Sleepy’s racing career began in the mid 1950’s when a local service club put on a soap box derby. The race was held for three years. Sleepy won all three years. This was also an introduction to controversial situations in racing.

Sleepy began racing karts in 1959 with a cheap store bought kart. He built the next seven karts that used his own modified engines. Still living at home, his parents didn’t find out he even had a kart until a win was printed in the local paper. Soon he was working in an industrial machine shop building printing presses where the foreman explained to him a machinist was someone who could take a file and a drill press and make anything. This was good practice for the racing years to follow.

In the early 1960’s Sleepy built his first stock car. It lasted only a few races before the stock suspension failed to survive a severe rollover. Family and finances made the decision that racing was over, at least for a while.

During this time Sleepy opened his own machine shop doing mostly industrial maintenance. However, a market developed for all copper and brass sculptured water fountains and chandeliers. These were sold and shipped across the country through east coast and west coast agents. As the economy slowed this market did as well. Sleepy worked in an architectural metal fabricating shop where steel, brass, aluminum and stainless steel was bent, formed, polished and welded.

During this time Sleepy took up flying competitive free flight model airplanes. Designing all of his own planes led to several articles in the model magazines. One of these was so radical the international sanctioning organization outlawed it as soon as its design was published. This was the beginning of Sleepy’s writing career.

Soon his offspring wanted a kart and the airplanes were hung up in the rafters of the shop. It didn’t take long for him to have several karts that were alternately raced by his kids and himself. When a dirt track was built for karts inside a local dirt stock car track the paved track kart racing was forgotten. It was all dirt track after that. Of course after a couple of seasons of this, the stock car bug bit again.

After two terrible seasons with a squirrelly car bought from someone who did not have a clue to how to make a car handle, Sleepy went to attend Duke Southard’s School of Racing.

“Duke was an excellent teacher. He gave me the tools to apply to race car handling. He taught me how to think through a handling problem.”

Back home the problems with the car were sorted out and it was traded for a Buick. After that a series of stock cars, modifieds, and mini-stocks were built in Sleepy’s shop.

Some of the time Sleepy drove the race cars himself, however, much of the time his daughter handled the driving. Always racing on a shoestring, Sleepy learned to fabricate many of his own parts. This eventually led to understanding the design and construction of parts for the race car. There were things like a six coil rear suspension under a modified built in the early 1980’s.

“When you have done all these things yourself you’ve made all the mistakes. This gives you a keen insight in what not to do and what won’t work. If you know what won’t work it is much easier to know what will work.”

Sleepy has had several interesting occupations. For several years after working in the metal fabricating shop he held the position of plant engineer in large air conditioner manufacturing company. Then, moving to the country area he and his wife, Sharon, bought a small country grocery store. After a few years of learning the butcher’s trade there appeared a need for a trash disposal business in the area. The trash business flourished and a larger company purchased it. Then he started a medical waste business which after a few years another company bought it. Moving to a nearby small town Sleepy opened a small welding and fabrication shop. It was soon filled with a pair of mini-stocks, one for daughter Martha and the other for Sleepy. About this time a new editor arrived at Stock Car Racing magazine. After talking to Larry Jewett on the phone for a while, Sleepy volunteered and Jewett told him to write something and send it in. This first article, on toe setting, written in 1999, was published in early 2000. This began a string of articles that led to a full time job as Technical Editor of Stock Car Racing magazine and a move from Texas to Florida.

Through out his career Sleepy has never been one do to something just because everyone else does it that way.

“If you only follow there will always be some one leading you around. Learn as much as you can from others, but learning to think for your self is the greatest gift you can give your self.