Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Death of 'Huey' touches many in racing
His real name was Paul, but nobody in the dirt-track racing world called him that. He was known simply as Huey — his surname, Wilcoxon, almost an afterthought because this was a man who was on a first-name basis with virtually everyone in the industry. | Slideshow
“You couldn’t go anywhere without people knowing him,” said Jamie Lathroum, the talented Dirt Late Model driver from Mechanicsville, Md., whose regional profile took off after Wilcoxon became his crew chief six years ago. “Any time you’d be with him, everybody would be like, ‘Huey! Huey!’”
But last Saturday night at Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway — the half-mile oval closest to Wilcoxon’s well-known MBH (MasterSbilt by Huey) Race Cars shop in Martinsburg, W.Va. — all of his friends and customers weren’t yelling his name. Instead, they were asking, “Where’s Huey?” in increasingly worried tones, his unexplained absence from the evening’s racing program setting off alarm bells across the pit area.
The hard, tragic truth was that Wilcoxon had died late Friday night, succumbing, at 50, to an apparent heart attack that sent the vehicle he was driving into a guardrail on Route 5 near La Plata, Md., as he headed home alone from Potomac Speedway in Budds Creek, Md. But his stepson and business partner, Billy Vacek, had not received any word on Wilcoxon from authorities by race time, so hope remained that perhaps he had made the highly unusual decision to go off the grid for a night.
“Billy come over to me and he said, ‘We can’t find Huey,’ ” said Dirt Late Model star Rick Eckert of York, Pa., who hired Wilcoxon to work on his self-owned equipment in the early ‘90s and maintained a close relationship with him ever since. “I was like, ‘What do you mean you can’t find him?’ He said, ‘He ain’t showed up.’ I told him, ‘Well, he must be mad. You know he’d get mad every now and then.’ ”
There were ominous signs, though, concerning Wilcoxon’s fate. The last person who had heard from him was apparently Dirt Late Model racer Jeff Rine of Danville, Pa., who got through to Wilcoxon’s cell phone shortly after he stopped for gas and a bite to eat a few miles from where he would be stricken. All calls to Wilcoxon on Saturday morning — including Lathroum’s customary race-day check-in — went straight to voicemail. In addition, Wilcoxon never showed up at his shop on Saturday afternoon to meet Rick Singleton, whose car is housed and maintained at MBH, and Jim Stevens of Penske Shocks, who was stopping by to pick up some parts.
“We all knew something wasn’t right,” said the 27-year-old Vacek, who lives just over 100 miles away from the MBH shop, in Mifflintown, Pa., near Port Royal Speedway. “Rick (Singleton) and Bob Harbaugh (of Harbaugh Amusements) — we rent our shop from him and he stops by every day to talk — went to Huey’s house (in Falling Waters, W.Va.) to see if he was there. He wasn’t but his dog was, so that’s when things started getting weird.
“I could see him maybe being frustrated with racing and just wanting to get away for the weekend or whatever and not telling anyone, but it ain’t like him to leave his dog unattended. He’d drive to the end of the world for his dog, so when we saw that he hadn’t been back to let his dog out we got in contact with police and hospitals.”
While the search for information on Wilcoxon’s whereabouts was underway, Vacek was at Hagerstown tending to MBH customers and working on the Dirt Late Model that his girlfriend, Lindsay Barton, races there each week. He tried to, at least.
“It was hard at the racetrack,” Vacek said. “About every team that’s at Hagerstown is good friends with him and they kept coming down and asking if I’d heard from him, but there wasn’t anything I could tell them.
“I was kind of in a daze. I could hardly even work on (Barton’s) car. I couldn’t even focus. It was a real rough night.”
Finally, at about 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, Vacek got the news he dreaded. A state cop who was Wilcoxon’s cousin had done some digging and discovered that Wilcoxon had been found dead in his vehicle the previous night. He relayed the information to Vacek just as state police were en route to Vacek’s brother Steven’s house with confirmation of Wilcoxon’s passing.
Moments later, still numb from the shock of losing the man who had raised him as his own son from the age of two, Vacek began informing Wilcoxon’s army of friends. The grim news spread with alacrity — by text message, across Facebook, on Twitter — and the outpouring of grief from all over the country soon reached Vacek.
“This morning I woke up and I had 130 text messages and I don’t know how many Facebook statuses and updates,” Vacek said on Easter Sunday. “It’s been unreal. I’m fine if I don’t look at my phone. When I look at all the messages that keep coming from his friends, it breaks me down.
“But getting texts and calls from people like Eckert and (Steve) Shaver and (Gary) Stuhler and Tader and Jerilyn Masters (of MasterSbilt Chassis) and (Steve) Francis — man, it means a lot. It just amazes me how many friends he had. He was around (racing) a long time and definitely met a lot of people.”
A native of Glen Burnie, Md., outside Baltimore, Wilcoxon grew up going to races at the old Dorsey (Md.) Speedway. After foregoing an opportunity to go to college on a football scholarship following his father’s sudden death — also from an apparent heart attack while driving when he was in his 50s — during his senior year of high school, he spent virtually his entire adult life carving out a living in the Dirt Late Model division. He worked for a long line of big names, including drivers Jeff Purvis, Larry Moore, Brad Malcuit, Les Hare, Rodney Franklin, Eckert and Stuhler and noted car owners Bobby Allen, Raye Vest and Dale Beitler. Most recently, he played a key role in Lathroum’s development.
The pursuit that would bring Wilcoxon his greatest notoriety — selling MasterSbilt machines that he customized with his own ideas — began in 2005 when he opened MBH Race Cars in New Freedom, Pa. With Vacek at his side, he built a thriving business that sold 20 to 30 cars a year to Mid-Atlantic teams. Just five months ago he moved the enterprise to a larger shop in Martinsburg, W.Va., putting MBH in a location more central to its customer base.
“He helped our business tremendously over there in the east,” said Tader Masters, who co-owns Crothersville, Ind.-based MasterSbilt Chassis. “He ran with that deal in ’06 and he got to where he sold quite a few cars over there. It takes years and years to build relationships and trust with guys like he did, so he’ll be missed.”
Wilcoxon’s passing hit Masters, 54, even harder on a personal level. They were more than merely business associates for the past decade.
“That guy was one of my best friends,” said Masters, who enjoyed Wilcoxon’s company for the last time when Wilcoxon spent three days last week at MasterSbilt and spoke to him by cell phone just a short time before he died. “We go back 30 years, back to when (car owner) Bobby Allen was racing and we were all kids on crews just having fun.
“Once Huey started selling our cars we just built a great relationship. We fought the same battle, had the same aggravation. We could run up front together or run behind together. We could drink together or not drink together. We just hit it off and were good buds.
“You couldn’t keep from liking him — you know what I mean?” added Masters, who often vacationed with Wilcoxon. “He had very few enemies out there, I can tell you that. He was just a hoot to be with or talk to on the phone.”
Wilcoxon was a hard-working, old-school type, but he possessed an outgoing personality that endeared him to so many people in the sport. Big and burly (6-foot-2, 280 pounds) with a booming voice and wit to spare, he was the life of any party.
“Everybody has a favorite memory of Huey,” said Eckert, who fielded a call from Wilcoxon last Friday afternoon as Wilcoxon headed to Potomac. “He was just one of those guys who everybody had a story about. If you got rained out and went drinking with a bunch of people, you just knew that Huey was gonna make it a fun time.”
“There’s not too many people out there who couldn’t have fun with that guy,” veteran crew chief Robby Allen said of Wilcoxon, who worked for Allen’s father Bobby’s team when Robby was a teenager. “You’d always enjoy being around him. He was just genuinely a good guy.”
“He joked with everybody,” offered Lathroum, who admitted he felt “lost” last Saturday night at Hagerstown with Wilcoxon missing from his side. “He had nicknames for this one and that one. He’d always be teasing somebody about something.
“And the best was after the races, when you’d sit around and hang out and he’d have story after story. If you’d get him and Robby Allen together, those two would have so many stories from back in the day when Huey helped Bobby Allen and Robby was 15, 16 years old or stories about being out on the road with Eckert and Shaver and other guys. He’d always come up with something to talk about, some kind of story.”
Former team owner Dale Beitler, who employed Wilcoxon at his painting company (1995-96) and later as his race team’s crew chief working with Stuhler (1999-2000), summed up the essence of Huey Wilcoxon.
“He was a cutup kind of guy,” Beitler said. “He had a story about everything, and he did a lot of crazy and fun stuff. He was just a fun guy to be around.
“And Huey was a good man. He took both those boys (stepsons Billy and Steven Vacek) in like they were his own and raised those boys like they were his own. He wasn’t their father, but he sure as hell was their dad, and that says something about the guy he was.”
Billy Vacek does indeed call Wilcoxon his dad. “Really, he was my father,” said Vacek, whose mother, Maria, was married to Wilcoxon for 14 years until they divorced in 2008. “Huey was the only parent I really had a relationship with.”
It was Wilcoxon who made a man of Vacek.
“He drove me hard,” Vacek said. “He’d get on you, but he wanted you to do things right and take pride in your work. He just had that old-school mentality of work hard and get it done, and we’ll play later.”
Now, with Wilcoxon gone, Vacek must use his mentor’s philosophy to make his legacy live on at MBH Race Cars.
“It’s gonna be a tough go,” said Vacek, who for the last five months has been making the daily 106-mile drive from his Keystone State home to the MBH shop to work alongside Wilcoxon. “But this is all I’ve ever done, all I know. It’s gonna be a big task for me to pick this up and continue without him, but that’s what I’ve gotta do.
“We’ve got a lot of customers that got to keep racing, and I’ve got a lot of close personal relationships with our customers. We’ve gotta keep racing. That’s what Huey would want.”
Ten things worth mentioning ...
1. How did Wilcoxon get his nickname? According to Billy Vacek, he picked it up while in high school. “His buddies called him Baby Huey,” he said. “The Huey stuck.”
2. The next race scheduled for Hagerstown Speedway just happens to be a major one — this Friday night’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series Stanley Schetrompt Founders Day Classic — and new track promoters Ernie Davis and Rick Jones will use the forum to honor Wilcoxon’s memory. They announced that they’ll collect money to defray Wilcoxon’s funeral expenses; sell MasterSbilt by Huey memorial stickers; have Lathroum follow the pace car for a special parade lap in Wilcoxon’s memory; and, after the checkered flag, have a bonfire so all Wilcoxon’s friends can reminisce in a manner that he would very much approve.
3. Billy Vacek is anticipating an emotional night at Hagerstown. “I imagine that’s gonna be pretty hard to deal with,” he said. “There’s gonna be all his friends who run Hagerstown all the time, and there’s also gonna be guys there who he was tight with like (Steve) Shaver, (Steve) Francis, Don O’Neal, Barry Wright … it’s gonna be tough seeing those guys.”
4. Austin Hubbard of Seaford, Del., will compete in Friday’s action at Hagerstown in a Huey Wilcoxon memorial car. Hubbard’s father, Mike, has designed a wrap featuring a photo of Wilcoxon and the MBH logo prominently displayed on the car’s quarterpanels.
5. Ray Cook of Brasstown, N.C., isn’t expected to be at Hagerstown on Friday after Tuesday’s announcement that his MasterSbilt house car ride has been pulled off the Lucas Oil Series by team owner Tader Masters, but he’ll certainly be thinking of Wilcoxon. Cook remembered his friend on Monday by Tweeting out a photo with the caption “Huey was the reason this photo was taken at eastbayracepark in 2012 winter nationals”; Wilcoxon, of course, worked with Cook at East Bay that year and stood in victory lane with Cook after his Lucas Oil Series triumph.
6. A Facebook post on Sunday by Ronnie DeHaven Jr. of Winchester, Va., showed how much Wilcoxon’s customers respected him: “You helped me to look like a hero and win the Winchester 200, a dream come true, keep a watch on us buddy!!”
7. Last Thursday’s announcement that Rick Eckert is replacing Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., behind the wheel of the Rocket Chassis house car got Eckert thinking about which machine from Mark Richards’s stable he’d prefer to climb in. “I was talking (with Richards) on the phone and I said, ‘Hey, I saw a picture of your shop and it has like five cars in there. Are any of them like that 7 car?’” Eckert said, referring to the Paul Crowl-owned Rocket No. 7 that he has enjoyed so much success with in selected non-World of Outlaws Late Model Series events. “That’s the one I’d like to go in.”
8. Eckert’s move to the Rocket team does mean he’ll have to make one significant adjustment. “Blue has always been my least favorite color,” he said with a laugh. “Everybody is making fun of me now — ‘you’re in a blue car, and you gotta have a blue suit and ride in a blue truck now.’ I said, ‘Well, I guess I’m gonna have to get used to it. Everything he’s got is blue.’ ”
9. Gregg Satterlee of Indiana, Pa., was a surprise entrant in last weekend’s Old Man’s Garage Spring Nationals tripleheader at Kentucky’s 201 Speedway, Ponderosa Speedway and Florence Speedway. “I don’t think anybody was expecting us to be there,” Satterlee’s chief mechanic, Robby Allen, said. “But there was really nothing going on around home, and we want to go back to the North-South (at Florence) this year so we figured if we had a chance to go there and get more laps and run a couple other races too, we might as well do it.” Satterlee had a solid weekend, finishing fifth at 201 and third at both Ponderosa and Florence.
10. The only thing that separated Satterlee from a very memorable outing at Florence last Saturday night was Club 29 — specifically, Club 29 chassis superstars Darrell Lanigan of Union, Ky., and Jimmy Owens of Newport, Tenn., who finished one-two in the Spring 50 after a race-long battle for the top spot. “Somebody said, ‘Were you close to Owens and Lanigan?’” Allen said. “I said, ‘---- no.' They were a half a track ahead. But if they weren’t there, everybody would be saying, ‘Man, that Satterlee killed everybody.’ We had a straightaway lead back to fourth.” Allen paused, and then added with a laugh, “Lanigan and Owens just had to show up and ruin it for everybody.”
