MILTON — John Buffum, Tom Curley, Bobby Dragon, Harmon “Beaver” Dragon, C.V. “Chuck Elms Shirley Muldowney, Charles “C.J.” Richards, Ken Squier and Gardner Stone were the luminaries comprising the charter class of the Vermont Motorsports Hall of Fame.
They were the human luminaries, but they had to share the Saturday night ceremony with the venue itself — the town of Milton and Vermont SportsCar, the Taj Mahal of race shops that was opened by Colchester’s Lance Smith in 2028.
Vermont SportsCar is located in Milton very close to the iconic Catamount Stadium, a stock car track that drew fans from all corners of the state and beyond.
“We are just about right on top of it,” Ken Squier’s daughter Ashley said while waiting to give the speech inducting her late father.
Yes, Vermont SportsCar was one of five buildings separating the large crowd from Milton’s old Catamount Stadium.
There you had it: A town and its historic racing facility that so many of the inductees had some connection to, a race shop that took everyone’s breath away and two of the inductees themselves — brothers Beaver and Bobby Dragon — hailing from Milton.
Just a sampling of how some of the members of this charter class had a connection to Catamount Stadium:
__ The late Tom Curley first gave racing a whirl at Catamount Stadium. His sojourn began in the Flying Tigers division and moved up to NASCAR modified .
Ken Squier later hired Curley to manage Catamount and that was just one line on a resume of racing promotion that helped to land him in the Vermont Motorsports HOF’s first class.
__ Beaver Dragon was a consistent winner on his hometown track of Catamount. He won at all kinds of tracks including Devil’s Bowl, Thunder Road and Airborne, but the track in his town will always be special to him.
Bill Ladabouche, a noted race historian who taught in the Milton schools before retiring, wrote a book on Dragon titled “To Beat the Beaver.”
__ Bobby Dragon raced at Milton Dragway and then when Catamount was built made himself at home there. He won 145 documented races at 28 different tracks during his starry career but many will always align him with the track just about a stretch run from where all those race fans were sitting on Saturday night.
__ Shirley Muldowney, the lone female inductee, became world famous for her drag racing career, but she grew up on a farm in South Hero and began a winning drag racing career at tracks all over the Northeast including Milton Dragway.
__ C.J. Richards will always be associated with Devil’s Bowl, a a track he built with his own hands and cultivated into a successful facility that Mike and Alaybe Bruno have so successfully operated today.
But the Richards’ family team also managed the food concessions at Thunder Road and, you guessed it, Catamount Stadium.
__ The late Ken Squier built his own track Thunder Road in Barre when he was only 25 years old but he replicated the building process with Catamount Stadium.
He was national figure in racing and in 1979 had one of the pivotal moments in NASCAR history when he convinced CBS television to show the Daytona 500 live from start to finish for the first time. He was also the one that gave the Daytona 500 its nickname of “The Great American Race.”
Saturday was his seventh Hall of Fame induction.
Despite his huge splash on the national scene., Ashley’s speech was about how her father loved Vermont and considered it home.
“There was only one place that would be home and it was here, Vermont. He loved NASCAR but Vermont’s his home,” Ashley said.
__ Stone was yet another who got his start his racing start in Milton. He began racing at the Milton Dragway in 1964 and collected victories almost weekly there until the facility closed in 1970.
His induction was for tractor pulling and drag racing.
GREAT START
Only nine people will be members of a Hall of Fame’s charter class and that is distinction this group will be able to claim forever.
But the venue itself came in for praise all night long.
“I wish we had a race car shop like this when I was racing,” Beaver Dragon said.
Buffum began his speech by thanking Smith for hosting the event in his facility and for all he had done for racing.
“I can’t believe the quality of this place,” Buffum said.
Justin St. Louis, the emcee and moving force behind starting the Vermont Motorsports Hall of Fame, said, “We finally have a place to honor our heroes and this is a hell of a place to start.”
LOVING RACING
There was a common denominator among all nine inductees and that was how much they loved their sport.
During C.J. Richards’ funeral service in February of 2012 in Fair Haven, the song “My Way” by Frank Sinatra was played.
It could not have been more appropriate. Richards did it his way every step of the way including building his own speedway Devil’s Bowl in a bucolic setting in West Haven.
He loved it all. He often said that his favorite time was on Monday after the weekend of racing when he got up on the tractor to reshape the track’s surface.
Ashley Jane Squier said that her father took the thing that he loved the most and made a career of it.
Saturday itself was a lovefest — a love for people’s heroes and for the sport of racing and all motorsports.
And it could not have been held in a better place: one lush history book of Vermont racing called Milton.
