VIR - 1957 - Newpaper Gossip Column

Virginia International Raceway - 1957

Leaves From A Reporter's Notebook

Struts and stuttering around the Virginia International Raceway track.

JAY FOOTE told us he had seen enough of the sports car fraternity to know that they will drive their foreign make cars a block to keep from.parking next to a Detroit made auto . . . a typical sports car racing fan would be an aged couple driving up in a Porsche…he's wearing Bermuda shorts, screaming red hose, an equally loud yellow sports shirt, open at the collar - with a green choker tie around his neck …this get-up is topped off with a beret or tam cocked jauntily on the side of his head . . . wifey, however broad she is, will be wearing slacks, her attire is only slightly less loud, and she'll be wearing the inevitable beret . .the fans travel in packs or herds in their little sports cars making up a caravan en route to a big race . . they are a fraternity all to themselves, speaking in a language the layman will be hard put to understand . . . sports car racers, they tell us, are gentlemen to the core . . ..if on the race course a car wants to pass, the driver ahead will pull over and give him passing room. . . they don't try to block out the oncoming driver as in stock car races . . . . one of the biggest sports car racing bugs is LANCE REVENTLOW, son of millionairess BARBARA HUTTON. . . Lance may drive in the May 4-5 races… Another is JIM KIMBERLING, who his pals say owns the Canadian Northwest…he's the Scotty towel tycoon…Yep, you gotta have dough and lots of it to mess around with these go-carts…Nothing unusual for one of the faster and bigger cars to setback the owner $30,000 to $40,000…And we hear tell that one of the best Corvettes made on this side of the pond sold for $80,000. . It was fast enough but it kept the pit crew busy filling her up . . . made about four miles to the gallon . . Incidentally, the pit crew is given a five gallon gas can for refills, and no fancy hose or funnels go with it… Biggest problem for the VIR owners is where the thousands of fans will find lodging and a place to eat

Hotels and motels from a great distance will be filled to capacity…It takes eight men to the car to operate a track like the VIR…that means driver, crew of three, plus four others. whose duties are strictly track attendants . . . That means that with 240 cars running May 4-5, about 2,000 people working at the track…NBC Radio will air the first races on its Monitor program, and a Cincinatti TV station will televise it. . . Other area TV and radio stations will be on hand . . . There will be elaborate press coverage . . . ED KEMM, the affable track owner, mar-ried Miss JANE GLASSCOCK of Greensboro. She's a daughter of LUKE GLASCOCK; first cousin of TOM, DICK and OTEY Glascock of these parts . . Ed is a New Yorker who has adopted the Southland and says he wouldn't go back to Yankeeland for all the money on Wall Street…As a matter of fact, he doesn't need the dough anyway…the young man has a modest fortune left him in textiles and chemical works by his father…He dropped out of the University of North Carolina to take over his business interests.


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