"Used by permission of Street
& Smith's Sports Group." by Mike Smith
 |
On a shelf filled with dazzling gold trophies and beautiful silver bowls, this bland memento is sorely out of place. Most people probably would have thrown it on the trash heap years ago, but in the Scott household, it will never be moved. This trophy is the centerpiece of Wendell Scott’s stock car racing career. It was the paltry reward for his only big-time win, and for Scott’s family it is emblematic of a black man’s struggle in a white man’s sport. More than anything else, Wendell Scott was a man of courage and conviction, with a good sense of humor mixed in. At a time when blacks were just making inroads into baseball in the metropolitan centers of our country, Scott was trying to do the same in the world of Southern stock car racing. Some say he succeeded, others say he failed. One thing is certain - he made an indelible mark. By the time he left the sport in 1973, after a horrendous crash at Talladega, Ala., that almost crippled him physically and left him paralyzed financially, Scott had won the admiration and respect of fans and fellow competitors. |
"I’m so glad we never gave up," said Scott’s widow, Mary. "When Ned (Jarrett) and all of those old drivers came to Scott’s funeral, they told us he had the respect of all the drivers. I’d say all of those older guys learned to like him and respect him. They knew he was a genuine person and he stood for what he believed. He didn’t give up."
He had every reason to, though. It probably would have been much simpler for Scott to walk away from racing and return to his Danville garage as a full-time mechanic. That would have been the easy way out.
Scott never made a lot of money in the
sport, just a tad over $180,000 in almost 500 NASCAR Grand National races. Early in his
career, he was looked down upon by fellow drivers and was forced to bear the indignities
of blatant racism. When he finally did win - he couldn’t enjoy the excitement of
seeing the checkered flag wave over his car or the roar of the crowd.
"Scott, the only Negro driver on the Late Model Stock Car racing circuit, drove a 1962 Chevrolet. The veteran of 12 years of racing was two laps ahead of the field at the finish, but due to a scoring error, was thought to be in third place," reported a wire service the day after the race. "Buck Baker of Charlotte, N.C. was flagged as the winner in a 1963 Pontiac."
Scoring error? Scott never thought so. But he endured that episode, as he endured the many other injustices of the time and he did so with great pride, head held high. The two were inexorably intertwined in his life. He never compromised the two. He raced hard and he raised six children as well as any man ever could. But racing was an undeniably large part of their young lives. It was more than a family livelihood, it was a source of fun, a source of learning and a source of love for a family that thrived on togetherness, be it at the race track or in the living room.
On Dec. 22, 1990, Wendell Scott died, finally giving way to the ravages of spinal cancer. Yet, his spirit and memory lives on in the hearts and memories of family, fans and friends.
The wife.
"Scott." Never "Wendell." That’s how Mary Scott refers he husband and always has, ever since she met him in 1940. It is, she says, her little pet name for the man she stood beside for more than 46 years.
Scott. It softly rolls from her mouth with waves of love and respect. Scott. When she speaks of him and their years together, her eyes sparkle. Sometimes they get a little moist with memories.
When Mary met Wendell Scott he was driving a taxicab in
Danville. Little did she know then what a large role driving and cars would play in their
future together. They went out a few times before Scott was called to service in World War
II and shortly after his discharge in 1944 the two were married. He’d been a mechanic
in the Army, and that should have been the second tip-off to the new bride that
automobiles would dominate the coming years. He opened a garage on spring street in
Danville, fixing cars during the day and running moonshine at night. Along about that
time, Mary finally got the hint.
"I knew when I first met him he loved speed," Mary said in a recent interview. "He used to fly all the time. In those years they opened a raceway in Danville and somebody approached him about driving. They were trying to see which black men they could get involved, who could be a good driver.
"They went to the police, now this is true, and wanted to find out who the fastest black man around was. Scott was running moonshine back then, and the police were able to tell them he was the only one they could never catch."
So, in 1949 Mary and Wendell went stock car racing; they went racing off into uncharted waters for a black man and woman. And by gosh, could her man drive a race car. For a decade he terrorized the little dusty quarter-mile and three-eighths mile dirt tracks throughout southern Virginia and into the Carolinas. By 1959 he had really arrived, winning the Sportsman championship at Southside Speedway in Richmond and NASCAR’s Virginia State Sportsman Championship.
"I remember when he first decided to race" recalled Mary. "He used a"39 Ford his brother-in-law had. They made a race car out of it. That was before all these real strict rules. He had the passenger side tied with a chain or something. I was never really against him starting to race. I knew it was what he wanted. It was exciting and all of us were kind of crazy and didn’t think about the seriousness of it al
In 1961, Wendell decided it was time to make a move. He had almost 200 weekly-racing wins to his credit. There were bigger tracks to run and better drivers to challenge. So he left the Sportsman and Modified ranks and wen big-time - Grand National racing. It was a move that affected the entire Scott family. The trips became marathons and as much as possible, whenever Wendell went, the family followed.
"When the children were smaller, we traveled at night when there was less traffic," said Mary. "we’d take the mattress out of the baby bed and put it in the backseat of the car and we’d pull the race car behind us. We didn’t even have a trailer to pull it on.
"A lot of our friends in Danville would tell us we were unusual people, the way we went to races. They said they didn’t know how we kept going, but we loved it. I stayed active in school activities with our kids. I made outfits for plays and was in the PTA. I was a ball of energy.
Mary eschewed the track duties undertaken by many drivers’ wives, saying, "I didn’t keep score for Scot but once or twice in his career." She was, though, a jack-of-all-trades at the track, handling any crisis that might come up. She was the team’s chef. Her culinary abilities were legend, as recorded by a newspaper article in 1970.
"On Friday nights before a Sunday race she begins cooking for the crew’s infield lunch - fried chicken, ham biscuits, potato salad, deviled eggs - and since cooking is one of her favorite endeavors, there is always plenty of others who might stop by."
"To stop on the highway to buy food for a big family, well, that was out of the
question," said Mary. "Even if we had money it was always better if I cooked
food and carried it along. We’ve gone on long northern trips where I carried a lot of
canned foods and I always carried an electric coffeepot and a hot plate. It was a way to
survive."
There were other reasons Mary packed food for those road trips, though. It wasn’t easy in the early 1960s for a black family to find a place to eat on the road.
"You have to remember back in the early days it wasn’t even convenient for us to stop and buy food unless we went to the back door," said Mary, who doesn’t talk about the problems the family ran into traveling across the country. Instead, she likes to think about it as one big learning experience. "In the early ‘60s, integration was just starting to balloon. It was an adjustment for the white man as well for us," she said. "We know how to survive. We never got into anything. We taught our children that people are people and treat everybody right."
And what about the way Wendell was treated by NASCAR officials?
"I’m sure if he was here today he’d tell you they gave him a harder time than others, but as far as we know they may have done the same thing to the other little guys who were struggling, too. Sometimes he thought whatever he had right with his car, they (NASCAR) would find fault with it. But he was so determined he didn’t let it get him down.
Through it all, Wendell and Mary took care of their six children - Wendell Jr., Franklin, Ann Deborah, Kay and Sybil. The parents made sure all had the childhood necessities. All had the opportunity to go to college.
"Sure, racing put a drain on us. He was operating on his own. Had he not been a mechanic and done all of his own work and made a living in his garage, we wouldn’t have survived," Mary said. "It never drained us to where we were out of what we needed to live, but there were times when we barely making it and when you do that, you soon learn to do without things. You try to put your priorities in perspective.
"There were times when Wendell couldn’t wait to go to Daytona in February to get his (points) bonus. He’d have to call and get it early for tuition for one of his children."
It’s been more than two years now since Mary lost her soul mate. Financially,
she’s OK, not wealthy, but comfortable in the Danville house that was Wendell’s
grandmother’s. She’s full of life, surrounded by children, grandchildren and
memories of her Scott.
"I’m so grateful for all of the experiences we had. We wouldn’t take anything for them. I feel like we made history," said Mary. "Somebody asked me after Scott died what I was going to do. I said I was going to stay right where Scott left me until the Lord came to get me to be with him."
The Son.
As a youngster, Franklin Scott’s first love was racing. That’s what he wanted to do more than anything else in the world. Sure, he played the normal sports other kids were playing in Danville in the early 1960s, but he didn’t want to be a baseball player when he grew up. He wanted to drive stock cars.
His father made sure there was a backup plan, though. Franklin went to college, became a teacher and a coach. Some 25 miles west of the little shop where his father turned out race cars, he has fashioned one of the most successful high school basketball programs in Virginia. His Laurel Park Lancers are perennial state championship contenders. Soon in the next couple of years or so, Franklin will chalk up his 500the win.
That’s all fine, but as he settles into those middle-age years, with one son in college and another his bona fide court star at Laurel Park, he knows it could have been much different.
"I’m doing the second thing I wanted to do in life," said Frank. "The first thing was to be a racer. That was my dream. Me and Dale Earnhardt used to play together as kids at the tracks. His father drove a modified and my father drove a modified. A lot of the older drivers, their sons are driving now..."
Franklin almost became a driver, though. His dad had a car just about ready for him to drive once, but it never worked out. Franklin was an integral part of the team, though, from the time he was old enough to go to the races until his father finally closed up shop in the early 1970s. Regardless of what else was going on in his life, Wendell’s youngest son seldom missed the chance to be at his dad’s side.
"I grew up in racing. We traveled as a family a lot and
everybody had a role to play," Franklin recalled. "I was the crew chief. I was
entrusted with things that related to the safety of the car. I was the one who changed the
right-front tire on the car. I would always be there. I would commute when I was in
college and after I had starting teaching."
Ironically, Franklin wasn’t around to see his dad get that lone Grand National win at Jacksonville in 1963, even though he witnessed the trophy presentation a month or so later. Frank had to stay home for a high school football game that weekend early in December. He was riding a city bus back to his Danville home when he got the word of the win.
"I’ll never forget it. I was playing football that weekend and I was home and got on the bus and a guy on the bus, a friend of mine who was a real joker, said, "Your dad won a race today." I said yeah, sure." And he said, "No, your old man won today." I still didn’t believe him."
It was true. Wendell had won a race, but it took a while to convince a lot of people -
like the NASCAR officials. In a story that is legend today, Wendell was awarded the win
well after the checkered flag had fallen on Buck Baker, well after Baker had enjoyed the
celebration and fanfare, well after Baker had left the dusty half-mile track with trophy
in hand.
"Dad had won the race and he knew it. They just wouldn’t drop the checkered flag. They gave it to Buck Baker and kept Daddy there all that time. Then they came out and said, "Wendell, you did win."
"My dad went off then. He said, "Give me my damn money." Buck got the real trophy. The thing we got was junk. They gave us a trophy about a month later at Savannah. But it wasn’t the real thing."
It was hard for Frank to understand what happened to his dad that day in Jacksonville. Today, he calls it "a sign of the times." Then he could only call it racism and he still doesn’t understand how his dad endured.
"I guess it all was just a sign of the times. The opportunity for a black man to race just wasn’t there. He overcame many hurdles and he never let it faze him to the point where it made him hostile. I don’t know how he was able to do that.
"It was difficult for me when I would see a lot of the things I wouldn’t understand why my daddy didn’t put them in the wall. I thought he was afraid. He wasn’t afraid... he was thinking about the next race."
Franklin’s memory is littered with on-track incidents he believes were race related. There are some that stand out more than others. At Martinsville, Va., one spring, Franklin said, Bobby Allison spun Wendell several times, but his dad never retaliated - during the race.
"I even put up the on the pit board for him to spin Bobby, but he didn’t do anything. When he came into the pits after the race, he got out of the car, walked over to Bobby’s pits and told him if he ever did that to him again, he’d whip his butt."
Most incidents were isolated, Franklin said, but it seemed two drivers, Neil Castles and Jack Smith, carried a continual grudge against his dad. Once in Savannah in 1962, Frank recalled, his dad had just set a track record in time trial when an irate Smith approached Wendell. Remembering the incident, Franklin said, "Jack got mad that night, We had just bought a ’62 Chevy from Ned Jarrett and we were fast. Daddy shattered the record and Jack was third fastest. After the drivers meeting, Jack told my father he had five race cars and when the flag dropped he would run through his old Chevrolet."
It turned out, though, that the only driver who could keep up with Wendell that day was Jarrett, who eventually won the race. When the dust settled, Wendell got an apology, but not from Smith.
"Joe Weatherly came to our pits after the race and he said, "Wendell, I just came to apologize for the rest of the stupid sons of bitches."
There were other run-ins with Smith and finally the elder Scott decided it was time to settle things once and for all.
"He (Smith) had wrecked us up at Winston-Salem (N.C.) and my daddy had had it with him," said Franklin. "On the pace lap he pulled up beside Daddy and started pointing his finger at him. We didn’t know it but Daddy had his gun with him and he pulled it out and pointed the gun back. We never had trouble with Jack again"
Once, Franklin remembers, in 1964, a promoter in Atlanta called and told Wendell to stay home because the Klan had said they’d make problems if he showed up at the track.
"We were working like mad on the car in the shop and Daddy got off the phone with that guy from Atlanta, I asked him what he was going to do. He said, "We’re loading this damned car up and we’re going to Atlanta."
The records show that Scott did not go to that race, but for every bad memory Franklin’s got a good one. There were other teams fighting to stay alive on the circuit and they all fell in together like a band of Gypsies. Color wasn’t an issue here. Money was and these guys didn’t have much.
"There were a lot of guys out there struggling just like us... Elmo Langley and Henley Gray and Jabe Thomas. We kept each other going. I mean, they’d have a partial pit crew and we’d pit three or four cars between us all."
The stars of the time - Richard Petty, Joe Weatherly, and Fireball Roberts - didn’t turn their backs totally on Scott. There were cheap, but outdated parts available occasionally from the factory teams. There were tires given when no one was looking. And there were a lot of pats on the back.
"A guy would loan you a tool or a part. I remember Tiny Lund one time in Jacksonville came over and told me to come with him. He gave me four tires for us to qualify on. That’s the type of guy he was," said Franklin.
"I can remember talking to Richard (Petty) one time in California after a race at Riverside. He said, "Franklin, when do you think y’all get home? I told him at the earliest Thursday evening. He told me he would be home that night, that he was on the way to the airport. Richard always felt bad about the way we had to struggle. Before I left he said to me, "You know what makes me mad, is I’ve got all these people working for me and all this money and I’m not running much damn faster than y’all."
This article first appeared in "American Racing Classics 1994/Vol3