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NASCAR HALL-OF-FAME INDUCTION CEREMONYJanuary 23, 2016Margaret Sue Turner WrightLen WoodCharlotte, North Carolina THE MODERATOR: Representing Curtis Turner family, we have Margaret Sue Turner. She is the daughter of Curtis Turner, and then we have Leonard Wood, and of course Leonard was with Curtis and is very, very familiar with him as a race car driver. Margaret Sue, I'm going to ask you, you gave a very, very eloquent acceptance speech on behalf of your dad. Maybe just some of the memories, and I really enjoyed listening to those talks that you and your dad had, but maybe just talk about the flood of memories that you have here today knowing that your dad is in the Hall of Fame. MARGARET SUE TURNER WRIGHT: I think the flood of memories that come back to me, especially when people say what were some of your favorite memories, and I have great memories of being at the races, especially when I was even young, and I remember watching and cheering Daddy on when I was little, especially at Daytona. That was a lot of fun. And when he started flying, we would fly down the coastline of Florida, and that was always fun, and he would talk to us and show us about it. All of those memories come back as good memories, and also the memories when he was building the Charlotte Motor Speedway, because I was just mentioning to another reporter that I would take my brother, Curtis Ross Turner, he passed away a few years ago, and I would take him with me and babysit him at the track while they were building it, and my brother liked to get his toes in the little dirt mounds and play in them. So I have those memories. I got to have a lot of good memories when Daddy would have people over and we met a lot of people. There were racing fans and racing families, and it was a beautiful family. I loved being in the infield during the races because that's where you had more camaraderie with the other families and talking with them and watching parts of the race or the whole race and getting on top of someone's RV. So it was wonderful. I loved it. Q. Leonard, certainly Curtis drove for the Wood Brothers and had some great years there with y'all's organization. Just talk about him from a standpoint, you've certainly been around some great race car drivers. Just talk about Curtis and his driving style. What set him above some of the others? LEONARD WOOD: Well, I don't know how many of you guys got to see Curtis Turner drive or how many of you didn't, but the ones that didn't, you missed something because it was just a show just to watch him drive. It didn't matter what position he was in. It was just a show the way he handled the car. He shows up at greens bury one time, and he's running the convertible circuit. Fireball Roberts is running the hard top circuit. This was 1957. And Fireball got sick, but Curtis running the convertible, he didn't have anything to drive, so he just showed up in a suit, wasn't planning to drive, so Fireball got sick. They put Curtis in it, and it was a '57 Ford with a supercharger. He threw dirt over the fence, lapped the field three times, and that's just to show you a little bit of something how he did. Junie Donlavey said it was this modified car showed up at Richmond, had never finished better than last. Every race this car always finished last. There again, he shows up in a suit. Wasn't planning on driving anything, and he gets in the car and wins the race. That just shows you how good he was, especially on dirt. Of all the drivers I can ever think of, this guy, he had more control of a car in a slide or to save a car from being spun out or whatever as any driver I've ever known. Q. I've got to ask you, Margaret, you alluded in your speech, which was wonderful, about all the flying stories you've heard about your father are true. Are there any of them you can share with us? MARGARET SUE TURNER WRIGHT: Sure. I wasn't in the plane when he landed it on the highway, but those are true. Yeah, he did that more than once. As a matter of fact, sometimes he would fly so low and I would be in the plane that he could tell the roads and which way to go, especially if maybe some of the instruments weren't working, he would fly low. One time we were flying to Charlotte, and we were suddenly in a storm, and it was at night. We were covered with‑‑ surrounded with that brilliant blue light, you know? That was really strange. But he was an excellent pilot. He could land anywhere. He landed in fields when he had to. Yeah, he was just an excellent pilot, and he let me fly sometimes when he wanted to get in the backseat and take a nap, and he would just say, just make sure you keep that little thing kind of level there. Okay, Daddy. So that was fun. He liked being up in the plane because he felt like he was free, you know, and close to whatever that spiritual aspect might have been for him. Q. Let me ask you, Virginia, the area that he's from, is very well known for its racing. Do you feel like he represents that racing and what it means to Virginia and how important it is? MARGARET SUE TURNER WRIGHT: Absolutely. Yeah, he's from Virginia. We kept both homes. He was in Roanoke. We kept our Roanoke home even when we moved around a lot, even when we went up to Indiana. We were up in Indiana one year when he was trying on that open wheel racing, and he came back and we had a Charlotte home twice, but we always kept our Virginia home here. He's definitely a Virginia boy all the way. I mean, my goodness, he was born in Floyd. So yeah, I think he represented Virginia very well. Q. There was in the film shown something or mentioned which was a little bit confusing for me. It was sad that your father was banned from NASCAR racing. Can you give me more details why? MARGARET SUE TURNER WRIGHT: Well, you see, he tried to save the track at one point. He and Bruton were working on this deal together for a long time, and they ran into trouble, and financing was a big issue when they hit granite because it was going to be so expensive to try to blast through there and fix it and also get it done in time for the race they had already advertised. So he was looking for financing. He was looking for more help because he didn't have it. So this is where he eventually went to try to form a Teamsters' Union because he was turned onto Jimmy Hoffa, and he said, well, I'll loan you the money if you can get a union going. So Daddy thought, well, this is what the drivers need, this will probably help them. They didn't have big purses then. They couldn't get insurance. That was a laugh. There was nobody that could get insurance then because of racing was a pretty dangerous sport. So that is my awareness of it, and that didn't work out at the very end, even though they told them that they would do that, because then they changed their mind and said, oh, we can't do that, it'll be a conflict of interest. But at the time, everyone was on board with Daddy and they were trying to help the track, and the racers that they sort of started dropping off from it because Bill France didn't like the idea of the union, which that was his choice, but he didn't want to have anything else controlling him, which I kind of understand that. But it was just a matter of not allowing that to happen because he wanted the freedom away from that. So anyway, Tim Flock was the only one that stayed on with daddy. All the other drivers did drop out of that original agreement, and they were going to do that to try to help, and so that's‑‑ I don't know, that's the best I can put that together for you. Do you have more on that? Q. Margaret, you're an artist, correct? MARGARET SUE TURNER WRIGHT: Oh, yes, thank you. Q. Have you done portraits or paintings of your dad through the years? MARGARET SUE TURNER WRIGHT: Yes, I have. Q. Any one in particular that you're most proud of or that stands out, or can you remember the first one you did of him, for instance? MARGARET SUE TURNER WRIGHT: Probably the‑‑ I did one of him in an open wheel racer, and I also‑‑ I like it because it showed a mood, and I did one of Mom and Dad standing in front of the race car at Langhorne Speedway when he won that race in 1950. I thought that was kind of cool. That's still over my mantel. I'm not going to sell it. But yeah, I do like to paint, and I do want to paint more paintings on Dad and about my life growing up and make it more of a narrative painting. THE MODERATOR: Thank you very much for joining us here today. Congratulations to your dad for getting into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, and Leonard, certainly thank you so much and all you and your family have meant to the sport, as well. Thank you very much. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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