For long-time drag racer Gene Altizer, his induction into the October 2010 East Coast Drag Times Hall of Fame at Henderson, North Carolina, is just as good as his class win some 40 years earlier at the 1963 NHRA Nationals at “Speed City,” Indianapolis, Indiana. Gene will be presented the Life Time Achievement Award on Sunday, October 17 at the Civic Center.

Others evidently agree. “We were at Maryland International Raceway recently, putting out the word about the reunion and me getting inducted into it, and all the people there were going crazy,” the retired 70-year-old Arlington, Virginia, racer said. “I kind of teared up. My wife Margie was actually crying.”

Thrilled? “Oh my God, yes. This is so wonderful. I’m so thankful, so proud. This is so special. I’m speechless to talk about it. So excited. I know my S&S (racing) group was inducted in the past, but a standout special award for me alone is phenomenal. I’m so gifted for so many people to like me that much,” Altizer said.  I started S&S Racing in 1960, with my ’31 Plymouth. Chuch Stolze took me under his wing.

For long-time drag racer Gene Altizer, his induction into the October 2010 East Coast Drag Times Hall of Fame at Henderson, North Carolina, is just as good as his class win some 40 years earlier at the 1963 NHRA Nationals at “Speed City,” Indianapolis, Indiana. Gene will be presented the Life Time Achievement Award on Sunday, October 17 at the Civic Center.

Others evidently agree. “We were at Maryland International Raceway recently, putting out the word about the reunion and me getting inducted into it, and all the people there were going crazy,” the retired 70-year-old Arlington, Virginia, racer said. “I kind of teared up. My wife Margie was actually crying.”

Thrilled? “Oh my God, yes. This is so wonderful. I’m so thankful, so proud. This is so special. I’m speechless to talk about it. So excited. I know my S&S (racing) group was inducted in the past, but a standout special award for me alone is phenomenal. I’m so gifted for so many people to like me that much,” Altizer said.  I started S&S Racing in 1960, with my ’31 Plymouth. Chuch Stolze took me under his wing.

He is in good company. A whole plethora of other drag racers, some active, some long-ago retired, will be inducted into the East Coast Drag Times Hall of Fame. The racer reunion, set for October 15-17 at Henderson, North Carolina, will also include a car show for any pre-1976 antique and classic car, hot rod, nostalgia drag racing car, rat rod, “anything with wheels on it,” says reunion and car show coordinator Nancy Wilson, Executive Director of the Vance County, North Carolina Tourism Development Authority, who began the reunion in her back yard in 2001.

It has grown from a back yard get-together of a few racers and their friends and family to a main event that boasts of 35,000 folks from as far away as Michigan to Florida to California, all getting together to talk over old racing times, to show their cars and to see a part of racing and automotive history. The location of it all will be in Henderson, North Carolina, which closes off the entire town --- 12 blocks long --- for the reunion and car show. There will also be plenty of food, attractions and the annual Show, Shine, Shag and Dine for those who like to dance the day and night away.

But here, the cars are the stars of this hot rodding show. Altizer’s old S&S racing team, including Fred Bear and his ’40 Willys; Dave Hales’ ’37 Willys; Charlie Hill’s famed “Filthy 40” Willys coupe; K.S. Pittman’s  fabulous ’33 Willys and his ’41 Willys; and Altizer’s own A/Gas Anglia, which won its class at the 1963 Nationals championship drag race and got runner-up in Middle Eliminator to “Ohio George” Montgomery and his Willys, will be there, a first gathering for the entire group. As an additional note on Altizer --- after his winning Anglia, he went on to race other cars, including wild and wooly Funny Cars before retiring in the 1980s.

Vance County tourism authority executive director Nancy Wilson, who lives in Henderson, North Carolina, is the main motivator behind the reunion. A long-time and now-retired racer herself --- she began in a Plymouth back in 1968, and continued racing in Mopars through the early 1980s --- says that the reunion’s early beginnings back in 2001 grew until her back yard and later a community building at Lake Kerr could no longer hold the racers and hot rodders who attended the annual event. The tourism authority in the mid part of the 2000 decade gave its blessing to the reunion being held in Henderson, as well as the city itself, and the official East Coast Drag Times Hall of Fame and Reunion was born.    

Some of the early attendees were Billy West, Hubert Platt, Pee Wee Wallace, Bobby Warren, Jerry Baltes and others who didn’t live that far from Wilson’s home. “Every time I talked to one or the other, they told me that we should invite this person or that, and it just got bigger and bigger. So we moved the reunion (there was none other on the east coast at the time) to the community building at Lake Kerr, and eventually a huge group of people showed up.   

The town of Henderson welcomes the opportunity to show the historic downtown area to show participants and visitors.  Henderson is located on exit 214, I-85, two hours south of Richmond, Va  and 45 mins. north of Durham, NC.  
    
Wilson said, show guest have included “Big Daddy” Don Garlits, Al Ackerman, Dick Burgess, Carol “Bunny” Burkett, Bill Carroll, Jim Walther, Dave Koffel, Kenny Warren, Californian Tommy Grove, Dan Weis, Wally Bell, the famed Pacers Car Club and their altered, Johnny Rocca, Herb McCandless (Mr. Four Speed), the late Ronnie Sox, camshaft grinder Ed Iskenderian, Robert “Bones” Balogh, also from California, Arnie “the Farmer” Beswick, Max Hurley, Ed Hedrick, Bill Wilcom, Jim and Alison Lee, Brian Beattie and the first lady of racing, Linda Vaughan and many others.

Dates of the East Coast Drag Times Hall of Fame and hot rodding gathering will be October 15-17 at Henderson, North Carolina. For more information, telephone 866-438-4565, extension 21 or e-mail,  vctourism@gloryroad.net or www.eastcoastdragtimeshalloffame.com