Ron Slavic, a former Dirt Late Model driver and longtime operator of a custom screen printing and sign company in western Pennsylvania, died Thursday after being hospitalized for Covid-19 and double pneumonia. He was 52.

A competitor in local Late Model action through much of the 1990s, the resident of Uniontown, Pa., opened a screen printing and sign business in 1990 largely to help fund his race team. His Lemont Furnace, Pa.-based firm, which eventually came to be known as the Slavic Corporation, steadily grew into a well-known entity offering custom apparel and other services for individuals, race teams and corporations far-and-wide.

Slavic traveled more than 20,000 miles a year to work major Late Model events with his merchandise trailer, which stocked items for, among others, Rocket Chassis and drivers Brandon Sheppard, Chub Frank and Boom Briggs. His large size and outgoing personality made him a popular and well-known figure with fans and fellow T-shirt sellers.

“Our souvenir row is a little family in itself and we lost a family member,” said Mike Hayes, who operates the Jimmy Owens T-shirt trailer. “Ron Slavic was a great friend at the track and away from the track. If we were at the same track we always had lunch or dinner together. We were always bouncing different ideas off each other about different things. A lot of people didn’t know how to take his brutal honesty, but Ron had a heart of gold and was just a genuine great guy. We are all gonna miss him for sure.”

Few in the Late Model community knew Slavic as well as Rocket Chassis co-owner Mark Richards, who met Slavic in the early ‘90s and came to entrust to him all of his company and house car race team’s apparel business and graphics work.

“Whatever we needed, he took care of it. He was just a phone call and about an hour’s drive away,” Richards said of Slavic. “I got to know him on a personal basis, and deep down, Ron was a great guy. Sometimes he was a little abrasive — that was his personality — but he would go out of his way to do anything you needed done.

“About a month ago he was here (at the Rocket shop in Shinnston, W.Va.) and we sat here and talked for an hour-and-a-half, two hours. And I don’t know … after a look back on it after all this has went down, I guess there was a reason for that talk. I mean, we talked about a lot of stuff. I feel like he was a friend of mine and I think he felt the same way with me. He will definitely be missed by this team, I promise you.”

Slavic is survived by his wife, Holly, and two sons, Tyler and Tanner.

Services are scheduled for Wed., Dec. 29, at Hopwood Social Hall, 114 Redstone Furnace Road in Hopwood, Pa. Visitation is from 10:30 a.m. to 12 noon with a memorial service to follow.

Editor's note: Adds details on services