The Roanoke Times from Roanoke, Virginia • 26

B8 Roanoke Times World News Sunday May 27 1 990 Humpy ROM PAGE B1 "A showman" Richard Petty says I "An Dale Earn hardt says Don King of stock car rac ing" Geoff Bodine says I Humpy is all those things A head for racing Sitting in his plush seventh floor penthouse office at CMS gold en haired Humpy Wheeler 52 gazes out the window and talks with pleasure about how his idea ma chine got its first jump start in 1951 actually promoted my first race when I was Wheeler says had a bicycle shop in Belmont about six miles from the old Char loite Speedway I had a field across the street from my house So I laid out a one tenth mile track I kijow it was one tenth of a mile but gone back and measured it since I also was the first integrated race run in the Southeast A Little Rascals type of a deal but I would giVe prizes and stuff I was a unique business tear their bicycles up over there see take home to try and let their daddies fix They so bring in to! me to put back together I to make a living some way back In the small poor cotton mill town of Belmont in the 1940s and e4rly Wheeler said the auto mobile supplied about the only ac tion around was nothing to do in Belmont so got out and watch cars go down Highway 29 on Sun Wheeler says I was about 10 I kept seeing these race go by could hitchhike back then and nobody would capture you So lid hitchhike over to old Charlotte Speedway every race and walk up to somebody and walk in free with because kids under 12 got in for nothing" By the time he was 1 5 Wheeler had driven in his first race Pretty sbon his backyard was filled with battered race cars the kid had picked up at the track I was something about racing that zeroed in on me he says at the time the last fifing a mother wanted her son to do was get involved in any kind of stock car racing thank goodness my mother eventually realized that rac ing was an outlet for me She always eftcouraged me from that His father Howard Augustus Wheeler was a teacher coach and athletic director at Belmont Abbey College The younger Wheeler inher ited his nickname which originated when he was caught smoking a Camel cigarette after a football practice at the University of Illinois father never liked racing at all He wanted me to play football and says Wheeler a state Golden Gloves champion at 17 At 1 8 Wheeler hooked up with publicist Russ Catlin and worked a sfimmer job at Darlington (SC) Raceway was kind of a nest bunch of people like Richard Petty Cale Yarborough and Bobby Alli son We were all the same age group and we knew each other while we were coming Wheeler says ever thought that anybody would amount to Still young saw be yond what on the surface at least appeared to limited boundaries know what it was but I just saw something in racing There was spectacle waiting to he says that was always in my Learning the ropes After graduating from the Uni versity of South Carolina in 1961 Wheeler quickly traded in his jour nalism degree to operate dusty dirty Robinwood Speedway in Gastonia NC dirt tracks back then were real rough and Wheeler says it take me long to make a lot of money that time I went through and operated about five dif ferent little tracks 1 I thought I knew what I was doing lost all the money I have a dime It because the facts successful it was judg ments against me for accidents and nof having enough insurance It took mer a long time to pay off those But Wheeler a fighter onihe canvas long He stayed in the raring game by taking a public rela tions job with irestone in 1964 It proved to be a great move In his six years with irestone Wheeler was given the opportunity to see nu merous forms of auto racing at facil ities all across the country He was inquisitive studying the pros and coils of each track really got a great education on the racing facility" he says But there was a flip side period was one of the bloodiest periods in the history of auto Wheeler says guys were riding in bath tubs full of gasoline A lot of people DON PETERSENStaff Jj A a1 1 r33 did I get the Wheeler says grinning believe this but a friend of mine found one in Pasadena Texas I guess the thing had been captured in'! Korea After the Air orce found out it fly4very well they sold it 1 as surplus A guy I know bought it restored it and brought it here" Today show includes a school bus jump over the and an appearance by Robb 1 saurus a 40 foot tall 60000 pound fire breathing robotic dinosaur that will roam the speedway grounds and 1 eat cars going to be a hell of a show It will blow your Wheeler says When it comes to the prerace show Cotter says no idea is deemed too absurd never forget going in for my first session with Humpy in Cotter says The i theme that year was Ameri were about eight of us sitting around and Humpy says not get a brand new Honda Civic shoot it out of a cannon and have it crash and bum beyond the third 1 that point I knew nothing would be considered a joke And that was neat Everywhere else it would have been stupid but here it was considered just think con ventionally He came out of left field throwing a outrageous prerace productions have made NASCAR Almost yearly expansion has increased Charlotte Motor grandstand seating capacity to 107281 Another 1 1000 or nervous at times so can be placed in the 63 VIP suites exclusive Speedway Club and first turn condominiums Ti VH of we get are little Wheeler says know here at Charlotte we get off the beaten path right oftert al has to go through a'' pruning session We had the circus here one year and former NASCAR 1 vice president John Riddle think get the race started on time i NASCAR look the oth 4 er way Current vice president Les Richter will call me and say tell me how bad it say terrible You want to hear the got killed 1 was the last person to talk to three different drivers before they got killed I knew a lot of them very well Emotionally it was a very bad time for When irestone pulled out of racing in 1970 Wheeler moved his wife Pat and their three children back to North Carolina After briefly operating a couple of dirt tracks Wheeler went to work for a major real estate developer in the Charlotte area the first time in my life I was totally removed from racing and that was good for Wheeler says needed those old wounds to Vision of success In 1975 Wheeler was contacted by an old friend Bruton Smith who had recently regained control of Charlotte Motor Speedway had known Bruton Wheeler says built the track here in 1959 then he lost it through bankruptcy in 1962 he was getting control back and was looking for somebody to work for him the time the place looked so bad The thing never was fin ished There had been very little money put back into the track and it showed asked Bruton can we ever do to this When Smith committed himself to putting all the profits back into the facility Wheeler says he knew he had found a home A dream home and I shared the same philosophy" Wheeler says must be the greatest sport in the world because dusted people to death given them terri ble rest rooms they sit out in the rain snow sleet and hail lousy parking traffic jams they kept coming back and they kept multiplying would ever happen if Bigger is better Humpy Wheeler is not sur prised by the number of people com ing to his stock car races he says the race is a spectacle county fair exist anymore like we knew them it little bit of the circus a little bit of the fair its a lot of color a lot of spectacle is big Americans like big And they come to see people walk the line and these guys drivers cer in tainly walk the fine line come to see cars running close together They come to see L': bump and grind They come to seei" them wreck They want to see them get hurt rir' PLEASE SEE HUMPYB9 Wheeler says in the back of my head I just had this thought and it would never leave thought was take a great stadium like the Los Angeles Colise um or the Rose Bowl If you take those kind of facilities and instead of putting a football field there put a race track and spread the seating out Yqu could have incredible building includes the V1UWUS Wheeler only questioned one thing about his vision was concerned about how we were going to get the females in volved It scared me to death in 1975 when we discovered that only 1 5 percent of the people coming here were women look entertain mentsports does well in the down periods of recessions and depres sions but only if the females are interested That type of entertain ment will keep Wheeler says just male or just female you split people in half and neither one wants to do The solution Wheeler says was no stroke of genius just copied what filling rants the Speedway Club and The stations did in the Clean the Club rest rooms Clean the place up really all we he says and the drivers cleaned up The tire companies and the auto mobile manufacturers put a lot of pressure on the drivers to clean themselves Put on a fancy face Now stock car racing cleaning up At no place is it more evident than Charlotte Motor Speedway the Taj Mahal of big time stock car rac ing look at says driver Brett Bodine the show palace of our Almost yearly expansion has in creased the grandstand seat ing capacity to 107281 Another 11000 or so can be placed in the 63 VIP suites exclusive Speedway Club and first turn con dominiums Including the spacious 100 acre infield area the soeedwav can han dle 170000 fans Wheeler says That number will mushroom again soon when construction is comnleted on a new 1 2 unit tower of luxury condominiums in turn one A or an $8500 lifetime member sa7 the ieasL at what we do and ship tee sponsor representatives and other high rollers can watch Dale Earnhardt battle Darrell Wal trip while eating a gourmet meal and drinking a $100 bottle of wine believe helped change the scene of stock car Wheeler says some of the things done have set a little bit of an show business When it comes to promotion Wheeler and his aggressive publicity team lap every track in NASCAR No facility sends out more prer ace news releases No facility holds more prerace news conferences No facility spends more money Anything to fill all the seats anything to turn a stock car race into an event Wheeler says CMS promotes and advertises heavily going after the borderline race fans by providing extravagant prerace entertainment The prerace shows have contained everything from boxing matches to a three ring circus to an aerial dogfight including a Soviet MiG you ever did it right? And I had seen none ngm ai a tew places so i was Close friends of Wheeler say he has believed for a long time that he can see into the future In 1975 he made a prediction Insiders snickered when Wheel er looked into his crystal ball and said stock car racing would grow into the multimillion dollar busi ness it is today not many people believed 40 unit complex was built in 1984 Wheeler says half of the new condos which went on sale 1 8 days ago already have been sold despite a price tag of $500000 each The Smith Tower the result of a $20 million expansion project fin ished in 1987 is impressive The 100000 square foot seven story incredible things could corporate offices a movie theater souvenir snop ticket outlet private ly leased office space and two restau think JNASCAR president Bill rance Jr takes a comical look wonders how we get away with it He would never do Wheeler savs the idea of a lengthy entertaining prerace show originally was planned to help keep all the fans from arriving at the track at the same time thus avoiding af nasty traffic snarl While the people wait for the engines to start Wheeler says they need to be doing something besides twiddling their thumbs got to be a happening a social Wheeler says sat around thousands of races waiting for the race to start People watch the grass grow and theKnhnlt hpnt lin Mnthina konnanc' so your drama and tension build i gri been to a heavyweight championship fight? I care who is fighting there is an aura' about it 1 You pay for that1? You pay to become tense You to become stimulated a sensory stimulation You need a warm up for the event have to take people all the way up says Wheeler holding his right hand at chest level ready for the event when the event starts they can go higher and going to come back more Wheeler says he has a simple philosophy about promotion got to create the illu sion that what doing is so unique so different and so unbeliev able that just got to go see it a lot of people can do he says got tb' make that illusion become a reality and what we try to do at Char lotte Motor DON PETERSENStaff or an $8500 lifetime membership fee sponsor representatives and other high rollers can watch Dale Earnhardt battle Darrell Waltrip while eating a gourmet meal and drinking fine wine at the Speedway Club and The Club restaurants i AP prerace show today will include Robosaurus a 40 foot tall 60000 pound fire breathing robotic dinosaur that roams the speedway grounds and eats cars must be the greatest sport in the world 11 because dusted people to death given them terrible rest rooms they sit out in rain snow sleet and hail lousy parking traffic jams But they kept coming back and they kept multiplying What would ever happen if you ever did it right? And I had seen it done right at a few places So I was 1 Humpy Wheeler A On his vision in 1975 of auto potential growth I "i WiwRMB Xy SVVT 4 '4 xBi Bif 4 it I I (y y4 4 BP 'i I A 4 1 4Z 'T' Sr Maa 4 I.