Big class inducted into speedway’s Hall of Fame

Two drivers, one owner
and a group of ladies
become part of HOF

Three men and a group of women were inducted into the Jackson Speedway Hall of Fame, with a ceremony taking place last Saturday at the Jackson Fairgrounds.

Car owner Richard “Dick” Valentine, driver Lyle DeVries, driver Junior Thaemlitz and the VFW Ladies Auxiliary made up the newest class of HOF members.

Dick Valentine

Dick Valentine began racing in early the 1960s at Jackson and also competed with the Minnesota State Stock Car circuit. He has raced or owned stock cars, modifieds and spirit cars.

Valentine retired from racing in 1968 when he started his business, but continued to be active in the sport as a car owner. He had many of the area’s top drivers race for him including Hall of Famers Marv DeWall and Jack McCorkell. John Sernett, Brian Schnee, Ron Boetcher and J.D. Hommes, who won the 1989 Jackson Speedway track championship, also sat behind the wheel of the Valentine owned sprint car.

Valentine’s two biggest highlights as a car owner came in the late 1970s. He was invited to participate in the first ever World of Outlaws show at Devils Bowl Speedway in Mesquite, Texas with driver Marv DeWall. Unfortunately, their night ended early with a crash in the B Feature. His other highlight includes winning the first and only Jackson Grand Nationals in August of 1979, also with DeWall as his driver.

Today Valentine continues to be very active in racing while battling cancer, a disease that he has been fighting for three years. His son, Greg, is also a five-year survivor of cancer.

While they wanted to race, they started racing go-karts but didn’t find that to their liking so they sold the go-kart equipment and went sprint car racing. Valentine still owns a race team with his son Greg as the driver and his other son and grandson helping out as pit crew members, mainly racing for fun. 

Junior Thaemlitz

Junior Thaemlitz began his racing career in the New York area in the 1940s, racing with the Central New York Racing Association.

In the 1950s, he moved to Lakefield and continued racing at the Jackson Speedway. In the late 50s he drove for Curt and Wayne Reetz. 

Thaemlitz liked the sport of racing, considered it a great hobby, made everything he raced and hardly ever bought anything new. 

With the cost of the sport, Junior found himself going broke. Instead of giving up on racing, he raced more. He raced many of the area county fairs and got himself back out of debt. Through his racing career he only had one sponsor for a short amount of time. The Hi-Lo Club of Lakefield, owned by Lloyd Kruse at the time, was the only business to sponsor him.

Junior, recalling a couple of early day events, claims to be the first Sunday morning winner at Jackson. Following a long night of racing, the racing wrapped up early on a Sunday morning in 1957, the year Jackson started racing on Saturday nights.   

He also recalled an incident which involved the late Darrel Dawley. Dawley had gotten into him, forcing Thaemlitz into some fencing around the speedway. Thaemlitz proceeded to get out of his car and throw some of the fencing back at Dawley. Because of his actions, Thaemlitz received a special award at that year’s racing banquet: a set of cross flags, one flag being a checkered flag, the other a black flag. Even with those antics he was still awarded the sportsman of the year award that year.   

Thaemlitz raced at numerous area tracks, including Spencer, Iowa, Sioux Falls, S.D., Brookings, S.D., and Watertown, S.D.  He always raced with a smaller engine and usually won a few races each season.   

Thaemlitz said Jackson racers were proud racers and he was proud to be a part of the racing in Jackson. He was proud of the people who helped him, including Hall of Famer Loren Woodke. 

Thaemlitz raced through late 1960s, retiring from the sport in 1970. 

In 2001 he received another big honor as he was inducted into the Central New York Racing Association Hall of Fame.

“It was an honor racing at Jackson,” Thaemlitz said during his acceptance speech. “The VFW up here had a tremendous show up here for years.”

Lyle DeVries

Lyle DeVries has enjoyed one of the longest racing careers as a driver in this area, one which spanned 50 years. The Sioux Falls, S.D., man began racing in 1957 and continued his career through 2006, when he retired from the sport at the age of 69.

DeVries has driven nearly every kind of racing machine imaginable including go-karts, enduro cars, stock cars, drag cars, mini-sprints, modifieds, super-modifieds and sprint cars.

His most successful period in racing came after teaming with renowned car builder Loren Fick in 1967. The pair enjoyed a successful 13-year stint at Jackson, as well as Fairmont, while also garnering a number of feature wins at Huset’s Speedway. In his first year of racing at Huset's, DeVries won the co-rookie of the year award along with Jackson Speedway Hall of Famer Darrell Dawley. 

In one of DeVries’ last races at the Jackson Speedway, he competed in the IMCA hobby stock class on June 23, 2001 where he started the feature in the 11th position and raced to a sixth-place finish. He also competed in several of the county fair enduro races at Jackson.

DeVries still resides in Sioux Falls and currently owns Tri-State Storage and still enjoys going to the races on a regular basis. 

“The quality of racing here at Jackson was outstanding,” DeVries said during his acceptance speech. “You had to bring you’re A game here.”

VFW Ladies Auxiliary

The Women of the Jackson VFW Ladies Auxiliary began their time working at the racetrack when the VFW Racing Association started operating the racetrack in 1954.

They had a small concession stand located underneath old 1938 grandstand. Many years later, Hall of Fame member Don Jenson built an addition to the back side of the old grandstand, greatly expanding the area of the concessions.   

The members of the VFW Ladies Auxiliary began with a limited menu which mainly consisted of barbeques, hot dogs and coney’s, along with candy, pop and coffee. Of course they were most noted for their famous barbeques, a recipe that was created by Ann Kidney. All of the products for the barbeques were bought locally and a big batch of it was made each week before the races, usually at the home of one of the members. A new item was tried for a short time; tacos were introduced but were later discontinued for lack of interest. 

The gals always enjoyed their time at the track as they were a good bunch of ladies who were good friends. Each week they set up the concessions, sold the food through the entire night’s racing program and then cleaned up, only to repeat the same process over again the next week. To conclude the racing year they would always go out for a celebration party. 

The women of the group proudly served their great race track food until the VFW Racing Association decided to no longer conduct racing following the 1985 racing season.