*Quick Summary: The author adds a personal eulogy as a memorial to friend and mentor Harry Hyde.*
The great Crew Chief Harry Hyde died this day 20 years ago. I had the pleasure of spending some time with Harry through the years, not only while he was at Hendrick Motorsports, but also when he went to Stavola Brothers Racing as well. In fact, it was that time while he was at the Stavola Brothers, that cemented my feelings towards Harry.
As mentioned here before, my dad was one of the first few employees in the early days of Hendrick Motorsports. Harry Hyde was the first Crew Chief there, so he was literally the first Crew Chief my dad ever worked with, or that I’d ever met. As a 13 year-old the first time being around Harry, he was certainly a larger-than-life figure for me.
Putting his Hall-of-Fame caliber racing career aside, Harry was quite a character, and had an incredible sense of humor. If you search the Internet, I’m sure you’ll find more than a few of the stories involving his sharp wit. I feel quite fortunate to have seen a few stories up close, and to know the humor he possessed. He was also a dog lover, and at one point there were more “shop dogs” than employees at Hendrick Motorsports under Harry’s early tenure. While there have been a million stories told about Harry and how he ended up at Hendrick, the point I always try to make to anyone who never met Harry is that if you’ve seen Robert Duvall play the part of Harry Hogge in Days of Thunder, you got a real good feel for who he was. It wasn’t a biography by any stretch, but Duvall completely captured the essence of the man in a way I would’ve never guessed possible.
Harry clearly had a soft spot for kids, and being a new teenager at the time, I fit the bill. I always tried to be respectful and understand that having a kid around a working race shop wasn’t ideal. Despite that, Harry was always warm and inviting. He always engaged me in conversation, sometimes he’d even take me to his trailer, just the two of us, and he’d talk about different races, cars he’d worked on, and people in the business. I was a sponge, soaking all that information and those stories up as long as he would give them to me, all the while I was still a bit in awe that it was happening. To have someone of his legendary status take the amount of time with me that Harry did was incredible. Yes, my dad was an employee, but Harry went beyond that when dealing with me. He was investing time in me, and even at that age, I understood how valuable his time was.
I mentioned above that my feelings for Harry solidified after he left Hendrick Motorsports. In life, there are very few people that deal with you if they don’t need something from you. Harry was one of those people. If you passed his test, you were in – if not, you weren’t. It didn’t matter whether you could benefit him or not. Yes, he would work with people he didn’t like, but once he didn’t have to any more, he wouldn’t; he was very well-known for making his feelings heard in those occasions, so it was clear where you stood. The first time I went to visit the Stavola Brothers shop when Harry was there, I came to see Tommy Johnson, a relative of Harry’s. I wasn’t sure how Harry would react to me now that he didn’t have to deal with me or my dad any more. As Crew Chief at Stavola, if Harry didn’t want me there, I wouldn’t be there. Period, end of discussion. This was, after all, a working race shop, directly competing with the one my dad worked for. That certainly made me nervous, but I pressed on because I felt our friendship was still good no matter where he was employed. When he first saw me, his eyes lit up and he came right to me. He asked me what size jacket I wore, and when I told him, he disappeared and came back with a gold Miller High-Life jacket for me. He told me to make sure I wore it everywhere, ESPECIALLY back at HMS. Ha-ha-ha! Good Ol’ Harry! Good-natured ribbing aside, he made me feel just as welcome at Stavolas as I felt in the shop he built “On the Hill” at HMS. Every time I’d go there, he’d always be just as welcoming, showing me that my connections had nothing to do with how he treated me. That to me is the measure of Harry Hyde. Once you were in his circle, you were in. I was very fortunate to have been “in”. Thank you Harry.
There are a ton of articles and stories on Harry all over the Internet. Below are just a few:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Hyde
http://legendsofnascar.com/Harry_Hyde.htm
https://www.racing-reference.info/crewchiefs/Harry_Hyde
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0404981/bio
