Hanging It Up
Ken Bugg receives a trophy for a model car contest from Mosteller at the Peach Bowl in 1962.
We asked Mosteller about when he retired.
“Well, yeah, I guess I’m retired,” he said. I retired after forty-five years with Hav-A-Tampa as senior vice president. Same with announcing. As I said earlier, I was working the booth at Atlanta Motor Speedway until my heart attack in 1982. After that I readjusted my pace and picked my own shows. Last month I was with the Swims family over at Dixie Speedway in Woodstock, Georgia, helping them get ready for the “Hav-A-Tampa Shoot Out” finale this year (the national racing circuit Jimmy put together back I 1989 with the United Dirt Track Racing Association and Hav-A-Tampa Corporation, which he continues to guide as president. Today it has grown into a series with multi-million dollar purses).
“And me, I wouldn’t feel good if I quit,” he continued. “Working with people like the Swims’ family keeps you busy. Never met a group of finer people n racing, and I want to get them active in our club (GARHOFA). Mike Swims heads the U.D.T.R.A. What an asset it would be to have them with us working as a team. This is why we need to expand Pioneer Pages (the GARHOFA quarterly newsletter magazine) with a larger staff to help you guys.”
In the past several years, Mosteller has worked tirelessly to help preserve Georgia's racing history. Here he's pictured with Tommie Clinard, Woody Moore, Sam Colvin and Dick Tasse.
“Boys, I’m going to shoot off some names off the top of my head,” Mosteller continued. “Rex White, the Pritchett brothers in North Georgia, Buck Simmons, Red Cruce, Russell Nelson, all the Rakestraw boys, George Alsobrook, Thomas Aiken, Billy Carden, Gerald Duke, Leon Sells, Bob Leach, Eddie MacDonald, Sam McQuagg, Roz Howard, Bud Lundsford, Shorty Tanner, Freddy Fryar and Jessie James Taylor. And you got our staff on GARHOFA such as Sam Colvin, Jimmy Summerour, Tommie Clinard, Jack Jackson, Lanier Englett, Hoot Gibson, Bruce Brantley, Aubrey Holley, Bob Moore and all the boys from our club down in North Florida such as Johnny Thompson, Tommy Moon and Buddy Heardon. You get Thompson and Moon together, man, would I like to hear their stories!
“And the families of Charlie Tidwell, John Hutto, Roscoe Thompson, Johnny Suddeth and, of course, the Flock brothers. The list is endless and if I’ve named twenty I have left out a thousand and twenty. Let me tell you, anybody that drove a racecar deserves to be mentioned. We have got to increase our staff and get busy with the history on all these people we have overlooked and preserve them for the future at our section of the Thunder Road Park. We need stories on every one of these men! That is our job!”
Editor’s note: Since the original publication of this story, 16 of the men mentioned by Mr. Mosteller have been inducted into the Georgia Racing Hall of Fame, housed in what was once known as “Thunder Road USA”. The building is now owned and operated by the city of Dawsonville, Georgia.