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(Excerpted with permission from Ed Otto: NASCAR’s Silent Partner.)

With his ever-present cigar and hello sucker greeting, Ed Otto was the charismatic promoter who wowed the crowds throughout the Northeast with his daredevil shows in the pioneer days of auto racing.  Shows full of wildly dangerous spectacles, raw nerve bravery, and purely masculine bravado. Starting in the late 1920s and continuing on into the late 1970s, he did it all-motorcycles, midgets, sprints, roadsters, dragsters, jalopies, stocks, convertibles. From rural dirt tracks and tiny asphalt ovals, to big city baseball fields and massive football stadiums, he hosted just about everything capable of burning rubber. Hell, he even dynamited drivers out of sealed coffins, had them ride behind crazed ostriches in crude sulkies, and careen around clay tracks blindfolded as fans looked on in jaw-dropping awe. He put on a heck of show.

Except for the occasional well-placed quote in a newspaper story, he was rarely recognized by the public, and yet, Ed Otto was one of America’s earliest and most successful racing promoters. He was responsible for putting on well over 1,100 races-sometimes in three states on one Saturday night-including 25 Winston Cup events. He alone established the legal precedent of race drivers and car owners being independent contractors in the New Jersey Supreme Court back in 1951, a point that remains the very foundation of the sport today. He seized control of the sport, placing it in the palm of the promoters; and he treated it as a business, something few people before him ever had. He was an ardent safety advocate who implemented the shoulder harness rule in NASCAR, and helped create the first flat guaranteed purse, annual point fund, and insurance policy for drivers. He put on the first foreign car versus American car race in the U.S., the first NASCAR race in Canada, and the first drag racing Winternationals in Florida. He was also one of the first vice presidents of NASCAR as well as a longstanding silent partner, at one time owning 40 percent of the company.

It has been over 80 years since he first started in the racing business, and while his name remains relatively unknown, his brash and flamboyant spirit is still remembered by many people who knew him, worked with him, or crossed his path in one way or another. Whether they are champion drivers, track owners, mechanics, car builders, TV commentators, promoters, publicists, journalists, business managers or beauty queens, they all have a poignant anecdote that demonstrates who Ed Otto was and what he contributed to the sport and business of auto-racing in America.

That “auto racing business” has come a long way since the late 1920s, and the world has embraced the sport in ways that no one could have ever dreamed possible. Fans tune in to SPEED TV and Sirius Radio shows, buy the sponsored products of their favorite drivers, and spend God-only-knows how much money attending the highly commercial and slicked-up entertainment events also known as auto races. With the second-largest sport-viewing audience after the National Football League, racing today is synonymous with NASCAR, and NASCAR is a multibillion-dollar empire. Network and cable television channels have inked deals exceeding $2.8 billion; sales of NASCAR-licensed merchandise exceed $2 billion annually; and major corporations fork over $1 billion a year just to have their names splashed across racecars, grandstands, and any other surface that might be glimpsed by the buying public. Hawking everything from M & M’s to Viagra, NASCAR, it has often been said, never met a sponsor it didn’t like. “NASCAR dads” are now a much-wooed demographic in the American political arena; and when a NASCAR driver gets killed on the track-as Dale Earnhardt did in 2001, his face makes the cover of Time magazine. NASCAR has raced its way into mainstream American culture and is now very much a part of our national consciousness. 

And how did this all begin?

With one man. At least it did if you read the official NASCAR version of the story.  And that man, the Patron Saint of Stock Car Racing, was Bill France. Tall, handsome, dynamic, William Henry Getty France. A former race driver and one-time gas station owner, “Big Bill” France was born in Washington, D.C., in 1909, and is largely credited with single-handedly creating the international phenomenon of NASCAR. Yes, in the world according to NASCAR, Big Bill was the sole visionary of stock car racing in America. He was the daddy of it all, the man who cranked the engine. Before Big Bill, silence. After Big Bill, ear-splitting 700-horsepower symphonies all across the land.

Well, not exactly.

Not to say the NASCAR version of the sport’s history is incorrect. It is not. It’s just incomplete. It’s the edited, controlled information version that has been told again and again until it passes for fact. It is the heroic biography used to humanize and enhance the public image of NASCAR. Crediting Big Bill with single-handedly creating NASCAR is like crediting Sir Edmund Hillary with the first successful climb to the top of Mt. Everest without mentioning that there was a Sherpa guide named Tenzing Norgay who not only climbed alongside Hillary, but carried his gear as well. Like most stories of long ago, what is left out is equally as important as what is put in. The problem is that unlike baseball, where records and anecdotes and trivia have been memorialized by millions of fans, the early years of auto-racing were never well documented and therefore there are many holes in the story.

Bill France was indeed a hard-working and determined businessman with a crystal clear idea of what he wanted to create. He was a brilliant visionary and the best thing that ever happened to stock car racing in America. But he was also a shrewd salesman who rewarded allies and punished dissenters. Intent on keeping it all in the family, Big Bill then tutored his son, Bill Junior, on how to do things the NASCAR way, and he in turn tutored his children on the importance of maintaining familial control. According to Forbes magazine, the France Family, because of NASCAR, is one of the richest families in America today. They’re several notches below Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, but they’re right on par with television talk show host Oprah Winfrey.

The Big Bill story is a great American saga. A larger-than-life man from working class beginnings who goes on to create a brand name phenomenon of staggering proportions. NASCAR today is a promoter’s organization, and it had to become that in order to succeed. But the truth is, success has a thousand fathers, which means many DNA tests are needed in order to prove paternity. There were many men-and a few women-who played critical roles in the growth of the NASCAR brand of stock car racing in America. Many people who put the swagger in the sport and helped NASCAR grow. Those who are familiar with racing history know their names, and they are names of people who are undeservedly obscure.  One of those names is Ed Otto. Along with laying the foundation in the early years of auto racing, he worked alongside Big Bill France for 14 years, and helped make NASCAR what it is today. Ed Otto was my father. Here is his story, sewn together from my memories of him; as well as from memories and stories and anecdotes and opinions from dozens of other people who have contributed greatly to the sport of auto racing in America.