Blue Ridge Country - September/October 2015 - 40

"Daddy wasn't bitter and didn't
like anger around him," she says.
"The climate at the time held him
back. If he had been white he
would have had the opportunities
to get what he needed to do what
he could do. There were people
who could have helped him but
were uncomfortable doing that. He
was disappointed and frustrated but
rarely angry-he had an even temperament."

MAKING DO AND
WINNING RESPECT

Top: Wendell Scott appeared on a Winner's Circle bubble gum
card.
Lower: Scott served in the motor pool during his hitch in the
U.S Army 101st Airborne during WWII.

40 BlueRidgeCountry.com

Jarrett first met Scott when they
competed in a Sportsman/Modified
race at the Chinese Corner track in
Norfolk, Virginia.
"Wendell did more to win with
what he had to do it with than anyone else I've known," Jarrett says.
"He was racing to support his family
and I respected him for that."
Not long before the Jacksonville
race, when Jarrett switched from
Chevies to Fords, he sold his blue
'61 Chevy Bel Air coupe to Scott,
who hauled it from Jarrett's home
in Newton, North Carolina back to
Danville on an open trailer.
"I had led a good portion of the
Jacksonville race but I was driving a
borrowed car from Holman-Moody
(race team and race car manufacturer)," Jarrett says. "I ran it with our
wheels and the wheel patterns were
off-didn't match. I was in the pits
twice and lost six laps and came in
seventh or eighth but I was tickled
to death that Wendell won in that
Bel Air."
"Wendell was a hard worker and
a very humble man and, occasionally, we had extra parts and could
share with him," agrees Glen Wood
(he was Glenn before he arbitrarily
dropped an N a number of years
ago), another NASCAR Hall of Famer. "Since he raced mostly Ford cars
and was a fellow Virginia native, we
were happy to help him."
"Wendell Scott was an individual ahead of his time as far as racing
goes-there were no other colored
drivers," says Junior Johnson, another NASCAR Hall of Famer. "He

didn't have a lot of money to put
into his cars but you could not have
found a finer person than Wendell.
He was a normal person with very
few resources but he and his boys
were so energetic. Ned (Jarrett) and I
tried to do a lot for him-with tires,
wheels, whatever-but it was not
a pity thing. It was something you
wanted to do if you knew Wendell
and his family.
"One time we were racing at
some former ball park in New York
and while we were all at the track
some kids broke into the pit area
and stole whatever they could,"
Johnson adds. "The rest of us had
put things in our trucks but since
Wendell carried everything in his
car, he had left his things in the pit
area. When he got done racing he
didn't have a thing and he and his
family were supposed to travel with
us all to more races in Canada from
there. So we helped out to get him
what he needed."

THE MAN DRIVING
THE RACE DRIVER
"Daddy helped other people too-
always made himself available,"
Sybil Scott says. "A lot of people
reaped the benefit of Daddy's mechanical genius. He was very resourceful."
Franklin Scott, Scott's son and
a retired educator, reiterates the
point: "Daddy had little formal
education but was far ahead of his
time, like using a nitrous oxide
hand pump system that he learned
in the Army. He would fix cars for
free for people in need and let them
live with us while he did it. We had
only a two-bedroom house and I
remember people sleeping in the
bathtub. Daddy was a man who
sealed contracts with a handshake."
Wendell Scott has been called
the Jackie Robinson of stock car
racing, comparing him to the
Brooklyn Dodger infielder who
broke racial barriers 20 years earlier in major league baseball. But
while Robinson's fame was national, Scott's was centered on a
fledgling sport deep in the heart of
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