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2001 NEWS ARCHIVE

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Wednesday, July 25, 2001

PEOPLE LIKE US

By Robin Smith Meiser

The Beckner Family

In 1970, a crazy 19 year old started his stock car career in the Figure Eight class at long gone but not forgotten Hollywood Speedway Park in Broward County. I was a mere child, only 12 and didn't know what a stock car was but several years later actually ended up going to the dragstrip next door on one occasion which was my first exposure to motorsports.

Life is strange, we all know that. I ended up moving to Fort Myers in 1973 while the crazy young man who I hadn't yet met continued racing in Hollywood. He moved to Ohio in 1980 and raced for one year on the dirt in a limited late model-type series. He stopped racing and began raising a family after meeting a likeable young lady and they had two sons.

Meanwhile, I met the man who would become my husband and the father of my three daughters. He was another crazy young man who loved to race and we spent our weekends at exotic places like Suncoast Speedway in Punta Gorda and Collier County Speedway in Naples. He too stopped racing to have a family but couldn't stand being out of it for too many years and began racing again at DeSoto Speedway.

Eventually, a new racetrack was born in Punta Gorda. It was called Charlotte County Speedway and our race team spent several weekends helping the man who built the track with his own hands get the place ready to open. My then-husband, Jim, built the flagstand that he would stand in over a decade later when he spent a season as the track flagman. This is a very scary thought but I actually put the fence up along the front stretch but, you know what, I am proud to say that fence still stands!

In return for our help, Jim received the use of a pit slab for a season and I got the job of my dreams as a scorer at CCS. What a joke, I had NO idea how complicated scoring was, had I known I would have been the 50/50 girl! On the day the gates to the Speedway opened, I was working the back gate. One of my first drivers through the gates was a relic of the 60's looking hippy type guy with long hair and a very friendly manner. He had his teenage son with him, who was just about the nicest kid I had ever met. This hippy-looking guy was the same young man who started racing at Hollywood Speedway Park in 1970.

This hippy looking guy led the first 18 laps of the first ever pure stock race at CCS and ended up finishing fifth. Also racing in that inaugural season in the pure stock division was George Richardson, whose brother Brian is one of the hotshoes in the 2001 mini stock division and Mike "The Hobo" Hovis who was racing Mike Greenwell's red Camaro. It's funny, it seems like just yesterday. A lot of drivers and crews have come and gone since then but names like Richardson, Hovis, Kuykendall, Fox, Trotta, Meier, Dufresne/Boyer, Turner, Weaver and Meiser have always been a part of Charlotte County Speedway's heritage. Oops, I almost left one name out, that hippy-looking guy and his family, the Beckners.

"Old Man" Dave Beckner has always been a part of Charlotte County Speedway. He has had his good times and his bad times. Back in the early 1990's, he always raced the legendary CCS Enduros that sometimes had well over 100 cars. He would go out there and bump and bang with the best of them, "having a hoot" as he likes to say. He won one of those Enduros but was disqualified in post-race technical inspection because he had put an extra bar in his door for safety purposes. There was nothing in the rulebook that said you couldn't do it but there was also nothing in there that said you could do it. The next Enduro, the rules said it was ok to have that door bar but that didn't help him out any.
PICTURE

Dave's favorite Enduro memory is the time he and his brother, Del, who just won the midseason championship in the road warrior division were racing together. As Dave was passing the front stretch up towards Turn One, where his wife, Vicki, always sits with the trusty video camera he spun out in front of where the cars come out of pit row. Well, Brother Del was driving out of the pits at that particular moment in time and they ran into each other and ended up bumper to bumper.

Del Beckner started racing thanks to his older brother, Dave. He used to come to the track to watch Dave race along with Dave's best friend, Mike Loney, another crazy son-of-a-gun who has definitely had some unforgettable moments at CCS that the rest of the Low Dollar Race team would like to forget! First, Loney built a racecar in partnership with Dave's older son, Jason, who was in the Marines at the time. Jason came home on leave about the time of Desert Storm, got into the road warrior car and won the feature race. He had never raced before.

Del built himself an Oldsmobile and it wasn't long before Dave's younger son, Bryan talked his mom into giving him permission to race although he wasn't old enough for a driver's license. She figured he would race once, be scared and never do it again. HA! Not with all that Beckner blood coursing through his veins! She liked it much better when he was drawing pictures of stock cars and winning Junior Fan trophies for the best artwork. All the racetrack brats ran together back then, Bryan ran faster than the rest because his legs were so long, all legs he was and still is! It always seemed though that it was Bryan and a bunch of girls, not necessarily other guys. Some things never change! He still gets along much better with the girls than the guys.

Just about when Bryan started racing, older brother Jason got out of the Marines and my twins, Shannon and Melanie, were about 17 years old. Jason and Melanie started dating and low and behold several months later Bryan and Shannon started dating. Melanie and Jason went on to marry and have a beautiful daughter that we all share named Victoria Robin for her two grandmothers. Bryan and Shannon went on to be the best of friends. Both boys call me "mom" too and I am extremely proud of my two boys.

Meanwhile, Dave finished second in the 1996 pure stock division championship to another long time racer, Doug Miller. The reason he finished second was that the division voted on whether to race 20 or 25 laps in the season ending race. Dave, being a natural born racer, voted to race 25 laps. He was leading the race at Lap 20 but Miller got around him the next lap so he ended up finishing second.

That was also the year Bryan started racing in the outlaw stocks. 1997 was an uneventful year for the Low Dollar Race Team except for an occasional colorful incident or two with other drivers that will happen to any race team that wins. The head scorer at Charlotte County Speedway at that time happened to be me and I say with great pride that I had the honor to disqualify each Low Dollar Team once. Actually, I believe they were the only times they were actually disqualified on the racing surface but I am sure if I am wrong someone will be glad to point that out.

In 1998, Dave decided to build a new pure stock for himself and he gave the old one to Bryan. Dave spent $3000 on that racecar and used three sets of the new Goodyear tires the entire season. It was a season racing families' dream of. Week after week, a Beckner won the feature race and by the end of the season Dave Beckner had the most points of any driver in any class at Charlotte County Speedway. He won the championship and following right behind him was his 17 year old son, Flyin' Bryan Beckner. It was the stuff movies were written about. It's really kind of strange; Dave raced the #3 that year because he loved Dale Earnhardt and because the track had let a new driver take his patented number #27 for that year.

In 1999, Dave let Flyin' Bryan drive the #3 Dale Earnhardt, Jr. lookalike car. One night Dave decided to drive Bryan's old pure stock that he was trying to sell and he hit the wall hard coming out of Turn Two. This aggravated an old back injury that put him out of commission for the entire year. In 2000, he bought Mike Loney's open wheel modified but decided he would rather cheer his sons on since Jason was also racing part time in a mini stock owned by he and 2001 Rebel road warrior midseason champion, Conrad Molter.

I talked at length with Dave on the phone the other night and we discussed the Beckner racing legacy. He said "I've seen them come and go through the years, good and bad. When I raced I never went out to wreck someone on purpose. I just wanted to go as hard and fast as I could. I taught my boys to take no quarter but give no quarter either. The best payback to anyone is to pass them in the next race."

Racing makes Vicki Beckner a nervous wreck. Whenever you listen to the videos she makes, it is more fun listening to her comments and screeches than the actual race. She tells her husband and boys that they have taken years off her life but she wouldn't have it any other way. Racing keeps a family together, you see.
PICTURE

That's what is important to people like us, you see, keeping the family together and the kids out of trouble. I have no doubt that several years down the road another Beckner will hit the racetrack somewhere. Only this time it will be a she, our granddaughter, Tori. She has been "racing" since she was less than a month old and boy does that give me the heebie geebies with all that Beckner-Meiser blood coursing through her veins. But, like I said, racing keeps a family together.

By Robin Smith Meiser


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