NASCAR Legend Junior Johnson To Appear In Dawsonville, Ga: The most famous moonshiner of them all plans for the first time to take part in a reunion of his liquor-hauling peers. NASCAR racing legend Junior Johnson will serve as Grand Marshal Saturday, Oct 26th during the 35th Annual Moonshine Festival at Dawsonville, Ga. At age 14 Johnson could drive a car so fast and well that he was transporting illegal moonshine whiskey from his father’s stills in the mountains of Wilkes County, N.C.,to thirsty customers celebrating the recent end of World War II. This talent for speed made Johnson a natural to join the colorful cast of competitors when stock car racing was born in North Carolina in the late 1940s. For most of the next half-century Johnson was a central character as NASCAR progressed from .jalopies and dusty short tracks to become the most popular form of motorsports in the world. .First as a driver rated by Sports Illustrated as the greatest ever, then as one of the top team owners of all time, Johnson maintained the fullbore philosophy that prevented him from ever being outrun on a highway by the revenuers. Johnson won 50 races at NASCAR’s major level as a driver, including the Daytona 500 in 1960. However, Junior made his greatest mark as a team owner, scoring 140 victories, including six when Dawsonville hero Bill Elliott drove for him during the1992-94 seasons. Cale Yarborough and Darrell Waltrip won three Winston Cup championships each while driving for Johnson. Elliott finished second in the ’92 title chase to the late Alan Kulwicki, losing by only 10 points, the smallest margin in history. Johnson will be Grand Marshal of the Moonshine Festival’s parade at 10 a.m. .Activities are scheduled 8 a.m.-5 p.m. and feature antique cars, racing displays and vendors in the city streets, at the square and at the Thunder Road Museum. From noon- 2 p.m. Johnson will autograph copies of his authorized biography, “Junior Johnson: Brave In Life,” which will be for sale in a booth at the square. Junior will be joined in Dawsonvile for the signing by co-authors Tom Higgins and Steve Waid, who also will autograph the books. Now in a fifth printing, the 200-page book on Junior features anecdotes and photos from his moonshining days, his driving career and his four decades as a team owner fielding cars for such drivers as Charlie Glotzbach, Terry Labonte, Bobby Allison, Neil Bonnett and LeeRoy Yarbrough in addition to Elliott, Waltrip and Yarborough. Higgins is a a retired motorsports writer for The Charlotte Observer who started covering NASCAR in 1958. Waid is vice-president for editorial development at Street & Smith Sports Group, which publishes Winston Cup Scene and Winston Cup Illustrated. He is a co-host of NASCAR Today, the Fox television network’s show preceding each Winston Cup race. One reviewer wrote the following of the Johnson biography: ..”The photos alone are worth the price of admission, including mug shots of Junior, his mother and his two brothers from revenuers’ files, massive stills and previously unpublished racing shots from NASCAR’s earliest days.” Also pictured is the pardon from a moonshining conviction that Johnson received from President Ronald Reagan in 1985. .”The pardon is a measure of the incredible life Junior has led,” said Higgins. “As far as we can determine, Junior is the only American ever to receive a presidential pardon in person in the Oval Office.” Johnson, 71, sold his racing operation and retired from motorsports in 1995. He now spends his time overseeing private businesses, including a large cattle farm in Yadkin County, N.C. Junior lives on the farm with his wife Lisa and young children Robert and Meredith.(10-21-2002)
