Brett Hearn, Harold Bunting & Joe Donahue Selected To NE Dirt Modified Hall Of Fame For 2020

Story By: BUFFY SWANSON / NORTHEAST DIRT MODIFIED HALL OF FAME – WEEDSPORT, NY – DIRTcar’s all-time winningest driver Brett Hearn, consummate Delaware standard-bearer Harold Bunting and pioneer Southern Tier wild man Joe Donahue will officially be inducted into the Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame in July.

These three racing legends add their names to a stellar list of Modified standouts that was started in 1992 when the Hall of Fame was established on the Cayuga County Fairgrounds in Weedsport, NY.

The 29th annual induction ceremonies honoring the Class of 2020 will take place Thursday, July 23 at 7 pm in the Northeast Dirt Modified Museum and Hall of Fame, on the grounds of the state-of-the-art Weedsport Speedway. The event is free and open to the public, and will feature pre- and post-program festivities. The following Sunday, Weedsport Speedway will present its Super DIRTcar Series Hall of Fame 100 for the big-block Modifieds.

No driver in the modern era of dirt Modified racing — and arguably, ever in stock car history — has taken down as many wins, titles and trophies as New Jersey’s Brett Hearn. His astounding career numbers simply blow every other contender out of the water: a whopping 919 victories at 48 different tracks in 11 states and two Canadian provinces. Starting in a Sportsman car he and his father put together in 1975 when he was a junior in high school, Hearn crushed the competition at both Orange County and Nazareth before moving up to run Modified with the “big boys” in 1978. His control, consistency and professionalism have produced an unmatchable body of work: 97 track and series championships, including eight overall Mr. DIRT Modified titles, 10 Super DIRTcar Series titles, and crowns in every other title series DIRTcar ever dreamed up. Hearn is a six-time Super DIRT Week winner in both the big-blocks and small-blocks (a dozen overall) and a 12-time winner of Orange County’s crown jewel Eastern States 200, topping the companion ES 358 event 17 times. Brett is Orange County’s all-time feature winner, with 308 victories in four divisions, and also tops the leader board at Albany-Saratoga Speedway, with 136 wins. Hearn was named Driver of the Year in 1986 by the Eastern Motorsports Press Association, and was number one on Area Auto Racing News’ list of the 50 Greatest Drivers of the Past 50 Years in 2013.

Milford’s Harold Bunting earns the distinction of becoming the first Hall of Fame driver inductee from the state of Delaware. The elder statesman from The First State was an accomplished Kart racer before climbing into Harry Dutton’s stock car at the now-defunct Little Lincoln Speedway in 1969. Bunting was successful right off the bat, teamed with Dutton and his brother Harvey, then driving for the Hitchens brothers in 1972. The following year, Harold’s career shot off like a roman candle: from June to October 1973, Bunting won 53 times at U.S. 13, Little Lincoln, Georgetown and the Delaware State Fairgrounds, driving the 8-cyl. Mod for the Hitchens crew, and a 6-cyl. car for Paul Whitelock. For ’74, Bunting went all in with the Whitelocks, driving father Floyd’s Mod and son Paul’s Sportsman to victory lane 51 times, winning the Mod title at Georgetown and 6-cyl. championships at both U.S. 13 and Georgetown. Harold has won 234 times in his career, at all the Delaware short tracks, Bridgeport in NJ, Grandview in PA, and the old A&N Speedway on the Tasley Fairgrounds in VA. He’s taken three Mod and one Sportsman title at Georgetown, four Mod and one Sportsman crown at Delmar’s U.S. 13, and was the overall State Fair champion in 1977, 1980, 1985 and 1986. Bunting retired at the top of his game in 1986, sweeping all three Delaware titles that year for car owner Steve Dale, at the age of 45.

A polarizing figure on the Southern Tier scene, Kirkwood, NY’s Joe Donahue was the man everyone loved to hate — and he relished the role of villain. Returning from WWII, Donahue discovered he could make a few bucks steering a stock car at local races. He put together a ’36 Chevy sedan in 1948, and won his first feature at Doty Hill the following year. Throughout the 1950s and well into the ’60s, “Irish Joe” continued to build better cars and attract better rides, with a hell-bent-for-leather driving style and undisguised intimidation. At rough-and-tumble bullrings like Five Mile Point, Glen Aubrey and Susquehanna (now Penn Can), he terrorized his fellow competitors — and won a lot of races. Fans who flocked to the tracks to see him lose to their favorites and “get his” were, more times than not, disappointed. In 1957, Donahue won every race but one at Glen Aubrey and the points title; he pretty much did the same thing at Five Mile Point. He backed that up with repeat championships at both places in ’58. During a career that spanned five decades, Joe won four titles at the Point, a pair at both Susquehanna and Glen Aubrey, a single title at Midstate, two Southern Tier championship races — and always, always put on a show. Joe Donahue passed away in 2007, at age 80.

Also being honored at the July 23 induction ceremonies are Tico Conley, Billy Taylor, Bob and Donna Miller, Tery Rumsey and April Preston-Elms.

The 2020 Gene DeWitt Car Owner Award goes to Tico Conley, a second-generation car owner who grew up in Oaks Corners, NY, and who will be forever attached to Hall of Fame driver Alan Johnson’s legacy. When a dramatic legal battle snatched Johnson’s 1979 ride right out from under him, Conley came to the rescue with a car to finish the season. Over the winter, the two officially became a team, with Alan ingeniously reconfiguring Tico’s old Show Car to his liking — and changing the course of dirt Modified history in the process. Blasting out of the box, Johnson and Conley won 20 events and the Canandaigua title in 1980. In the next three years, the team took down another 88 victories, two Mr. DIRT and a pair of Super DIRT Series titles, the ’83 Florida tour, track championships at Weedsport, Canandaigua, Rolling Wheels and Ransomville, the 1983 Super DIRT Week biggie on the Syracuse mile, and over half a million dollars in winnings and prizes. When Johnson abruptly left for the promise of a better opportunity in ’84, Conley sat on the sidelines. The pair reunited, joined by co-owner Rich LeFrois, in 1987, going on to claim another Canandaigua title in ’88 and Alan’s second Super DIRT Week victory in ’89. All told, the Johnson/Conley teaming hit for 169 feature wins at 24 different tracks in five states and two Canadian provinces.

Billy Taylor, recipient of this year’s Mechanic/Engineering Award, has been in the sport for the past 59 years, starting out with ’60s racers like Bill Wimble and Dick Goodell at Plattsburgh and tracks north of the border as a teenager. After his family moved to Rochester in the 1970s, Taylor hooked up with Richie Evans at Spencer Speedway and traveled the circuit with the NASCAR Mod superstar for the next three years. Crew stints with Maynard Troyer and Geoff Bodine followed. When he moved back to NY in the mid ’80s, Troyer was already manufacturing Mud Busses — and Taylor turned his attention to dirt. Sporting sponsorship from his brother Phil’s Chevy dealership, Billy’s meticulously prepared cars were driven by many of the marquee names: Kenny Brightbill, Doug Hoffman, Alan and Danny Johnson, Mike McLaughlin, Dave Blaney, Gary Balough, Sammy Swindell and more. DIRT’s Asphalt Series, which ran from 1988-1992, seemed custom-made for Taylor, with his vast paved track experience. He won six of those specials, with Danny Johnson, ringer Geoff Bodine, and Doug Hoffman, who took the series championship in 1991. The majority of success came with Hoffman, who won 19 big events for Taylor, including a pair of Lebanon Valley 200s, two Fonda 200s, and the 1996 Super DIRT Week classic. Taylor now works for JR Motorsports in NC, building electric systems for the team’s Xfinity cars.

The promoting team of Bob and Donna Miller will receive the prestigious Leonard J. Sammons Jr. Award for Outstanding Contributions to Auto Racing. The Millers, formerly of Pennsylvania and now residing in Florida, recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of their popular Thunder on the Hill Series at Grandview Speedway. Launched in 1990 as a joint venture with Grandview promoters Bruce and Theresa Rogers, with impetus from Sprint Car and Modified driver Dave Kelly, the “specials only” series was designed to showcase open-cockpit racing for the resident Mod crowd. Since its inception, the TOTH Series has run 137 events at Grandview, paid out more than $4.8 million to competitors, and featured such high-octane traveling series as USAC National Midgets and Sprints, World of Outlaws Sprint Cars and Late Models, and the All-Star Circuit of Champions, in addition to DIRTcar, RoC, ARDC and URC. TOTH is also traditionally part of Pennsylvania Speedweek. Bob, who cut his racing teeth at the Reading Fairgrounds and Bridgeport, and his wife Donna, organizer of the annual Ms. Motorsports pageant from 1986-2020, have also promoted successful events at New Egypt, Lincoln and Big Diamond speedways, among others.

DIRT TV cameraman and producer Tery Rumsey, now residing in Rochester, NH, will receive the Andrew S. Fusco Award for Media Excellence, in memory of Hall of Fame board member and legal counsel Andy Fusco. Rumsey had been a production manager and cameraman for Channel 9 in Syracuse before meeting DIRT president Glenn Donnelly in the late 1970s, to film Donnelly’s snowmobile races at Weedsport Speedway. From there, Rumsey went on to shoot and produce Super DIRT Week for ESPN, and was on the ground floor — along with Andy Fusco, Patrick Donnelly and local sportscaster Doug Logan — for “This Week on DIRT,” a slick weekly cable show that captured the CNY racing season. Originally playing to a limited audience, Tery shrewdly shopped the show nationwide. Clamoring for content, regional sports networks across the country picked up the program, which wound up reaching almost 15 million households every week during its 20-year run. Rumsey was also involved with live broadcasts from Weedsport, and continued to produce tape-delayed racing from the Syracuse Fairgrounds, Rolling Wheels and other venues. Since 2007, Tery has worked as a freelance cameraman, covering the Olympics and other major sporting events.

April Preston-Elms, co-owner of Bear Ridge Speedway in Bradford, VT, will be honored with this year’s Outstanding Woman in Racing Award. As a kid, Preston-Elms spent Thursday nights with her family at Thunder Road. She got out on the track herself in 1994, racing a “Fast Four” Mustang on the asphalt at Claremont and Canaan Fair Speedway in NH. By 2000, April was also hosting a one-hour radio show on local racing — and that’s how she met Bear Ridge owner Butch Elms in ’02. They hit it off, and by the end of that year they had bought Canaan Fair. For four years, Butch ran Canaan’s Friday program on the dirt oval, then returned to Vermont to manage Bear Ridge on Saturdays, while April stayed at Canaan to run the asphalt track. It proved to be too much, and in ’06 they sold Canaan and April set her first sights on Bear Ridge, bringing a new vision to the 1/4-mile dirt track that had been in Butch’s family since 1967. Since her arrival, the facility has been spruced up; the program has been tightened up to end by 10:30pm; and 358 Mods were dropped for Sportsman, racing under a DIRTcar sanction. The result? The weekly fan base has tripled, car counts are up, and this year Bear Ridge — in the farthest reaches of dirt Mod country — will host a DIRTcar series event.