The Scott Pacich article appeared in Area Auto Racing News on 2/4/03.

One of the neat things about writing this column is receiving e-mails, and occasionally telephone calls from people who share the same interests as I do. Even more exciting are the communications from people who were involved, sometimes intimately with some racing team or venue in the past. I count among my friends now, although we've never even met people from several different decades of modified racing. The subject of this week's effort came to my attention last year, and it took no small amount of coordination to get the information together to do this column.

I would like to introduce you to Dick Cadwallader and his son Kevin. Most people know Gus Frear and his stint as a mechanic on Joe Bullock's racecars. But the Bullock car was racing; quite successfully I might add before Gus joined the team, and before Gerald Chamberlain became the driver. It was during that time period that Dick Cadwallader was the head mechanic for the team. With the help of his son Kevin, this is their story.

First, the obligatory personal information. Dick was born in 1935 in Warrington, Pennsylvania. Right off the bat you can see that he was destined to get involved with the Bullocks, as they are from the same area. Married to wife Jackie and with grown children Kevin, Kellie and Kyle. Dick now resides in Chalfont, Pennsylvania. Dick was, and still is a mechanic and still works for the Bullock family. While he was building the racecars he could be found working at Cooper's Speed Shop. Kevin, who is Dick's oldest child came along in 1962 and is a cabinetmaker.

Ok, that's done. Now on to the racing.

I asked Dick when he became involved in modified racing, and is there any other racing he was involved in before then. Dick responded that he got into the modifieds in 1957 (a very good year I might add) and before that was a drag racer. Kevin adds that he really was born into the modifieds, and personally got into it about 20 years ago helping out Dave Hahn. He helped first with the modified and now helps on Dave's sprint car. He does not go as much anymore, nor does his father as their families come first.  

When I asked Dick what first drew him to racing, and the modifieds in particular I got a response that I'm sure a lot of us can relate to. It seems that he, like many of us first watched the races from outside the racetrack. In particular, Dick used to sit up in the trees overlooking the backstretch at the Hatfield Speedway. Now I don't know much beyond what I've read about Hatfield, but I do know that for a young kid there must have been two elements of excitement at play here. One, climbing a tree, and two, watching racecars being thrown a marvelous dirt oval from that tree must have been great. 

With all the different kinds of cars that competed at Hatfield I asked what it was that made Dick concentrate on the modifieds. He answered that he and his friend Ed Horn simply decided to build a modified because they didn't think it would be that hard. Given the choice between midgets, sprints and modifieds Dick said it looked much easier to take the "stock" modified route. Besides Dick says, "What do 19 and 20 year old kids know anyway?"

I then asked Dick if he had any kind of racing career (that he was willing to talk about) before he became a mechanic. As was mentioned earlier, Dick was involved in Drag Racing before turning to the modifieds. He competed at the first NHRA Nationals in Great Bend, Kansas in 1955. In an auspicious debut, he was the A-Gas class eliminator champion driving a 1933 Ford Coupe with an Oldsmobile engine in it. When the Nationals moved to Kansas City in 1956 Dick again competed and then in 1957 stepped away from the drag strip and into the world of modified racing.

When I asked Dick what his greatest racing accomplishment was, I kind of expected it to be the NHRA national championship. After all, that's a pretty prestigious and tough accomplishment at any time in history. Instead, he reminded me that he was the builder and mechanic for Freddy Adam's 1964 win in the Race of Champions at Langhorne. For a modified team, that was the ultimate accomplishment. Dick also remembers fondly racing on the Beach at Daytona in 1958 and winning a 100-lap race on the big track at Nazareth with the Bullock team.

I'm always interested in finding out if racing people have favorite tracks of their own, and Dick tells me that his is Hatfield. I'm really beginning to think I missed something by not ever having a chance to go there. So many people list it as their favorite place, and the descriptions I've read of it and pictures I've seen make it seem still alive. Anyway, besides racing successes do you think that Dick's affection for Hatfield could go back to his youth? Remember, this is where he first watched the modifieds from the trees...

I wanted to know what other cars besides the Bullock team Dick worked on. Of course there was his own car, the one he built with Ed Horn. It was numbered 999 and ran a Ford Flathead. Dick didn't talk much about it other than to say it was raced at Hatfield, and at Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia. His mechanical involvement ceased with the Bullock team and he hasn't worked on any modifieds since.

When someone is involved with such a successful team as the Bullock's, you get a chance to see a lot of drivers. Some you competed against, and some were your drivers. I asked Dick if he had any "favorite" driver that drove the Bullock car while he was the chief mechanic. It's a tough question, but Dick replied that it was Freddy Adam. He said that besides his obvious talent, Freddy was a great guy to be with. Dick says, "Freddy worked on the car as hard as we did. Me, him and Jim Blichas (another Bullock helper) spent many, many nights building and rebuilding the cars". Yes, I can imagine a shop filled with smoke from torches, ripe with the smell of welding residue and three guys laughing about the repairs they were doing.

It's great to read again of a driver who jumped right into the fray of repairs and contributed. But here is not the place to get started on that topic again!

Another thing that is of interest to me, and I hope you as well is the view the "old-time" guys have of the current state of modified racing. I like to know how they feel it stacks up against "their time". Kevin answered for his father with, "In dad's time, you made everything. There were very few off the shelf parts as far as making chassis and suspension modifications."

Kevin added, "Of course it did not cost nearly as much as it does today. Now you go to a store and buy everything you need." He finished his answer by stating, "Dad his own motors, as did a lot of the teams. Now most teams buy them from a builder for amazing amounts of money." You know, this is something I talk about a lot. The build versus buy approach. I know times have changes, and things are different but what caused the change?

With all the successful Bullock cars Dick built and/or worked on, I asked him if he had a favorite that stood out. Since just about all of the cars are reverently remembered I didn't really expect an answer, and the one I got was a surprise. Dick says that they built a sedan once that had an extreme engine setback. So extreme in fact, that two guys could lift the front end of the car off the ground. While it sounds a bit ahead of it's time, they never really got the chance to see how it would perform. It only lasted in that configuration for one or two races before it was crashed.  

My next question actually taught me something I didn't know. I asked Dick what it was that made them use Ford power in their cars, which really was somewhat unusual. He told me that it was really Gus Frear that brought the Ford engines to Bullock, simply because he was a "Ford guy". For many years Dick and the Bullocks ran Pontiac engines, 421's in fact until they ran out of parts for them. It was that parts shortage that caused them to change to a 427 Chevy, which as you now know was replaced by a Ford. I was under the misconception that the cars were Ford all along. That'll teach me I guess...

I wanted to know what a typical race week would mean for Dick and his family. He related to me that they would work on the car every night, and race on Saturday and Sunday nights. When Gerald Chamberlain came to the team that every night job continued, but they increased their racing to all three-weekend nights. At this time his kids were young, but they went to most of the races at Reading with some thrown in at Penn National and few at Flemington. Kevin related that, "I helped work on the car. That really meant getting in dad's way and asking lots of annoying questions."  There were always things to fix and races to go to.

I looked to Dick for some insight on how he felt about the history of modified racing. I asked if he thought it was important for a fan to understand what things were like "back then", and if it might make a better fan. His answer was concise. "I don't think today's young fans care what we did back then" was his reply. Sadly, I feel that in general I have to agree. Kevin on the other hand elaborated a bit more. "I think its great to keep the history at everyone's fingertips. Some fans may not understand what was involved in building a car back then, when it was hand made, and how things evolved from there" said Kevin. I have always been of the idea that any knowledge of the past makes the present that much more interesting and
understandable.

Regrets? Dick says, "My to oldest children grew up before I knew it." Kevin however has the opposite view. "I wish it lasted longer. I was twelve or thirteen when dad stopped, and I was just starting to understand things."

There you have it. A little insight into a man who spent years with one of the top modified teams of several eras. Plus some insight from his son. I hope you enjoyed it.

Scott Pacich
Area Auto Racing News
Under the Radar
pacich711@cs.com
(570) 820-1613

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