Longtime The Charlotte Observer reporter Tom Higgins has been named the recipient of the 2015 Squier-Hall Award for NASCAR Media Excellence. Higgins 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 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 since his retirement. 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. Higgins was among eight nominees voted upon by a panel comprised of NASCAR and NASCAR Hall of Fame executives, journalists, public relations representatives and former drivers. The Squier-Hall Award was created in 2012 to honor the contributions of media to the success of the sport. Legendary broadcasters Ken Squier and Barney Hall, for whom the award is named, were its initial recipients.(NASCAR), see more information and the other nominees on the Squier-Hall Award for NASCAR Media Excellence page.(7-5-2014)
