Rick Rogers
One of east Tennessee’s great Dirt Late Model drivers will be honored on Sunday night at the Tazewell Speedway when that track hosts its annual Buddy Rogers Memorial event. The $4,400-to-win race will also serve as the final stop on the ‘Iron Man Speedweek’ mini-series tour.
Buddy Rogers died after a bout with cancer in 2008. Along with preserving the championship driver’s legacy, this race serves as both a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society through a lap sponsorship program and to raise awareness of that terrible disease.
Rick Rogers(Buddy’s son) was an accomplished racer himself until he stepped away from the sport in 2011. His departure was brought on by several factors, including the need to take on a new job after his own trucking company fell victim to economic woes.
“About the time I quit racing they cut our contract out and the business folded under,” Rogers explained in an interview with InsideDirtRacing.com. “I had to shut my business down and I went to work for Kellogg’s. I’ve been doing that for five years now delivering cookies and crackers all over the southeast. I’m on the road five days a week. I’ve got benefits and it’s a union job. We weren’t getting rich in our business, but I had a lot of freedom. Other than that the work is about the same. It’s just a lot more hours.”
After driving his own equipment for virtually all of his career, Rogers found himself in the unfamiliar position of racing for others toward the end of his time as a racer. That proved to be something he had difficulty adjusting to.
“I had several people call me wanting me to drive for them and I tried that for a little bit,” the 2008 Tennessee Thunder Series champion recalled. “But I’ll just be honest with you, it wasn’t the same. I just didn’t enjoy it like I had in our stuff. For a lot of my years in racing I was just a weekend warrior, but in the last five or six years of my racing career I was funded pretty good and I got to go to places I would have never been fortunate enough to go to if I hadn’t had the backing I had. I loved doing that so stepping back wasn’t as much fun. Plus, I had a bunch of people I was around and we had kind of jelled together. I enjoyed their help and their company and it just wasn’t the same when I had to pull back from that.”
Rick Rogers carried the same car number as his father
As a youngster Rogers excelled in a number of athletic endeavors, but he was ultimately drawn to the sport his father participated in.
“Growing up I played ball all through school and was fortunate enough to get a scholarship in baseball and enjoyed that,” the former driver declared. “But my knack was to follow my dad and do what he did. Dad was a really good driver and was real smooth. I think I was more aggressive and more hard-headed than he was. But that was my love. What I wanted to do was that. There wasn’t a weekend that went by for many years that I wasn’t at a racetrack somewhere here in east Tennessee.
“My senior year(in high school) I was the MVP of my baseball team and had several awards, but I didn’t even go to the banquet,” he continued. “I was at Atomic Speedway. I loved racing and it was my passion.”
Rogers happily recalls numerous racing memories made with his father, including one that didn’t go as he had hoped.
“I guess the funniest thing I remember was one night we were at Atomic and I spun my dad out,” he said with a laugh. “He told me after the race that he owed me one, but he never did get me back. It wasn’t something I did intentionally, it was just one of those things where we were racing tight and I wanted to beat him and I just got into him and turned him.”
As a child, there was no doubt who Rick Rogers’ hero was.
“When I was younger and going to watch my dad I would never take my eye off his car, even if he was running mid-pack and not having a good night,” the 55-year-old second generation racer said. “He was a really smooth racer. His style of racing was that he never looked like he was going that fast but he was always there at the end.”
Another instance etched in Rogers’ memory was one in which he and his dad were a part of dirt racing history.
“One year we both followed the NDRA enough that we finished in the top-24 in the points and they had a big race up in the Pontiac Silverdome,” Rogers remembered. “A company that was sponsoring us took us up there in a tractor-trailer. To my knowledge, we were the first dirt racers to pull with a tractor-trailer.
“When we got up there the cars had flat tires and we couldn’t get the dang air compressor to run so that we could air the tires up and get the cars out of the trailer,” he added. “I thought that dome was going to collapse because they had to keep the end of it open so long for us to get the cars out of that trailer. It was kind of a classic.”
Rogers being honored for his Tennessee Thunder title
Rogers still longs for the thrill of competition of racing, but he isn’t necessarily looking to make a comeback.
“There isn’t a weekend that goes by that I don’t miss it,” he insisted. “When it gets in your blood, you can’t get rid of it. But for me to go to a track now, I get this adrenaline rush and I’m just better off if I steer clear of it. And I’m not getting any younger. I feel like there’s an age where a man needs to stop. At this point in my life, with the way I work, I don’t feel like I could do it the way I did.”
Rick Rogers plans to attend Sunday’s Buddy Rogers Memorial with is father’s car in tow for display.
The last race car driven by Buddy Rogers
