Obituary
Racer, J&J Steel founder mourned by community
By Todd Turner
DirtonDirt.com managing editor
Johnny Johnson was a driver, sponsor and track owner. (K.C. Rooney)
Iowa's Johnny Johnson, a cigar-chomping fixture in Dirt Late Model racing as an accomplished driver, multiple racetrack owner and prolific sponsor of some of the sport’s highest-profile teams, died Saturday night at age 75 after a lengthy illness. Johnson’s death from Alzheimer’s disease in West Des Moines was confirmed by long-time crew member Jeff Kunkel. | Slideshow
Johnson’s J&J Steel of West Burlington, Iowa, sponsored dozens of teams more than 30 seasons, but most famously adorned the quarterpanels of a pair of fellow Iowa natives, Scott Bloomquist’s Barry Wright house car starting in 1995 and later driver fellow Hall of Famer Billy Moyer’s yellow No. 21.
“It kind of puts a lump in your throat,” said the 53-year-old Moyer, a six-time World 100 winner. “I could just go on and on. He’s just a great guy and one of the best sponsors I’ve ever had. He was just always there to help me get what I needed to get to win races. If we needed something better than what we had, we’d sit down and talk about it and try to figure out how to sell something or get something better for us. He helped me in a lot of ways.”
“People will sure miss the J&J Steel car, that’s for sure,” said Wright, the South Carolina chassis builder who first met Johnson in 1988. “Have you ever just met a guy where the first time you saw him, you sat down and talked it and seemed like he was one of your best friends? He was just that type of guy.”
Besides sponsoring teams, Johnson started his own driving career at the age of 40 and was a two-time winner on the National Speedway Contest Association in his first few seasons and later a three-time winner on the IMCA-sanctioned Deery Brothers Summer Series. His 2002 victory at Quincy (Ill.) Raceway made him one of the oldest winners of a sanctioned Dirt Late Model event at age 67. Overall he posted 29 career IMCA victories.
A frequent visitor to Ohio’s Eldora Speedway and other tracks that hosted the sport’s biggest events, Johnson and his son Jay are the only father-and-son combination to earn starting spots in the same World 100 field at Eldora, first in 1989 and again in ’93. The elder Johnson’s best World 100 performance in three career starts was an eighth-place finish in 1980 in his second year of Late Model racing.
Johnson at one time owned Iowa dirt tracks in Columbus Junction and Bloomfield, and had two stints as owner of 34 Raceway in West Burlington, not far from his J&J Steel and Ideal Ready Mix businesses he started after his father sold the family farm in the late 1950s.
Kathy Root, president of the sanctioning body IMCA, was among many in the Dirt Late Model community mourning the passing of a racing figure who touched so many on so many levels.
“One of the biggest supporters of racing ever, Johnny helped many drivers over the years and was a big part of IMCA Late Model racing,” Root said. “Johnny was instrumental in the Late Model spec engine and will be missed by all of us. The owner and promoter of 34 Raceway in West Burlington for several years, he was also a sponsor of our Late Model division with his J&J Steel business.”
Born in 1935, the self-described farm boy with a ruddy face launched his steel operations after buying a pickup and a welding machine, eventually developing his southeastern Iowa business into J&J Steel in 1967, later adding concrete and quarry operations to his interests.
With his businesses already sponsoring dirt racers, Johnson started driving himself in 1978, first competing in the sportsman division and a year later stepping up to Late Models in a Camaro built by fellow Iowan Dick Schiltz.
“I was sponsoring a couple of guys and I decided I could drive just as good as they do, so why was I sponsoring them,” Johnson said in a 2001 interview with National Dirt Digest. “And I really think it helped my family back when I started doing it because they got involved with it as well.
”It’s just something that I enjoy. I like all the people I meet. I’m not a suit and a tie guy, I like to be around everybody and everybody puts their pants on the same way, one leg at a time. I just like to socialize with all these people. That’s from where I come from, from working as a farm boy.”
The famed J&J Steel logo — a pair of orange J’s atop a beam emblazoned by the word ”steel“ — was carried on race cars through the Midwest and beyond, with Bloomquist, Moyer, Freddy Smith, Rick Eckert, Brian Birkhofer, Ronnie Johnson, Shannon Babb and Dale McDowell among the most prominent Dirt Late Model racers enjoying Johnson’s help. In the 1980s, Johnson also fielded ARCA cars for drivers Rodney Combs, Bosco Lowe and the late Davey Allison.
”The Moyers and the Bloomquists and the Freddy Smiths, you name them all and they’re all friends of mine. There’s sponsors out there for them,“ Johnson said, ”but there’s not enough sponsors for the guys that run in the back. They need help just as much as the guys that run in the front.”
Johnson’s sponsorship is best known for Bloomquist’s No. 18 during some of his best seasons on the Hav-A-Tampa Dirt Racing Series in the mid-’90s, and Wright remembers when their partnership began after the chassis builder successfully assisted Johnson one night at Eldora. ”He said, ’Barry, any time you ever want anything, you let me know, and I’ll try to help you,’ ” Wright recalled.
Some time later while Wright was putting together his house car deal with Bloomquist, Johnson repeated his offer just as a snazzy truck-and-trailer combination rolled by in the pit area. ”We’d like to have one of those,“ Wright blurted. ”And (Johnson) said, ’Done deal.’ The next week, he sent his plane down here to pick us up, and we flew up there to Iowa and we were like kids in a candy store getting to pick out whatever we wanted.”
Not that Johnson was a pushover, Wright added.
”He’d let you know if he didn’t like something. He was a take charge kind of guy,“ Wright said. ”You didn’t have to worry if you weren’t pleasing him, because he’d sure tell you. You’d rather have that than someone who doesn’t tell you something and you don’t know what’s what.”
Johnson enjoyed sponsoring other race teams, but he enjoyed even more tossing away his cigar and climbing into his own No. 99.
”I’m doing it for myself so I really enjoy it,“ said Johnson, who quit racing following the 2007 season. ”There’s a million guys out there that would want me to sponsor them, but once you’ve been a driver, you’re a driver and that’s all you can think about. It’s like running my business. I don’t feel other people could run it as good as I do. Once you’re a racer, you get hooked by it.“
With their Iowa connections, Moyer spent many years racing with Johnson before he landed J&J Steel sponsorship, and the Batesville, Ark.-based driver helped Johnson with his driving on occasion.
”For the limited experience Johnny had, he always did a heckuva job,“ Moyer said. ”Being an older guy and not getting started until he was 40 years old, he did a phenomenal job, really. He had a million-dollar business to run, and racing was just fun for him. ... He always told me, ’Heck, anybody can drive these cars if you get the car right.’ That was one of his favorite sayings.”
Moyer remembers a rainout long ago at a now-closed track near Branson, Mo., that Johnson’s competitive spirit came out when, following an evening of eating and drinking, drivers and crew members challenged one another in a sprint.
”I don’t even remember who won the foot race, but it was just so funny that they lined up and raced about 50 yards down the highway in front of this hotel,“ Moyer said with a laugh. ”Johnny got down on all fours to get started in this foot race, and I’m not sure he didn’t beat them guys. At that time, he was 45 or 47 years old, and these other guys he was racing were 10 years younger than him. That’s always stuck out as pretty funny.
“He was very competitive, for sure in his business. He knew how to make things happen, and that’s why he was as successful as he was.”
Survivors include four children, including fellow racer Jay, along with five grandchildren. A private family service is scheduled for 10 a.m. Saturday at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Mediapolis, Iowa. Burial will be in Kossuth Cemetery. Friends and fans are welcome to a ceremony is scheduled for noon-3 p.m. Saturday at the Burlington Golf Club. Special remembrances will be shared at 1 p.m.
The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the John R. Johnson Memorial for Southeast Iowa Builders Association Scholarships. Memorials may be sent to P.O. Box 1113, Burlington, IA.
