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2/8/05
Honor Thy Father
Scott Simmons probably isn’t the first guy whose dying
wish was to honor his father, but he’s the first person
to make such a wish known to me. It happened last summer,
when he left a phone message at my Hot Rod Nostalgia office. Although
we’d never been formally introduced, I recognized the
name immediately. Scott had been the regular announcer
at my adopted home track, Sacramento Raceway. He was
also the original voice of the Goodguys Vintage Racing Association
circuit. I hadn’t heard his distinctive, squeaky
voice in a while, and had wondered why.
Turns out that Scott had been in and out of hospitals, due
to complications from diabetes. When I called him back,
he calmly described how the doctors had chopped off one of
his feet — and wanted to keep cutting, on both legs. He’d
just made the decision not to let that happen, even though
the alternative was certain death. He said that he’d
decided to come home to Roseville, Calif., and spend the
rest of his life in the comfort of hospice care and his wife,
Heidi.
Scott Simmons at work: During
Goodguys’ 1989 Jim Davis Memorial Nitro Nationals,
the veteran announcer interviewed the late fuel racer’s
son, Brent Davis, in Sears Point’s staging lanes.
Simmons started announcing Sacramento Raceway events
in 1971. His last on-air gig was a Car Talk radio
show on January 15th, only 16 days before he died. (Photo
courtesy Jackson Brothers Video) |
He also said that he wanted to devote what little time he
had left to getting what he considered to be long-overdue
recognition for his father’s role in drag racing. He
was calling for advice about how to best make that happen. In
particular, he hoped that his dad would be considered for
induction into the California Hot Rod Hall Of Fame, whose
new members are annually elected by the NHRA Motorsports
Museum staff and honored at the California Hot Rod Reunion
in October.
“I know I won’t be around to see it happen,” he
told me. “The doctors are giving me three months;
I’m thinking I can go another year. But my dad
is in pretty good health, for a guy who’s gonna be
76, so he might make it. NHRA’s Hall Of Fame
doesn’t admit people who are deceased, so it’s
got to happen soon, while he’s still around. This
is a man who helped change the course of drag racing.”
When Scott confirmed that he still had enough energy to
work his keyboard, I suggested that he type out everything
he knew about his dad’s accomplishments. A couple
of weeks later, I received a copy of a three-page, single-spaced
letter addressed to “The Committee of the Hot Rod Hall
of Fame,” written with the skill of someone who majored
in communications in college, as Scott had. Before
I got to the end of Page One, it became apparent that his
father had, indeed, been a major player in the sport.
 I was vaguely familiar with Windjammer Blower Service as
a kid growing up in Los Angeles, but not with the name of
its founder, Leonard Simmons. The senior Simmons had
been an unknown diesel mechanic until Art Chrisman walked
into his employer’s shop one day in 1958, looking for
someone to work on a surplus GMC supercharger. When
Leonard learned that Chrisman’s unit would be connected
to a Chrysler Hemi, he became intrigued with the challenge
of modifying a low-r.p.m. truck blower to withstand the demands
of fuel racing. In March of 1959, Simmons’ first
race-car blower powered the Chrisman & Cannon Hustler
to victory in what is arguably the most-significant fuel-dragster
event in history: the inaugural U.S. Fuel and Gas Championships,
which came to be known as the March Meet.
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