Pardue was killed at Charlotte Motor Speedway while testing tires. Jimmy was the third NASCAR driver to lose his life in the 1964 season with Joe Weatherly (Riverside) and Fireball Roberts (Charlotte) being the other two.

Top five finishers:

1. Ned Jarrett, Bondy Long Ford, winning $1,550.00

2. Cotton Owens, Cotton Owens Dodge, winning $1,000.00 (1 lap down)

3. Larry Thomas, Herman Beam Ford, winning $750.00 (5 laps down)

4. Wendell Scott, Scott Ford, winning $575.00 (11 laps down)

5. Buddy Arrington, Arrington Dodge, winning $425.00 (14 laps down)

Sixth through tenth were Curtis Crider, Steve Young, Roy Tyner, Major Melton and Gene Hobby. Worth McMillion was 12th , Jimmy Pardue 13th, David Pearson 14th, Richard Petty 16th, Buck Baker 20th, Cale Yarborough 22nd, Earl Brooks 23rd, Neil Castles 26th and Don Branson finishing 28th after completing only one lap.

PERSONAL NOTES:

I had gotten to know Jimmy Pardue fairly well during the 1964 season as he was one of those "Mopar Drivers" I always gravitated towards. To me he was always the soft-spoken guy who loved racing and gave it every bit of his energy. Although it hasn't been mentioned often, Jimmy hit the rail at Charlotte Motor Speedway and left the track. The reports as to what actually caused his death are varied but several indicated the car came down driver's side first and a fence post (metal cyclone fence) came through the driver's window. At the National 400 in October, Richard Petty and Fred Lorenzen were engaged in one of their classic duels with Richard leading the Golden Boy by a car length coming to the white flag (and I was in the infield cheering wildly) when his right front tire blew and Richard hit the rail a ton almost in exactly the same spot as Jimmy had hit three weeks before and gone through the rail. Charlotte had reinforced the rail and Richard's car stayed inside the track although the hit was so hard it pulled Richard from his shoulder harness and he actually ended up lying in the seat. If the rails had not been reinforced it could have been another loss. When NASCAR lost Jimmy Pardue, they lost a great racer and a true gentleman.

ALSO, the Celebration of the Automobile is coming up at the speedway which is the subject of today's Minute on September 28th. You will have a chance to talk with the 10th place finisher in the '64 race, Gene Hobby. Gene can entertain you for hours with his recollections of the events in which he competed. Also,you can expect members of fifth place finisher, Wendell Scott's family to be in attendance. Earl Brooks' son, Ervin, will be there with a replica of his Dad's racer. You can check out all the attendees by checking www.historicspeedwaygroup.org and you find many legendary drivers and racing personalities will be there. I have attended the past four years and will be there this year. When I start my calendar for each new year, the first thing I look for is the date for this event and it goes on my calendar before anything else. It is a day a race fan will never forget.

Honor the past, embrace the present, dream for the future.

Race Report from Spartanburg Herald.

Though this site is dedicated to the preservation of stock car racing's history, we occasionally draw in historical or trivia nuggets from "outside the track".

September 21, 1964 is also the date the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the New York Giants and their legendary but aged quarterback, Y.A. Tittle. Morris Berman of the Pittsburgh Post captured one of the most famous sports photos of all time of the battered and beaten QB who was at the end of his rope professionally.

But at just about the same time, a second photographer captured a similar image - though not distributed nearly as much as Berman's photo. The photographer of this 2nd photo was a young guy from Atlanta named ... Dozier Mobley. In the years to come, Mobley had a great career capturing many memorable photos from NASCAR events.

Read on for more:

http://www.ajc.com/news/sports/one-moment-two-photographs-different-tales/nQZPM/

Dozier was a first class photographer and a first class person. The year our Earnhardt / Bud Moore Wrangler team won at Nashville, RJR forgot to make a hotel reservation for Dozier. I let him use the second bed in my rather seedy room at Nashville's Hall of Fame motel.

The late Dozier Mobley

Dozier had another famous (infamous) encounter of a very tragic nature when he was assigned by Associated Press to photograph civil unrest at two black colleges in Orangeburg, SC - the adjoining South Carolina State College and Clafflin College in 1968.

Ellensburg (SC) Daily Journal - February 9, 1968

Dozier was our "official " photographer for the Wrangler NASCAR program as well as RJR's official photographer for the Winston Cup Series.

A 2007 story below ran in the Athens (GA) Banner-Herald telling of an exhibit of the late Dozier Mobley's varied images staged by his son prior to Dozier's passing.

Jefferson's Dozier Mobley captured the greatest faces of the 20th century on film

Athens Banner-Herald

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

For close to half a century, Dozier Mobley was a photographer for a host of newspapers, news agencies and NASCAR-related organizations. But saying that Mobley merely "took pictures" doesn't do justice to the canon of images he's captured and preserved, some of which are photojournalism's finest.

Although thousands of Mobley's images have been published in newspapers, magazines and books, and been utilized in films and on television, the 73-year old Jefferson resident has never had a public showing of his works.

That oversight has been corrected, thanks to Mobley's son Mark, an Athens-based freelance writer who also works as an arts agency consultant, most notably with the symphony orchestras in Augusta and Baltimore. Mobley the younger has collected about three dozen of his father's most evocative prints for a month-long exhibit at Flicker Theatre & Bar on Washington Street. A reception is set for 6 p.m. Saturday.

"I had motive and I had opportunity," jokes Mobley about his efforts to promote his father's work. "A lot of things came together and Flicker is the perfect venue for something like this. There's lot of support but no interference. It's also a funky kind of place where the people there don't mind if not every frame matches."

After learning photography through a correspondence course while serving in the U.S. Army, Dozier Mobley spent much of the late 1960s as a news photographer, working for the Atlanta Journal, Associated Press and United Press International, among others. For the next 30 years, he rode NASCAR's Winston Cup circuit as a photographer for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, at the time the sport's biggest sponsor.

"He was Winston's own Winston Cup photographer," says the younger Mobley. "I can remember tuning in a race on Sundays and seeing my dad hanging out of the pace car."

Not surprisingly, many of the shots at Flicker are NASCAR-centric, focusing on the races and faces of the sport's first modern era, the late 1960s and early '70s, when the stars of the sport still raced in places like Macon and Jefferson. Included among the portraits are two unusual shots - speed king Richard Petty without sunglasses and the late Dale Earnhardt without a mustache.

"All of a sudden, people are really interested in NASCAR," says Mobley. "I research my father's archives and help him get images out to folks who are looking for them. ESPN just did a documentary on Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Fox did something on Dale Earnhardt Sr., so we provided some photos for those projects. And there are people out there who collect photos of old NASCAR stuff, the South in general and just big old sideburns."

Photographs by Dozier Mobley

When: Through March 10; reception 6 p.m. Saturday

Where: Flicker Theatre & Bar, 263 W. Washington St.

Call: (706) 546-0039

Many of the photos are for sale.

Reception will be catered by Mama's Boy.

For more information about the photographs, e-mail Mark Mobley, markmobley@gmail.com.

Besides the stars of the fast lane, Dozier Mobley also captures other famous faces, including Presidents Johnson (at a funeral in South Carolina), Carter (then governor, hanging out with Petty and Bobby Allison) and Reagan (eating KFC between Petty and Allison in 1984).

Also on display are photos of The Beatles, Jackie Gleason and presidential brother Billy Carter. Two of Mobley's photographs have been published thousands of times and seen by millions of readers - a 1964 sports image of bloodied New York Giants quarterback Y.A. Tittle after a particularly onerous tackle, and the iconic 1961 shot of Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, who integrated the University of Georgia, arriving on campus in the back seat of a car.

But it's life at the racetrack that the younger Mobley likes best.

"The (photos) I like are probably different from what others, including my dad, might think," he says. "I like life around the edges and you can certainly see plenty of that from his shots of drivers on Victory Lane. You see the driver, the queen and the trophy, but usually in the background, there's the crew and the family and a lot of stuff going on. There's one photo that I love - it's (NASCAR legend) Darrell Waltrip getting a check for winning a race from a guy with a gator head."

Mark Mobley's primary motivation for showcasing his father's work is very personal in nature.

"My dad is not well," he says, alluding to his father's fight with pulmonary fibrosis. "While he's still here, I want people to be able to see this work that I've loved."

One of my favorites from the late Dozier Mobley's photo archives has AJ Foyt chatting with Dale Earnhardt on Daytona's pit road early in the morning of July 4, 1981 before the then 10:00 a.m. starting Firecracker 400 as Dale sits on the rear deck of the Wrangler Jeans Machine.

http://www.dozierthegreat.com

And, from the 1962 World Press Photo Competition :

Year 1962
Photographer Dozier Mobley
Nationality USA
Organization / Publication
Category News
Prize Honorable mention
Date 1962
Country
Place
Caption A parachutist lands on top of another, both jumpers made it to the ground safely.

Game was Sept 20 not 21. Once again I got in too much of a hurry. I went to Sept 21 news archives to find articles and pics for stuff that happened the day before.

Chase, I'm guessing you know this, but I'm also guessing many of our RR members don't. Since the tobacco companies, including RJ Reynolds, were involved in so many lawsuits, a huge number of their formerly "private" papers went into the public domain as the "Legacy Tobacco Documents."

Dozier's contracts with Sports Marketing Enterprises (SME) , the spinoff entity created to handle all RJR sports sponsorships, were no exception. Below is a copy of his 1995 contract with the late T. Wayne Robertson. I'm sure if we looked a little, we'd find contracts in the Legacy Tobacco Documents with the signatures of Bill France Senior and Junior.

To celebrate the anniversary of the famous photo, the Carolina Panthers sacked N.Y. Giants' QB, Eli Manning SEVEN Times this past Sunday in Charlotte, beating the New Jersey based pretenders 38-0! Here's thinking of you, Dozier!

Above - David Foster Photos for The Charlotte Observer

Above - Grant Halverson photo for Getty Images via The New York Times