For Kelley, hall is a job
and a hobby
By Tom Gillispie
The most touching moment so far for Winston Kelley probably came when the NASCAR Hall of Fame inducted Ned Jarrett.
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| WINSTON KELLEY OF THE NASCAR HALL OF FAME (PHOTO BY HALL OF FAME) |
“I went over to shake Ned’s hand, and
I had tears in my eyes for him,” said Kelley, the director of the still-young
hall of fame. “He was genuinely surprised, and he looked in my eyes and said,
‘I’m going to make you a good inductee.’
“We were thinking of what we could do
for him, and he was thinking of what he could do for us.”
Jarrett wasn’t the only North
Carolinian who has impressed Kelley. The hall-of-fame folks asked Junior
Johnson, the former moonshine runner, how they could make a moonshine display.
Johnson bought the materials, drove to Charlotte and built a still for them.
“We called and asked him to talk us
through it,” said Kelley, 54. “Instead, he came here and built it. I was like
Babe Ruth designing and building an exhibit at Cooperstown.”
The hall broke ground in January 2007
and opened May 11, 2010 at 400 East Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in
downtown Charlotte.
Kelley was hired long before the hall
of fame was built, and he says he and others traveled to other halls of fame to
see how they did it and learn. They visited the Pro Football Hall of Fame, the
baseball hall in Cooperstown, the hockey hall, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame
and many others. They took what they saw and added their own wrinkles.
Kelley, the hall’s director, says
that his job at the hall of fame has been kid-in-a-candy-store for a man whose father,
Earl Kelley, was once the public-relations director for Charlotte Motor
Speedway, a public-address announcer and a member of the Universal Racing
Network broadcast team. Kelley’s first race, the 1964 Daytona 500, probably
affected the directionhis life. He got to meet the race winner, Richard Petty.
He became a huge Petty fan, and he’s gotten to know Petty during his own long
career in racing.
Kelley’s worn many hats over the
years; for instance, he once was the vice president of
economic and business development and vice president of government and business
relations for Duke Energy Carolinas. He’s worked on Motor
Racing Network’s radio broadcasting team since 1988, and he still works several
races a year. He also worked as a field reporter for “NASCAR This Morning” on
Fox Sports Net from 2001 to 2004.
The hall of fame in Charlotte is a
perfect job for Kelley, a native of Concord and magna-cum-laude graduate of
N.C. State (BA degrees in business management and economics) and a resident of
Charlotte.
“I consider myself blessed,” Kelley
said. “This is a job and a hobby at the same time. I have to-do things that I
don't like to do, but I love honoring people. They’re all so humble.”
He had good access to racers before
he became the hall of fame’s director, and that access has increased since. He
says it’s been strange to be so close to Petty, Jarrett, Cale Yarborough, Bobby
Allison, David Pearson and many others. They once were his heroes, and he’s
gotten to know them as ordinary folks.
One of his problems has been who to
induct. When they inducted the inaugural class on May 23, 2010, some people
complained there were only five. They wanted 20, but Kelley says you can’t
complain about a racing class that included Bill France Sr. (NASCAR’s founding
father), Bill France Jr. (Bill Sr.’s replacement and the man who helped steward
NASCAR into a new era), Junior Johnson, Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt.
The second class, inducted on May 23,
2011, was also strong, with Jarrett, Bobby Allison, Bud Moore, Pearson and Lee
Petty.
The 2012 class included two great
stock-car drivers, Darrell Waltrip and Cale Yarborough; a crew chief, Dale
Inman; a modified great, Richie Evans, and Glen Wood, founder and former owner
of the Wood Brothers Racing team.
Next year’s class has already been
announced, and it includes three great drivers (Buck Baker, Herb Thomas and
Rusty Wallace), a great crew chief (Leonard Wood) and a driver/car owner
(Cotton Owens).
Kelley says he’s thrilled to have
those men inducted, and he’s looking forward to future inductees.
But you can’t get Kelley to admit
which exhibit is his favorite.
“I don't think I’ll answer that,” he
said. “It’s like a grandparent having 40 or 50 grandchildren and asking him
which is his favorite.”
Still, it’s obvious that Kelley
enjoys the Glory Road section, which includes dozens of exhibits. There are
displays on the current Cup, Nationwide and truck tracks, as well as displays
of the tracks that fell by the wayside, like Hickory, Bowman Gray Stadium,
North Wilkesboro, Rockingham and tracks far, far away from the Carolinas.
Kelley is obviously proud of some of
the memorabilia, like the car that Ricky Craven drove when he edged Kurt Busch
by .002 seconds at Darlington on March 16, 2003. That was the closest record
finish in NASCAR history.
He says that people who don’t know
much about racing gravitate to the interactive displays, while knowledgeable
folk want to hear the old stories, learn about the old tracks and look at the
memorabilia.
While Kelley won’t give his favorite
display, he does say that the hall needs to induct an engine builder to go with
the racers, car owners and crew chiefs.
“I have Maurice (Petty)
on my list,” he said almost whimsically.
Contact: I can be reached at tgilli52@gmail.com or nc3022@yahoo.com. Also, my Twitter handle is EDITORatWORK.
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