New York State Stock Car Association To Induct Six Deserving Individuals Into Hall Of Fame For ’24

Story By: RON SZCZERBA / NEW YORK STATE STOCK CAR ASSOCIATION – ALBANY, NY – On Sunday May 4 at the Fonda Speedway Hall of Fame & Museum, the NYSSCA organization will induct six individuals into their prestigious Hall of Fame.

The class of 2024 includes drivers Billy Decker, Steve Paine, and Jim “Rocky” Rothwell, along with three people who have held many different roles in racing over the years Jay Castimore, Margaret and Brian Bedell.

2024 NYSSCA HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE BILLY DECKER

According to the book Fonda, in 1984 fresh out of high school and coming off successful years in the six cylinder late model class at Penn Can and Five Mile Point, the “Franklin Flyer” Billy Decker headed north to run 320-Modifieds at Fonda. “The 320 class at Fonda was some of the most fun I’ve ever had racing,” Decker said in the book. “We were allowed to run drag rubber and we’d run three wide and never let off the whole way around. It was something.”

Jack Johnson was Billy’s mentor in those days. Johnson was friends with Billy’s father and also with his soon to be father in law. During a 1983 hunting trip to the Decker family’s vast property in Otsego County, Jack convinced Billy’s father Floyd Decker to get him a 320. “I still remember my first 320 race, opening night at Fonda in 1984,” Decker said. “I finished third, a lap down to winner Mitch Gibbs.”

Decker captured one 320-Modified win at Fonda on 8/3/85, switching over in 1986 to run double duty at Fonda in both the Big Block Modified and Small Block 320-Modified classes. He scored numerous top finishes in both classes and ended up in the top ten in points in both divisions at season’s end. On 5/2/87, Decker won his first career Big Block feature at Fonda and over his career won two more at the “Track of Champions”, the final win coming on 9/26/2015.

To date, Decker has a total of 312 feature wins (279 Big Block and 33 Small Block), driving for eight different car owners to go along with 17 track championship titles at six different tracks and three Mr. DIRT Series/Super DIRT Series Championships in 1998, 2008, and 2014. He had success in many events at the New York State Fairgrounds as well with four Big Block Super DIRT Week wins (1998, 2000, 2001, & 2005), and seven Small Block victories (1991, 2002, four straight 2008-2011, & 2019 at Oswego). He also captured Fourth of July wins at Syracuse in 1992, 1995, & 1998.

Decker had a lot of success in 200-lap events over the years as well, winning the Fulton 200 four times (2007, 2009, 2015, & 2017), the Lebanon Valley 200 four times (1988, 1989,1991, & 2000), and the Eastern States 200 once (1988). In 2000, Decker won a total of five different 200-lap events at Rolling Wheels, Albany Saratoga, Williams Grove, Lebanon Valley, and the New York State Fairgrounds.

Decker was inducted into the Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame in 2022.

2024 NYSSCA HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE STEVE PAINE

Paine began his racing career in April of 1979, two months before graduating from Waterloo High School in the Street Stock division at the Canandaigua Speedway. At the time the Street Stock division was broken into three different classes, rookie, novice, and expert with Paine winning his first race in the rookie Street Stock class on 5/19/1979. From there he moved up to the novice class and won again, with the next step being the rookie class. He ended the 1979 season at Canandaigua with 13 wins in 15 starts in the Street Stock division.

From 1980 through 1982, Paine raced Late Models at Canandaigua and Weedsport along with a few starts in a Modified. He moved into the Modified division in 1983 with his first career Modified win coming on 5/12/1984 at Canandaigua. In 1990 he won his first of 11 Modified Track Championships at Canandaigua, including nine straight titles at the track from 2000 to 2008. While he was successful at Canandaigua, he has the most wins of his career at the Black Rock/Outlaw Speedway where he has a total of 112 career wins to go along with 99 at Canandaigua.

Paine also had a lot of success north of the border in Canada at Autodrome Granby with 27 wins and Track Championships in 1996 & 1997 and Autodrome Drummond with 21 wins and Track Championships in 1995, 1996, & 1998. All total during his career, Paine has a total of 335 victories at 26 different tracks and 32 Track Championships. He was the Overall Mr. DIRT Modified Champion in 2000, and the overall Mr. DIRT 358-Modified Champion in both 1999 & 2000. He was a three time 200-lap event winner in 1999 at Fonda, Granby, and Bridgeport.

Steve was named the 1991 DIRT Driver of the Year and inducted into the Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame in 2017. He comes from a racing family, growing up his parents Don & Nancy owned a race car and through the 80’s Steve’s brother Bobby also drove a race car. In 2018, Steve’s son Billy began the third generation in racing and two years later his other son Tommy got into the driver’s seat.

2024 NYSSCA HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE JIM “ROCKY” ROTHWELL

Back in 1979, Jim “Rocky” Rothwell was working for Skip Seymour at Skip’s Used Cars when Seymour purchased a Chevy Camaro from Randy Kisacky and Charlie Castle. That is when Rothwell started his racing career in the Late Model division at many tracks including Five Mile Point, Fulton, Brookfield, Utica Rome, Rolling Wheels, and Weedsport for special events. His first career win came at Five Mile Point in his first year of racing, and if not for being taken out by a lap car on the final lap in a feature at Brookfield, he would have had two wins in his first year.

In his second year of competition, Rothwell won five features at Brookfield along with the Track Championship. He also had wins at Utica Rome that year and ran a few races at Fonda as well. Jim had many wins in the Late Model division until DIRT did away with them and then the switch was made to the 320-Modifieds with two wins coming at the “Track of Champions” Fonda Speedway. Once the 320-Modified class was done away with at many tracks, Rothwell’s focus turned to the “Open Sportsman” division where he had many wins and championships at Skyline, Fulton, Utica Rome, and Fonda to name a few.

According to the Auto Racing Research Associates (ARRA) website, Rothwell has one Modified win at Fulton on 6/30/1984 along with 12 Sportsman victories, the first one coming on 4/24/1993 and the final one on 6/17/1997 to go along with the 1995 Sportsman Track Championship. At Utica Rome thanks to information provided in the “Utica Rome the Home of Heroes” book by Bones Bourcier, Rothwell has two Modified wins (first on 8/2/1998 and last on 5/4/2003), 23 Sportsman wins (first on 8/21/1988 and last on 5/23/2010), and two Late Model wins (first on 8/9/1981 and last on 4/30/1982). His 23 career wins in the Sportsman division at Utica Rome place him second on the All-Time win list in the division.

Rothwell was crowned the 1982 Late Model Track Champion at Utica Rome after a single win season along with seven second place finishes and the Sportsman Track Champion in 1994 when he had a total of six feature wins. A quote in the “Utica Rome the Home of Heroes” book by Bones Bourcier, states that Rothwell was “as reliable in the summer as snow in the winter.” At Fonda, Rothwell has a total of nine wins in the Open Sportsman division along with the two 320-Modified wins mentioned above.

“One of my favorite wins was a 50-lap $1,000 to win race at Fonda in 1989 while my second favorite was the Super Nationals win at Afton in 2021,” Rothwell said recently. “I have no idea how many wins I have but I do have six or seven championships. My favorite championship, all of them. 46 years of racing and counting! Very proud of my Grandson Carson (one career win at Utica Rome in the Limited Sportsman division on 5/26/2023), he is getting better each race. He’s a winner!”

2024 NYSSCA HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE JAY CASTIMORE

Growing up 20-25 minutes away from the Orange County Fair Speedway in Vernon Township NJ, Jay Castimore went to his first race at age 12, the 1970 Eastern States 200, won by Will Cagle. From that point on he was hooked. His intro into racing came in 1982 when a friend of his father’s, Randy Filipowski, asked Jay to help on his race car. “I was never a mechanic and I’m still not a mechanic,” Castimore said recently. “Randy taught me how to break down a race car tire and from that point on I’ve spent my life being around a race car.”

At that point, Castimore knew that if he was going to learn how to do this the right way he had to get together with the right people. So, he introduced himself to Ken Stye who was Brett Hearn’s tire guy at the time. When Stye got a promotion at his job, he moved away to Pennsylvania and at the same time Filipowski had also quit racing so Jay was open for the opportunity to become Hearn’s tire guy, an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. “I was saying to myself I want to do this, but who is gonna give me a chance,” Castimore said. “Having fun, winning races, what an opportunity. Guys that worked around Brett learned the right way of doing things, his motto was to have a plan and work the plan.”

Castimore was with Hearn through the end of 1992 until he took the Race Director job for Ralph Compani at the Fonda Speedway for 1993. In 1997 through 1999 he worked as General Manager and Race Director at the Orange County Fair Speedway, working for Glenn Donnelly and the winner of the first race that he ever attended, Will Cagle. “I learned to be a winner with Brett Hearn,” Castimore said. “But I learned to become a good Race Director and General Manager with Will Cagle, learning what to do and what not to do.”

In 2000, Jay went back to work for Hearn, which lasted until 2016. At that point he was at Tommy Conroy’s wedding and was talking to Andrew Phillips who asked Jay to help him out on Friday nights on Keith Flach’s race car. Castimore agreed and did the exact same thing for Flach as he did for Hearn, until Flach had to adjust his racing career as he had to turn his attention to running his family’s business. It was bad timing for Jay but then he got a phone call from Tommy Conroy who said that he needed help with Stewart Friesen’s Racing Team after Friesen switched from DKM race cars to Bicknell. “Andrew and Tommy are like two son’s to me,” Castimore said. “But we put a program together for Stewart, went to Fonda in 2019 for a race after the fair, and won in our first race together.”

Ironically not only did Castimore win in his first event working for Friesen at Fonda, but he also won the first event that he worked for Hearn at Orange County. Jay’s list of victories includes one win with Filipowski, two with Jessica Friesen, seven with Flach, 117 with Stewart Friesen, and 679 with Hearn but his favorite win happens to be one of the two that he won with Jessica Friesen. “Stewart was racing trucks and Tommy Conroy wasn’t at Utica Rome that night either, so it was just me and Burky in the pits and Jessica was able to win the race,” Castimore said. “That was the single most rewarding race that I can ever remember, Stewart trusted in us to be sure that Jessica was safe and to do the right things to the race car.”

Castimore was a 1977 High School graduate with a degree in Business Management and retired from Peckham Industries (formerly Reclamation) in 2023 after 26 years of service. He is proud of the fact that there were never any job applications, resume’s written, or job interviews to go to. “They always found me,” he said. “My mother and father brought me and my sister up to be humble and respectful. Racing was and still is my lifelong passion and there are some races that last longer in your memory. Working with Stewart (Friesen) is the second best thing to ever happen to me next to marrying my wife Marilyn and I hope that the good Lord lets me do this for as long as I can.”

2024 NYSSCA HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE MARGARET ANN BEDELL

Margaret Ann Bedell first attended the races at the Lebanon Valley Speedway with her parents Walt Bedell Sr. & Peg Bedell in 1957. That was the start of her involvement in racing, which grew year by year to involve many different facets of the sport. She went up and down the East Coast hitting all the tracks as a fan including Langhorne, the New York State Fairgrounds, Fonda, Orange County, Flemington, Devils Bowl, Trenton, and many, many more. It was an eight decade love affair with the sport from the 50’s through the 20’s, 67 years of dedication.

From a fan she went on to be president of racing fan clubs, scored races at her home track as needed, and also scored for many different drivers in the big 200-lap racing events. She was also a writer for the racing program at Lebanon Valley along with Dirt Trackin’ Magazine and the Super DIRT Week in Syracuse programs, winning the press award for her writing at Lebanon Valley in 1995 and an award for her dedication to writing about the sport by Dirt Trackin’ Magazine the following year in 1996.

Margaret Ann has also been a huge part of the NYSSCA Organization for many years, 40 plus years as a member, a writer for the annual NYSSCA Yearbook, a track rep at Lebanon Valley, and a sponsor of the NYSSCA Hall of Fame for 30 years from 1994 through 2023 through her family business Boomers Performance. Her crowning achievement was in 1999 when Kenny Tremont, Jr. won the biggest race of his career at the Syracuse mile, the Super DIRT Week Big Block Modified event, with Margaret Ann’s business Boomers Performance as a sponsor on the race car.

“She has done it all quietly and with great respect,” Margaret Ann’s brother Brian said recently.

2024 NYSSCA HALL OF FAME INDUCTEE BRIAN BEDELL

Since 1965 when he was one week old, Brian Bedell has been dedicated to the Lebanon Valley Speedway. For a total of 59 years, he has been attending events at the Valley and hasn’t missed a single event for seven decades from the 60’s through the 20’s. At the age of eight through age 12, he used to help driver Chuck Ely pick up the rental chairs after the evenings races were completed. At the same time, he became interested in writing down all of the finishes after the races, taking after Uncle Art Stuarts who was the track announcer at the time, and kept all of the records at Lebanon Valley. Brian thought that was pretty cool.

For over 50 years, Brian has religiously kept the statistics for the “Valley of Speed” and for 30 of those years he has helped Lebanon Valley announcers John Stanley and Dan Martin with prepared notes about the history of Lebanon Valley both weekly and at banquet time. For many years, Brian traveled up and down the New York State Thruway with family friend Kenny Tremont Jr., keeping statistics for Kenny and his racing team.

For ten straight years (2000-2009), Bedell was an officer of the NYSSCA organization, four as a member of the Board of Directors, three as Vice President, and three as President. From 1994 to present he has been a part of the NYSSCA Hall of Fame Committee and through his families business Boomers Performance was a sponsor of the NYSSCA Hall of Fame.

“Brian’s knowledge of the sport and the accuracy of his statistics are second to none in my book as he has provided me with many facts about the NYSSCA Hall of Fame Inductees over the last few years for my NYSSCA Hall of Fame write ups,” Ron Szczerba said recently.