Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 17, 1991 TAG: 9102170017
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bob Zeller
DATELINE: DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. LENGTH: Long
As strong as the waves that endlessly crash upon the shores of this birthplace of speed, the influence of Big Bill France survives.
But in the twilight of his life, the 81-year-old founder of NASCAR is a ghost of his former self. Big Bill France, who stood so tall and so strong for so many years, is afflicted with Alzheimer's disease.
France still goes to his office and occasionally visits Daytona International Speedway, the place he conceived and built and loves so much. His pace his slow. Longtime friends and employees help him about.
"Nothing stands still in this world. Things get better or worse, bigger or smaller."
Those were the first words France uttered at the first meeting of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing 43 years ago in a smoke-filled room atop Daytona Beach's Streamline Hotel.
How true they have become for France himself. For just as surely as his health has grown worse with age, his place in the history of automobile racing has become bigger with time.
France retired as NASCAR president in 1972, but he remained a dominating presence in the sport through the rest of the 1970s and into the 1980s.
But his mind began to fail in the mid-1980s. On Aug. 18, 1987, his wife of 59 years, Anne, and his two sons, NASCAR President William C. France Jr. and James C. France, took a step that is so difficult for any family: They petitioned the Circuit Court of Volusia County, Fla., to become his legal guardians.
The language of lawyers, so stiff and harsh, says in case file 87-1129-02: "William H.G. France is an incompetent, whose date of birth was Oct. 26, 1909. . . . The nature of the incompetent's incapacity is senile dementia of the Alzheimer's type. It is necessary that a guardian of the person and property be appointed for the incompetent."
Incompetent is not the word to describe the towering NASCAR founder, who stands 6 feet 5. He was gracious. He was tough. He was warm-hearted. He was dictatorial. He was unassuming in the face of praise. He was a racer.
France ran NASCAR with an iron hand; he was the czar of stock-car racing. But NASCAR also was, in the minds of many, the best-run racing organization in the world. In the 1970s, when Indy-car racing was mired in the battle between USAC and CART, France told people the reason he could get things done was because he could hold his board meetings in a telephone booth.
He also was a generous man. He encouraged and helped young racers.
"He was a guy who reached out for people in other types of racing and got them to come to Daytona," said Roger Penske, now a team owner. "I remember he bought my motel room for me and helped me come down here to run a sports car back when they first ran the Daytona 24-Hour race."
"He tried to be fair with everybody," said H. Clay Earles, the owner of Martinsville (Va.) Speedway, who has known France since the late 1940s. "I don't know who else could have done the same job he did."
Big Bill France may have been laid low by that debilitating mental illness. But even with that he was, quite literally, a $6 million man.
An inventory of his property, filed on Jan. 11, 1988, showed he was personally worth $5,845,729.58, not including his wife's interests.
About $3.7 million of that is in some 266,000 shares he owns of the stock of International Speedway Corp., the company he formed that owns the speedways at Daytona, Darlington, S.C., and Talladega, Ala.
NASCAR itself issued only six shares, and France owned less than a share (.9672), which was valued in 1989 at $353,048.
France himself is responsible for nearly every penny of that wealth, for when he and his young family arrived in Daytona in 1934, he had $25 in his pocket and $75 in the bank.
A native of Washington, D.C., France was then a young mechanic who drove race cars on the tracks around the nation's capital and the East Coast. Although the nation was in the throes of the Great Depression, France worked a variety of jobs. His move south, originally with Miami in mind, was simply to get a fresh start.
Curiosity drew him to Daytona and Ormond beaches for a visit. He was well aware that the great land speed trials had been held there since 1902. He and his wife decided this was where they wanted to be, so they rented a three-room bungalow in Daytona for $13.50 a month.
Six months after France's arrival, the great land speed era at Daytona ended with Sir Malcolm Campbell's 330 mph run on the hard-packed sand at Daytona. The speeds had become too fast for the narrow beach and Campbell moved to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
To fill the void, Daytona leaders staged the first beach race for stock motor cars in 1936. France helped organize the event and raced in it, too. He was credited with a fifth-place finish, although the event was so chaotic, no one really knew who finished where.
That first effort lost $22,000, but France and others doggedly pressed forward and managed to continue staging the race. France became the promoter in 1938 and began holding two races a year. He also continued racing, winning in 1938 and 1940.
It was an era when a lap prize could be $5 credit at the Red Pig Barbeque, a box of extra fancy Hav-a-Tampa cigars, a bottle of rum from the Walgreen Liquor Store or $25 credit at Dick Rose's used-car lot.
After World War II, the popularity of the beach races mushroomed. Manufacturers became actively involved. They engineered modifications in their passenger cars to make them better for the races.
By 1948 - only a year after he organized NASCAR - France realized that the days of beach racing were numbered. Simply, there was not enough room for all the fans.
It took 11 years and a seemingly endless series of roadblocks for France to overcome, but by 1959, the Daytona International Speedway was built and made ready for its first race.
The success of NASCAR made France a wealthy man. But by 1988, he certainly had not become the Donald Trump of Daytona Beach. He did not enrich himself at the expense of his organization.
France and his wife live in a $350,000 house on the Halifax River in Ormond Beach. And he held interest in several parcels of land, including some oceanfront acreage, in the town of Ponce Inlet, where the beach course was located in the 1940s and 1950s.
Beyond that, his only property is a couple of modestly valued lots in Volusia County, the court file shows.
In 1989, the France family began selling some of his assets to ease the tax burden on his estate. They set up a gift program for his descendants. The Ponce Inlet beachfront property was sold. On June 20, 1989, NASCAR purchased France's stock in the organization.
"It's sad," Earles said. "He doesn't know anyone anymore. But I think so much of Bill. He's a man who always thought about improving everything he's ever done."
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