Nathan Stonecipher grew up in Oliver Springs, a descendant of several pioneer families. He and his wife, Ellis, are now retired in Las Vegas and very active in many different interests. This newspaper article may be of interest to some of his old friends and family.
Sunday, February 25, 2001
Las Vegas Review-Journal
NATHAN STONECIPHER
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Nathan Stonecipher
glances at a program from a NASCAR stock-car race he attended March 17,
1963, at Atlanta Motor Speedway. |
The retired electrician has been a fan for more than 40 years. His garage has been converted into his racing museum with walls lined with old event posters and photos of his favorite drivers.
He has nearly 100 die-cast race-car replicas, but what sets his collection apart are event programs from races he's attended over the past four decades. The oldest program is from the second annual NASCAR National 400 on Oct. 15, 1961, at Charlotte Motor Speedway (now named Lowe's Motor Speedway) in North Carolina. Cost of the program was $1.
Stonecipher has numerous video tapes of races he's attended, including an 8-mm reel from the Atlanta 500 in the early 1960s.
One of his prized objects is a colorful Davey Allison leather jacket he bought before the 19-time Cup winner was killed in a helicopter crash in 1993. Although he paid about $200 for it, he's been offered as much as $1,200. It's not for sale.
His daughter, Marti Gold, grew up traipsing to race tracks with her dad and mom, Ellis Stonecipher, and designs her dad's Web site www.winstoncupfans.com
Gold remembers a summer trip around 1968 when her family spent two weeks traveling throughout the South to visit New Orleans, Atlanta and the Civil War battlefields in Vicksburg, Miss. They also journeyed a couple hundred miles out of the way to drive through Alabama to see a new track being built in Talladega, the now legendary Talladega Superspeedway.