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
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
We keep hearing of interesting NASCAR scoring decisions and results being changed.
In the case of the July 4, 1964 NASCAR Modified feature at Myrtle Beach's RAMBI Raceway , track officials threw up their hands and sent the scorecards to Daytona after 4 different drivers of the 44 entered claimed the win.
I haven't found a follow-up story, so I'll depend on Coastal Jack Walker and Bobby Williamson to tell us who finally took home the paycheck.
The initial controversy was reported below in the July 6, 1964 Charleston News & Courier .
Bobby Williamson's hero driver, Earl Moss of Creedmore, NC and Doug Yates of Chapel Hill weren't exactly strangers.
In 1958, Moss tapped Yates to replace him in the driver's seat at Daytona when he was diagnosed with measles!
Daytona Beach Morning Journal
I feel badly for Martin Truex who seems to be the one person in this whole scenario who did nothing suspect.
However, as a corporation, I wouldn't want to be affiliated with Michael Waltrip or the company he partially owns.
There are too many ways to spend corporate dollars than to dump it into a place with no ethics and whose conduct is having repercussions with customers and potential customers.
I guess all those annoying "Know How" commercials with the Waltrip family can be thankfully shelved.
To my knowledge, NAPA has always had a good corporate reputation and I have certainly been satisfied with my expenditures with them through the years. No reputable company can tolerate the position NAPA was placed in.
Perhaps the drinkers of those energy vials and the renters of television sets are not so particular as the purchasers of auto parts as to concern the 5-hour or Lucky Dog folks. Since I'm a customer of neither, my opinion doesn't register on their radar... but, I do buy auto parts and everything about the Waltrip affiliation has always had me questioning why an outfit like NAPA would stay tied up with Waltrip.
I applaud NAPA for cutting the cord.
Thoughts to your Uncle Bobby in the hospital, Tim. Hope his health may improve.
Those are very special memories of your Mom and Dad. So many of us in our generation have similar stories.
My Dad enlisted in late 1942 at Fort Lee (Camp Lee back then) in Petersburg, Virginia and took basic training at Ft. Riley, Kansas - the horse cavalry outfit. Mom moved back home with her parents.
Dad went by troop train to Ft. Ord, California and shipped out from the San Francisco Port of Embarkation, first to New Caledonia and then on to Guadalcanal in the South Pacific. When they were awakened to board their troop transport in San Francisco, Dad's outfit discovered most of them had been robbed by the Marine guards assigned to their overnight barracks.
When Dad returned in 1946, he said there was a band playing "There's No Place Like Home" up above on the Golden Gate Bridge as the troop transport passed beneath. Not a dry eye on the ship.
I can't even begin to imagine what it was like for our left behind Moms to endure those years of wondering. My aunt (Dad's sister) devised a system to try to keep the family informed of his whereabouts. She gave Dad a map of the world with $$$ amounts assigned to every country and island. He would write home that he had won xxx$$$ in a poker game and the family knew he was on Guadalcanal.
Our parents lived in an amazing period of history transcending the use of the automobile, surviving the Great Depression and literally saving the world from tyranny. No wonder they were ready for some recreation in the 1950s.
Been waiting to see if you chimed in Devin. I had eliminated Legend and Leon, but thought maybe you'd flown the coop with all those millions!
