October 16, 2009

The first class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame has been announced and I couldn’t think of five more deserving people -- Bill France Sr., Bill France Jr., Richard Petty, Junior Johnson and Dale Earnhardt. All of these men, in different ways, helped mold our sport to what it is today.

While I never had the pleasure of meeting Bill Sr., I have had the opportunity to spend some time around the other four, if only limited. Some of my fondest memories in the sport have come from the time I have spent around Junior Johnson.

My first job out of college was with a newspaper in North Wilkesboro, N.C., the home of Johnson and North Wilkesboro Speedway. While covering all of the sports in the community was my job, my passion for racing found me spending a lot of time writing about NASCAR and specifically Junior’s teams. I was constantly calling the shop to talk with Junior to find out what he thought about the last race or about the upcoming event. He was always kind and patient with me.

My first full-time job in motorsports came in 1993 when I was hired by a company to handle media for the McDonald’s Racing Team, a team which Junior owned. This allowed me to be around Junior even more and listen to some of the legendary stories he would share with others.

Those stories will be treasured forever.

At 78 years old, Junior still looks young and gets around well . . . but that’s nothing new. We were at Dover in the early 90s and fell out of the race early. This was before they had the pedestrian bridges, so back then when you were in the infield you were stuck until the race was over. For some reason, on that particular day, NASCAR let us cross the track while the cars were on the backstretch under caution, but they didn’t open any gates. So after we jumped over the pit road wall, we had to climb the catch fence and go through a little opening to get out. All of this had to be done with about 100,000 fans watching. Junior was one of about 10 of us who left early that day and was my inspiration to make that dash across the track and up the fence. I figured if he could do it at his age, so could I, right? Well trust me, he was up the fence and out before I could make much progress. We all made it out safely that day just not ahead of Junior.