South Carolina since the beginning has blessed stock car racing with Hall of Fame Drivers and Car Owners. Some of the original and best stock car racing promoters called The Palmetto State home, also. South Carolina has also had its share of future Hall of Fame stock car racing newspaper writers, from Jim Foster, Jim Hunter, Joe Whitlock, Gene Granger, and Jim Mclaurin to Mike Hembree . I'm sure I've left some good ones off this list.
Today, while poking around on another racing site, I came across an old photo of a Ford Mustang drag racing car, parked in front of a Columbia, SC speed shop. The car bore the familiar ( to we old stock car fans ) "BOWANI" and the number 29 on its side. Of course, the dragster had been fielded out of Camden, SC by the amazing Bondy Long !
A year ago, Mike Hembree of Greenville, SC wrote an outstanding article for SPEED-TV telling how drag racer Bondy Long came over from the dark side and joined us in stock car racing for a few years. His mom had the gumption to personally call Bill France Sr. and have him meet her at the Daytona Beach airport so she could find out what this stock car racing deal was all about. The rest is history. The story begins below the two photos. It's a great story!
Bondy Long today holding a souvenir card of his #11 BOWANI Ned Jarrett Ford
CUP: Longs Short NASCAR Run Was Spectacular
1960s team owner raced for six seasons then drove on to other things
Mike Hembree | Posted January 17, 2011 Camden, SC
In the spring of 1956, Bondy Long, soon after being licensed to drive at the age of 16, powered out of his driveway in Wilmington, Del., bound for Camden, S.C. in a brand new red-and-black Chevrolet.
Without the convenience of interstates, it was a long trip. To Long, that didnt matter.
He was going home.
He also was on the road to racing and to a life that would include a surprise introduction to Bill France Sr., an unlikely NASCAR championship and a brief but spectacular spin through the countrys best stock car racing circuit. On that day southbound, neither Long nor anyone in his circle could have imagined anything of that sort.
At 16, Long was on fire with the same energy and enthusiasm that makes most teenagers glow when they see their own names on a drivers license for the first time. Freedom. Power. Independence.
Wheels.
In Longs case, however, the scenario was colored by the fact he wasnt simply driving away from the place where he had lived since the age of 10. He was driving away from privilege and money millions, in fact.
Maynard Bond Bondy Long II was the stepson of Lammot du Pont Jr., a member of one of the worlds richest families. Du Pont married Longs mother, Mary, in 1950, six years after Longs father was killed in action in World War II. The company the Du Pont family built now is best known in NASCAR circles as Jeff Gordons long-time sponsor.
Long spent his early years in Camden, where he and his brother, Walter, walked barefoot from spring to fall and lived the bucolic lifestyle of kids in a small Southern town. When their mother met and married Du Pont, the world at least their part of it changed.
I was on a train going to Wilmington at 10 years old, and I didnt know what was happening, Long, now 70, said. I thought I was going up there to visit. Somebody said, Youre going to live up there. I said, What?!
From a small house on a quiet lane Mill Street in Camden, Long moved into Du Ponts huge stone farmhouse outside Wilmington. He entered private school and wore a coat and tie and shoes! every day. His mother, who had worked as a secretary, no longer had to worry about making ends meet.
Long had left his friends in Camden, and he was mostly isolated out in the countryside in a new and strange home. Too young to drive and bored with school, he started tinkering with boat-building kits in the big barn behind the Du Pont home. That became a passion of sorts, and he raced through every boating magazine that arrived in the mail.
Then he turned 16 and got his drivers license. The boats sank. He had wheels.
I got that new car and packed it with all my stuff, Long said. My stepfather was sick and in the hospital in New York, and I called my mom there and told her that I was going back to Camden to live. I just dont like this up here, I told her. She said, No, you stay put. But I drove south.
Long had aunts, uncles and other relatives scattered around Camden, and he lived with several while he completed his schooling at Camden High. His love of tinkering intact, he started drag racing in the Carolinas and soon began traveling outside the region to race. He was winning very little money (We usually got a trophy that wasnt even as big as a bowling trophy, he said) and depended on checks from his mother in Wilmington to stay afloat and on track.
Then, in February 1963, Longs life took an abrupt left turn.
He was drag racing in Bunnell, Fla., north of Daytona Beach, and was invited by a friend of a friend to visit Daytona International Speedway during Daytona 500 week. Long and his group got garage passes. He had never seen an oval-track race and, flipping through a race program, was surprised at the prize money NASCAR events awarded.
I called my mother in Wilmington and told her that she had to see this, he said. I told her, These people actually win a lot of money if they win races. She said, Well, I might have to check into that. I said, You need to come down here to the track.
Two days later, to Longs surprise, she did. With an escort Bill France Sr.
I had no idea what she was doing, Long said. She called down to the track and asked, Whos in charge? Somebody told her it was Bill France. She said, Well, can I talk to him? Evidently, she talked to him and made arrangements to fly down and for him to pick her up at the airport. I didnt know any of this. I was just sitting there at the track eating hot dogs and talking to people and looking around.
Bill France picked her up at the airport and drove her around the track a few times and told her what was going on. Then I hear my name over the garage loudspeaker, telling me to come to the garage office. There she was with Bill France. She said, I think youre right there is something to this. This is a great thing.
Bill France, the founder of NASCAR, was a busy man in those days, and its reasonable to conclude that he didnt return every telephone call asking questions about NASCAR. And he certainly didnt drive to the Daytona Beach airport regularly to pick up people he didnt even know. But someone carrying the Du Pont name? That was a different story.
I never talked to him about it, but Im sure he felt that if he could pull the Du Pont name into the fold it couldnt hurt anything, Long said.
Soon, Long was looking around for a stock car to buy. He settled on a Plymouth from Petty Enterprises. He hired a few mechanics and started his racing team in 1963 in a shop on the familys Camden property. At 23 years old, he was suddenly a team owner, a racing mechanic and an engine builder.
He learned quickly. It was not a good year for Plymouths they typically were 10 miles per hour behind Fords at the circuits big tracks, and Long soon switched to Ford.
On a long haul to the Northeast that summer to run several races (Bobby Isaac was the teams driver), Long made a temporary return to the Du Pont family compound in Wilmington. He, Isaac and several crew members stayed with the family for several days, with the teams race car resting on a trailer out front an odd sight for that place and time, to be sure.
We stayed at the big house, and wed go downtown and visit my stepdad at the bank where he had an office, Long said. It was this scruffy-looking gang of guys in the bank. Im sure the people working there thought we were asking for a loan.
Late that year, Long and other family members became involved in discussions with Ford factory executives and John Holman of Holman-Moody, Fords Charlotte, N.C.-based racing operation. When they finished talking, Long had a factory deal to run Fords in 1964 with Ned Jarrett, the series champion in 1961, at the wheel.
As the team began what would become a successful season, Long dealt with a setback. On the eve of the Daytona 500, then the seasons second race, his stepfather died after a long battle with cancer. On the morning of the 500, Long flew out of Daytona Beach to attend Du Ponts funeral, even as thousands of others arrived for the race. Soon after Du Ponts death, Longs mother returned to her home in Camden.
The racing continued, and, despite blowing numerous engines as Ford builders struggled with a persistent valve-spring problem, Longs team found its stride quickly. Jarrett won 14 races, including six of the final 16, that season.
In 1965, Jarrett drove the No. 11 Fords to the Grand National championship, scoring the Blue Ovals first driving championship at NASCARs top level.
It was a year of dramatic highs and lows for Jarrett. He suffered what he called the worst injury of his career a back injury in a crash at Greenville-Pickens Speedway in South Carolina but soared to a 14-lap victory, the largest in Cup history, in the Southern 500 at Darlington.
Sliding toward retirement, Jarrett left the team early in the 1966 season, and Dick Hutcherson replaced him. He won four races for the team over the next two seasons. Then, in 1968, Long saw his group begin a downward spiral that ended with his ties to stock car racing going away as quickly as they had appeared.
Bobby Allison, Swede Savage, A.J. Foyt and Paul Little Bud Moore were in Longs Fords that season. None scored a win, and there were only five top fives.
Long had seen enough. He met with his mother, who was still bankrolling the team, and they decided to shutter the shop.
The year was such a disappointment, Long said. We really had all kinds of good thoughts about what was going to happen, but Bobby quit the team and decided to move back home to Birmingham, and then we couldnt get going with the other drivers. I felt like after being at the top that we were back at the bottom and we were going to have to start over again. I didnt want to go through that.
So Long disappeared from the NASCAR scene. He was only 28 but had enjoyed a championship run, dozens of victories and a life-changing experience.
That was where I learned what you can get from hard work, and thats exactly what it was, Long said. If you want to win races, you have to work harder than the next guy.
Although he entered the sport from a background of wealth, Long said he quickly became one of the guys.
All they knew was that I was Bondy Long, he said. They saw me getting dirty with the rest of them. I think that made a difference. And they saw that we were going to have a pretty good team and hold our own.
It was a great experience. We just became part of a traveling circus. I drove the teams truck, and Fred Johnson (Junior Johnsons brother) drove their truck. We traveled a lot together and stayed at the same places and ate at the same restaurants. Some of the stories he had to tell Wow. I had no stories. All I could do was listen.
It was a trip.
Yet it was barely a beginning for Long, who has jammed an astounding mix of experiences into his 70 years with no end in sight. After the run in NASCAR and a few years operating an auto-repair business, he owned a scuba-diving excursion business. Then he decided to go into medicine. He got a nursing degree and worked in the intensive care unit in a hospital in Columbia, S.C. He still works part-time as an emergency room nurse in a hospital in Camden.
Long also wind-surfs, fishes for trout in high-mountain country and competes in bicycle races.
My SPEED is devoted to the passionate fans who celebrate motorcycles, motorsports and the automotive lifestyle.
When my stepfather died, everything he left for us was left to my mother, Long said. But most of the Du Pont family money is in trusts. When he died, a lot of what he had went into those trusts for the rest of the family. But she got something out of it, and thats how she lived. When she died, there was a trust left to me and my brother. And weve lived on that. And thats fine with me.
About 10 years after his mother died, relatives cleaning an attic stumbled across a large scrapbook in which she had collected newspaper and magazine stories, photographs and other items relating to the familys NASCAR team. Long had no idea it existed.
Back then, all we did was race and get ready to race, he said. We didnt ever take a camera anywhere, we didnt look at the newspapers we just didnt have time for any of that. And here she was keeping all this.
It is the best record of those days and of Bondy Longs short but eventful NASCAR run.
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"Any Day is Good for Stock Car Racing"
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/05/16 04:02:07PM
