RACING’S ROYAL FAMILY – PART 1
Ned Jarrett tells a heart-warming story
about the Petty family. He attended the memorial for Adam, and he wanted to
console the Pettys. According to Ned, they wound up consoling him. He thus calls
them the strongest family he’s ever met.
It confirms a great fact about the Pettys
– they can be put down, but they can’t be put out. Not by the fire that
destroyed their house in 1943, not by the chronic economic hardship in which
they grew up, not by anything.
The story of the Petty family and the race
team they built is now well known, but it deserves retelling to remind us all
just what this family means to racing.
"You can’t imagine the fear a
six-year-old boy has when he’s standin’ there, watchin’ his whole world burn
up." So noted Richard Petty in his 1986 autobiography on the most traumatic
time of his life – the fire in the winter of 1943 that destroyed the small frame
house in which logger and truck driver Lee Arnold Petty, his wife Elizabeth
Toomes Petty, six-year-old Richard, and four-year-old Maurice lived.
"That’s why I’ve never let the psychologists and the writers tell me I
don’t know when I’m afraid. I know what fear is."
It got worse for the Petty family. For
that year young Maurice contracted polio, and he had to stay at Duke University
Medical center for several months. "Nobody knew much about polio then, so
it took a long time and a lot of whirlpools and therapy for him to get the use
of his legs back again." It cost the Pettys a great deal, but Maurice
eventually beat polio, though he still walked with a limp.
Life in the Piedmont region of North
Carolina was anything but middle-class. "Most of the men – including my
Daddy – had as many jobs as it took to make a living. Everybody had the
necessities of life, but not a whole lot more." Indoor plumbing? No one had
it.
The very beginning of the Petty family
caught the bug of driving fast. "Great grandfather Petty may have been the
first racing Petty. He was an old man, and I don’t mean just from a kid’s eyes.
He was an OLD man, ninty-eight, when he was still racing around the countryside
in his stripped-down Model T Ford."
Lee’s father, Judson Petty, was "a
quiet, God-fearing Quaker gentleman, who was sort of dominated by Grandmother
Petty. I don’t think I ever saw him without his hat on, except at the dinner
table."
Lee was sixteen when he traded his bicycle
– "Bikes were worth more than a lot of the cars back then" – for a
Model T Ford. Lee promptly stripped it down and started racing around the
countryside with it.
For area entertainment, a quarter-mile
dirt track between Level Cross and Greensboro existed. Richard "pestered
the daylights out of Daddy to take me there." When Lee and his brother
Julian finally did go with Richard, it became a Friday night ritual.
Richard and Maurice then took to
drag-racing wagons down a hill toward an area swimming hole, and were frequently
joined by their second cousin, Dale Inman, who lived only a mile away. One time
Richard greased his wagon’s axles, and Maurice grabbed Richard’s wagon and saw
what he’d done. "Sure enough, Dale and Maurice went straight to the reaper
shed and greased their axles." Richard, though, secretly hid a steel plate
in a burlap sack on his wagon for extra downhill speed, but Maurice caught on
right away.
RACING LESSON #1: If you can get an
advantage, take it. For the Petty family, so began what Sam Moses called
"the continuing NASCAR saga called Cheatin’, or as Bill Gazaway would have
it, Fudgin’, or as Richard Petty puts it, Jes’ Tryin’ To Get An Edge."
The Petty boys quickly learned that there
is a guilty pleasure in pileups. "On the fifth day of the wagon racing
season" Richard and Maurice hit trees. As they staggered back to their
feet, they saw Dale Inman on the ground, "pounding his fists into the dirt.
"’Listen,’ I said, ‘we might have
killed ourselves, and you think it’s funny?
"’It IS funny,’ he said. ‘Can y’all
do that again? I’ll stay right here where I can see good.’ And then he broke up
again."
Eventually they graduated from wagons to
bicycles, and soon had carved out bike courses that rivaled much later BMX
courses. But when Lee saw one of their races, he promptly gave his boys extra
chores, "just to save our lives." Among the chores was working tobacco
fields. "There is nothing in the world as hard as messing around with
tobacco, any part of it."
Amid the labors of life in the Piedmont
region of North Carolina, the Pettys were gravitating more and more toward
outright participation in auto racing. Lee and Julian were also attending races
at other area tracks, even as far north as Martinsville, Virginia, and would
drive home faster than they’d see the cars race. Racing was a sport without any
organization – "Most of the time, a bunch of guys got together and planned
a race, or maybe a promoter dreamed up the idea…." And of course at times
promoters would make off with the gate of those participating and attending.
All the tracks were just dirt ovals.
"When the green flag was dropped, you’d think war had been declared."
Whenever a driver began winning too often, "the hooligans ganged up on him
and wrecked him."
Lee had already established himself as
king of back road racing in the Piedmont – and in such races bets sometimes
exceeded $1,000 – but eventually the circle track bug bit. "The only thing
that surprises me is that it took as long as it did," Richard wrote years
later. For 1947 Lee and Julian rebuilt a 1937 Plymouth coupe and took it and the
family to Danville, Virginia. Richard and Maurice watched from the grandstands,
and when Maurice asked for a hotdog at a concession stand, the man said,
"Here you go, Chief." Richard then said, "Chief, gimme my hot
dog."
Lee won his heat, and even Elizabeth
Petty, who’d tried to appear disinterested, was excited. Ten-year-old Richard
greeted Lee when he joined them to watch more heats. "’You won, Daddy, you
won! It was great! Chief here even liked it.
"’Of course I won,’ he said, trying
to act as matter-of-factly as he could…..then it sunk in. ‘Chief?’
"’Chief,’ I said, jerking a thumb at
the former Maurice’s direction."
Lee then crashed in the feature, but
despite damage he roared past the field and won going away. The next Friday
night, at Roanoke, Virginia, Lee won his heat but finished second in the
feature. "Good? You call that good? Hell, I lost," he said to Richard.
In his third race, at Lynchburg, Virginia,
Lee finished third, and right there he quit racing, given his lack of experience
and lack of horsepower, and also given that he’d won $900 in those three races
and it cost $4,000 for the car.
But in Daytona Beach, Florida, a new
sanctioning body for stock car racing was being formed, and when news of the
body’s creation made the Greensboro News, Lee reentered racing. Big Bill France
and Bill Tuthill were contacting drivers to get them into their organization,
and a new division, different from the modified division that was prominent at
the time, was created for strictly stock, new-model passenger sedans, and the
first race for this Grand National division (the actual division name came
later) was on June 19, 1949. Lee talked a friend named Gilmer Goode into loaning
him a Buick Roadmaster for the race, at Charlotte Speedway. Lee roared through
the field but the radius rod broke and the car tumbled four times.
Glenn Dunnaway took the checkered flag but
was disqualified from that race for alterations to the rear springs – the car,
owned by Hubert Westmoreland, turned out to be an ex-whiskey runner, and the
spring alterations were an old trick to outrun the revenooers. The other drivers
pooled their winnings and gave Dunnaway a split that was even more than what
he’d have gotten if he’d won.
For Lee Petty, however, Grand National was
now his life. He traded in the ruined Buick – "Gilmer (Goode) just stood
there, looking at his car, and he didn’t even speak," Richard wrote – and
bought a 1949 Plymouth business coupe. For a car number, Lee looked at his
license plate and 42 were the first two numbers, so on the racecar they went.
It marked a change in Lee’s approach to
racing – the Plymouth had little horsepower, but it was lighter than the cars
others drove – "Julie, we need to get a lighter car. That Buick was just
too heavy," Lee said – and was thus easier on parts. Lee also decided that
in future races he’d lay back and let others break first. "They pay first
place money to the cat that’s leading the race at the checkered flag. It don’t
matter when he got there," Lee said.
Lee finished second in the 1949 Grand
National season behind Harodl "Red" Byron, and Richard, at the ripe
old age of twelve, became his crew chief, with ten-year-old Maurice and
thirteen-year-old Dale Inman as crew. Richard started rebuilding engines along
with Maurice, and in 1950 Lee appeared ready to win the title. But a run in an
unsanctioned stock car race brought a massive points penalty from Big Bill
France, and Lee had to earn points from scratch to finish well in 1950. And
among the new races for the 1950 season was the inaugural Southern 500. The
drivers of powerful cars laughed at the ten-pound-weakling Plymouths of Lee
Petty and Johnny Mantz – "Leave the taxicab (Plymouth) here; I’m gonna race
it," Mantz said to Bill France – but those other cars crashed or caved in,
and Mantz won going away with Lee solidly in the top ten. Red Vogt filed a
protest, but the car was legal, though Vogt kept muttering, "There’s no way
a Plymouth can beat a Cadillac. No way."
Though the Petty boys and Dale Inman were
frequently chased out of the pits – often by Bill France Jr., who was only about
three years older than Richard – they nonetheless worked and worked and got
Lee’s cars better and better. For 1953 they switched to Dodge, which had more
power, and Lee was able to hire additional help. In 1954 Lee won the Grand
National title, and when Elizabeth Petty’s grandparents passed away, Lee
purchased their house and moved the family to where Richard had actually been
born. The reaper shed was rebuilt into a garage, and when the Pettys poured
concrete on the floor, it was all Richard could do to not push Maurice into the
wet cement. The boys did scrawl their initials – RP, MP, and DI – into the
floor, a permanent mark of their youth.
The Petty family often traveled with Lee
and the boys to races, and soon it seemed like life was "one big picnic
interrupted by races." For the Pettys it was a family life that most kids
generally didn’t have. And that made sticking together all the stronger. It was
particularly important given that fights at racetracks were hardly uncommon, and
one of the most famous occurred at Greensboro in 1956. One of the employees at
Lee’s team was Dewayne "Tiny" Lund. Said Tiny’s widow Wanda Lund
Early, "Tiny started out working in (Lee’s) shop sweeping up for $40 a
week. Then when he went to drive for Lee, back then the drivers got 40% of the
purses they won, but Lee didn’t want to pay Tiny his 40%. He still wanted to
give him $40 a week. I don’t think Tiny ever forgave him."
Lund himself had said before his death in
1975, "Lee hated for anyone to pass him on a racetrack. He was tight,
clannish, and selfish back then."
At the Greensboro race in 1956 Lee studded
his car with wingnuts so that they’d shred another car’s sheetmetal, and went
after Tiny that day. Tiny hit back, of course, and when the drivers gathered at
the payout window, Lee accosted Tiny. "You tore up my car pretty bad. I
guess you know you’ll have to pay for it." Tiny refused, and Lee punched
him. Then the fight was on. Richard and Maurice tackled Tiny and Alfred
"Speedy" Thompson tried to intervene. But the kicker came when
Elizabeth, the team’s scorer and handler of finances, started beaning Tiny with
her purse. Tiny then gave up: "I can’t beat the whole damn Petty
family." To this Buck Baker replied, "Damn if you weren’t doing a
pretty good job of it."
Another famous such occurance involved
Maryland native Rex White. "He was a super short-track driver, but he
wasn’t well liked by the competitors," said Maurice Petty. "He was
just a – Yankee." One night Rex slammed Lee into a fence, and
sixteen-year-old Richard, already close to six feet tall, grabbed White.
"Go ahead an hit me. You’re bigger’n me," White told Richard. Richard
was so taken aback he didn’t know what to do, but then another man appeared over
his shoulder and punched Rex White into the bushes. "I guess it was one of
Daddy’s fans," Richard said.
"To a certain degree (Lee) was
hot-tempered," said Maurice to author Peter Golenbock. "He was a
perfectionist…..if you done it wrong the second time, it was your a$$. Daddy
didn’t stand for it to be done wrong twice."
That perfectionism helped the team.
Richard notes, "The cars were getting faster……little by litte, the guys
– we did it too, we had to stay competitive – cut their repair bills by
replacing stock parts with heavy duty ones." They also took to
"blueprinting" their engines – tearing them down and rebuilding them
with completely cleaned parts, as they would be if they were hand built. Such
engines made 50 more HP. And with every race the Pettys learned more and more,
and got faster and faster.
Richard got his license at sixteen – he
had to roust Lee out of bed to get it – and after graduating high school – Lee
and Elizabeth insisted he graduate even though he wanted to be a full-time
mechanic – Richard rebuilt one of Lee’s old racecars and used it as his own
personal machine. Soon he was attending every football game at Randleman High,
and even practices. It wasn’t exactly school spirit that drove him here;
"there was a freshman cheerleader named Lynda Owens, you see, and she was
was as cute as a speckled pup. Man can’t live on racing alone." Lee himself
knew what was going on: he told Elizabeth, "He’s got about as much interest
in that football team as he does in liver. He’s haulin’ cheerleaders
around."
Richard, though, was getting interested in
driving on the racetrack, but Lee insisted he wait until he was twenty-one.
When Chrysler quit NASCAR after Carl
Kiekhafer left, Lee switched the team to an Oldsmobile and began fielding a
second car at certain races. "Instead of buying cars, they gave them to us.
The Petty name commanded some respect by then, and with the factories into
racing…..there was one more high-cost item we could eliminate – buying the
car." Money made from race winnings was reinvested into the team, and in
1958 Lee won the Grand National title for the second time.
During that year Richard, a day after his
twenty-first birthday, went to Lee and said, "I think I’d like to try
driving – you know, on the track."
"Take the convertable over
there," Lee said.
Richard rebuilt the Olds convertable, and
Dale Inman helped out. They had a gallon of white paint and a gallon of blue
paint, so they mixed them together, and the most famous color in racing was
created. As far as a number, Lee had 42, so Richard added one to 42. Richard’s
first race was a convertable event at Columbia, South Carolina. He managed a
sixth-place finish behind Fireball Roberts and Bob Welborn. "I knew one
thing: it didn’t scare me," Richard said, though he wasn’t entirely sure he
wanted to drive.
Nonetheless, by 1959 Richard was
campaigning the NASCAR Grand National series, and among the first races that
year was the inaugural event at a new racetrack in Florida – an International
Sweepstakes 500-miler on a high-banked 2.5 mile superspeedway that intimidated
all who had entered. Richard ran a convertable while Lee drove an Olds hardtop.
No one knew what to expect, but when it was over, it became one of the most
famous races ever seen, and despite 61 hours needed to confirm a photo finish no
one expected, Lee Petty had the trophy for the first Daytona 500.
Lee won three more times in the Olds, but
when Oldsmobile pulled out Lee went back to Plymouth. Richard ran the Olds
convertible to use up the stock of parts they’d assembled, and he won his first
race ever – a convertable shootout at Columbia, SC in July. But his first Grand
National win would have to wait – at Lakewood, Georgia, Richard found himself in
the lead, and the checkered flag was flown to him. But as he went for the
trophy, NASCAR received a protest that the flag was waived one lap too early.
After a recheck, a NASCAR official said to Richard, "’We’re awful sorry,
Richard.’ It was the same kind of thing Daddy would say before he whipped
me." Richard "learned the meaning of ‘bittersweet’ that day"
because it was Lee who filed the protest.
"There was a good reason for it – I
guess," Richard wrote. With the factories gone, teams mostly had year-old
cars, and NASCAR paid more if the winner had a new car. "’I had the new
one, son,’ Daddy said. ‘It made us more money. Besides, you’ve got lots of time
to win races. We’re in it to make money, you know.’"
Richard did win Rookie of the Year for the
Grand National series. He had also picked up a new member of the family – she
entered Randleman High as Lynda Owens and graduated as Lynda Owens-Petty. Lynda
learned and accepted the demands of racing almost right away, and Lynda and soon
their son Kyle were accompanying Richard to races.
For the 1960 season Richard opened up in
much stronger style. Now running a new Plymouth, he finished third at the
Daytona 500, and at Charlotte Fairgrounds he hammered out his first Grand
National win. Soon he was finishing high week after week, and both Pettys were
challenging Rex White for the Grand National title.
For all their success, the Pettys were not
just racing other cars, but NASCAR as well. "I’ve never been able to
understand it," Richard wrote, "but they never did seem to like
Daddy……they always seemed to favor the other guy – no matter who it was – in
any kind of dispute. I was new and they weren’t too wild about me. I guess the
fact the Pettys were so independent didn’t help a whole lot……I wasn’t going
to let it upset em. Well, I thought I wasn’t."
But it did upset him and Lee in the
inaugural World 600 of 1960. With the track not even finished, the trioval was
dirt. NASCAR told teams they would be disqualified if they ran through the
trioval dirt. During the race Lee, Richard, and several other cars spun through
the trioval dirt. They kept going, made up lost time, and finished together in
the top five. But at the payout window afterword, NASCAR told them they were
disqualified. "I heard later that Rex (White) was the one who complained
about it…….Daddy and Rex were in a battle for the point standings, so I
think that had something to do with it, too." They weren’t the only ones
DQed, but it wound up hurting them enough to cost them the title."
Despite that, Petty Enterprises won eight
races between Lee and Richard and finished together in the top six in points,
with Richard in second behind White. During that year the Pettys helped Goodyear
Tire & Rubber get established into NASCAR. Their relationship with Goodyear
had actually started in 1957 but it wasn’t until 1960 that it got serious.
Richard was asked to tire test for them, and it earned the team extra money with
which to race. But at Atlanta International Raceway at the end of a ten-lap run,
the right front exploded and Richard hammered the guardrail. It was his first
big crash – but not his last.
But 1961 proved to be a pivotal year for
the team. On the final lap of his 100-mile qualifier for the Daytona 500,
Richard was clipped by a spinning Junior Johnson and slammed the guardrail in
Turn Four. He shot through the armco and landed in the parking lot. Despite the
severity of the crash, Richard has only heavy bruises; he hobbled to the pits
where Lee asked, "Do you want to drive in this race, too?"
Richard politely declined, and instead got
a quick examination in the infield hospital. He got out in time for Johnny
Beauchamp and Lee to hook bumpers and plunge through the third turn guardrail.
Lee’s injuries were far more serious than Richard’s, and he was unconscious for
over a day. He awoke enough to tell Richard to get ready for the next race:
"Me and your mother will be home about Friday."
Richard stayed in Daytona enough to drive
relief for Bob Welborn, a Level Cross, NC neighbor. He drove Welborn’s Pontiac
for an hour, but he ignored Welborn’s crew’s signals to pit so Welborn could get
back in. So they gave the pit board to Dale Inman, and Richard promptly pitted.
But now the 1961 season for Petty
Enterprises was a lot different than previous seasons had been.