Story By: BUFFY SWANSON / NORTHEAST DIRT MODIFIED HALL OF FAME – WEEDSPORT, NY – Four-time Super DIRT Week big-block winner Billy Decker, Pennsylvania small-block champion Craig Von Dohren and 1950s North Country pioneer driver Don June will officially be inducted into the Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame in July.
These three racing legends add their names to a stellar list of Modified standouts that was started in 1992 when the Hall of Fame was established on the Cayuga County Fairgrounds in Weedsport, NY.
The 30th annual induction ceremonies honoring the Class of 2022 will take place Wednesday, July 20 at 7 pm in the Northeast Dirt Modified Museum and Hall of Fame, on the grounds of the state-of-the-art Weedsport Speedway. The event is free and open to the public, and will feature pre- and post-program festivities sponsored by the track. The following Sunday, Weedsport Speedway will present its Super DIRTcar Series Hall of Fame 100 for the big-block Modifieds.
Following his family onto area tracks, Franklin, NY’s Billy Decker bought his first racer from his cousin, Hank — a six-cylinder Tiger car — and went out and won seven times in his rookie season at Penn Can Speedway in 1981, when he was still a kid in high school. Groomed by his father Floyd—and later mentored by the late, great Jack Johnson—Decker went on to craft a world-class career, starting with his first SBM score at Fonda in 1985 and full-blown Mod wins the year after. In 1988, he found his niche: winning the big ones. In the span of eight days that September, driving his dad’s car, Decker took the Lebanon Valley 200 and 100-lap events at both Fonda and Rolling Wheels. Those extra-distance races have remained his sweet spot. More than a third of the 308 Modified victories Decker has claimed to date—128, to be exact—have come in special events of 50 laps or longer. And he’s particularly shined during Super DIRT Week: Decker grabbed six Modified pole awards and won the big-block classic four times on the Syracuse mile (three for car owner Randy Ross, and once for John Wight). He was even better in the 358 ranks, taking SDW honors six times at Syracuse and once at Oswego. Decker was the overall Mr. DIRT/SDS champion in 1998, 2008 and 2014, and he’s got an arm-long list of individual track titles: five at Brewerton, four at Fulton and Weedsport, two each at Rolling Wheels and Lebanon Valley, and a single championship at Canandaigua. An accomplished traveler, “The Franklin Flyer” has posted wins at an impressive 35 tracks in nine states and two Canadian provinces.
Longevity is the name of the game for Oley, PA’s Craig Von Dohren, the senior statesman of the tough Pennsy small-block scene. Recording his first victory at Big Diamond Raceway on August 1, 1980 before his 17th birthday, and his most recent at Delaware’s Georgetown Speedway in March of this year, Von Dohren has strung together an incredible streak of 43 consecutive winning seasons, second only to Hall of Fame driver Alan Johnson in dirt Modified racing history. CVD’s other numbers are equally impressive: He is a 12-time track champion at Grandview Speedway, where he tops the all-time win list. Von Dohren also sits at the head of the class at Big Diamond, where he holds four small-block Modified titles, and was the 1995 champ and Lebanon Valley 100 winner at the defunct Penn National Speedway during the Tri-Track Series days. And he’s done well in the big area races, especially south of the PA border, taking seven small-block and six big-block crowns in the year-end Delaware State Championship events; and scoring three times — one Mod and two small-block — in Hagerstown’s Octoberfest. Back home at Grandview, CVD won the big Freedom 76 race five times and is a nine-time winner of the Forrest Rogers Memorial. He is a four-timer in Big Diamond’s Coalcracker. All told, Von Dohren currently has 347 career wins to his credit, at 13 tracks in five states. In 2021, he finished third in the NASCAR Weekly Series national point standings and was named Northeast Regional champion, collecting a total $28,500 in point monies for his efforts.
The late pioneer driver Don June, of Theresa, NY, proved to be a natural right out of the gate when he began his racing career at age 21. June dominated the inaugural season at Edgewood Speedway in 1951, winning 11 feature events at the Alexandria Bay oval—a rookie with a total investment of $50 in his race car. He also claimed the 1951 championship in the Adirondack Stock Car Club, which sanctioned racing at the Watertown Fairgrounds in addition to Edgewood. Racing a Ford numbered 117, sponsored by a local dealership, June was so unbeatable that many nights they’d start him on the backstretch, a half-lap behind the field. A master mechanic, June earned the nickname “Stroker” after his experiments with stroking a crankshaft in a Chrysler produced big horsepower gains — and a bunch more wins at places like Canton and Evans Mills, in addition to Watertown and Edgewood. Despite the fact that June’s racing endeavors were curtailed by his military service during the first half of the ’50s, he was the ASCC’s top winner, and held his own with the Northern Stock Car Club in the ’60s, where he competed against Hall of Fame drivers like Dick May, Guy “Shorty” Robinson, Bob Zeigler, Cliff Kotary and Gary Reddick. Retiring after being injured in a work accident, June kept his hand in the game, becoming the North Country’s first Hoosier Tire representative and going on to serve as a tech inspector at Can-Am Speedway. Don June passed away in 1999, at the age of 69.