Bill Elliott - Awesome Bill from Dawsonville: My Life in NASCAR

William Clyde Elliott as a toddler, circa 1957.

F OR A ROCKY PATCH OF EARTH, Dawson County, Georgia, sure does grow good roots. Elliotts have been calling this hilly section of rural north Georgia home for a long timeas long as I can remember, anyway. Our little corner of the county is just outside downtown Dawsonville on Route 183. When I was growing up, if you counted parents, spouses, kids, and Mama Reece, there were twelve members of the Elliott clan living in four brick houses alongside this winding, wooded country road.

While both Mothers and Daddys families go back several generations here, I only really knew the last generation or two. I never knew my fathers father, Ervin Elliott. He died well before I was born. I do know that he was into farming, as was just about everybody back in those days. Daddys mom was a different story. I knew her quite well and loved her. Ruby Elliott lived into her nineties. In fact, up into her late eighties she was actually still driving a car. I guess that was a pretty good omen.

My daddy was born in nearby Lumpkin Campground in 1924. The Campground was a settlement that sprung from an old Methodist meeting ground. If youve ever seen one of those revival meetings in the movies, thats what the place looked like: as country as it gets. George Elliott was the second of four children born to Ervin and Ruby. He and his siblings all came up the old-fashioned way: hard work, independence, and family. My aunt Louise was the oldest. She is about eighty years old now, but we rarely get to see her. Sadly, she lost her husband to suicide in the 1970s, and shes been a bit of a recluse ever since. Then there was Daddy, one of the biggest influences on my life; much more about him in a moment.

After Daddy came my uncle Ralph. You want to talk about a tough guy. As a young man, Uncle Ralph worked in a rock quarry down in Cumming, Georgia. One day he was trying to clean out the bin where they store the rocks before they dump them into the truck. Well, he was in the bin when someone accidentally dumped the rocks. The load buried him alive. He just about died from that, but now in his eighties, hes getting along reasonably well.

The youngest is Ethel Mae. If you ever go down to Gordon Pirkles Pool Room, the center of Dawsonvilles social scene, youll see three things. On the walls youll see all kinds of press clippings from my racing career. On the ceiling youll see the grill from a Thunderbird I wrecked at Martinsville a few years back, and across the room you might very well see Ethel Mae. Shes in her seventies now and shes still a piece of work. A great lady.

Through military service and education, Dad traveled more than his parents or any of his siblings. By contrast, my mother, Mildred Reece Elliott, spent virtually her entire life in the Dawsonville area. Records show her childhood address simply as Route 2, Dawsonville. Mom was fiercely intelligent. She completed high school at the ripe old age of fourteen and was valedictorian to boot. We still have the original and meticulously handwritten manuscript of her valedictory speech. Heres an excerpt taken from a section where shes talking about graduation as the beginning of a voyage.

Whether that voyage will be prosperous or disastrousGod knoweth. But this we know: It will depend on ourselvesupon the use we make of the gifts and powers weve been givenupon the ends toward which we choose to work.

I happen to believe those words are universally true, but they would turn out to be particularly prophetic as far as her children were concerned. Mother was really a pioneer. At a time when very few womenparticularly rural southern womenwere pursuing higher education, she studied business and finished two years at North Georgia College. She was quite a lady. When people say I favor my mother, and Ive heard that many times over the years, I take it as a great compliment. Whereas Daddy was businesslikeshrewd, quiet, and close to the vestMother never met a stranger. If she walked into a store and both the town drunk and the preacher were in there, shed probably hug the drunk first, but shed hug both before she left. She loved everybody. She and Daddy made a real nice couple, seemingly balancing each other out.

They married in 1943, shortly before Daddys military service took him to ports all over the United States and the South Pacific. After the war Daddy returned to Georgia and they had three boys: Ernie was born in 1947; Dan, in 1951; and me, William Clyde Elliott, in 1955. Born on October 8, in Forsyth Hospital in Cumming, Georgia, I was named for two relativesWilliam Elliott, a prisoner of war in World War II, and Clyde Elliott, who was killed in an automobile accident at the age of fourteen.

For where and whence Daddy came up1920s rural north Georgiahe was an educated man. Hed seen the world. In the service he got a chance not only to travel but also to study math and physics at prestigious universities like the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell. He earned his bachelors degree at North Georgia College in nearby Dahlonega, Georgia, and studied toward a masters in mathematics at Emory University in Atlanta.

Before he could complete his masters, Daddy was offered a job with Burroughs Machine Company in southeast Georgia. While the new job meant a move from the Dawsonville area he always loved (he used to refer to it as the most beautiful place on earth), it also meant a better paycheck for the young couple and a move closer to the port city of Brunswick where Daddy could carry out his Naval Reserve duties (after the war, he spent many years in the Naval Reserve, ultimately retiring with the rank of commander). In 1952 Daddy returned to northern Georgia where his life, away from the racetrack anyway, was largely defined by his businesses. I was very youngtoo young to really rememberwhen he and Mother had a small feed supply business and some chicken houses, but they had gotten out of those lines as I was coming up. Thats when Daddy started Standard Building Supply. Located right on the main drag in our hometown of Dawsonvillenearly an hour north of Atlantawe sold lumber, nails, concrete block, structural steel, you name it.

The building supply business was an extension of our home. It was even located amid our homes, diagonally across the street from my childhood home, which still stands today. Farther down the road was Grandma Reeces house (I lived in the basement there for a few years in the mid-1980s). There are still lots of Elliotts in the area. My brother Ernie lived across the street from Grandma Reece for quite a while, and Dan lives right down the street from him. In fact, my daughter Starr lives in Grandma Reeces house now.

The building supply was a simple retail operation, but it would become the focal point of nearly every waking hour of my childhood. Life in Dawsonville was pleasant, for sure, but if you were an Elliott you worked. Anyone around town will tell you thatdawn to duskif you ever needed to find one of the Elliott boys, you best look wherever there was wood that needed to be stacked, bricks that needed to be chipped, cows to be milked, parts to be hauled, or customers who needed assistance. If there was a chore to be done, we three boys were called on to do itno questions asked.