1946
A Talk with JACK SMITH - by Eddie Samples
I looked at NASCAR's list of top 50 drivers of all time, but I did not see the name of Jack Smith. The list was chock full of good racers but very absent of one of the best. I called Jack at his transmission shop in Spartanburg, S.C. and asked to stop by to see him. I wanted to know exactly what I was missing that NASCAR apparently was not.

Jack was born in Illinois but moved to Georgia when he was two. His first race was at Thomaston, Georgia in 1946. He explained, "I used to watch those guys before the war out at Lakewood and knew I could do that. When I got old enough I entered a race in Thomaston. I qualified second to defending national champion Roy Hall but after the race started I spun out a whole bunch so I knew I had some learning ahead of me."

When I asked Jack to name the best driver in the stable of Raymond Parks, (Lloyd Seay, Roy Hall, Bill France, Bob and Fonty Flock, Red Byron, and Norman Wrigley), he replied, "It would be hard to pick becuse they had such good equipment with Red Vogt working on the cars. A lot of drivers would have won under those circumstances, but I'd say Bob Flock was the best of the group."

Smith's favorite track was the Daytona superspeedway. "It was a smooth track. Of course I had a good win there in 1960 for the Firecracker race. I led my share of the first 500 in 1959 but had ignition problems. When asked about his worst accident, he said, "Well, I guess the one that gave me the biggest problem was at Darlington in '50 when Curtis Turner and I tangled and I ended upside down with an arm full of stitches. Bad thing about that was up until 1975 I was still having problems with that arm and doctors were still taking broken glass out of it. They put over a hundred stitches in it in '50 and had to keep opening it up to pull more glass out for the next quarter of a century, but I think they finally got it all."

And finally, the reason I dropped by his office: What about the NASCAR Top 50 list? Why aren't you on it? "That's a good question," he laughed. "The credentials are there (21 Winston Cup wins, Most Popular Driver in 1958, Motorsports Press Association Hall of Fame and on and on), but I can't tell you."

(reproduced with permission from Pioneer Pages, the official newsletter of the Georgia Automobile Racing Hall of Fame Association)
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1946
RUSS TRUELOVE
After graduation from high school in 1942 Russ Truelove, a native of Waterbury, CT, joined the US Navy and the crew of the USS Sherwood DD 520 in the Aleutian and Northern Kruli Islands in the Pacific. He was discharged in 1946 and began racing in New England and the along the east coast in a 1947 Crager. Savin Rock, Plainville, Danbury, Stafford Springs, and Rhinebeck were home to Russ until he joined NASCAR in 1953.

In 1956 Russ qualified fifth at Daytona (128.205 mph) and made a bit of history. While down shifting down from 130 mph for the North Turn, the right tire dug in, and the car flipped six times. Photos of the crash made the March 19th issue of Life magazine.

"I walked away, but spent the night in the hospital. My bell was pretty well rung," says Russ. "I consider myself very lucky to have survived. You don't think about a whole lot but hanging on. You see sand and sky. It all happens so fast," Russ explains. But, he still wonders how Ralph Moody managed to duplicate his gymnastics and still finish the race.

After the race, Russ got a new car body from the factory, but when he blew an engine in 1957, he quit racing. "It was just too expensive for independent drivers," he explains. Russ had two top ten finishes during his Grand National career.

Russ' racing career was revived in 1989 when his wife presented him with a four-cylinder Spec Racer kit car for Christmas, and he was off and running with the Sports Car Club of America. He finally stopped racing when he was hit from behind and knocked into a wall. "The medical people told me to keep out of racing, and I decided to listen to them," he said.


Russ still lives in Waterbury and has served as a director of The Living Legends of Auto Racing, Inc. These days he spends a large part of his time scheduling public appearances for our members. Russ can usually be found posing for photographs with his restored 1956 Mercury and signing autographs for old and new fans at Living Legends events.