The Myers Family - The First Family of Southern Modified Racing

More often than not, the Petty family or the Earnhardts are mentioned as the first family of stock car racing. On the Indy car side it's the Andrettis. But in the world of Southern Modified racing, there is no doubt about the identity of the first family. It's the Myers family from Walnut Cove, North Carolina.

The family tradition started over 50 years ago, about the same time that racing started at Winston-Salem's quarter-mile Bowman Gray Stadium and Billy Myers and his little brother Bobby started racing Modifieds. Since then, the family has been permanently tied to the racetrack which the family refers to simply as "The Stadium."

Both of the brothers were track champions in the Modified division at Bowman Gray and Billy was the NASCAR National Modified Champion in 1955.

While racking up win after win in their Modifieds, the Myers brothers were also well known on the stock car side of NASCAR. Billy ran 84 races on NASCAR's senior circuit from 1951 to 1958, with his best season coming in 1956, with two wins, 22 Top 10s and a finish of Sixth in points.

Bobby ran sporadically from '51 to '57, competing in 15 races during that span. The careers of both drivers were tragically cut short, however. Bobby died in a horrific accident at Darlington in 1957, and Billy died at Bowman Gray Stadium the following year. Each driver left behind a family and sons who were destined to become auto racing stars in their own right. Bobby's son, Danny, is better know to race fans all over the world as "Chocolate" Myers, Dale Earnhardt's long-time gas man.

"Chocolate" currently is the curator of the Richard Childress Racing Museum in Welcome, North Carolina. Billy's sons, Gary and Randy, are still heavily involved in Southern Modified racing, as are Gary's sons, Burt and Jason. Gary raced until 2003 and now oversees the family team. Randy is the track operator at Friendship Motor Speedway in Elkin, North Carolina, and heads up the ASA Southern Modified Race Tour.

Burt and Jason are regular competitors at Bowman Gray as well as regulars on the NASCAR Whelen Southern Modified Tour and the ASA tour.

"I guess it was a family thing," says Gary. "Since my dad and my uncle both raced, it was just natural for me to race. I was pretty young when Dad died, so when Randy and I got old enough, we just picked it up as a family tradition. Back when I started racing, you had to have a driver's license to race. I got my license on Friday and raced at the Stadium on Saturday. I started out in the lower divisions and moved up to a Late Model and won the track championship in 1971. I tried racing some in Winston Cup in the mid and late '70s and that about broke me, so I came back to the Stadium to race Modifieds.

"We have had a lot of success in racing and it certainly wasn't due to money, because we've always been racing on a shoestring. We use a lot of used parts and try to repair as much stuff as we can. Our success is due to a lot of hard work and dedication."

Burt Myers picks up the family story from here. "I started racing a Modified at the Stadium in 1995 when I was 18 years old, but I've always been around it," he says. "There's a picture around here somewhere of me pushing a shop jack around when I was about five years old and in a diaper. I never said if I raced, it was always when I raced.

"I actually started in 1994 and did half a season in the four-cylinder division, just to get some seat time and get used to the track. I knew that I was going to be a Modified driver.

"Racing Modifieds is strange. When we race around here, the crowds are great. The same fans who come to the Stadium are the fans who come to Caraway and Friendship (speedways). It's when we get away from the area that fans drop off. Like when we went to Nashville earlier this year. The racing was great, but the crowd was pitiful. Tracks like that, and NASCAR itself, need to step up and do the promotional things that will get the fans out to see what kind of racing we do. It can be a success, but we need help on the promotional side."

Burt has a clear and distinct strategy behind the wheel of a racecar. "Championships are great, but we go to the racetrack to win," he says. "The way I look at it, if you go to the racetrack and win, you're going to get the most points. To me, you see one of those Cup guys get out of the car running Fifth, and they say, 'We had a good day.' I don't agree with that. You may be happy, but you aren't satisfied.

"Racing at the Stadium is so different, racing wise, than any place else. It's a bad place for people's egos to get away from them. The handicap system there fuels that. I've always been the type when, if a guy runs me down by 10 car lengths and I'm holding him up, I'm expecting him to use his front bumper to get around me. If I'm holding a guy up and he's knocking me around, I deserve it.

"A lot of people at the Stadium think that if they qualify last and draw for a spot in the front, they think, 'Wow, I can win tonight.' If you don't have the car, tonight is not going to be your night. You can be aggressive in a Modified because they're designed for it. They don't put these bars hanging off the side of the cars just for looks. They're made for contact and the Stadium is asking for contact. I don't know that I've ever moved anybody out of the way who didn't have it coming. They might disagree, but I don't."

Jason Myers is helping keep alive the family tradition.

"I started racing at the Stadium in 1999 in the Street Stock division and stuck with that for four years," Jason says. "In 2003 I started running a Modified in some of the SMART Modified Tour events and then moved up to the Stadium Modifieds when Dad retired. It was a bit of a transition going from Street Stocks to the Modifieds, but running on the SMART Tour helped and I'd been going to the Stadium since I was a little kid, watching them and watching how the drivers drove them, so it wasn't so bad getting used to it.

"Burt and I have been going to the Stadium every Saturday night, every year for 25 years. It's just what we did. A lot of kids grow up playing baseball or football. We got off the bus and headed straight for the garage. On Saturdays, we didn't want to go to the baseball game, we wanted to go to the racetrack.

"Right now, we're just concentrating on winning races. Championships will come later. I know that every time I go to the racetrack, I have to beat Burt. When I beat Burt, I get to hold it over him at dinner, and when he beats me, I have to hear it from him."