Tom Archdeacon: Igniting a racing passion

May 7—They want to leave an imprint.

—But not like the black tire marks that marred the intersection of E. Third and Jefferson streets and some other Montgomery County crossroads after pop-up street takeovers in January by young people in cars with muscled engines and squealing, smoking tires did doughnuts and burnouts and other hooning circus acts as some of their friends hung out of their windows, other people encircled them and cheered and others parked their cars in the roadways to block normal traffic from interrupting their "Fast & Furious" frenzy.

—And certainly not an imprint like the ones carried by Lamar Ford, whose leg is scarred and disfigured by bullet wounds sustained during a shooting in the misguided years of his younger days. Back then he was on a reckless road that led him away from a college football career and into a Texas prison and later, he said, into other shooting incidents before he turned his life around and became a small business owner here in Dayton and a community activist.

No, the imprint a group of Dayton area leaders — led by Montgomery County Commissioner Debbie Lieberman and assisted by people like Ford and Steve Ross, a former college football player, area coach and now retired-teacher — hopes to make on young people here is a positive one.

It begins this Saturday on Indy Grand Prix Race Day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway when a group of 50 Dayton young people — chosen after writing essays at the Dakota Center, Urban League, Boys & Girls Club and the Wesley Center — will be hosted by the Force Indy race team owner Rod Reid and the successful 22-year-old driver Myles Rowe.

Force Indy, an African American race team which has a mentorship with racing heavyweight Team Penske, will compete in Saturday's Pro 2000 race, one of the rungs on the ladder leading to the top of the IndyCar circuit and the Indianapolis 500.

Myles is one of the hottest drivers in IndyCar sanctioned events. He's won three of the circuit's first four events and leads the driver standing by a whopping 42 points.

Reid, a longtime presence on the open wheel scene around Indianapolis, also is the founder of NXG (Nexgeneracers) Youth Motorsports Academy, which teaches life skills through a racing context while also relying on STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education. NXG also sponsors a go-karting series for young drivers and has the Path 2 Pro program that prepares older teens for careers in motorsports, whether it's as a driver, a crew chief, race engineering, in communications or any other related field.

Reid knows Steve Ross, a long-time racing buff himself, who ran a similar youth program here in Dayton called Spirit 4 Racing. Reid agreed to help with the Dayton effort.

"But this is just one facet of the overall plan," Ross said.

In the coming months, he and the Dayton group hope to convince older teens and other young people who were part of the street burnout exhibitions to take their street derring-do to a safer venue, someplace like Kilkare Speedway, where there could be competitions, trophies, monetary prizes and crowds cheering their hooning antics.

"This ain't no joke, kids are losing their lives on the roads here. It seems like there's crashes every week," said Ross. "We've got do something, as opposed to just saying the younger generation is crazy doing this and that. We've got to try something."

Although Reid used it in a different context — to describe why he and his late business partner and friend, Charles Wilson, decided to start a racing effort geared to African American kids -his mantra fits the Dayton effort now:

"If not us, then who?"

"If not now, when?"

Ford agrees with that sentiment when applied here:

"Yeah, the county was plagued by a black eye from this, but I strongly believe it can be removed and healed. That's what we're trying to do."

'Street soliders' lend a hand

Debbie Lieberman knows a few things about cars and racing.

She grew up in Indianapolis and said she started going to the Indy 500 as a kid:

"My mom worked for the mayor and I can remember getting in the suites and the tents and meeting drivers and the celebrities that came that came for the race, people like Paul Newman and David Letterman."

Her brother, Mark Bowell, a successful Indianapolis business executive, has worked with various race teams over the years.

Lieberman tries to go to the Indy 500 each year, admitting: "The month of May is big with our family...Once racing gets in your blood, it takes hold."

And that brought a laugh: "Yeah, I had a passion for it and I even raced for a while. I did drag racing (at Indianapolis Raceway) with a big block Chevy Chevette and I raced karts on a dirt track, too."

When she was approached about the street burnouts and some other issues involving youth downtown, she met with Dayton mayor Jeff Mims and some city commissioners and they eventually put together a group to come up with ideas.

She said 20 community activists — "street soldiers" she called them — came together:

"There was an immediacy, but there also was true concern and compassion for the kids," she said. She said Ford asked her to join a subgroup that came out of that session and one concept that got traction was this idea of STEM instruction as it applies to racing.

Like with Reid's NXG Academy in Indianapolis, that's a concept in the Spirit 4 Racing program started here by Ross and Virgil Oatts.

"Debbie and Lamar are the ones who really put this whole thing together," said Ross. "I had some ideas, but Lamar really has the energy and passion."

Ford said: "I just don't want kids to go down some of the roads I did."

A high school football standout in Houston, he ended up playing at Laney Community College, a national junior college power in Oakland, California.

"I played a few downs and then my past caught up to me," he said. "Bounty hunters came and brought me back to Texas."

He said he was still a teenager when he went into a Texas prison for 18 months for drug possession with intent to distribute:

"I'm not going to sugarcoat it. That's the worst place for any human being. You hear crying of boys being raped, boys being beaten. It's psychologically damaging. If you're weak, you'll be broken."

It took a while, but Ford eventually turned this life around, moved to Dayton and today owns Ture Game-USA, an athletic clothing line that includes motivational messages. He's a public speaker — especially for young people — and discusses topics like gun violence, peer pressure, bullying and other life challenges.

He said his unvarnished testimonial is intended to give young people an understanding that "it's OK if you've made mistakes, but you just don't want to continue doing them."

Ross is the executive director of the Greater Edgemont Community Coalition and when he met Ford the two hit it off. When the subject of street racing and hooning came up, Ford found a resource in his new friend.

Growing up on Wisconsin Boulevard in West Dayton, Ross was fascinated as a kid when he saw race teams hauling their colorful cars with the big numbers on the sides up Germantown Hill to Dayton Speedway.

A high football standout at Chaminade High who went on to play at Bethune Cookman and Ball State, Ross began to dabble in stock car racing, especially at Queen City Speedway in West Chester. He taught autistic children at Wogaman Elementary and several years ago launched Spirt 4 Racing, which along with academics, included go-kart instruction — everything from engine maintenance to driving, the latter producing 18-year-old star Ebene Smith.

Ross knew Rod Reid, who's now directing the Force Indy team, and figured he, the driver Myles Rowe and the minority crew would be an inspiration for the young people in the Dayton area that Lieberman, Ford and others were trying to reach.

'People who look like them'

Rod Reid moved with his family from Atlantic City, N.J. to Indianapolis when he was young.

Just as Ross was captured by the spectacle of Dayton Speedway, Reid was fascinated by Indianapolis Motor Speedway, even though, as he said the other day: "most of the Black people who live just a half mile from the track have never been inside (IMS)."

Over the years racing has never made Black people feel welcome. The American Automobile Association (AAA), which sanctioned open wheel races, banned blacks from racing until the mid-1950s and IMS segregated the crowds.

That led to things like the Gold and Glory Sweepstakes, where Black drivers competed from 1924-1936 on the one-mile dirt track at the Indiana State Fairgrounds; the Colored Speedway Association; and Black racing stars like Charlie Wiggins, dubbed the "Negro Speed King," and Dewey "Rajo Jack" Gatson.

By the early 1970s, when Reid took an interest in Indy, the AAA rules were gone, but there still would not be a Black driver in the Indy 500 until Willy T. Ribbs debuted in 1991. And since then only one other Black — George Mack in 2002 — has made the race.

Reid's first entry into IMS came as a teenager when he became a "yellow shirt" volunteer picking up trash. That enabled him to see the race and he was hooked.

Later, when getting his engineering degree at Purdue and, after that, working for an advertising firm, he got invites to watch the race as a spectator.

All that changed when he met a potential client for his company, race driver Charlie Wilson, who also was Back. They became friends and partners in a racing venture. They started Scorpion Racing and even had some support from Budweiser on the Super Vee circuit at the same time the beer giant was backing Ribbs

As Reid put it: "Willy T., Charlie and I were the three Black guys walking into the Speedway back then."

Eventually Reid's venture ran out of money and got no embrace from other powerbrokers with cash. Disillusioned, he left racing and made his mark in the business world until 2000 when he and Wilson decided to revisit racing, this time on their own terms.

They eventually launched NXG Youth Motorsports, which has introduced 2,400 diverse students not only to career opportunities in racing, but also life skills that will serve them in the everyday world.

In 2020, IMS finally launched its Race for Equality and Change initiative in an effort to bring diversity to the sport.

Late that year, Penske provided financial backing to help launch the Force Indy team owned by Reid (Wilson died in 2011) with the understanding he would try to hire and develop men and women of color at every level of his race effort.

That has happened and driver Myles Rowe, who just graduated from Pace University with a degree in film and photography, has emerged as a young star.

In 2021, racing in the USF 2000 series, the lowest rung of IndyCar ladder, he made history as the first African American driver to win an IndyCar sanctioned race.

Last season, after initially out of a ride when Force Indy moved up to the USF Pro 2000 level with a different driver, Rowe had to scramble for funding until he signed with Pabst Racing. He ended up finishing second in the driving championship by just six points.

This year as the Force Indy driver in the USF Pro 2000 series, he's won one of the first two races in St. Petersburg and both in Sebring as he heads into this weekend's Friday and Saturday races at IMS.

Reid and Rowe were open about meeting the Dayton group even though they will be immersed in their own effort on Saturday.

Reid arranged for tickets and sent then a box filled with Force Indy caps. Back here in Dayton Ford is making them shirts and Lieberman and a few local companies have provided some financial support.

The group still needs sponsors, but the effort is guided by that mantra: "If not now, when?"

Reid said he hopes to pass on a few things to the Dayton group:

"The main thing when we started Force Indy, it wasn't just about finding black race car drivers. Sure, that's the glamour position, but I wanted to bring people of color into positions where they can make money and find a career — whether it's as a mechanic, in marketing, working in health care with the medical teams, whatever.

"And one day soon, I hope they do see Myles running the Indianapolis 500.

"The main thing when the Dayton kids come here, they will see people who look like them."

Now that's an imprint.