Hot Wheels: Tom was one quick cat

Miller’s time on the track went fast, very fast

By KARL E. PEARSON - kpearson@starbeacon.com Staff Writer

Third of a Series...

Like a comet appearing in the night sky, Tom Miller arrived on the dirt-track racing scene in the late 1970s and 1980s, then disappeared just as quickly.

That racing career, which lasted almost exactly a decade, gave a huge impetus, though, to what has become the 51-year-old Geneva resident’s livelihood. Miller’s love of automobiles has produced a career where he keeps other people’s cars in good shape, serving as the proprietor of Ashtabula Body and Fender on West 49th Street in Ashtabula for the past 20 years.

Miller also spends a good amount of his spare time working on his personal fleet of vehicles at occupy his five-car garage at home, including the 1968 Chevrolet truck he drives to work virtually every day during the summer months and the 1935 Chevrolet coupe that he also built himself and drives around on occasion.

Cars are still very much Miller’s passion.

“I love cars,” he said. “I always have. I love working with them.”



Catching the bug

Miller’s interest in working on cars stemmed from a visit he and his father, Dave, who still resides in Conneaut, took to Raceway 7 in Monroe Township shortly after the track opened in 1970.

“We probably went down there when I was 12 or 13,” he said. “It wasn’t that my dad was into driving the cars. He was just a racing fan.”

The urge to get involved became a little more ingrained when he started working with George Shuster, a neighbor of the Millers on Daniels Avenue in Conneaut.

“I used to hang around him in his garage,” Miller said.

That ignited enough of an interest in automobiles that young Miller quickly decided that his education should head in that direction. He went into the auto body program at the Ashtabula County Joint Vocational School.

Like any other youngster, a big day in Miller’s life came when he turned 16 and was able to obtain his driver’s license. That gave him the ability to work with a lot of the drivers who frequented area tracks. He continued to follow that routine through his graduation from Conneaut High School in 1977.

“I started to help guys like Jack Andrew and (Shuster) and the other drivers around there,” he said.



His own man

Another big development was Miller’s ability to get on the track himself. That happened near the end of the 1978 season.

“We bought a 1971 Camaro and rebuilt it,” he said. “I worked on it in my dad’s garage and was able to get into a few races at the end of the (1978) season in the semi-late model division.”

Miller really took it to the track in 1979, becoming the youngest competitor at Raceway 7 at 20 years old.

“I just decided I wanted to try it,” he said. “I finished a lot of the races. They were 25 laps long and probably had 25 cars. I probably finished in the top 10 in a few of them and had a decent finish in the points standings.”

He immersed himself deeply into the dirt-track circuit.

“I was usually racing at least two or three nights a week,” Miller said. “Fridays were at the Expo in Cortland at the Trumbull County Fairgrounds, Saturdays were at Raceway 7 and Sundays were at Tri-City Speedway over in Franklin, Pa.”

Even then, the season generally ran from late April through Labor Day.



Changing rides

In 1981, Miller decided to switch to the modified division. That meant a switch to a big-block Chevrolet that was finished for him at B&H Speed Shop in Erie.

That got him into perhaps the most competitive divisions in dirt-track racing.

“There were guys like Lou Blaney, (Andrew), Ed Lynch and Jim and Ron Watson in that division,” he said.

Virtually all the other drivers he was competing with were nearly twice his age, but he found them a very accepting group.

“Almost everyone else was in their 30s,” Miller said. “But we were already really friends. There was no animosity.

“Everybody helped everybody else if you needed something or needed a tool to work with. It was kind of a brotherhood.”

Moving into the modifieds proved to be the proper decision.

“By the end of that first year, I felt pretty competitive,” he said.

Over the years, Miller went on to win a number of feature races at the tracks he frequented and was always quite competitive at those tracks. But he never quite reached the brass ring.

“By the end of my racing, if I was still running at the end of the race, I was usually in the top five,” Miller said. “But I never won the points championship. I know I finished second at least once at Sharon Speedway (in Hartford).”



End of the line

But, just like all other sports, the rising cost of operations were the driving force behind Miller’s withdrawal from the sport. The 1989 season was his last on the track.

“I couldn’t go farther with the financing that was needed,” he said. “When I stopped racing, I always felt I would end up driving someone else’s car, but it just never materialized.”

As it turned it, the timing for Miller’s departure from racing probably came about at just about the right time, even though he hadn’t quite reached his 30th birthday.

“I got started at Ashtabula Body and Fender in 1990,” Miller said. “I had a partner in Marvin Wright, but when he retired, I took it all over. I’ve been (the owner) by myself since 1997.”

The love of automobiles and racing has never left Miller. It just doesn’t drive him anymore.

“I rarely go to the races,” he said. “After competing, it’s no fun to watch.

“I’ll always be a racing fan. I just don’t have to watch it anymore.”

Although it had no connection, Miller also got out of racing shortly before he met his wife, Debbi. They are approaching their 18th anniversary.



Connections

Despite the fact he’s set aside racing, though, he wouldn’t trade the relationships he developed in his relatively short time in the sport for anything.

“There are a number of guys (particularly at Raceway 7) that I’m still friends with,” Miller said. “I met a lot of good people in racing. I developed a lot of great relationships in racing.”

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