May - The North Star Monthly

6 MAY 2010 THE NORTH STAR MONTHLY
Archi Blackadar took a brave stance starting cars at Thunder Road. Anyone could identify Archie by the way he stood on the track. In all the starts, he was only injured once.
Balls of Fire!
Archie Blackadar was an ambassador of racing
By Dorothy Larrabee and Sharon Lakey
Pete and Archie Blackadar
were registering
racers at a track when
a sheepish-looking man approached
the window. “I
wonder,” he said, “if I might
have two of those driver
pins for my children who
are with me.” Archie, field
manager and nice guy,
agreed and Pete handed him
the two pins. The man
started to turn away, but
hesitantly turned back. “You
wouldn’t be able to give me
one for all my children,
would you?”
“Well, how many children do
you have?” asked Archie.
“Eight.”
“Balls of fire!” exclaimed
Archie. And everyone laughed.
“Take all you want,” he said.
“That was one of Archie’s expressions,”
explained Pete. “He
took his job seriously, but he never
lost the joy of being part of the
racing community.” Archie’s been
gone now since 1993, but in 2010,
he was inducted into New England
Antique Racers Hall of Fame.
Archie Blackadar grew up for
most part in West Danville, graduating
from Danville High School in
1922. He went to the Boston area
to work where he was bitten by the
racing bug. He drove “midgets,” a
small-sized, high-powered class of
racing cars. “I didn’t win much,”
said Archie in a newspaper interview.
“I couldn’t afford to build my
own, so I raced clunkers.” When
WWII broke out, he enlisted in the
Navy in 1942. In 1944, he became
Chief Petty Officer on the USS Alhena,
serving in the South Pacific.
After eight years in the Navy, in
1950, Archie returned to West
Danville to care for his ailing
mother and began work at Ralston
Purina in St. Johnsbury, where he
worked until he turned 65 in 1968.
His job at Purina didn’t slow the
racer in him, though, and he took a
job as flagger at the Waterford, VT,
racetrack. The racing community
would soon enjoy the acrobatic
starter that was his trademark. In
1961, after attending the NASCAR
Officials School in Daytona Beach,
he became a licensed NASCAR
chief steward. A chief steward has
full charge of the officials, and the
responsibility of the race rests on
his shoulders.
Three years later, he met a widowed
waitress named Pete working
at Brickett’s Diner in St. Johnsbury.
What attracted Archie to her was
her insistence on not having anything
to do with racing. “I’d been
to a race before and it just didn’t
appeal to me,“ said Pete. “Women
threw beer bottles around and were
cursing and things like that,” she
said with disgust. It really bothered
Archie that someone didn’t like
racing, and he just didn’t give up
trying to change her mind.
One day, when he had to flag a
race in Groveton, he called her to
ask her to accompany him. Since
she was tired of him pestering her,
she grudgingly said yes. That’s all it
took. After that race, they were inseparable,
although they didn’t
marry for another 8 ½ years. “Just
good friends, “said Pete. For nearly
30 years, though, they worked
“desk by desk,” as she puts it.
Over that lengthy period of
time, Archie moved from flagger
to chief steward to track owner
and partner, to field manager. The
track they owned was a partnership
with broadcaster Ken Squier —
Catamount Speedway in Milton,
VT, from 1965 to 1977. When they
sold that, Archie became the East
Coast field manager for NASCAR.
He worked 48 tracks in the U.S.
and Canada. Pete worked 38 of
them. Every February, the two of
them found themselves at the Daytona
racetrack where they worked
in registration, which consisted of
Archie with officials at Plattsburg racetrack in New York.
This was where Achie grew up from seven years of age. The house is
located on the corner of West Shore Road and Rt. 2 in West Danville.
Archie graduated from Phillips Academy in Danville in 1922.
selling NASCAR memberships
and making sure all the drivers,
owners, sponsors, and wives, etc.,
had signed insurance releases for
admittance to the pit area.
“Every winter Archie would
say he might like to stay in Florida,”
said Pete. “I told him, ‘Anytime you
want to do that, just put the sign
out there in front of the house in
West Danville.’” He never asked
for the sign and when their big
chance came for the couple to
work the prestigious Winston Cup
circuit registration, he listened to
the pleas of Lin Kuhlor (Executive
Vice President of NASCAR), who
begged him to stay as chief steward
in the north. “Archie was a man
who felt a deep sense of duty,” said
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