H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler was one of a kind. Not just as a promoter, but as a person.
Wheeler, who died on Wednesday at the age of 86, is famous for utilizing promotions that often were outlandish, sometimes aggravating and setting the standard for pre-race shows, but he also was a mentor to many young people, including myself.
Perhaps it was because two of Wheeler’s three children were daughters and he understood the sport’s environment of the early 1980s that he took me under his wing. It was an era when the sport had no female broadcasters, public relations representatives, track and race team executives, engineers and crew members. There might be one or two women press members, so there was only one bathroom in most press boxes. I was with United Press International at the time and I had already been to one track and picked up a press credential that had printed on it “No Women Allowed In Pits.”
It was print journalism’s heyday and Wheeler knew every reporter that covered an event at his track and who that person represented. He suggested stories and offered advice. It was while Wheeler was president and general manager at Charlotte Motor Speedway that his communications department, headed by Ed Clark and Bob Kelley, created the track’s annual media tour.
The access the media had to race shops, drivers, team owners and crew chiefs was unprecedented. The first year in 1983 there was one passenger bus with a North Carolina Highway Patrol trooper leading it from race shop to race shop. By the 1990s, there were four buses packed with media gathering preseason stories.
Wheeler helped a young Dale Earnhardt when he was struggling to break into NASCAR Cup racing. When Alan Kulwicki moved from Wisconsin to North Carolina, Wheeler once told the young man that when he won his first race, he needed to do something memorable to celebrate. After Kulwicki’s initial Cup victory at Phoenix he executed what was then dubbed the “Polish Victory Lap” because of Kulwicki’s heritage. Today, it’s identified as a reverse victory lap, but Kulwicki created something memorable as Wheeler advised.
While most people always talk about the publicity and promotional stunts Wheeler spearheaded, it was his understanding of people that made him such a special person professionally and personally. He always knew what the motorsports community needed. When Tim Richmond died of AIDS, it was Wheeler who had a memorial service for the flamboyant driver in the speedway’s ballroom. He did the same for the motorsports community when driver Rob Moroso was killed in a traffic accident after the September 1990 North Wilkesboro race.
Bruton Smith hired Wheeler in 1975 to be the Charlotte speedway’s general manager after Smith regained control of the track he and Curtis Turner built. However, it wasn’t that simple. Initially, when Smith approached Wheeler the Belmont, North Carolina, native declined. Wheeler explained to me that while Firestone’s representative in the 1960s he got tired of seeing his friends die in race cars. He had even had to identify an open wheel driver, a friend who was killed at Indianapolis, and he didn’t want to return to the sport. However, Smith persisted, and Wheeler eventually relented. One could say, the rest is history, but not quite.
I mentioned he was one of my mentors. When I was trying to make a major job decision in 1984, he and I sat on the pit wall at Charlotte Motor Speedway and discussed the situation. I followed the advice he gave me, and I have never regretted it. After that, whenever I needed advice or to discuss a situation in the sport, I always went to Wheeler.
I will miss him tremendously, but he will always be remembered!
Thank you, my friend!
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