MFDJ 02/24/2019: Skimp’s Fiery Fate

Today’s Fiery Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

On June 11, 1950, the National Stock Car Racing Association, or NSCRA for short, was running a 100-lap event at Atlanta’s famed Lakewood Speedway, a track dubbed “The Indianapolis Of The South.” The NSCRA group raced out of Atlanta, so the Lakewood event was a “home game” for the series. The series actually pre-dated NASCAR, having crowned champions as far back as 1946.

It was a hot, dusty day, with the heavy stock cars kicking up a ton of dust at the one-mile fairgrounds track. Future NASCAR racer Jack Smith was out front as the race wound down. From all reports, it had been a fairly uneventful event. But on lap 81, all that changed.

John Edward “Skimp” Hersey was one of the drivers chasing Smith around Lakewood that day. The 37-year-old driver from St. Augustine, Fla. had been a regular competitor on Bill France’s NASCAR modified circuit, winning at Jacksonville in 1948. Hersey had stepped away from NASCAR to run this NSCRA event, driving a car for Mack Richardson, as a teammate to Bill Snowden.

Skimp Hersey

Hersey slid his car off into Lakewood’s treacherous first turn when disaster struck. For whatever reason, Hersey’s car got away from him, tumbling side over side into the turn.

Many drivers in those days would keep an army gas can in their cars when they raced at Lakewood. This was so if they ran out of gas on the backstretch, they could pull off and put enough in to get back around to refuel. With the lake in the center of the track, anybody who stopped on the far side of the track was pretty much stranded until the end of the day.

When Hersey’s car became airborne, the lid came off of the gas can, coating the inside of his car with fuel. As the car came to rest, something sparked, igniting the fuel, and turning Hersey’s car into an inferno.

The accident occurred right in front of the grandstands, which were situated at the entrance of the turn. An estimated crowd of 15,000 people watched in horror, as flames roared from Hersey’s car.

Suddenly, disoriented and on fire, Hersey emerged from the burning car. He stumbled from the wreck, and sat down on the track, still burning as the crowd screamed for someone to help.

The closest person to Hersey was a photographer for an Atlanta newspaper. The photographer moved out onto the track, and had been taking photos of the accident when Hersey emerged from the flames.

He never went to help. He just continued taking photos. They would run in gruesome sequence on the front page of the next day’s paper. [Well, somebody had to! – DeSpair]

Finally, someone reached Hersey and managed to get the fire on him put out. But it was too late. He would be transported to Grady Hospital, where he died one day later.

And so it begins…

Crawling from the wreckage…

Almost out of the flames… 

And taking a seat.  (All crash photos culled from the June 12, 1950 issue of The Atlanta Constitution)

The race was not restarted. Jack Smith was declared the winner.

The photographer, according to witness reports, had to be personally escorted by police from the track.  Had the crowd gotten their hands on the photographer, they likely would have torn him to pieces. [He’s a photographer, not a firefighter or an EMT!  He wouldn’t know how to help the guy.  Sheesh, people! – DeSpair]

The same photos that he took would run in dozens of newspapers across the country.  Auto racing deaths in those days were widely treated sensationally, with photos of racers having been or being killed running on the front pages.

Culled from: GeorgiaRacingHistory.Com