Les Richter gives Skip Hudson some "coaching" and shows some of his football form in the mid-1960s.

Coach died yesterday. Les Richter, the football player who came to be one of the most revered and most effective executives in motorsports went quietly at 79. He had not been well for sometime, back surgery had not relieved the years of physical damage that he had endured during his years as a star player in the NFL.

Elsewhere you'll read all the stats, all the public moments that marked this good great man. My best memories of Les Richter are very small, but very intense, personal ones.

Like the time that I was involved with a tree-planting program that had set out to plant 400 trees across the city of Indianapolis a few days before the inaugural Brickyard 400 NASCAR race. We were kicking off the event just inside Gate 1 at the Speedway. The Governor of Indiana, The Mayor of Indy, Mary Hulman George, Tony George, top execs from Chevy, Mike Joy emceeing, Sterling Marlin, and Les Richter were all there for the Ceremony.

The 5-foot diameter, 4-foot deep hole for the tree had been pre-dug so the silver shovel work was minimal and really for the cameras. However, the tree that I had ordered was quite another matter. Normal tree-plantings by environmental organizations use fairly small, very young trees, sometimes only the size of a bare root rosebush. In this case, for the visual impact, I had ordered up a good-sized young tree which turned out to have a root ball that was the same size as the hole. It must have weighed at least 300 pounds.

Speeches said and guest line up photos taken, the time had come to actually plant the tree. I started tugging and pushing at the thing along with a grounds person from the Speedway. We were both going nowhere trying to shove the tree towards the hole, when I was gently swept aside by a giant had, and just watched as Les Richter hit that root ball as though it was an errant halfback and the damn thing just went Slip-Grr-Plop! and it was in the ground, in perfect placement, with me and the grounds man just standing there in full awe.

A few years later my wife Dede and I were driving in to California Speedway on a Sunday morning in a slow line of traffic. A water sprinkler had broken off along the parkway and (moving at 4 miles per hour) we could see a figure up ahead kneeling on the ground in a dark suit, trying to stem the flow. He was a big guy, you could see that. As you've already guessed of course, as we slowly drove by I gasped, Oh! That's COACH! My wife didn't quite get the significance at first, but later, when we told the story up in one of the luxury suites, everyone there who knew Les Richter simply shook their heads and said the very same thing I had earlier (with a slight change in inflection:) Oh, THAT'S Coach.

When we race at Riverside, his word was law but the fairest and most accommodating law that anyone would ever care to follow. His respect flowed not from the fact that he was an imposing physical figure, but that he always had the highest regard for the sport and the people who played (whatever their role) their chosen sport well.

Nothing ever seemed to bother him for long, even when the definitive book about Riverside Raceway grievously mis-identified his alma mater as USC (he was an honor student at Cal).

We had a little thing between us, he would always try to crush my had in a handshake, and I would always feign going to my knees during the grip. Fact is, at one point in his life he could have compressed my phalanges into a meaningless mass of junk. It was our little joke, I'd pay a bunch to have our handshake ritual play out just one more time.

Doug Stokes June 13, 2010

Les Richter racing slot cars in the Eldon A-frame at Riverside Raceway. Ed Horne photo

Les celebrating with Tim Richmond after Tim's win at the 1982 Budweiser 400. Frank Mormillo photo

Les "doing a dance" for Linda Vaughn and Patrick Tambay in 1977. Frank Mormillo photo

Les Richter, Gordon Johncock, Richard Petty and Gunnar Nilsson before a 1977 IROC race. Les Richter was instrumental in creating the International Race of Champions. Ron Takacs photo

Photos courtesy of The Petersen Automotive Museum and the Riverside International Automotive Museum.