Ron Lemasters
Posted Saturday, March 26, 2005

With the passing earlier in the week of Harvey Duck, NASCAR has lost one of its most original and best ambassadors.

Who was Harvey Duck?

He was the man who brought a new age to NASCAR, who set the stage for today’s multi-million-dollar sponsors and taught a generation of public relations people how it should be done. If you cut Harvey Duck, he bled STP red.

Duck, along with old warhorses like Jim Chapman of PPG and Deke Houlgate of Pennzoil fame, was a newspaperman from the big city who immediately grasped the idea of getting publicity from the “ink-stained wretches” they had grown up among for the sponsors who had hired them away.

If not for men like Chapman, Houlgate and Duck, the landscape of today’s sport would likely be vastly different. Among the first to recognize that motorsports would not progress beyond its fragmented, regionalized appeal if it did not broaden its horizons, these men put theory into practice and made it happen.

Of course, the following generations made their contributions too, and what we have today, especially in NASCAR, is an amalgam of all that they have wrought. It’s a good thing to see NASCAR in full health, challenging the NFL for supremacy among sports on TV and in the marketplace. It used to be that baseball was the main hurdle, but MLB’s problems over the past 15 years sank that particular ship.

Let’s not talk about open-wheel racing. The subject is too painful for words. Growing up in Indiana, born to parents who themselves grew up within sight of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and having listened to Tom Carnegie since before birth, what has happened to open-wheel racing is heart-rending.

I guess it’s a sign that I’m getting older. The men and women I grew up idolizing in the sport are slowly passing on, and that brings the inevitability of our own race against time into sharp, clear focus.

Duck was a master of the hearty handshake, the grin and slap on the back style of PR. His infectious good humor earned a lot of copy for STP, which was perhaps the first big-money sponsor in NASCAR. Andy Granatelli, best-known for bussing Mario Andretti in Victory Lane at Indy in 1969, was a genius at getting publicity, and in hiring Harvey Duck, he proved that luck had nothing to do with it.

Richard Petty, the King of NASCAR and one of the most important ingredients in the success of STP over the years, remembered Duck upon his passing.

"Harvey was one of the original PR guys in motorsports, and especially in NASCAR racing,” he said. “He came to STP from a big Chicago newspaper, and there hadn't been much of that at all for race teams or sponsors. Harvey knew the sport and he knew the media. A lot of the things people are doing today in PR started with guys like Harvey Duck.

"Add in the fact he was a pretty nice guy, and he was fun to have around. We've missed him since he retired, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family."

If you’re going to have someone say nice things about you when shuffle off this mortal coil, Richard Petty is a good choice. Of course, those who knew Harvey will all say nice things too.

Goodbye, Harvey, and God speed.

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