Me and the Champ

When I set out to start this blog, I had no real plan as to what I would cover when, but rather planned to just write about whatever hit me that week or that day. For some reason this week, Larry Phillips has been on my mind so I thought I’d give some insight into my relationship with one of, if not the greatest short track racer ever.

I’m not sure when I first met Larry Phillips but I moved to Missouri in about 1990 from Southeast Wisconsin and it was shortly thereafter when the ARTGO Series made annual visits to Bolivar Speedway USA and Lebanon I-44 Speedway. Having been around the Wisconsin racing scene for so many years, there was nothing better for me than watching guys like Joe Shear, Bob Brownell, Jim Weber, Dennis Lampman, Steve Carlson and Eddie Hoffman travel down to Missouri to take on the likes of Larry Phillips and the rest of the Missouri gang. I knew Larry was good but I mean not Wisconsin good right? Or at least so I thought at the time but would soon learn differently.

The more I started hanging around the Missouri asphalt tracks, I became friends with a great guy named Kevin Morgan who eventually introduced me to Paul Wallen from Arcola, Missouri. I started working on Paul’s late model. As a guy that grew up wanting to move to Charlotte to work in NASCAR, this felt like the big time and to me it was. I’d travel to Paul’s shop in Arcola to work on his car and then would ride with him in his rig to Lebanon on Saturday nights or ride with his brother Phillip. Going with Phillip meant a stop at El Taco in Springfield so that was always a plus.

Of course, being around the track a lot, it was hard not to be aware of Larry as that is who we were all trying to catch every night which pretty well seemed impossible. On occasion it happened but it was rare. In 1992, after spending a couple of years wrenching and learning on Wallen’s car, word came down that Larry’s Crew Chief James Ince had got his big break and was moving to North Carolina to work in NASCAR land so I got brave and inquired about working for LP. I was single, lived at home and had nothing to lose. This was my first full time racing job and I was thrilled to say the least. I don’t remember the conversation about going to work for him or how that started but I do remember visiting with him at the Championship Banquet at University Plaza and him asking me if I was ready to get to work and I WAS! Little did I know…….

It must have been right after the banquet that I had officially quit my mechanic job at Bill Roberts Chevrolet and commuted south from my Mom’s house in Needmore, Missouri to Larry Phillips Autosports. For some reason, I had went to an auto auction with Paul Wallen and bought a Gold ’82 Cadillac Coupe de Ville and that was my daily driver to Springfield. See I could afford a new Cadillac working for Larry because I made $180/week cash and we worked 8:30am-7pm, 6 day a week so I was rolling in the dough at that point. I’m not sure Terry made quite that much but he got to race and I was getting paid to go to “racing school” so it was all good.

During that winter of ’92-’93, Larry had a lot on his plate as he was building a “Late Model Stock Car” to run in the NASCAR Invitational at Volusia County Speedway during Speedweeks. He was also preparing his Super Late Model for that trip but he was wide open building his own Late Models at that time to sell. Larry basically designed and built every single piece on that car from scratch so my primary day to day job was building each component. This involved cutting, notching, welding and assembling everything from roll bar pieces to spindles. (Sorry if you got one of those early spindles that I “built”). He had this incredible 3-ring binder that detailed every piece in color, how long to cut it, where to notch it, what degree to notch it, etc. We used the same Mittler Bros notcher as Terry uses today.

It was during this time that I really got to know Terry well also. As I was building parts, he was welding chassis together and then I helped whenever he needed it to assemble a car or just whatever he needed. During that time I know we built cars for Archie Griffin, Ricky Icenhower and a host of others but I don’t remember all of them. I frequently get criticized for hanging around Terry at the races still today but we go way back and we’re just friends and that’s the way it is. I don’t play favorites for him or anyone else but he has a ton of knowledge so I listen when he speaks as he learned a lot himself from one of the best.

So I spent that whole winter just working and learning and doing the best I could but at the time I just thought he never cared for me. For the most part I would later realize, he was just always so focused on his work that he didn’t spend a lot of time chit chatting. He personally was crafting that Late Model Stock Car and since not every race car of that era started out as an AMC Hornet, you can imagine the amount of work that was done to get it fast and “legal”.

One thing about working for Larry, is that there was no such thing as sick days or snow days. One time, we had an ice storm like serious ice but there was no way in hell I was calling to tell him I couldn’t make it. If any of you know where his current shop is in north Springfield, you know how hilly it is there. Do you know how bad a 1982 Cadillac Coupe de Ville handles on ice on a hill. No worries, I called from the gas station on 13 close to the shop and LP graciously came and picked me up so I could work. Another time, I got a piece of metal in my eye probably around early afternoon but I wasn’t blind yet so I still worked the rest of the day and drove home at 7pm. Thankfully, it was a Wednesday night and my future wife at that time Dee Ann got a hold of Dr. Lane Nutt at church and he brought me in and drilled it out at 9pm but we did get our full shift in!

Well the time finally comes to leave for Florida in February and I was completely unprepared, I had hardly any clothes but work clothes. I was going to go that night before we left and grab a few things at Bass Pro to take on the trip. Well apparently I looked at the clock one or twelve too many times and got lit into and almost didn’t get to go but we got through it. The next morning we took this ol’ straight truck and his yellow Ford, Cat Powered toter with all new racing disc brakes on the trailer that Chuck Meads put on. Ricky Icenhower and Russ Phillips went with us on the trip as he needed some people that know what they were doing at the race track and that obviously wasn’t me yet. Russ and his wife were experienced and Ricky was trying to learn like me as was as he was stepping up to a late model after capturing the 1992 NASCAR Sunbelt Regional Championship in his modified.

It was an adventure to say the least. The first thing I remember on the trip was going to dinner at some sort of buffet joint like an Old Country Buffet at that time and we were sitting there eating and Ken Schrader just walked in and sat down and I was in awe. He just saw Larry’s hauler outside and stopped in. We even went to the Circle Track Trade show that was held in Daytona at the time and that was always something I remembered.

Finally, it was time for race week and since Larry was really focused on his Late Model Stock Car, he had hired Pensacola native Junior Niedecken to drive his Super Late Model. Ricky and I worked on both cars while Russ really worked as the crew chief throughout the week and we had some success but without Larry driving the Super each night, it just wasn’t the same. Junior did a great job but he just wasn’t LP. For some reason we had power steering issues all week, and I must have changed that rack 10 or 12 times. I don’t recall the issue but I could change it blindfolded. As the week culminated, Larry took part in the Invitational and after some “tech issues” finally got the car deemed good to go by the NASCAR Tech Officials. He ended up finishing second to Barry Beggarly after a late race restart so it was a great ending but didn’t quite get the win. All in all, a great experience I will never forget.

On the way home, we decided to stop just the other side of Paducah to sleep for the night but when we woke up in the morning, it had snowed heavily. It wasn’t like we could just pull out our phones and check the weather, that just didn’t happen in those days yet really. Well we wait it out and finally get going but there is a large jam at the bottom of one of the hills and wouldn’t you know it, it was one of the “bell ringers” on their way home from Florida too and had spun out their motor home. We finally got on the road but that guy could drink a lot of coffee I know that.

Well back at the shop in February, I had started really getting homesick for Wisconsin. I wasn’t making hardly any money, I was living at home, I wasn’t enjoying the long hours or the stress of working for LP. Bottom line was that I was too immature to handle it and I was about to learn a valuable life lesson. One day, I just decided I had had enough so I chose the cowardly route and rather than face it like a man, I left a note in Larry’s engine room that I wasn’t coming back. I drove to my Mom’s house, loaded everything I owned into my Cadillac and drove that night to Wisconsin. That folks, is not how you do it. It has haunted for years how I dealt with it and probably not many people know that. Terry knew and through all these years, he has never made an issue of it or chided me about it and tried to embarrass me in front of anyone but I have lived with it and still feel terrible about it to this day. When I moved back to Missouri in 1996, it took me several years just to get the courage up to track Terry down and apologize and it actually happened at the Show-Me 100 in West Plains in probably ’98.

As I said, I moved back to Missouri in 1996 after growing up a little and finding a good job at a new manufacturing facility in Springfield. During this time, I started hanging out again at Bolivar and Lebanon and desperately wanted to be involved in racing but had already burned my bridge with LP. One day at Bolivar, I was helping Doug Strassburg who was the GM at the time and Bill Willard waved me over and asked if I wanted to line cars up on Saturday nights so that was my first track racing job. Seriously, I got paid $60 a night to watch the races, now that was some good shit.

Shortly, thereafter my path would cross in a big way with LP again but in a completely different role. I don’t have specifics of years or time frames, I’m sure Ronnie Williams can set it straight but somewhere there in the late 90’s or early 2000’s, Tim Parson and Larry got together coming out of turn four and I was the front stretch official. The official call came from the flagstand, 75 to the rear and I knew that wasn’t going to be good for me because since this was before RACEceivers, I had to put him to the back manually and he hated me already for walking out on him. Well anyways, I see that red and white 75 coming and I know he’s already mad so I go all the way to the grass on the infield at Lebanon and point to my ass to tell him tailback. He locked up the brakes right there on the front stretch and waited for the field to come by. Well he drove from the rear like a mad man because he was a “mad man” and didn’t agree with the call at all as he felt that Parson had turned down on him. He pulled into the pits and made pretty quick work of beating Tim up in his pits. He of course got suspended by NASCAR for fighting and was out for a time.

For some reason, on a Saturday shortly thereafter, I was driving around and I thought I would swing by his hanger at Bolivar Airport to see if he was there as I loved his yellow plane and I knew with no racing he was bound to be there as he was building his Midwest Aero business. That day, me and LP made up and actually took a ride in that yellow airplane and if I remember right, we actually buzzed Wheatland Raceway as they were just opening up. I could be all wet on some of these time frames but that’s how I remember it.

As Larry got sick with lung cancer and I was still working at I-44, we actually got to be what I thought close and I really missed him once he passed. That picture at the top I believe was one of the last races he ran toward the end of 2000 and I am thankful that I got that picture with him. He taught me a lot about not only racing but life, it just took me awhile to realize it. He will always be the greatest racer in my lifetime as far as I’m concerned and I am proud to say that I got to work for him and call him a friend.

DR