Texas Gas ~ NASCAR History Lost?
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I
hate to see us lose our history. We have such a long, interesting and rich
history that it hurts when we lose a part of it.
It
may be a team closing their doors or a long-time sponsor deciding to go in a
“new direction.” Every driver who leaves by choice or otherwise changes
our history. Same with car owners, crew
members, media members… or fans. It could be something as solid as a
track or as ethereal as a racing web site. Once gone, we lose a part of
history.
Or
it could be something that on the surface you never knew was even a part of
racing history.
Sadness…
that’s the way I felt a couple of weeks ago when I went back home to Owensboro,
KY for a short visit with our family. I don’t get back there as often as
I’d like but it seems that every time I do, something has changed.
Sometimes, it may not be obvious at first, but if you look real close usually
you can find something different. Other times there is no mistaking it.
Sometimes
it’s for the better... sometimes not.
A
recent change I’d put in the good category is the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s Grand
Opening and 2018 Induction Ceremony that took place a few weekends ago.
It looked like it was quite a celebration and as a bluegrass music fan, having
a top-flight facility like this in my hometown is hard to top.
A
bittersweet change was the June addition of the statue of Owensboro’s Nicky
Hayden.. The “Kentucky Kid” was tragically killed in a bicycle
accident in Italy in 2017 and the recently unveiled statue captures that
special time in 2006 when Nicky won the MotoGP World
Championship at Laguna Seca. We miss him, but this tribute helps ensure
we won’t forget him or his smile.
This
trip almost broke my heart as we headed down the main drag on our way out of
town only to spy the building and grounds at 3800 Frederica St. The
building had been headquarters to Texas Gas Transmission. Its
architecture is unique for the town and its time, as it was the most noted
Modern building in Owensboro. It was
designed by the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which is best known for
their design of the United States Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel.
The
once proud building was long vacant.
Boards covered the broken windows vandalized over the years. The magnificent trees that surrounded the
property were all gone. The once
manicured lawns were dozed under. It was
almost surreal and the once peaceful grounds had been transformed into a
construction zone… or a destruction zone, depending on your position.
Texas
Gas is a natural gas pipeline company that transports gas from the Louisiana
Gulf Coast through Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky to its
customers in Indiana, Illinois and Ohio. It was created in 1948 from a
merger of Memphis Natural and Kentucky Natural Gas and it located its
headquarters in the distinct Owensboro building in 1962. It became a
local landmark of sorts for the company that had so much impact on this
community and beyond.
Nearly
one-third of the 1500 Texas Gas employees who once worked there, worked in the
Owensboro-Daviess County area. Employees
and their families participated in every facet of the community and served in
leadership roles in city government, school boards, service clubs, Chamber of
Commerce, charitable organizations. They
prepared leaders for the future as they were a major force in Junior
Achievement programs on the local and national level. Employees served their local churches in all
denominations. They were truly a
significant part of the Owensboro “fabric”.
Personally,
Texas Gas played a significant role in my life.
They were my first employer out of college, working as the low man on
the totem pole in its pipeline survey crew. My future wife was from a
“Texas Gas family” and worked there in the summers. Her father, a civil
engineer for the pipelines had helped land me that first job. He has been
an employee there probably as long as there was a company, so Texas Gas has
always been a big part of our lives and its headquarters was always the
ever-present reminder of that place in our lives.
So to see it in this shape really hurt.
But
what you may not know is that from that building came many things that would
impact our sport of NASCAR. In the late 1960’s the President of Texas Gas
was Frank Rader. Mr. Rader had two
daughters. Carol, the older daughter went to high school with a local
race car driver. That driver would one day come to Mr. Rader’s office at
that building and ask his permission to marry his younger daughter,
Stephanie. He reluctantly (understandably so) gave his permission and she
became known to NASCAR as Stevie Waltrip, wife of three-time Cup Champion,
Darrell Waltrip.
What
you may not know is Stevie is a woman of great determination who would go on to
break NASCAR’s “gender barrier.” She didn’t do it as a driver as we
normally think of, but as a crew member. Prior to Stevie joining her
husband’s crew, handling scoring and fuel mileage calculations for his team, a
female in the pits was even more rare than a female driver. Pit road was
man’s country… that is until Stevie came along, quietly going about her job,
slowly opening that closed door and holding it open for other racing spouses to
walk through and now occupy the pits.
Also
working at the building was Chairman of the Board, Mr. William
Elmer. An avid race fan, he once posed the question to Rader and DW what
it would cost to “put a car in the Daytona 500?” The search began for a suitable car for
big-time racing. Holman-Moody had the
old Mario Andretti Daytona 500 winning Fairlane that had been converted to
David Pearson’s Cyclone for sale for $12,500. The information was passed
back to Mr. Elmer and DW soon found himself on the circuit, launching a 29-year
Cup career that we all know.
For
his first three years on the circuit his car carried the name of Texas Gas
subsidiary, Terminal Transport. The
barge line’s name was on the car when DW scored his first Cup win at Nashville
in 1975. Before the season was over, DW would replace Donnie Allison in
the Gardners’ DiGard
ride for the final 11 races of the year. The new combination got off to a
rough start as DNFs and problems outnumbered complete races. But when they did finish, they finished well,
scoring five top-10’s including a 7th, 4th and two 3rds. Terminal
Transport was on DiGard’s first winning Cup car when
DW wheeled it into Victory Lane at Richmond before season’s end.
Vice
President Dennis Hendrix also worked in the Texas Gas building. Hendrix
was playing golf one day with Rader and suggested he have his son-in-law
contact Hendrix’s fraternity brother, Bill Stokley, head of Stokley Van-Camp. They had a product that Stokley believed
would market well in racing but was reconsidering after their efforts to put
their product, Gatorade on Johnny Rutherford’s Indy 500 entry. Things had not gone well there as Stokley and
Hendrix were treated so badly by Indy officials over their credentials that
Stokley was ready to throw up his hands on the prospects of using racing.
However, after following Hendrix’ suggestion, Stokley and Gatorade replaced
Terminal Transport on the car after signing a sponsorship deal valued at
$200,000 for the 1976 season. When the season opened DW, DiGard and
Gatorade were not only racing for a Cup Championship but they also broke the
“color barrier” in NASCAR. It was not skin color as we normally think of
but car color as they carried the Gatorade green on the #88.
Race
drivers are a superstitious lot and then the color green was considered
unlucky. Few, if any drivers would carry the color and most of the older
drivers didn’t even want to be around it. So strong, David Pearson
refused to park next to DW’s Gatorade ride. It hardly proved unlucky, as
over the next five seasons the Gatorade ride carried DW to 25 more wins.
Together, they finished top-10 in points every year, establishing DiGard as a
team to be reckoned with. DiGard would
go on to win a total of 43 Cup races and the 1983 Cup Championship with Bobby
Allison behind the wheel.
At
the end of 1980, when the chance to drive for the legendary car owner, Junior
Johnson arose it was a phone call to Owensboro that produced the final $100,000
of a $325,000 contract buyout that allowed DW to drive a new shade of green,
Johnson’s Mountain Dew #11. The first two years together resulted in 24
wins and two Cup Championships. Before that relationship ended in 1986,
the Johnson/Waltrip team had won another Cup Championship and a total of 43 Cup
races, over one half of DW’s win total and nearly one third of Johnson’s win
total. Their success secured Waltrip’s place as
NASCAR’s Driver of the Decade (1980’s).
But
Texas Gas wasn’t just Waltrip. They supported various forms of racing,
even turning their beautiful manicured property into a top class kart track
that drew in hundreds of karters from all
around. It was first class. Speed
bumps were graded out, a new silky smooth pavement was placed down all around
and hundreds of hay bales outlined the course that circled the magnificent four
story structure. The swarms of single-cylinder karts racing around the
improvised road course was truly a sight to behold. The thunderous drone
of battling bumble bees would signal their approach and the sicky-sweet
smell of spent racing fuel and oil (with maybe a hint of a little something
extra mixed in) excited those senses as well.
It
was a great day of racing that day, as you would expect from a Texas Gas
event. One driver who caught my eye that
day was a youngster from Brownsboro IN. Maybe he caught my eye because he
was fast and smooth. Or it could have been his snappy leathers that had
the name ANDRETTI on the back, just barely visible above the seat top.
His uncle Mario was my sister’s favorite driver. We had seen his father
Aldo race as well. My lasting thought from that day was “I wonder what’s
going to happen to him?”
A
few years later we’d find out.
Texas
Gas still exists but it is no longer what it once was. Takeover after takeover has left it a shell
of what it once was, now a subsidiary of a larger company. Their barge line, Terminal Transport, whose
name visited Cup Victory Lane twice in its short appearance in NASCAR was sold
off to another company who needed it to fit its need. The Headquarters were vacated and have sat
empty for many years now. It and the
grounds have been sold, first to the local board of education and recently to a
developer. The building that housed
Junior Achievement, like the magnificent trees, many planted in memory of
employees past, now gone.
It
is heartbreaking indeed.
What
is its future? Only time will tell. Its impact on NASCAR? Probably memories long past.
But
it’s those memories and their significance we need to remember and hold tightly
to, for time and change continue their endless march to rob us of our
history. Our history, no matter how big
or small is just too important to lose.