the man behind the driver
Ed Spencer
this page is deticated to ed spencer, jimmy spencer's father. on this page you will find an article taken from the jimmy spencer's newsletter.
the apple did'nt fall far from the tree..!!
Ever wonder where “Mr.Excitement” got his fiercely competitive spirit? Is there something in the water in
Berwick,Pa. Hardly. Just chalk it up to heredity. You see, Jimmy’s dad-Ed Spencer,Sr.-was buning up the short
tracks of the northeast long before most of todays superstars were even born. Mr Spencer- better known as “Fast
Eddie” in his heyday- won over 500 races during a career that spanned nearly four decades.
The patriarch if the Spencer clan began his career in 1950 at Bone Stadium in Pittston,Pa. In fact, he won the
very first race he entered.
“I owned a race car and had another guy driving it” he recalls. “One night, my driver was late getting to the
track. So I climbed in the car,went out and won the feature. I really enjoyed driving, so I decided right then and
there that that I didn’t need someone else in my car”.
M. Spence career shifted into high gear with a track championship the following season, and he quickly
established himself as one of the Keystone States toughest competitors. Not even his induction into the Army could
break his stide.
“I had a really good sponsor back then, Stauffer Chevrolet,” he explains. “The owner had his own airplane. He
would fly me back and forth between Virginia-where I was stationed-and Pennsylvania every weekend so I could
race.”
By the 1970s Fast Eddie Spencer had reached legend status,winning races and championships in wholesale
fashion. He was nearly unbeatable at places like Clearfield and Port Royal speedways. He still holds the record for
the most victoies in a season at Port Royal, winning 14 of 26 races back in the mid-70s. He was so dominant in
Clearfield’s “big money”events that track management asked him not to return.
“Five thousand dollars to win was a lot of money back in the 70s,” says Mr. Spencer. “Clearfield held a 50-lap
feature that paid $4000 to win,plus $20 for every lap led. Well, I had a Camaro with a tunnel-port that was really
fast. I went thee, sat on the pole, led every lap,and won. I did the same thing a month later in a race that paid about
$1850-still good money.”
Three months later,the talented hotshoe won yet another high-paying event at Clearfield. That’s when speedway
management intervened.
“ They sent me a registered letter, “Mr. Spencer elaborates, “saying that I could bring my car to the track, but I
couldn’t drive it. Or, I could let one of thei officials, who was pretty fair racer himself, drive it. But I couldn’t drive
it. I still have that letter to this day.”
Of course,son Jimmy began his own racing career in the late 70s. Mr. Spencer didn’t exactly savor the idea of
his kid being in a race car at first. But Jimmy’s middle initial is “P” - and we all know it could just as easily stand
for “Persistent” as “Peter.”
“Jimmy knew I didn’t want him to race,” says Mr. Spencer, who ownes the highly-successful Ed Spencer Auto
Parts in Berwick. “I was afraid he would get hurt. But he and one of his friends, John Frank, built a car down in
the junk yard and kept it covered up.”
One weekend, the Spencer cew loaded up and headed for Selinsgrove Speedway. On this day, however, Jimmy
and his buddy stayed behind-or so everyone thought. Mr. Spencer and his crew had barely gotten his racer
unloaded when Jimmy came pulling into the race track with his own car.
“You can’t stop me now, Dad,” Jimmy said matter-of-factly, and the phenomenal career of the man we know as
“Mr. Excitement” was born.
Father and son raced as teammates for several years, Fast Eddie in his famed No 24 and Jimmy in 24Jr. Many
time the pair finished 1-2 while competing against the best drivers the northeast had to offer.
As Jimmy’s star began to rise Mr. Spencer trimmed his own driving scedule significantly, devoting more time
to his son’s effort.
“We knew early on that Jimmy was going to be real good,” he says proudly. “It just made sence for us to focus
on his racing. Man, could he ever drive a Modified. Richie Evans was the king of Modifieds back then, and Jimmy
was the only person who could run with Richie consistently. They had some great races.”
Jimmy went on to win back-to-back Modified crowns in 1986-87. During those title runs, it was the elder
Spencer’s job to quailify the teams second car as a back-up in the event that something happened to Jimmy’s
primary mount between quailifying and race time. If nothing went awry with the team’s number one ca, Mr.
Spencer would usually run the number two wntry a few laps into the main event and park it.
He offers an amusing anecdote one of the few times he planned to run the back-up car for the entire race. It
happened at New Yorks’s legenday Shangri-La Speedway towards the end of the 1987 campaign.....
“We decided I’d run the whole race since it was near the end of the season,” he says with a laugh. “Jimmy
started on the pole and I think I quailified 18th or 20th. Anyway, about 75 laps in, the flag man starts waving the
move over flag. I look in the mirror, and here comes that kid of mine up behind to lap me. I said to myself, “I’ve
been racing all these years and there’s no way on earth I’m going to let my own kid put me a lap down.” So I drove
in the pits and got out of the ca, I told guys that there was something wrong with the ca-it was out of gas or
something. They said “No there isn’t anything wrong with the ca.” But, it didn’t matter. The truth was I just
wasn’t going to let Jimmy lap me on the race track. No way.”
The Shangri-La track also produced one of Mr. Spencer’s fondest menories of Jimmy’s racing career, The
speedway staged a special $5000-to-win 25-lap race open only to drivers who had won feature races. All of the big
names were there: Ruggiero, Jarzombek, Hischman, Kent-nearly 20 of the badest cats in the Modified jungle. The
drivers drew for starrting position, and Jimmy wound up starting dead last.
“My eldest son, Ed,Jr., set the car up for 25 laps,”Mr. Spencer recalls, “but only 25 laps. He told Jimmy that’s
all it would last-that car would be totally used up by the end of the race.”
As you might have guessed,Jimmy came storming through the field. He took the lead 18 laps into the contest
and never looked back.
“That car was just smokin’,”laughs Mr.Spencer. “I still have the right rear tire from that race. It was absoutely
blistered.It would not have run one more lap. Ed,Jr.was right. He set the car up to run off the right rear for 25
laps,and thats’s all it had in it.”
Mr.Spencer made his last appearance behind the wheel in 1992 at Evergreen Speedway driving a Modified
racer normally piloted by his son,Paul.
“The car just wouldn’t run for Paul during practice,”Mr.Spencer remembers. “So, I climbed in and drove it in
the heat race.I could tell the ca wasn’t right because it just wouldn’t pick up speed coming off the corner. I told the
guys that something was wrong with the brakes. One of my sons said,”Oh Dad,you’re just stale because you
haven’t raced in a while.’ But I knew better.”
Sure enough,in a real-life case of Father Knows best, an inspection of the brake system revealed that a front
caliper wasn’t releasing properly-hampering the car’s ability to accelerate. The ccrew corrected the problem and-in
true Spencer style-Fast Eddie marched through the field to win the feature race.
“After that race,”he says,”I told everybody that I was’nt getting in anymore race cars. That was it for me,but at
least I went out a winner.”
Racing has produced many precious moments for Mr.Spencer,but his eyes get even brighter when he speaks of
his family life. He and wife Frances have been maried 45 years. Interestingly, they met at the race track, where
Mrs.Spencer worked as a nurse during the early days of Fast Eddie’s career. The Spencers have seven children;
four sons (Ed,Jr.,Jimmy, Gary, and Paul) and three daughters (Chris, Justine,and Pam).
“We have seven of the best kids a parent could ever have,” says Mr.Spencer with his ever-present smile.”I can’t
say anything good about one of them I can’t say about all the others. I’ve been blessed with a wonderful wife,
wonderful children, and wonderful grandchildren. I don’t know what else a man could ask for.”
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