Where is ... Ray Fox?

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- Ray Fox, a spry 90-year-old, lives in a home he built more than 30 years ago, a stiff 5-iron shot away from the fourth fairway of the North Course at Daytona Beach Golf Club.

He doesn't play golf. Hasn't for decades. No time.

"I played at one time, but my balls always did this," Fox said cheerfully, his right arm describing a graceful slice that he said usually ended up in the woods. "Anyway, once I got here, racing kind of wiped that out."

Racing kept him busy then, when he owned and prepared Modified, Sportsman and Grand National cars -- the forerunners of today's Nextel Cup machines -- that won the Daytona 500, World 600, Southern 500 and a pile of other NASCAR races and pole positions.

And racing still runs ragged the man who belongs to five motorsports Halls of Fame, including the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in Talladega, Ala., and the National Motorsports Press Association's Hall in Darlington, S.C.

Fox retired, he figures for probably the last time, at 80 as a NASCAR engine inspector -- a role born of a chance meeting with then-NASCAR president Bill France at a local pizza parlor.

Now Fox cultivates the legacy of the sport he loved as a youngster and adores no less today, as the president of the Living Legends of Auto Racing, a motorsports historical preservation organization of more than 600 members that's based in South Daytona.

It's fitting that Fox, whose racing introduction came at the 2-mile board track at Rockingham, N.H., near his birthplace in Salem, N.H., is there.

The admission-free facility, located at Sunshine Park on South Ridgewood Avenue, is open daily except Sundays, but Fox draws a crowd every Thursday when he volunteers at the shopping mall location that houses memorabilia and more than half a dozen race vehicles, including Fox's 1959 Chevrolet that Junior Johnson drove to the Daytona 500 Victory Lane in 1960.

It was a hometown victory for Fox, who moved here after getting out of the U.S. Army in 1946.

"I came here because there was racing here," Fox said of his early days traveling the South racing Modifieds with buddies and fellow hall-of-famers Marshall Teague and Fireball Roberts. "And it was in all the papers." (Continued)