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July 31, 2009
DYING IN THE PITS
There’s no doubt that Buzz Rose’s monumental book, RACERS AT REST,
is one of the most historically significant racing books ever
published. It is a sobering and emotional testimony to nearly 1500
racers who perished competing in open wheel racing over the last 100
years.
It is curious, though, to contemplate related incidents beyond
Buzz’s focus, remembering drivers who died at the speedway, but not
on the track. Here are three examples from the Northeast. If readers
know of other examples around the country, we would very much like
to hear about them.
Sparky Belmont in the Dark Horse
Special cutdown at the
New London Waterford Speedbowl in the early fifties.
Dave Dykes Collection
In the 1960s, Connecticut’s
Plainville Stadium, that funky little outlaw track, sure had a
roster of hot shoes. Right up there was Michael Belmonte, aka
“Sparky Belmont.”
Belmont was a fixture in the midget boom after World War II. As the
doodlebugs outpriced themselves and lulled the fans to sleep with
follow-the-leader shows, he switched to hard tops in 1949 and towed
all over the Northeast with Harvey Tattersall’s United Circuit. He
was a big star, leveraging his talents, friendliness, showmanship,
and colorful garb. He was known as a family man, but he seldom
brought his children to the track. His avocation, he thought, was
too dangerous for them to be watching. How
ironic.
On July 3, 1968, Sparky, then 49
and defending track champion, swept a major 100-lapper at Plainville
aboard Walt Kuyns’ #00 coach. Fellow racer (now motorsports
historian) Tom Ormsby, along with a throng of folks, ran up to
congratulate him. Sparky was pleased, grinning widely as he popped
open a beer. Recalls Ormsby, “What a great guy. He was on top of the
world, looking good, and then suddenly he flopped over. It was so
sudden that we didn’t know quite what to do, and the ambulance had
just pulled out the gate for the night. It took 20 minutes to bring
it back and by then the Spark was out.”
Jerry Dolliver at Hudson, NH, behind
the flathead that propelled him to a hundred wins.
Coastal 181 Collection
On September 1, 21 years later,
Jerry Dolliver warmed up a NEMA midget at Star Speedway in Epping,
New Hampshire. At 61 years of age he knew what he was doing. He was
a huge, though undocumented, winner in Northern New England. It is
said that he amassed fully 100 features with one single flathead
motor, often embarrassing the fast-invading overheads. Although the
bulk of his wins were in coupes and cutdowns, in his heart he was a
sprint car guy. He loved the open air.
Jerry had survived a horrible
garage explosion in the mid-fifties that flung him across a lift and
into a concrete wall. He had endured pain ever since. Then in the
mid-sixties he underwent innovative surgery to repair a congenitally
defective heart valve. The operation was a success but left him
easily tired, so his busy life and the rigors of racing required
unusual determination.
As he warmed up the midget that
night at Star, a suspension part broke and Jerry ended up pushing
the car back to the pits. No one really noticed that he immediately
sat down on the edge of the trailer. He often did. But this time it
was different. His heart finally gave up, and the ultra-popular
racing role model was gone.
Jerry’s two boys, Bryan and Peter,
by then had formed a team, and those talented racing genes were
shining again. With never any finances at all, Bryan showed all that
smoothly speedy Dolliver finesse behind the wheel. Tragically,
however, poor health also passed between the generations. Peter
quietly endured problem after problem, finally to pass away on the
operating table during a second pancreas transplant a few years ago.
Lou Lazzaro and Blackie will be at
Fonda Speedway together forever.
Dick Berggren Collection
In 1999, the fabulous racing
journalist from Indianapolis, Bones Bourcier, went to Fonda Speedway
in New York to check out Lou Lazzaro. “The Monk,” as Louie was
called for his balding pate, was beyond question one of the greatest
stock car drivers ever to come out of upstate New York, itself one
of the country’s busiest racing pockets.
Louie had raced for a living for
years, bulling his often ancient, perpetually underfunded #4 dirt
cars to victories with raw talent. At age 60, he was still at it,
still accompanied by his familiar German Shepherd Blackie. He told
Bones, “They say that retirement age is 65, so I think I’ll hang
around till then.”
That’s exactly what he did.
Louie’s daughter Melissa tells what happened at an April show at
Fonda five years later:
| “That night at the
track Dad complained that he was real tired. He asked me
to get in the car to warm it up. It was strange. Always
before I had to ask to do that. In the heat, though, he
did something that caught my eye. Bobby Varin went under
him, and Dad jerked the wheel like he was spooked. I
never saw him do anything like that before.
Before the feature, I
noticed that he kept falling asleep in the lineup. He
came in after 15 laps, not having done anything. He was
totally discombobulated. He looked at me and George
Biancosino, blinking like he couldn’t see right. He said
the car wouldn’t steer, but I think both George and I
knew what wasn’t working. He had these deep circles
under his eyes and his words began to slur. He just
stayed in the car and, when his friend Dave Lape won the
feature, I asked him if he was gonna go over and
congratulate him. When he said “no,” I knew he was
really in trouble.
We got the
ambulance and he collapsed on the way in. When the
ambulance doors closed, the dogs started going crazy,
barking their brains out. He was air lifted to Albany
and along the way he kept moving his feet like he was
driving his race car. But, by the time we got there, he
was all but gone. He had a massive blood clot.
They unhooked his
life support on Monday morning. I was there and I kept
begging him to take one more breath.
Ric Lucia, the
promoter, was wonderful through the whole thing. He had
a big memorial race for Dad. We had saved the ashes and
we spread them all around the track. We spread Blackie’s
ashes at the same time.”
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© 2009 Lew
Boyd, Coastal 181 |
