It Was Glamorous - It Can't be Recaptured
General
Forty years ago, the first week of December 1981, I attended the first ever NASCAR Winston Cup Awards Banquet held in New York City and all the associated activities connected with it.
Actually, those of us who were around the circuit really attended two Winston Cup Awards banquets in 1981. The first was held in the smelly, musty, basement "ballroom" of a decrepid oceanfront property on Daytona Beach during 1981 Speedweeks. We crowned our Wrangler Jeans driver, Dale Earnhardt, as the 1980 Champion - the firstand onlydriver to win Rookie of the Year (1979) and follow it in his sophomore season (1980) with the Championship. Our car owner, Rod Osterlund, didn't show for the banquet. That made Earnhardt nervous( with good reason )and us( Wrangler ) mad. By July, Osterlund quit showing altogether. He sold the team out from under us. But that is another story.
Before season's end, Bill France, Jr. announced we'd hold the banquet to celebrate the 1981 champ at year's end in New York. At the time, it was a brilliant move by France. New York was the advertising capital and CEO capital of the world. No CEO could resist taking his wife to a banquet at the Waldorf Astoria hotel.
For the first New York banquet in December 1981 we flew one of the little Wrangler "Rice Rocket" Mitsubishi turboprops from Greensboro, NC to the Teterboro, NJ airport, where we were met by a limo for the ride to the Waldorf in Manhattan. Dale Earnhardt announced he was riding "shotgun" and the limo driver explained there would be no front seat passengers. Guess who won?! When we actually got on the streets of New York, our "One Tough Customer" Earnhardt (who would later be called "The Intimidator "), riding shotgun, after having viewed some of New York's " street people " asked the driver to lock the doors. We all burst out laughing and Dale was chafed!
That first year 1981 we had a beautiful gathering sponsored by Gillette at the now gone Central Park restaurant Tavern on the Green, everything lit with twinkling lights and NASCAR race cars on display. There was a lot to take in, but it was beautiful to stroll by the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree and watch the ice skaters. No offense to Las Vegas, but I don't like the place and I was never a proponent of making the special banquet night an open to the public affair. In fact, I thought the banquet started sliding downhill when it began to be televised. The original New York banquets were hosted by the wonderful Barney Hall, but when ESPN came along and parts were televised it was determined that ole Barney wasn't telegenic enough and we started having hosts like Bob Jenkins, but then a rapid downfall to comedians and singers who knew nothing of NASCAR.
That first New York banquet in 1981 at the Waldorf was held at the Starlight Room, but it quickly became apparent that future banquets would have to be held in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf to accommodate the crowds. New York Banquet #1 was NOT blacktie as subsequent banquets would be after moving to the Grand Ballroom. Our new car owner for 1982, Bud Moore and wife Betty joined us at our table for the banquet. All of the men in our group, including Earnhardt, were attired in beige Wrangler western cut jackets and brown Wrangler jeans and Wrangler western boots. That was quite a sight in the fancy Waldorf! Poor Tim Richmond, attired in a stunning tux, with ruffled shirt and red bow tie, had no place to sit so Earnhardt asked if he could sit with us. Somewhere in my archives I have a treasured photo taken by the late Dozier Mobley of that table that night. Earnhardt, Richmond, Bud Moore.... what a group.
My wife, Joyce & I with Glen & Bernece Wood at the 1985 New York Banquet.
That photo and many other memories of New York banquets make me remember how many of my racing friends and associates are no longer with us. I have other wonderful photos of my wife, Joyce and I seated with a very distinquished Glen Wood and his wife Bernece. I have poignant New York memories of various breakfasts and dinners at the Waldorf when my track, Richmond International Raceway received the Myers Brothers Award and my employer and great friend, the late Paul Sawyer received the Buddy Shuman Award .I remember Bill France, Jr. standing on the stage of the Grand Ballroom andannouncing NASCAR had created a new award to celebrate a "competitor who had pulled himself up by his own bootstraps" and calling Richard Childress on stage to accept the inaugural award.
There were just so many memories on the New York stage. I remembertwo very quiet and reserved men - owner Billy Hagan and his champion driver Terry Labonte walking onstage in 1984, a tremendously popular championship with other teams. I remember Teresa Earnhardt the first time she stood on the stage at the Waldorf as Dale Earnhard's wife. So many wonderful memories that can never be recaptured.
One year when we flew in from Dallas the computers went down at the Waldorf. We couldn't check in. So the staff walked through the lobby with trays of champagne. My wife clinked glasses with movie star Jack Lemon. What a story she had to tell.
Going to dinner at the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria in New York was like attending a Grand Theater opening. When you first arrived in New York, you had to visit the NASCAR suite at the Waldorf and pick up packages of invitations to various events. The more success you had had, or the more money you had spent with NASCAR or were likely to spend, determined the size of those invitation packets. There were tickets to Broadway shows, there were invites to various breakfast, dinner and cocktail functions. We were sometimes invited off premises to cozy little French and Italian restaurants. But, the big show was the awards banquet in the Grand Ballroom on Friday night.Believe me, you didn't get near it without invite in hand. There were about a million bronze doors leading into the Grand Ballroom and they were all thrown open silmultaneously. Winston must have flown every pretty girl in Winston-Salem to New York, because they had one in a red Winston dress manning every door and checking invitations... this was after you got past the separate table checkin on the mezzanine to the Grand Ballroom.
I want you to picture hundred of wives who never saw their husbands during the racing season because they were on the road or at the shop late at night. Picture all of those wives in the very finest ball gowns all decked out to the max waiting to enter the Grand Ballroom of the most famous hotel in the country. They were beautiful and there was an unmistakable air of excitement that swept over everyone. There were tables with Ford execs and GM execs. There was so much high dollar energy in that one room that it wafted about. When dinner was served, hundreds of waiters magically appeared, dressed like little penquins and scurried about to the tables, always serving on the left just so correctly.
The Grand Ballroom was surrounded by balconies where many crew and media members were seated. For all of the dignity displayed during those early New York banquets, it gave you goosebumps to watch a number of balcony tables stand as one and cheer and catcall when one of their drivers, crew, owners or sponsors was honored. Afterwards, the winning car makers and sponsors had huge hospitality suites opened until dawn to celebrate.
Our wives loved the New York trip and the shopping and dressing up. I guess we did, too, but didn't realize it at the time. My wife went shopping with some others one afternoon at Saks, as well as Lord & Taylor and some other high dollar establishments, taking my Amercan Express card. Early that evening, before dinner, I hosted a number of media at The Peacock Lounge, one of the Waldorf's famously overpriced bars. When I attempted to pay the bill, the waiter came back and told me they had been instructed to confiscate my AmEx card because it had been used that day by an unauthorized user (my wife). Fortunately, I had a couple of other cards to max out, but my wife spent the next day at a couple of NY banks getting cash to pay for the rest of our New York stay.
We had numerous funny ( now ) adventures in New York cabs. Some years when we flew commercial into LaGuardia, we had to be very careful to be sure the driver used the Triborough Bridge and right roads to get us into Manhattan and the Waldorfquickly and for the least possibe mileage. One night, Joyce and I had dinner reservations at the restaurant overlooking Central Park at the top of the Gulf & Western Building. It was snowing and our turbanned cab driver put us out several blocks away, past the Plaza Hotel and Horse Carriages because he didn't want to drive in the congestion. It was a long walk in the snow.
Another year, the late journalist Jack Flowers, Richmond trackoperator Paul Sawyer's son Bill, Larry Starling of Piedmont Airlines and I decided to take a cab to some of the City's seamier attractions - the Pink Elephant Lounge in particular, featuring "exotic" dancers. Larry had lost a leg in VietNam, which I didn't know until that night when he announced he was becoming scared of the wisecracks Flowers was making to the bartender. That was when Larry told us he was getting out of there and taking a cab back to the Waldorf because he didn't think he could run fast enough with a wooden leg to avoid thetrouble that was soon to be headed our way!
Now I know I have rambled .Most of you who never had the opportunity to attend one of those early New York Winston Cup Awards banquets at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel Grand Ballroom could care less and it is very difficult to put into words what special times those were for a sport that was starting to break out big. In retrospect it was glamorous and we enjoyed it and it was a different day.
I don't think the NASCAR Awards Banquet can ever again recapture the special feeling of those first few years in New York.
updated by @dave-fulton: 12/04/21 01:15:29PM
