By Steven Katona
Speed, adrenaline and roaring mechanics are all elements in the creation of a film that is aiming to reignite the history of the high-octane Daytona Beach community.
One of the goals of the Daytona Beach Racing and Recreational Facilities District — the organization that oversees the Turkey Rod Run and is affiliated with the International Speedway — is to raise money and distribute it back into the community in the form of grants. Recently, two Daytona State College professors and a racing historian received this grant and were allocated $44,500 to produce a film on beach racing in Daytona.
Local historian and DSC professor Len Lempel is the man who wrote the grant proposal and is the visionary of the project. A member of the Halifax Historical Society, he frequently contributes to the Halifax Historical Museum, which houses many antique artifacts from the area.
“One of the things they have in their archives as a lot of videos, DVDs and tapes of racing on the beach, and it’s just sitting there. It’s kind of hidden away,” said Lempel. “It was my idea to try to make a documentary out of an edited version of all of these films so it could be of use.”
After some searching, Lempel teamed up with DSC photography professor Eric Breitenbach to produce and direct the film, who is no stranger to film making. He has made two feature documentaries and numerous half-hour documentaries for National Geographic.
“There is a love affair in this town with the eight-cylinder engine,” said Breitenbach, whose job it is to sift through all of the documents and videos in the archives. “I’m basically in charge of all of the stuff. Gathering the material, making sure the camera gets shot right, making sure the material is stored correctly and I’m going to have to wade through it all.”
Just to get an idea of how much he will “wade,” Breitenbach said, “I know they have 50 albums of newspaper clippings and the albums have 50 pages a piece. Then, there are probably 15 newspaper clippings on each page. You do the math. What we will probably do is get an intern to archive it in some way.”
Additionally, there is film, still photographs and artifacts that he and the interns will have to filter through.
The main focus of the film, however, will not be the materials in the archives. The project’s head consultant, current historian of the NASCAR Hall of Fame Albert “Buz” McKim, shifted the aim and geared the project to include interviews of people who were actually involved with beach racing, like racers, mechanics and bystanders. What would have taken Lempel and Breitenbach many hours to do McKim could do in minutes. Because of his NASCAR connections, he was able to gather a variety of these people and celebrities to interview.
Lempel’s vision for the film is mainly focused on the era of beach racing in the years 1936-1958, when stock car racing was popular.
“Many of these people are still alive and in their 80s and 90s, so this is exciting because it is really kind of the last chance to get these people on tape to get their story and all of these great tales about beach racing that would have been forgotten unless we get it on tape,” said Lempel. “As far as I know, nothing like this has ever been done.”
WDSC Channel 15 did something similar though. Over the summer of 2012 they released a film on beach racing called “The Great Sand Speedway,” which features the era of racing done in Daytona from 1903-1935. During these years racers would drive on the hard packed sandy shores allowing the cars to travel up to 276 mph to break speed records, and almost every year between 1903-1935 all of the land and speed records were broken here in Daytona Beach, according to Lempel.
The film that Lempel and Breitenbach are producing focuses more on the period on racing between 1936-1958, when Daytona made a beach track, part on the coast and the other on A1A. They also hope to include African-American racing history as well.
Lempel said, “What I found that’s very intriguing, in the HHS, is a poster from 1946 that announces a ‘colored race’ for black drivers which was to take place on Labor Day on the beach south of New Smyrna Beach. That raises the question of whether there was a whole separate black racing going on, and that’s where I’m trying to find for information without much success yet.”
The team will begin filming the interviews and sifting through all of the archives in February 2013, and the film should be available around the same time the following year.