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RON OTTO MEMORIAL
Notes by Tony Otto
Dad first fell in love with racing attending Midget races in his hometown of Waterloo, Iowa shortly before his family moved to Long Beach in 1942. He started crewing on Duane Sears' URA Midget in the early '50s. He and co-owner Don Giese built the first TQ Midget in 1957 to run in the newly created NMRA. They won the 1961 championship handily with it locked up without running the last race of the season the day I was born.
I believe he was a board member before he was elected as Secretary/Treasurer in 1964 he held that position for twenty years with the exception of 1975 when he was elected President and Mom was Secretary. After Duane, Norm Sheardown drove for him for several years. During the '70s, Duane's son Kirk started driving his new car finished about 1969. Their final main event win came in May 1983 at the Date Fairgrounds in Indio. They nearly won the semi-main championship in 1983 and did well on the' dime' track at Ascot--a tenth mile track around the fuel pumps that the TQs shared with Speedway Bikes.
He was also Pit Stewart for both NMRA and USRC for most of the '70s and '80s and was my assistant when I was starter for USRC in the mid '70s.
Long before he and Mom moved to Nipomo in 1996, our family considered SMS our home track and we had a special relationship with Doug Fort for many years.
He worked for National Bearing in LA over forty years. His notebook of what bearings each owner used for their car was legendary. He took a can Heim-joints and box of spare parts to every race in case a car needed a spare.
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