Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 13, 1993 TAG: 9302130112
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DAYTONA BEACH, FLA. LENGTH: Long
DRIVER'S DEATH IN RACE SPREADS GLOOM OVER DAYTONA
The Florida 200 Daytona Dash race had just ended Friday at Daytona International Speedway, and as the cars and the pit crews streamed back into the garage, word spread quickly that jovial Joe Booher was dead.Booher, 51, a back-of-the-pack racer who competed for the sheer fun of it, had tangled with 55-year-old Carl Horton just past the start-finish line as they started the second lap.
After hitting the wall head on, the "Booher Farms" Chevrolet spun around and around, spreading a huge cloud of white smoke. Another driver, Rodney "Pee Wee" White, drove blindly into the smoke and plowed into Booher's spinning car. White was seriously injured.
Rescue workers had to cut the roof off Booher's car to get him out. He suffered massive head and internal injuries. The race was stopped for 12 minutes, 35 seconds.
When it was over, winner Will Hobgood was celebrating in Victory Lane. But in the garage, happy faces turned sad as drivers and crew members learned of the tragedy.
Horton, from Ayden, N.C., was standing by his car - the black Chevrolet with a big American flag decal on the hood. He wore jeans and a grease-streaked sport shirt. His day had ended after 28 laps with engine problems.
The left front of his car bore the damage from his collision with Booher, but Horton had not lost control of his car during the crash and was not hurt.
He had not heard the bad news.
"We were on the outside of the 98 car going into turn 1," Horton recalled. "I was right against the wall. It looked like he started comin' over toward the wall.
"His car just kinda drifted up, so we backed out of the gas. And that just seemed to kinda pull the back end of his car into our left front. He headed into the wall head first and after that, there was just a lot of smoke.
"It wasn't no fault of his," Horton said. "And I don't think it was our fault. You just don't touch a guy if you can help it."
It was just one of those deals. In fact, when Horton had needed help earlier in the week, the short, stout, ever-smiling Booher was right by his side.
"He helped us get our [right] side [window] glass in," Horton said.
"When we first came down here a week ago, he was very helpful. He already had his window in. In fact, he even gave us our window."
"Is he OK?"
The answer was hard to give.
"He didn't survive the accident," a reporter told Horton.
Horton fell silent. He turned away and retreated to the front of his car to grieve in private.
A few minutes later, Horton wandered away from his car. He found a place to sit next to the Hoosier Racing Tire trailer in the Grand National garage. And there he sat for the next 25 minutes, alone and numb, as the noise and bustle of garage work continued around him.
Booher was the 24th person to die at Daytona International Speedway since it opened in 1959. The last death was in February, 1990, when Julius `Slick' Johnson was fatally injured in an ARCA 200 crash.
Even though Halifax Medical Center is less than a mile from the track, Booher had been flown there by helicopter. At 11:45 a.m. - 12 minutes after the race restarted - Booher was pronounced dead by Dr. Jose Dimayuga.
White, 37, from Gaffney, S.C., was in serious but stable condition Friday afternoon in the intensive surgical care unit of the same hospital with facial lacerations and compression fractures of two vertebra in his spine, speedway spokesman Larry Balewski said. There was no paralysis, Balewski said.
Booher, a farmer, a trucker and a father of three, lived on a farm in central Indiana outside Montmorenci with his wife, Donna. He grew soybeans, corn and wheat.
He had been a racer since 1958 and had been coming to Daytona since 1970. He drove anything and everything: Dash cars, ARCA stock cars, Grand National cars and even Winston Cup cars. In 1980, he finished 17th in his only Daytona 500 start.
In the Dash series, his best finish in five starts was 12th in 1987.
"He was always in the middle or the back of the pack, but he was just as happy as he could be," NASCAR Winston Cup media coordinator Chip Williams said.
Booher was excited about the budding career of his eldest son, A.J., who is a champion go-cart racer and followed his father's footsteps into the ARCA stock car series.
"Joe told me, `I ain't got any talent, but A.J., he's got a lot of talent,' " Williams said.
Driver Darrell Basham, who finished 17th, was one of the last to talk to Booher.
"I was talking to him on pit road just before the race," Basham said. "I raced with Joe Booher years ago, and he was talking about how we used to run ARCA together. He was talking about what a great time it was running ARCA in those days."
Booher "always had a smile on his face," Basham said.
"After qualifying [on Tuesday], he waited on me," said Basham, the only other Indiana driver in the Florida 200 field. "When I came by, he said, `How ya doin', Hoosier? How fast did ya go?'
"He just liked to race, that's all."
Keywords:
FATALITY AUTO RACING