Thoughts On Bruce Brantley
Victory lane after a race at Middle Georgia Speedway in 1965. Pictured left to right are Roy Knight, Ron Burnette, Doris Bryson, Bruce Brantley, Dub Smith, Johnny Waddell (with a beer in a shop rag) and Richard Davis.
“I met Bruce working for the Chamblee Post Office and his speed shop was on my route,” said Larry Adams. “It was with his help that allowed me to develop an automotive background and work my way into top management for the Postal Fleet Service Operations. Bruce never failed to offer advice to all of us ‘hang arounds’ at the shop. It was ‘bragging rights’ back then to say you had your car serviced at Chamblee Carburetor and Electric by either Bruce, Jack Childs or Ronald Wright.”
“Within all my years of being involved in racing, Bruce was never out of line at a racetrack and believe me, he has had his share of times he could have retaliated,” said former GARHOFA CEO Jimmy Mosteller. “He has been and continues to be an inspiration to the sport he so well represents.”
“I remember Bruce ran a 1955 Chevrolet in the mid 1960s for a Sportsman-Modified affair at Atlanta International Raceway,” friend Richard Davis told us. “It as the oldest car, the smallest engine by far the most aerodynamically disadvantaged shape, and still finished eighth. If it were not for a flat right rear and the crew’s unfamiliarity with inner liners, which made the tire look okay, and the resulting one lap loss, his finish would have been in the top five.
“Bruce Brantley was a complete racer of the old type – a suspension wizard, a super motor builder, and a flat out tune-up guru. Throughout our time, we ran hard, and pretty much fair. We raced from Georgia to Alabama, Florida, Tennessee and the Carolinas, and in places nobody but the membership who read this will know. But we partied pretty good too, and there was always a cold one over at the car 27 for a thirsty friend.”
Bruce has had his share of fire and rain in both racing and life. After his 1965 tragedy he could have walked away from the sport and no one would have blamed him.
But isolating himself from everything he knew and loved would have been a self-destructive prison for the then 26-year-old man. He righted himself and over the next 30 years took not only is racing career to a further place, but as an educator, shared his “hands-on” knowledge to a whole new generation.
The soft-spoken country kid from Wrightsville, Georgia has left notice and presences to the rest of us, on and off the track.
Editor’s note: This story was originally published in the Sept 2001 edition of the Pioneer Pages magazine. Bruce Brantley was inducted into the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame in October of 2007, and remains involved with the Hall of Fame today.
Eddie Samples is a racing historian and writer, and is the son of champion stock car racer and Georgia Racing Hall of Famer Ed Samples.
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