SUMMERS COUNTY W.Va. (WVDN) – It is time for another edition of A Peek into Summers County’s Past. Each week, local history collector William Jones discusses pieces from his collection and their historical significance to the area. In this edition, the topic turns to a race car.
To begin, Jones said, “This week’s series is in respect to something that came about from three men’s love for thrills and automobiles. My grandfather, Bernard Thompson, has either been mentioned or the stories have centered around him in a few of my past pieces. From his coal business in Talcott to having run Thompson’s Garage in Talcott. This time the story involves his race car that he had in the 1950s.”
Continuing the narrative, Jones stated, “My grandfather and two of his friends had always been enthralled with cars, trucks and working in a garage. So Granddad, Mr. Kessler, ‘John’ as we called him and Kenneth Willey decided to build a race car in 1957 from a 1932 Ford Kenneth had recently bought. It was built from a 1932 Ford and had the number 3 painted on the doors. The helmet you see in the photos was Granddad’s helmet. He painted flames on it to resemble the flames that were painted on the car. In writing this piece I was struggling to recall what years he had the race car. Granddad always documented everything. I took the helmet off of the shelf, flipped it upside down, and found a note he had placed inside of it that reads: ‘Bernard Thompson Racing Helmet 1957, 1958 and 1959.'”
“Granddad passed away in 2018 at the age of 90. John Kesler of Lowell, West Virginia, passed away in 2018, he was 88. Last but not least Kenneth Willey, who is 94 years young this year, still lives in Hilldale, West Virginia. The trio only won two races during their three years. One of which was in 1958, they took first place. I still have this trophy buried in my collection. In talking with Kenneth’s son David he can remember only being 5 years old at the time but vividly going to the races with them.”
Jones said, “They would load their race car on a trailer or in the back of Granddad’s dump truck that he bought his coal in and haul it to the Rupert Speedway. You can see in the photo one of the original tickets to one of the races they competed in. The old newspaper clipping is from a photo of the car that was in The Hinton Newspaper in 1958 taken when the car was being worked on in front of Thompson’s Garage in Talcott and reads ‘Number 3 stock car racer owned by Bernard Thompson and John Kesler of Talcott and driven by Smoky Iddings won second place in a ten lays heat, first place in the Australian pursuit and first place in the amateur main event at the Rupert Speedway Friday, August 17.'”
“Granddad was the primary driver in the races after the untimely death of Smoky Iddings, John filling in from time to time. Kenneth would ‘warm the car up’, as Granddad would say, by driving it around the track a few laps prior to the start of a race in order to ‘prime it.’ David recalled there being wrecks during races and drivers going over an embankment off the track and down the hill towards a pond. This leads me to my favorite memory of my grandparents telling stories of his racing days.”
To complete the story, Jones said, “My grandmother, Bea Thompson, always told me the story about the only time she went to one of the races. That granddad had never wrecked the car or was injured. She finally went to a race in 1956, she was pregnant with my Uncle Bob. The race had just begun and Granddad lost control of the car and went off the track and flipped it over an embankment. ‘Nanny’ as I called her, said she got so upset and sick by what she had just seen that she never went back to another race. Then Granddad would chime in and say, ‘Nope, she didn’t come back, which was why I never wrecked again.’ And would just laugh and laugh as he walked off.”
This concludes another edition of A Peek into Summers County’s Past. Have you heard about any of these races? Were there any other racers in the county?
If you have a story regarding the area’s history to share, send an email to news@hintonnews.com.
