Forum Activity for @dave-fulton

The Pettys' Pull Pushed Derrike Cope to Big Time

General

NASCAR West Coast racing for many years was a little different animal than the east coast in the way it was organized. Bill France had his son, Bill, Jr., while stationed inCalifornia in the NAVY in the 1950s form an alliance with successful west coast promoter, Bob Barkhimer, who began staging NASCAR sanctioned races on the West Coast. His company was Bob Barkhimer & Assocs. and his right hand man was Ken Clapp, who later bought Barkhimer's business when he retired and the outfit was renamed NASCAR Western Operations. Many of you know/knew Ken in that role as VP, Western Operations for NASCAR, although he in fact owned the company promoting most west coast events. Owen Kearns who did all the publicity for the Truck Series worked for Ken. Ken had a daughter, Michelle, now deceased who was my first "Miss Wrangler" in 1981.

Often times, to spice up the Winston West races, Ken would pay to have GN & Cup talent appear on off Cup weekends. That's how I first met Derrike Cope.

Ken was promoting a Winston West road course in Seattle (Kent), Washington, the Stroh's 200 on July 8, 1984following the Daytona Firecracker 400 on July 4th (Richard's 200th win).Ken worked a deal for Richard Petty (driving Pontiacs) to race in Kent in a second Hershel McGriff Pontiac. Ken thought it would be neat if Richard's son Kyle also came out with him. Kyle was under contract to 7-Eleven and Ford and could only drive a Ford. When Ken Clapp called me in Dallas and pitched the deal, he told me he could arrange a Ford ridefor Kyle in the car of George Jefferson. Actually, I think it was the only Ford in Winston West at that time.

George was a bearded lumberman in Yakima, Washington who wore a ten gallon hat and was called "Jeff" by all who knew him. He had begun racing in 1966 with the legendary Parky Nall building motors and his #95 cars being driven by his brother Harry Jefferson with great success, even in a few Cup forays. In2004 George Jefferson was inducted into the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame.Over the years a lot of racers drove for and won in George Jefferson cars. That's another one of my most colorful characters in racing whom I highly respect.

George Jefferson

A young rookie named Derrike Cope was driving for George at the time and had already won the Pacific Coast Late Model Championship, the equivalent to the LMS title on the west coast.We agreed to put Kyle in a second Jefferson Ford, sponsored by 7-Eleven and also sponsor Derrike's car in that one race.

Derrike came to NASCAR in an unusual way. His father, Don and Don's brother, Jerry were successful west coast engine builders for drag racers - Cope Brothers Racing Engines, but Derrike played baseball and golf in high school and attended Whitman College on a baseball scholarship, signing with the Chicago Cubs as a catcher. Almost immediately, in the Florida rookie league, Derrike blew out his knee and ended his baseball career. He returned to Spanaway, Washington (on crutches) and began to apprentice as an engine builder for his dad. At the time Derrike's brother Darren (father of the Cope Twins - Amber & Angela , NASCAR drivers) was running some Late Model races. They decided to let Derrike try his hand at it on a rotating basis and Derrike, on crutches, would outrun Darren and became the primary driver. Then on to George Jefferson.

Derrike never wanted anyone on the east coast to know he was an accomplished engine builder... he thought it would detract from his driving. Derrike and George agreed to put Kyle in their only road course car and Derrike drove the oval track car that day. Well, Derrike ran circles around most of those guys in his oval track car, finishing 5th. I was mightily impressed and agreed to sponsor Derrike in George's car under the 7-Eleven banner for the rest of the year. Owen Kearns and Winston had a wonderful time shooting photos of Derrike catching packs of Winston cigarettes in a catcher's mitt. Ironically, If you remember the terrible mauling in 2005 of a California chimp owner in California by his own chimpanzee, that was St. James Davis, last place finisher in the Kent, Washington race that day in 1984.

Later, in September 1984 I talked old friend Paul Sawyer into giving George Jefferson $10,000 to bring a7-Eleven-sponsored car from Yakima, Washington driven by Derrike to Richmond for the Wrangler 400 Winston Cup race as a companion entry to Kyle Petty. Paul also arranged free motel rooms for the crew and Huggins Tire, the Goodyear distributor, threw in some free tires for us. Derrike did make the field, but crashed out on lap 163 in a melee on the famously narrow Richmond frontstretch. I'll never forget what Bill Gazaway and Dick Beatty told me after qualifying. They said they told George Jefferson the car could race, but not to ever bring it back to a Cup show. The car itself was an old Elmo Langley ride that had one too many bandaids on thechassis to suit Dick and Bill. They were very nice about it.

Derrike Cope/George Jefferson Ford at Richmond in 1984

The final race of Winston Westof 1984 was at Phoenix and Tim Richmond drove a7-Eleven George Jefferson team car to Derrike. Derrike wound up winning the Rookie of the Year title, but lost the championship by 4 points. He had stayed up all night before the final race rebuilding an engine for Tim Richmond.

7-Eleven continued to sponsor Derrike and George in 1985 and Derrike came east in 1986. It all happened because a race promoter needeed a Ford for Kyle Petty.

updated by @dave-fulton: 07/09/20 01:25:04AM

It Really is a Small World of Racing Acquaintances

General

Looked at the Richmond property assessor records today. This little bungalow I mention in this writeup that we sold to Dick Dolan's daughter in 2002, where I grew up and that mom and dad purchased in 1948 for $8,000, was sold by Dick's daughter in 2009 for $255,000, nearly 32 times what my parents paid. Talk about inflation.

It Really is a Small World of Racing Acquaintances

General

Randy, I figured he was long ago retired. Thanks.

It Really is a Small World of Racing Acquaintances

General

Robbie, I had to laugh at the reference to fashion. It made me remember 1 week after we took the Wrangler sponsorship to Richard Childress with Dale Earnhardt in 1981. I had to go over to Hanes Mall in Winston-Salem to the Wrangler Ranch store, where our show car was appearing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw RC and his daughter, Tina go in another store. When I went in to say hello, RC was in the process of buying Tina a pair of our competitor, Levi's jeans. It was awkward. Now, that young girl has her own son on the track in RC equipment. Time flies.

It Really is a Small World of Racing Acquaintances

General

This story includes a couple of folks associated with racing, but it is not a racing story. It's really an "Isn't this a small world" story." For many, many years, before Sunoco,the Official gasoline of NASCAR was Unocal/Union 76/76 and before that it's predecessor was Pure, as in Pure Firebird racing gasoline. That NASCAR relationship with Pure Oil Co. and following its buyout with Unocal, began in the early 50s and was spearheaded by and supervised for many, many years by a man named Dick Dolan, who was Special Events Director for Pure Oil out of Palatine, IL and later in Schaumburg, IL for many years carrying the title of Manager of Automotive Events & Public Relations for Unocal 76. Pure Oil, along with Pepsi and a few others loaned Big Bill France the money to build Daytona.

It was Dick who started the famed Pure Oil / Darlington Record Club that every year inducted the fastest qualifier of each automobile make for that year's Southern 500 in to that exclusive club. I was fortunate to attend a number of those Darlington/Florence dinners hosted by Dick. They always featured good entertainment, such as having comedian Jerry Clower as a dinner partner.

For many years Dick was assisted at the track by the very capable Bill Joyner. Bill Kiser, who had once worked for Dick in Pure Oil PR, became for a number of years the PR honcho at Darlington and was replaced by the familiar Bill Brodrick, the "hat man". It was also Dick who began the famed Pit Crew Competition at Rockingham, in conjunction with one of the track's founders, Larry Hogan.

Pure Oil and then Unocal had a hospitality suite at every track that had suites. Rockingham's Larry Hogan's wife Jane always catered Dick's UNOCAL suites and she also started catering all of my Wrangler hospitality suites. I had met Dick at functions, including the Darlington Record Club dinners, but I hadn't had any interaction with him until the 1984 Daytona 500, my first working for Southland Corporation as Motorsports Coordinator, including the Kyle Petty primary sponsorship by 7-Eleven with affiliated sponsors Chief Auto Parts and CITGO Petroleum, both owned at the time by Southland.

On each quarter panel of Kyle's car, we'd put a very large CITGO triangle ID. Anyway, shortly after the first time Kyle went out on the track that February of 1984, I got paged to call the NASCAR suite. I called and was told Bill, Jr. wanted to see me right away. So off I went. When I got to the suite, Bill told me Dick Dolan of Unocal had something he wanted to tell me. If you ever met Dick, he was very blunt and not a people person. In fact, the late Bob Latford used to kid that every year Dick won the National Motorsports Press Association poll of the "least liked person in racing." Dick at that point was on a real vendetta against the Pettys. He was campaigning with Bill, Jr. to have the STP logo and the saying "Racer's Edge" taken off the front spoiler of Richard's car.

He really got upset when he saw the CITGO logo on Kyle's car. He told me, in Bill Jr.'s presence, it had to come off because Unocal had the exclusive right to all gasoline signage in NASCAR.

My answer was quick. I told him and Bill, Jr. we were advertising CITGO motor oil and if they didn't like it, maybe our legal staff could explain it. That was the end of the discussion and it was never raised again. I'm sure Shell used the same reasoning many years later. Anyhow, fast forward to the 90s and my time at Richmond International Raceway. If you ever wondered at any racetrack where the winner is whisked off to so fast after victory lane ceremonies at every track, it was to Dick Dolan's UNOCAL suite to meet his guests, another little perk for the years of service to NASCAR and Daytona.

During my ten years at Richmond, I felt like I knew Kenny Wallace and Rusty Wallace on a first name basis from having escorted them after every Richmond win first to Dick Dolan's suite, then to track owner, Paul Sawyer's suite. In fact, I started receiving very nice Christmas gifts each year from Dick & Bill Joyner for getting the race winner to their suite in such a timely fashion. All these many years later Dick was still using Jane Hogan of the Rockingham connection to cater and staff all his suites. It was at Richmond, escorting Rusty Wallace in Dick's suite, that I met Dick's two daughters, briefly, who were working for Jane as hostesses in the Unocal suite. Although living in Illinois, they both were going to college in Richmond, 800+ mile from home.

Change thoughts for a moment. In September 1948 my parents bought the first and only home they ever owned (they were married in 1938 and rented), a small Cape Cod bungalow in Richmond.Dad sent the downpayment for that house to my mom from poker winnings he amassed over nearly three years on the island of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific during WWII. He never held a deck of cards again after returning to the states.One month after mom and dad moved in I was born in October 1948 and brought home from the hospital in dad's used 1938 Plymouth, with the big, tall stick shift coming out of the floorboard. Two years later dad bought his first new car, a 1950 Plymouth with the stick on the steering column. It was a 4-door, not the Johnny Mantz-winning Darlington 1950 Plymouth coupe, though.

Mom and dad lived in that little Richmond house together for 53 years (with 1950s/1960s updates like enclosing the side porch, adding aluminum siding and finishing two upstairs bedrooms and a second bath), until dad died in 2001, followed by mom in 2002. They were both age 85 and lived the exact same number of days. Mom was bornOctober 3, 1916, 1 year and two days after dad was born on October 1, 1915 and she died May 16, 2002, 1 year and two days after dad died.

Anyway, I was living in Charlotte when mom passed and my sister in Richmond took charge of emptying the house of 53 years of memories and getting it sold. When my copies of the sale papers arrived for me in Charlotte in the summer of 2002, I was absolutely startled and taken aback by the purchaser's name.

Dick Dolan's oldest daughter had bought my mom and dad's house and the only home I ever knew growing up! What do you suppose the odds would be of someone I had met once and was the daughter of someone I knew from racing years before and who had lived over 800 miles from Richmond in Illinois buying that house? It was eerie. Again, not a racing story and you may be very bored if you got this far, but I was thinking of Dick and his daughters today.

updated by @dave-fulton: 04/23/18 10:44:01AM

Racing Spies

General

I guess race teams have spied on each other as long as one car has outrun another. In 1986 at the June Michigan race our rookie Derrike Cope's #79 Western Peterbilt team had outqualified rookie Alan Kulwicki's #35 Quincy's Steak House car, placing Cope's T-bird 27th on the grid, ahead of Kulwicki, who started 32nd. We'd all gone back to the truck for a snack and then returned to the car in the garage, which was on jackstands. We'd started talking and heard a squeak. We had a crew member named Erik who we called "Big E" and who stood about 6'-7" tall (he later worked for a number of years at Robert Yates Racing). Well, Erik bends down and looks under Derrike's car and then says,"Whatcha doing down there, boy?" At that point, a creeper with Alan Kulwicki on it slowly emerged from under our car. He had nothing to say and got theheck out of there. Kulwicki was always asking us questions, but never wanting to share any answers of his own. Derrike was very restrained and I admired his composure. A lot of folks called KulwickiUnderdog, some Underbird... personally, we thought hewas a strange bird. Funny thing is that rookie Chet Fillip had outqualified both Cope and Kulwicki posting the 26th fastest time... that's the car Kulwicki should have been under, or maybe he had been.
updated by @dave-fulton: 04/07/17 09:54:31AM

1986 Hayride 500

Stock Car Racing History

It's now been 30 years since Ohio's Tim Richmond organized the August 1986 "Hayride 500" to bring much needed animal feed to a parched southland.

Here's a period story from the United Press International (UPI) archives:

We think it is hot and dry in the southland this summer. But, it is nothing like as bad as it was 30 years ago. That's when Ohio racer, Tim Richmond (remember him, NASCAR?) organized Hayride 500 in August 1986 to shuttle much needed animal feed from Ohio to the southern states. 30 years later, we can still say, "Thank you, Tim Richmond."

From the archives of United Press International (UPI) here is a brief story as it was actually written in August 1986:

The 'Hayride 500,' a 46-truck caravan of relief for...

The 'Hayride 500,' a 46-truck caravan of relief for the parched Southeast, left Columbus, Ohio, today with 20,000 bales of hay for starving herds of cattle.

The tractor-trailers, normally used to transport race cars on the NASCAR circuit, arrived in Columbus from Charlotte, N.C., Friday night at a giant grain staging area, where hundreds of farmers from throughout central Ohio dropped off their hay.

When the convoy left, about 9:30 a.m. after a sendoff by Gov. Richard Celeste, farm trucks were still coming in and thousands of bales of hay were left for transportation later. A spokesman for the Ohio Department of Agriculture said arrangements were being made to send the additional hay by rail.

NASCAR driver Tim Richmond grinned and waved to a cheering crowd as he pulled his truck out of the parking lot.

The convoy was to complete its journey to North Carolina on Saturday night.

Supporters crowded onto highway overpasses along the 480-mile trip Friday waving 'Thank you' signs and taking pictures, said NASCAR flagman Harold Kinder, who drove the lead truck.

'I've never had a feeling exactly like that,' he said. 'It made you feel proud that you were participating.'

In Washington Friday, Agriculture Secretary Richard Lyng announced a broad relief program that includes shipment of surplus grain to Southern farmers.

'At the behest of the president, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is launching an intensified effort to help farmers who are victims of this national tragedy,' he said.

In Canada, industrialist Harrison McCain said Friday he has launched a drive to gather 2,400 tons of hay for the drought-stricken farmers.

Farmers, businessmen and private citizens in the eastern Canadian province of New Brunswick already have pledged 660 tons of hay for the project.

'When I saw this campaign being mounted in the United States, I said: My God, we should join that,' McCain said. 'The Americans are the most generous people in the world. They're the first to reach for their wallets when someone's in trouble. Well, they've got a lot of trouble now.'

In Columbia, S.C., more than 125 farmers rallied to thank Midwestern farmers for free hay, and they formed a non-profit farm relief group with an 'Adopt-A-Cow' program.

'There are 17 million people in New York City, some of whom have never seen a cow or been away from concrete,' said rally organizer Michael Rose. 'This might be a way for folks in big cities to help farmers and have some fun besides. We'll even send them a picture if they want one.'

NASCAR drivers conceived the 'Caravan of Care' last week when they drove through the sun-baked Alabama countryside on their way to the Talledaga 500 race and saw the crop devastation firsthand.

'Farmers and people that work around farms and stuff are racing fans,' said driver Richard Petty, who volunteered to help unload the hay. 'And if they get a chance, they go to the races and naturally we're going to drink their milk and eat their cows. Naturally, we want to keep them going. The better shape they are in the more they'll buy those tickets.'

The hay will be taken to five North Carolina cities, where it will be distributed to farmers. North Carolina herds consume about 7,690 tons of hay a day, which would amount to 1.5 million tons by next spring.

The South's worst drought in a century has cost the region's farmers an estimated $2.3 billion in lost crops, livestock and poultry.

North Carolina's drought loss is around $400 million but Alabama has been hardest hit with $750 million. Georgia's loss is estimated at $533 million and South Carolina's at $378 million. Virginia and Maryland have suffered $100 million damage each and Delaware $40 million.

Midwestern farmers, enjoying a bountiful crop of grain, have sent tons of hay to the South.

The Columbia rally, dubbed the 'Thank You America Rally,' was organized to express the gratitude of South Carolina farmers for some 4,000 tons of hay shipped into the state from the Midwest.

The Adopt-A-Cow program idea came from Charleston bank official Sheila Thomspon.

'We're going to make up certificates with pictures to send to those who want to adopt their own cow,' Thompson said. 'We're just getting organized and don't really have an address or an office yet. But we think it will cost $140 to adopt an animal for eight months.'

The goal is to find 'foster parents' for up to 48,000 cattle, Thompson said. The money collected would be used to ensure that the cattle are fed and for other agricultural needs

1986 Hayride 500

Stock Car Racing History

Apropo

1986 Hayride 500

Stock Car Racing History

1986 Hayride 500

Stock Car Racing History