100-year-old takes up racing on his birthday

09:00 AM EDT on Thursday, August 25, 2005

By DAVID PERLMUTT / The Charlotte Observer

6NEWS

Roy Lawing, 100, took a spin in the Pace Car at Lowe's MotorSpeedway for his birthday.

Darn few people get to live out a dream at 100.

Roy Lawing did.

Wednesday, the day he became a centenarian, Lawing strapped himself behind the wheel of a victory red Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS pace car at Lowe's Motor Speedway and, as friends and spectators watched from Pit Row, twice lapped the speedway's 1.1/2-mile track - gunning it at one point to 75 mph. "You averaged 61.45 mph on that second lap," Lawing was told. "If I'd known I was being timed, I'd have gone faster," he responded.

The drive around the track was the climax of a surprise birthday party his friends and the speedway threw for the lifelong pro wrestling and NASCAR fan. Lawing, "Mr. Roy" to his friends, was born in a log cabin in Lincoln County "back in the woods off a dirt road going nowhere." He has lived most his life in Belmont, where he worked in a mill for 60 years and cut hair on the side. He learned to drive on a Ford Model T and drove Fords until he bought a 1986 Cadillac Cimarron at age 81, which he still drives mainly to church, one of 10 N.C. drivers with valid licenses who are 100 or older.

"A grandson almost murdered me when I bought that Cadillac," he said. "He said I was a Ford man."

He won 40 trophies with a 1966 Ford Mustang show car, but sold it years ago when he got tired of going to shows. He says he's never been ticketed in 84 years of driving no real way to check that far back. He lives alone, surviving his wife and son, and cleans his house and cuts his grass. Mondays and Thursdays, you'll find him watching wrestling (he's a Ric Flair fan), and Sundays, he wouldn't dare miss a NASCAR race on the 60-inch television in his den.

"TV's bigger than him," said Joyce Hester, Mr. Roy's across-the-street neighbor since 1978. "Watching wrestling and racing; that's what he loves to do."

Over the years, Mr. Roy has let his dream be known - he's always wanted to feel the thrill of driving a car around a race track. As luck would have it, he's an active member of Belmont's First Baptist, where speedway President H.A. "Humpy" Wheeler's sister-in-law attends church. The surprise party was an easy sell. So Wednesday, his friends picked him up on the pretense of taking him to lunch. He wore a pressed blue shirt with metal collar points, a bolo tie and a white hat over his head full of white hair. He looked a little stunned when he walked into The Speedway Club and was seated with a fine view of the track and served his favorite meal: fried chicken, slaw, pinto beans and cornbread.

"I had no idea," he said. "Never in my life did I expect anything like this." After lunch and a chocolate birthday cake with "Age to Perfection" on top, Wheeler buckled Lawing into the pace car's passenger seat and screeched out of Pit Row, in no time pushing the car to 100 mph - "for 100 years," he said

- and averaging 90 mph the first lap.

"Hope Mr. Roy doesn't lose his pinto beans," one friend mused.

A lap and a half later, Wheeler stopped on the back stretch and turned the car over to Lawing. Mr. Roy drove it 2.1/2 laps, visibly slower than Wheeler - the Monte Carlo's 303 horses whistling instead of hissing. He was?roger//or "impressed"?/sm// impressing spectators and Wheeler nonetheless. "Watch your foot," Wheeler told Mr. Roy when the speedometer hit 75. For the record, race driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. drove the same car with a Navy admiral inside 125 mph the day before. On the second lap, Lawing's friends wondered if he'd ever stop, but he pulled the car into Pit Row //pit road/style from sports/sm// to rousing cheers. Mr. Roy got out cockier than he appeared to be when he got in, especially after Wheeler proclaimed Lawing's time around the track a record-breaker "for 100-year-olds." Lawing invited his friends to get in for a ride, but reached for the keys and proclaimed: "Darn, they took the keys." He was surrounded by cameras and peppered with questions.

"I thought for a while, 'Do I want to get into this race car, and something told me, 'YeaYeah?roger, you go ahead and get in,'." he said. "It was natural. I just held onto the wheel and pushed the gas. "Now I know how it feels to drive a race track. Lordy, I just never thought this would happen."

After the historic drive, Wheeler gave Lawing two clubhouse tickets to the UAW-GM Quality 500 on Oct. 15 and a membership to The Speedway Club - for life. He asked Lawing back for his 101st birthday. "I don't know if I'll be here then," Lawing said. "If I am, I'll see ya."

Reach David Perlmutt: (704) 358-5061; dperlmutt@charlotteobserver.com.