For most of us, racing has defined our lives. For ace mechanic and car owner Cliff Wright, it’s meant even more.
Wright’s history dates to 1948, when he and partners Bobby and Donnie Zautner first fielded a stock car for Del Molk on the Capital District bullrings. But it was with Howie Westervelt that Wright first made his mark.
“He ran for us from ’55 to ’60, and one year we won 12 of the 17 races at Lebanon Valley,” recalls Wright. “But then he broke his foot at Victoria and sat out a while. He came back, but he’d lost his fire, so I hired Donnie Wayman.”
The team ran New York’s premier track at the time — Fonda Speedway —  and Stafford Motor Speedway in Connecticut.
“I finally fired Wayman at Stafford. He gave me hell because the mirror was broken off, forgetting he’d wrecked it bad the week before and we worked like hell just to get it ready again,” Wright remembered. “Then he wrecked it in the heat and said it wouldn’t have happened if he had a mirror. I told him to grab his helmet and hit the road. Donnie kept saying, ‘How will I get home?’ but I told him I didn’t care. I asked Rene Charland, who’d lost a motor, if he could drive a car without a mirror and he ran third in the feature.”
The next night at Fonda, the car sat until Bill Wimble’s car broke. But as he was adjusting the belts in Wright’s No. 24, Wimble’s crew said his car was ready. Thus, Kenny Shoemaker, whose regular ride had died, got the break of his career.
“The Shoe” was soon winning everywhere in the Toll Gate Ice Cream No. 24.
“We won a lot of races on the dirt, and if we’d stayed at Fonda, we’d have been king of the hill,” reflects Wright. “But we went to asphalt and found you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. My guys got tired of repairing Kenny’s wrecks and told him the next time they weren’t going to fix it. Sure enough, he dumped it at Catamount Stadium in Vermont, so I told him to take a walk, too. We hired Richie Evans, who ran it until he got in trouble with NASCAR.
“He told me through the fence at Utica-Rome that they wouldn’t let him in, and he introduced me to national sportsman champ Don MacTavish. He made some adjustments, added some shocks recommended by Eddie Flemke  and started winning. He won a lot of races for us before he got killed at Daytona in 1969.”
MacTavish’s death sent Wright’s world spinning off its axis.
“My wife and I got to blaming each other for Donnie’s death, then the kids took sides. I finally gave her the house and we got divorced,” he continued. “My second wife wasn’t interested in racing, and I spent the next 35 years camping, going to the Grand Old Opry, building a new house and woodworking. Then she died in 2003, and I was totally lost again.”
Wright’s friends convinced him to attend a steak roast put on by the Northeast Stock Car Oldtimers.
“I was looking over John Flach’s restored car. He asked me, ‘Does it bring back memories? and I said ‘Not with a Chevy engine. It needs a Ford flathead.’ He asked me to build a crossfire like it had originally, using parts Don Smith had gathered but not assembled before his eyes went bad, but I declined.”
The ride home was tough, with Wright’s son pushing the issue until Cliff finally changed his mind.
“He kept saying it would be the best thing for me. I was depressed, spending my time taking flowers to the cemetery and crying, and he thought the motor would be a cure. He said he’d help me, so we turned my two-car garage into a motor shop, put it together and then installed it and got it running. Pretty soon I was doing a lot of things I couldn’t do with my wife.”
Wright, who will be 80 in October, built five Ford crossfires and then got into a slew of street-stock engines.
That rekindled a desire to race, and he bought a slingshot for his grandson, who soon decided he wasn’t a racer. The ride went to one of Flach’s grandsons and to Chad King, who is undefeated in 2007.
Flach had a dozen race cars in the family stable, and through helping him, Wright got to know area pro-stock kingpin Butchie Irwin. Wright was impressed with Irwin’s talent, and when friend Billy Schoon decided to field a modified for Irwin, the circle was complete. Now he’s back at Fonda every Saturday, working on a white No. 24 modified.