Racing author, former AutoWeek editor William Neely dies at 77
By GREG MIGLIORE
Autoweek Magazine

March 28, 2008 -- William Neely, a prolific racing writer who chronicled the lives of Richard Petty and A.J. Foyt, died Tuesday, March 25, in North Carolina after complications from heart surgery.

Neely was 77. He was most famous for the 1974 classic Stand on It, a Novel by Stroker Ace, which told the fictional story of driver/wild man Stroker Ace and was later made into a movie starring Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson. Neely loosely based the book on his experiences in the 1960s, when he headed up public relations for Goodyear at the height of the racing “tire wars” with Firestone.

During this time, Neely got to know many of the icons of the sport, as open-wheel racing was evolving and NASCAR first gained prominence in America.

A.J. Foyt, whose victories in the 1960s helped resurrect Goodyear’s racing program, called Neely a close friend. The two collaborated on his 1983 life story, A.J., which remain Foyt’s only formal memoirs.

“He knew my life story better than I did,” Foyt said.

Through Goodyear, Neely also became close friends with another icon of racing in that era, Carroll Shelby, and the two maintained a nearly 50-year friendship. Shelby called Neely one of the most versatile writers of his time.

Neely was AutoWeek’s travel editor in the late 1980s and early 1990s. His work also appeared in Playboy, Car and Driver, Esquire and Sports Illustrated. He also penned a chili cookbook, as well as Tire Wars, a look at Goodyear’s racing program in the 1960s.

“He could write about a thousand different subjects, and he knew something about every one of them,” Shelby said.

H.A. “Humpy” Wheeler, who led public relations for Firestone at the same time, said Neely was known for his grace under fire, as the 1960s was a turbulent time for racing, wrought with accidents and driver deaths.

“He was one of the icons of auto racing in the 1960s, when auto racing was really jumping forward by leaps and bounds,” said Wheeler, who is now the president of Lowe’s Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina.

Neely’s relationships and story-telling ability won him the respect of his peers in journalism, a business notorious for competition.

“I never saw Bill without a smile on his face, and he never asked anything more from life than the privilege of enjoying it,” said William Jeanes, a former editor and publisher of Car and Driver who went on yearly quail-hunting trips with Neely.

Neely also worked in public relations for Rolex and Exxon. In total, he authored 19 books.

Neely later turned to acting and appeared in Night Flier in 1997, a movie based on a Stephen King novel where Neely’s character had his head chopped off. He moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, about a decade ago to try to secure more acting roles with a local studio. He also made an unsuccessful bid for Congress.

He had a heart attack several years ago, and the surgery he was having Tuesday was to install a new heart valve. In his later years, he enjoyed driving around Wilmington in a black 2002 Corvette, and lounging in a yacht he owned that previously belonged to Hollywood actress Greta Garbo. As his longtime friend Jeannette McLean said, he was “living the life of a retired person who loved life.”

A funeral service is scheduled for March 30 at the First Presbyterian Church in Wilmington. Neely is survived by five children and four grandchildren. He was a native of Jane Lew, West Virginia, and graduated from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 1952.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations in Neely’s name be made to Friends of Felines, P.O. Box 475, Castle Hayne, NC 28429 (910-452-6721, or www.friendsofelines.org)