Editor’s Note: Don Mecoy is a friend and former colleague at The Oklahoman who retired as the newspaper’s managing editor at the end of 2022. A recent conversation about sports heroes from our youth when Don was a guest on the 3 Old Geezers podcast sparked his memory about a local race car driver from the late 1960s. Don wrote this guest blog post about that driver and those memories.
By Don Mecoy
I had my share of sports heroes when I was a kid. Roger Staubach, Lou Brock, Johnny Bench and Joe Washington were among my faves. But my personal hero — and it truly was personal — was a guy you probably never heard of: Evard “Kerfoot” Humphrey.
Evard was the driver of the No. 12 super-modified sprint car that ran every Friday night at State Fair Speedway during my youth in Oklahoma City. My Daddy — a preacher, shade-tree mechanic and race fan — liked Evard, so I did too. Evard won a couple of season championships at State Fair Speedway in the years just before my family moved to OKC in 1967. And he was highly competitive in the first several years we sat in the fourth-corner stands at the beloved dirt track.
Some grainy video of Evard’s “Black Magic” No. 12 is available on YouTube:
I watched Evard win a lot of races, and as I became more knowledgeable about racing, I could see that he was a smooth and cagey driver and a gentleman on the track. He cut other drivers a lot of slack. He didn’t tear up his equipment, or anyone else’s. Unlike most of my other sports heroes, Evard wasn’t a highly paid athlete — he ran a salvage yard.
I was grown and raising a family of my own when I saw Evard’s obituary in The Oklahoman in November of 2007. At the time, I was a writer on the business desk at the newspaper, and we had recently added blogs to our newspaper website. I decided to write a post about Evard. It was brief, but heartfelt.
‘Forty years after the first race I witnessed, I remain a fan of the sport. But there will never be a driver that I pull harder for than I did Evard Humphrey. According to his obituary, Evard was 72 and “loved by all” — even some folks who never met him.’
The day that short item appeared in the paper, my phone started ringing. I heard from Evard’s son-in-law, Terry Doss, who drove the “Black Magic” super-modified car after Evard hung up his racing suit. He thanked me on behalf of the family, and said Evard deserved all the love — not just as a successful driver but as an all-around great guy.
Shane Carson, one of the most successful dirt track racers and promoters to get his start in OKC, called to thank me and to tell me that his cars typically carried the number 12 because of his love for Evard. Others called to echo my feelings of Evard, and share memories of OKC’s wonderful dirt-track venue.
The blog post also drew the attention of Evard’s charming wife, Pat, and she came to the newspaper office to meet me. I told her how I was thrilled sometimes to see Evard walking through the stands, wearing his racing suit, to sit with his family between races or when his car had failed. She told me I should have talked to him; he loved to mix it up with his fans. But for 9-year-old me, he was on a pedestal too high to approach.
She was delighted to flip through our file of her late husband’s photos in our library. A librarian told me all our photos were being digitized and then would be thrown out. Since Evard’s file had already been captured, we gave Patty those old black-and-white memories. That may have been one of my most rewarding moments in journalism.
In researching this article, I learned that Pat passed away last year. She seemed like a joyful person. I hope she enjoyed those photos.
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