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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Author
Storyteller.
That time period has change into a bit overused. From social media influencers to suburban Substackers, everybody likes to declare themselves a storyteller. The nice ones by no means have to put on that identify tag, although. them as quickly as you hear them.
Ken Squier was, above all else, a storyteller.
“Like bullets they propel themselves out of the nook!”
“He is getting some air … gobbling it up in that automobile, No. 88, maintaining it cool to prepare for that closing assault …”
“Johnny Utsman hand grenades the engine! It detonates proper on the start-finish line!”
“Have a look at that Oklahoma land rush on the backstretch!”
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“He fireballs his method into the lead!”
Squier’s story is equal components Howard Cosell and Johnny Appleseed. He was a New Englander, born and raised in Waterbury, Vermont, the son of a radio station proprietor. He’d hearken to auto races carried by WDEV and have become enamored with the pressing, gallant descriptions of the lads who piloted hurtling items of equipment round locations such because the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, devouring and finding out these broadcasts like a literature professor delving into Shakespeare and Chaucer. He took what he discovered to the PA microphones of brief tracks all through race-car-obsessed New England. The expertise that oozed from these audio system caught the ear of NASCAR president Invoice France, who was kicking across the concept of a radio community that would carry his inventory automobile races to a broader viewers.
“I believe, a minimum of I hope, that what Invoice heard was one thing totally different,” Squier recalled in a 2013 dialog following his election to the NASCAR Corridor of Fame because the recipient of the Squier-Corridor Award for NASCAR Media Excellence. Sure, that is his identify on the award. “Once we first began discussing what we might try this was maybe a little bit totally different was specializing in the drivers. There would at all times be a spot to debate the mechanical elements of the automobiles and the race technique, all of that. However ultimately, it needed to be about these heroes behind the wheel and the death-defying stuntmen who went over the wall to pit these automobiles. It isn’t about steel and engines and tires; it is in regards to the individuals and the tales behind these individuals, as a result of they’re exceptional individuals.”
So was he.
With France’s blessing, it was Squier who constructed the Motor Racing Community in 1970, with races carried by a group of radio stations that grew from a smattering of southern outposts to a nationwide chain that reached into the a whole lot. He assembled a staff of fellow native racing broadcasters and PA announcers, together with the person who shares high billing on the Squier-Corridor Award, the satisfaction of Elkin, North Carolina, Barney Corridor.
“So, you took a Vermont Yankee and a North Carolina hillbilly and you set them on the radio collectively to speak about race automobiles,” Corridor recalled in 2013 with a chuckle. “However it labored. And it labored as a result of Ken believed that in the event you might inform a narrative in a singular method, use totally different phrases, actually take the listener down into the infield, make them really feel like they had been there, then it did not matter the place you had been from. Simply have a look at our groups at MRN and what he had on TV. Broadcasters from in every single place. That made listeners from in every single place really feel welcome on a Sunday afternoon.”
It was by no means sufficient for Squier to easily broadcast NASCAR races and be achieved. He was at all times engaged on a deal someplace. He was instrumental in serving to the sanctioning physique ink its landmark take care of CBS, a partnership that lasted twenty years and started with what’s inarguably Squier’s most well-known second: the end of the very first CBS flag-to-flag reside broadcast, the 1979 Daytona 500.
“And there is a battle! Between Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison, their tempers overflowing. They’re indignant. They know they’ve misplaced. And what a bitter defeat.”
His voice, and this legendary name, without end modified our sport. pic.twitter.com/scozSNQuRt
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) November 16, 2023
Squier by no means stopped working WDEV and its regional community, which his household nonetheless owns, and for many years, whilst he jetted off to commentate Olympic speedskating or to shoot film scenes with Burt Reynolds, he nonetheless discovered time to cohost a weekly WDEV present titled “Music to Go to the Dump By.” He by no means stopped doing no matter he might to maintain up the well being of grassroots racing in New England, even when he had change into bigger than racing life, particularly his beloved Thunder Street Speedbowl, a quarter-mile hilltop oval in Barre, Vermont, that he based greater than 60 years in the past.
“You’ll watch him on TV doing a race from Talladega on CBS with Dale Earnhardt battling Richard Petty after which three nights later he’d be with us doing public deal with at Thunder Street,” two-time Xfinity Sequence champ Randy Lajoie recalled on the NASCAR Corridor of Fame standing subsequent to Squier in 2013. “I’d say, ‘Ken, you do not have to slum it with us anymore,’ and he’d say, ‘I like it right here. And you will be racing at Talladega with us quickly sufficient.’ Rattling if that wasn’t true. And I believe he had loads to do with individuals down there even realizing who I used to be.”
Squier was at all times scouting for and training up younger expertise, each on the racetrack and people speaking in regards to the racetrack. An limitless roster of former and present motorsports broadcasters, from broadcast and cable TV to terrestrial and satellite tv for pc radio, acquired their first breaks at one in every of his racetracks or radio stations. And irrespective of the place any NASCAR media member comes from, anybody of a sure age with a media heart credential has a minimum of a number of tales to inform about Ken Squier calling, writing a letter or pulling them behind a stack of tires within the storage with recommendations, recommendation and a little bit of razor-edged New England criticism.
“Do not accept unusual phrases of description when extraordinary phrases can be found.”
“Join the everyman with Superman and Superman with everyman.”
“Always remember, irrespective of how massive it will get, above all else this sport is about frequent males doing unusual issues.”
The final time I chatted with Squier in particular person, we talked a couple of column of mine he had simply learn and did not like. He instructed me that he did not agree with my premise, however he appreciated my ardour. Then he seen my ring, emblazoned with the crimson, white and blue protect of Captain America. He grabbed my hand and pointed on the emblem.
“Properly, after all you want superheroes. We’re surrounded by them each weekend on the racetrack.”
Sure, we’re. And Ken Squier was one in every of them. The superhero of motorsports storytellers.