NASCAR's founding couple's legacy lives on with its family, in sport they created
Eighty years ago this month, Bill France Sr. and Anne Bledsoe France drove from Washington, D.C. to Daytona Beach, Florida, and over the ensuing decades, the couple built Daytona International Speedway -- the "World Center of Racing" -- and the foundation for NASCAR.
France, a member of the inaugural class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, will be joined in the shrine in January 2015 by his wife, the inaugural winner of the Landmark Award. A month later, as NASCAR returns to Daytona International Speedway for the 57th Daytona 500, the first authorized biography of the founder of NASCAR, "Big Bill: The Life and Times of NASCAR Founder Bill France Sr.," will be released by Random House.
"Bill France Sr. ... not only changed the game," H.A. Branham, author of "Big Bill" said. "He kind of made the game to begin with. And then kept changing and changing throughout the time he was at the controls of NASCAR."
Two years after arriving in Daytona Beach, France helped lay out the first beach/road course. A racer himself, he finished fifth in that first race and then began promoting the event in 1938.
"Bill Sr. had firsthand experience of being a competitor and knowing how they sometimes didn't always collect the money they were due from promoters after small-time stock car races," Branham said. "As a promoter, he committed himself to trying to make sure that wouldn't be the case so he could create some loyalties."
After World War II, France brought together disparate forces in the world of stock car racing, and on December 14, 1947, these founding fathers of NASCAR met at the Streamline Hotel on A1A in Daytona Beach to discuss the future of the sport.
"The Streamline meeting is sometimes miscast as just a grab for power," Branham said. "Granted, there was some of that going on but a better overall description is that it was a move to organize things by someone who really understood all facets of what competitors and promoters had gone through. Bill Sr. had plenty of support at that meeting. If he hadn't had the support, he wouldn't have been able to get everybody there to begin with."
As more hotels like the Streamline moved further south and development encroached on the beach-road course, France began the process of building the Daytona International Speedway.
"...the most amazing thing about the speedway is it was really built in about 15 months," Branham said. "It was an incredibly quick project.
"It was basically just swamp land, a muck pond, that type of thing. Just really undesirable land, and they turned it into what it is today."
As International Speedway Corporation, which France also founded, proceeds with the reimagining of an American icon with the $400 million DAYTONA Rising project, it reaffirms the France family's commitment to Daytona Beach and NASCAR. A commitment that Betty Jane France, wife of Bill France Jr., learned about on a lap around the speedway as it was under construction.
"They were building the track, and they hadn't paved it yet so it was just the shale, dusty," Branham said. "She said that Bill Sr. took her around the track pretty fast. Dust is flying everywhere.
"Bill Sr., about mid-lap, told Betty Jane, 'This place right here is your future.'
"Betty Jane likes to tell people that she looked over and she wanted to say, 'Yeah, right.'
"She thought he was crazy, and then she'll tell you, 'But I guess he wasn't crazy, was he?'
"You're talking 1958 or '59. They don't even have the asphalt down yet, and he's talking about it in terms of long term, of changing the course of all kinds of things. Not only as a family, but obviously a sport."
Alongside Bill Sr. was Annie B., his wife, and Monday, Oct. 27 marks the 110th birthday of the secretary and treasurer of NASCAR and International Speedway Corporation who also managed the speedway's ticket office.
"She's legendary in her own right," Branham said. "There are stories that apparently she used to make her husband, the founder and president of NASCAR, turn in expense reports from his trips."
Lesa France Kennedy, the CEO and Vice Chairperson of the Board of Directors for International Speedway Corporation, "really learned a lot about the speedway business, how the business ran, from her grandmother," Branham said.
"Betty Jane tells a wonderful story about how she used to work in the ticket office and help out," Branham said. "At the end of the day, she was less than a dollar off on her books, and she told Annie B. 'I'll get right on this tomorrow.'
"Annie B. said, 'No, you're going to get on this today ...' and made her stay and figure it out and she did and rectified that very small amount that she was off.
"Betty Jane says she was so mad ... but she did it and that because of things like that, to this day, she balances her own checkbook down to the penny. Every time she balances her checkbook, she thinks of Annie B."
In addition to writing "Big Bill," Branham also serves as senior manager of the ISC Archives and Research Center in Daytona Beach. As part of Daytona International Speedway's "VIP Tour," fans can visit the center, which includes a tribute to Bill Sr. and Bill Jr. Designed like a mini-boardroom, the section includes photos and authentic artifacts, like "From the desk of Bill France Sr." notepads.
For those who can't make it to the "World Center of Racing," the book, scheduled for release in February 2015, will tell the story of the patriarch of the France family and the sport he created.
"It really is an in-depth look at his life," Branham said. "I've gotten so much help from so many people throughout the industry such as NASCAR Hall of Famers Ned Jarrett, Junior Johnson and Richard Petty, who did the foreword. Bobby Allison was awesome, as was A.J. Foyt and Jeff Gordon.
"Jeff Gordon, one of the newer guys, even though he didn't know Bill Sr., he was involved in the legendary Atlanta race which ended the '92 season just several months after Bill Sr. had passed. Gordon made his Sprint Cup debut in that race. He had some great perspective on that most significant period of NASCAR history."
France Sr.'s legacy lives on in his great-grandson, Ben Kennedy, who is the son of Lesa France Kennedy and became the first France family member to run a NASCAR national series race in August 2013 at Bristol Motor Speedway. Kennedy paid tribute to his great-grandfather at Talladega Superspeedway earlier this month when he reenacted a famous photograph of Bill Sr. selling a ticket to a patron for the first NASCAR race at the facility in 1969.
"My great-grandfather had a vision to create a palace of speed, and he certainly accomplished that," Kennedy said on the 45th anniversary of that first NASCAR weekend at the track. "I remember coming here as a kid and seeing how incredibly huge this place was. I can’t believe I am actually about to compete against some of the greatest drivers in the world on it Saturday.
"It's heart-warming to know this place came to fruition and that my great-grandfather was able to build something that so many drivers and fans have enjoyed over the years."