WEEDSPORT, N.Y. – The late Joe Donahue, a pioneer driver on the rough-and-tumble Southern Tier tracks in the 1950s and ’60s, will be honored as an inductee into the Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame this year.
Driver inductions and special award ceremonies are scheduled for Thursday, July 23, at the Northeast Dirt Modified Museum and Hall of Fame on the grounds of Weedsport Speedway in New York.
A proficient motorcycle racer prior to his U.S. Navy stint during World War II, Donahue continued to race bikes when he returned from the war – until he discovered he could make a few more bucks driving stock cars at the local speedways. Donahue put together a ’36 Chevy sedan in 1948, and won his first feature at Doty Hill, outside Wellsburg, N.Y., the following year.
Driving on dusty backwoods tracks like Doty Hill and Brookfield, Donahue was scrappy enough, and successful enough, to attract some attention: In 1952, he picked up a ride in Harold Whitbeck’s sharp No. 23 Chevy Master coupe.
Throughout the 1950s and well into the ’60s, Donahue drove for a long list of car owners – Reuben Neild, A.L. George, Dick Cole and Norval Conklin, Floyd Allen, John Manny, Jerry Dunham, Jim Beavans and Evey Gathany, Wes German, Marty Kennerup, Ted Wrench, Bert Lewis, in addition to Whitbeck, who knows how many others, and cars he built himself.
In conversation with historian Jeff Ackerman, Donahue’s friend and machinist Sam Lewis made this observation: “Remember that old saying about getting a new driver? And he wants the seat changed, and the wheel, and then the pedals, and by the time you’re done with the list of changes, it’s just easier to change drivers?” Lewis said to Ackerman, “Well, Joe was just the opposite. He could get in anything and drive it. Guys like him were true pioneers of the sport, back when ‘cut and try’ was the norm.”
Donahue’s single-minded determination to “get it done,” driving anything and everything, did not go unnoticed by fans of the era. To Joe Donahue Jr., it was a source of pride.
“One time, when I was about 10 years old, my dad’s car broke in the heat at Shangri-La. He got a ride in a competitor’s car and when they announced the driver change, a man sitting behind us said, ‘Good! Now, we’ll see what that car’s got!’” Donahue Jr. remembered. “I never forgot that, to this day. Dad always had a ride. The minute he ever broke down they came running to have him drive.”
Despite his popularity, Donahue – to put it mildly – was a polarizing figure on the Southern Tier scene. Oh, he got the job done. But he pissed off just about everyone in the process.
“Fans Flock to Stocks, Most Are Foes of Joe’s” was the inflammatory subtitle of an article featured in the Binghamton Press in mid-1959, wherein sportswriter John Lake illustrated the bloodthirst Donahue’s no-consequences driving style unleashed.
“There sat ‘unholy Joe’ in the seat of his disabled No. 47Jr., glumly awaiting the wrecker, when a wrecker in skirts showed up instead and whopped him in the kisser,” wrote Lake, of an incident at Glen Aubrey involving the irate sister of another racer. “She was the envy of every driver who watched her pull it off.”
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