Happy New Year!

The guest speaker for our upcoming meeting will be Tom Higgins, renowned NASCAR storyteller. Higgins, who was a reporter for The Charlotte Observer, was the first beat writer to cover every race on the NASCAR schedule, a role he held from 1980 until his retirement in 1997. He has been named the recipient of the 2015 Squier-Hall Award for NASCAR Media Excellence.

He will be honored during NASCAR Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony festivities on Jan. 30, 2015, and featured in an exhibit in the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Higgins’ professional newspaper career started in 1957 at the weekly Canton Enterprise in North Carolina. While at the Asheville Times in North Carolina, he covered racing for the first time. Higgins joined the sports staff at The Observer in 1964 as an outdoors writer and soon began covering stock car racing as well. He has continued to write motorsports nostalgia columns for the newspaper and its website ThatsRacin.com since his retirement.

“Tom Higgins helped establish what it means to be a NASCAR beat reporter,” said NASCAR Chairman and CEO Brian France. “For more than five decades, his words have told the story of NASCAR, and the people and emotions that define the sport. He has been much more than a reporter to those in the NASCAR industry — serving as friend and confidant to competitors, administrators and his fellow journalists.”

Higgins, affectionately known as “Pappy,” won the International Motorsports Hall of Fame Henry T. McLemore Award for lifetime achievement in motorsports journalism in 1980, the NMPA George Cunningham Award as writer of the year in 1987 and was named the NASCAR Bill France Award of Excellence winner in 1996. He was inducted into the NMPA Hall of Fame in 2011. He is also a member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame Voting Panel.

Thanks to NASCAR.com for the information

Mark Your Calendar

1/21/15 – Mike Fox, Head Baseball Coach, UNC
2/4/15 – Debbie Yow, Athletics Director, NC State University
2/18/15 – Howie Freiling, Special Assignment Scout, Philadelphia Phillies