NOTE: This column originally appeared in the October 30, 2007 issue of Area Auto Racing News
There was no column in this space last week but I had a good reason for being absent and this will undoubtedly be the most self-indulgent column I have written for AARN. Last week a column was due as usual and early in the week I had already planned on covering the Dirt Track World Championship race in this space. Or so I ‘thought’.
Mom passed away.
On Tuesday October 16, all things racing went right out the window.
So here we are, a week after her funeral and I need something done for AARN and I haven’t the motivation or faintest clue as to what to write about as racing hasn’t even been on my radar this week when the wife suggests I write something about my Mom. After all, the wife explains, she was a race fan, had plenty of relatives who raced and were involved in the sport, she took me to my first race and besides, it’s Mom.
It’s true, my very dirt race I attended was on June 26, 1965 and I sat beside my Mother. Dad and Mom brought us to the grand opening of Wayne County Speedway in Orrville, OH where Dad’s brother, Wellman Lehman, was an investor/stockholder and a track officer. We visited WCS frequently (at the time we only lived a few miles from there) and a couple years later Mom was working during the week and race nights with my aunt who owned the three concession buildings they had then.But I remember many, many nights during the 1960’s sitting beside Mom at the races.
Mom’s interest in racing didn’t begin there though.One of her older brothers, Cecil Smith, was a successful long time dirt stock car and modified owner throughout the 1950’s based in central Ohio. Smith also spent some winning time behind the wheel. Smith’s racecars competed at tracks throughout central Ohio as well as western Pennsylvania.
Smith’s racecars were adorned with the numbers #119 and #120. (Smith was also partnered at times with fellow car owner Harry Landaw.)Among Smith’s hired guns behind the wheel were top-flight drivers Blackie Kern, George McCollough, Bernie Myers and Bernie ‘Meatball’ Keithline. Among the Ohio tracks most frequented by the Smith-owned cars were Ashland Fairgrounds Speedway, Midvale Speedway, Olivesburg Speedway, Moreland Speedway and Grabbitts Speedway.
Her younger brother Chuck Lyon was a successful go kart racer and pit crewmember for his brother’s stock car team.And at many of these races cheering either my uncle or one of his drivers on were Mom and, in the early years, her first husband, Don Horst, Sr., a professional mechanic who often wrenched on his brother-in-law’s race cars. My brother, Stewart, and I began working at WCS in the very early 1970’s. I began as the public relations director and Stewart started as a concession manager and eventually became the office manager, both of us working under our uncle, Wellman, who by then had become the promoter and majority stockholder. Mom, even sometimes without Dad, often came to the races with friends and other relatives.
She was proud of all five of her children and when her middle child decided to try and pursue a career in racing she was encouraging and supportive. Always. She made many friends who were and are involved in racing, chief among them the entire (generations of) Jacobs family, former Late Model racers Dave Ledford & Blaine Aber & their families, and others.
During my STARS years and my promoter years at WCS she had to have a shirt any time we made new ones that she dutifully wore in Michigan when Dad was a pastor in Muskegon. When my parents retired and settled back in Wayne County, Ohio, she was able to visit the track and see the races again on occasion and even assisted my brother at times in his store when he had Lehman Racing Collectibles a decade or so back. So yeah, Mom liked racing and liked it even better when a relative was involved (or if she got to drink coffee with David Pearson, which she did at my uncle’s, at the time not realizing he was a superstar celebrity).
Mom was born in Adena, OH and raised primarily in Wooster, OH. At age two her father passed away in a coal mining accident (she had an amazing stepfather though, Charles ‘Pappy’ Lyon, Sr., one of my heroes) and Mom was then, too, widowed with two small children at age 26 when her first husband was killed during a tornado saving his employer’s life. Dirt Late Model driver Blaine Aber’s father, Clyde Aber, who was also involved in racing, was one of the men who dug him out to no avail after a chimney and roof collapsed. She later married my father, Rev. Randall Lehman, had three more children and spent well over 50 years married to him and was absolutely devoted to her husband, five children, their spouses, her 12 grandchildren and 16 grandchildren.
So now Mom is gone but for myself, Don, Cheryl, Stewart & Karen, the memories of Mom remain. In recent days the memories have come like a tidalwave and there have been a multitude of racing memories with Mom I have nearly forgotten, until now. I have them and I will certainly cherish them and maybe pass a few along to my grandsons. They are warm and wonderful memories, for sure, but the one I will never, ever forget will be the day she passed on while I held her hand with my sister Cheryl at her side.That was an honor and privilege.
It was, and is, an honor and privilege to be Helen Maxine Lehman’s son.
