Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 21, 1995 TAG: 9509210044
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE LENGTH: Long
H. Clay Earles built Martinsville Speedway. W.Clay Campbell is still building it. Perhaps it's appropriate that the Henry County track presents grandfather clocks to its Winston Cup race winners. The successful operation of the ever-growing speedway is being passed along just that familial line.
Where Earles did a lot of his dealing with handshakes, Campbell's leadership requires more contracts, like the one for $1.2 million annually that starts next year for ESPN telecasts, and like the one that will put another 6,800 seats around the tight oval by next spring.
Earles, 82, will tell you he went to the school of hard knocks. Campbell, 35, graduated from old Drewry Mason High, and then on to a form of higher education.
``I always tell people I went to MSU - Martinsville Speedway University,'' said Campbell, named the track's president in 1988. ``I never went to college, never missed it or regretted it. Really, I didn't think I could justify four years away from here. Shoot, I didn't even go on the beach trip at the end of my senior year. I graduated and started full-time the next day.
``I've always thought I've had a lot of common sense, and that's what's most important. I couldn't learn in a book what I've learned here. Besides, like I say, I had the best professor I could have in my granddaddy.''
Earles knew what he wanted for his speedway. When Campbell was born on Feb.7, 1960, Earles was in Daytona Beach, Fla., for the Daytona 500. He sent a telegram to his new grandson. It was addressed: ``To the Future President of Martinsville Speedway.''
Campbell can't be as colorful as his grandpa, and he's not as patient, either. He has changed the speedway operation noticeably, however. There are more employees in addition to more seats, and a sellout crowd of 59,000 will fill those for the Goody's 500 on Sunday.
Campbell is popular, innovative and community-minded. He's the president-elect of the Martinsville-Henry County Chamber of Commerce and on the board of directors of Piedmont Trust Bank. He also headed a speedway drive that produced 1,728 toys for underprivileged children in the area.
He grasps the business - which has an estimated $40 million economic impact on the region - in a way most people can't, or won't.
How many other NASCAR track presidents also drive race cars? Campbell does, usually about a half-dozen times a year, in limited sportsman races at New River Valley and Lonesome Pine speedways. And, like many more famous drivers, he's also a licensed pilot, flying the track's Cessna 310.
Still, Campbell is about as down to earth as a person in his position can be.
``I pretty well knew from Day One how I'd grow up and what I'd do with my life, and I was content with that,'' Campbell said in his paneled office in the modest brick speedway administration building. ``I was very fortunate. It wasn't like I had to spend a lot of time trying to decide what to do. When I was out of school, I was pretty much here all of the time. Vacations were spent here. My summer job, from the fourth grade on, was right here.''
Campbell recalls first driving a car on the track when he was 6, with supervision, of course.
``I just pushed the seat all the way up, sat on something and went,'' he said. ``I looked through the steering wheel. I wasn't tall enough to see over it.''
Try to picture Campbell driving beauty queens around the track in convertibles on race day - when he was 10. He'd rather remember that than the first assignment his grandfather gave him.
``I was 8 or 9,'' Campbell remembered. ``He put me on the big bank there in the third and fourth turns, by the scoreboard, with a swing blade. I was supposed the clear the bank. That bank looked like a mountain to me.''
Nor will longtime speedway employees forget the day when little Clay was in the track garage, washing a car. Earles was standing nearby and, not surprisingly, telling his grandson how to do the job.
``I gave him that look, I guess,'' Campbell said, confirming the oft-told story. ``Granddad said, `Don't you dare squirt me.' Well, I hosed him down pretty good. He came and grabbed me and spanked me.
``So, I called him an old son of a Campbell never has strayed far. He and wife, Kim, and Will, the couple's 5-month-old son, live in a home adjacent to the speedway's property, which has stretched to about 300 acres. Where Earles once dreamed of putting asphalt on his dirt oval, Campbell envisions the day when the .526-mile circuit will be surrounded by 100,000 seats. His thinking is that Martinsville can not only fill that many seats, but that it must do so to be able to pay the skyrocketing Winston Cup purses.
While Campbell runs the day-to-day operations at the speedway, no major moves are made without Earles - his title is chairman these days - having an input.
``It's different now than it was in the '60s, or even the '70s,'' Campbell said. ``If there's something that we have to do that Granddaddy doesn't necessarily like, well, I understand how he feels. He adapts well. I don't think there's ever been a problem. Our relationship has always been strong.
``Obviously, we don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, just as any other two men who are 82 and 35 don't see eye-to-eye. You might say we come up with the best solution. We reach a happy medium. For instance, I have no patience. I want it done now. He slows me down, and I guess I speed him up.''
Dick Thompson, the veteran public relations chief at the speedway, likens the Men of Clay relationship and operation to a football success story.
``It's like the 49ers, with Joe Montana and Steve Young,'' Thompson said. ``Joe was the old hand. Steve was the young gun. They were different and they did things differently, but it worked both ways. That's the way it was here. That's the way it still is.''
However, times have changed.
``Race day for me, when I was a kid, it was fun,'' Campbell said. ``It wasn't a business to me. Then I moved in here. It used to be when all of the cars and trucks left after the race, I was the most unhappy person at this place. Now, when that happens Sunday, I'll be the happiest guy here. Monday will be the best day of the year.
``I guess I've grown up.''
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB