NEMA Pres Recalls Hall of Famer Dad
Asking Mike Scrivani Jr. to come up with a No. 1 memory of his dad is both unfair and impossible. The Northeastern Midget Association president has a host of fond memories of the bigger-than-life character remembered as “Iron Mike.”
It is fair to say there are hundreds of stories about the late Mike Scrivani who will be inducted into the New England Antique Racers (NEAR) Hall of Fame Sunday, January 27th at the LaRenaissance Banquet Hall in East Windsor, CT.
A charter member of NEMA (Jerry Russo drove his car in the club’s first-ever race at Seekonk on May 30, 1953), Scrivani’s auto racing connections went back to the Sprint Cars of the late 1930s. Although he was also successful in Modified racing, “his heart was always with the Midgets and Sprints,” reports Mike Jr.
Based at the legendary “Mike’s Truck Stop” in Wrentham, MA, Scrivani, who passed away on Feb. 28, 1983, wrote a ton of New England racing, adding particularly to NEMA’s story. Butch Walsh and Nokie Fornoro won championships in Scrivani cars. The Scrivani-Fornoro combination remains one of the most potent combinations in both NEMA and ARDC history.
NEMA has had co-champions just once – 1970 – and the Scrivani operation played a major role. “The old man didn’t have a steady driver,” Mike Jr. recalls, and despite sitting in second place in the driver points, Dave Humphrey (“the old man called him ‘kid’”) didn’t have a ride for the final event at Thompson Speedway.
Humphrey, Mike Jr. points out, was actually three-for-three in the car, the former Johnny Thomson-driven MacLeod Curtis Craft/Offy. “They worked it out and Humphrey showed up at Thompson,” continues Mike Jr. “Back then,” he continues, “you asked Dave ‘How is it?’ and all he said was ‘OK.’ He would sit on the race car, smoke a cigar and then go out and race.”
He went out and “stuffed” the car into the sandbank that then bordered the turns at Thompson. “They pulled him out, started him last and we win the main,” says Mike Jr. He finished in a tie with Lou Fray for the championship.
A year earlier at Thompson Gene Bergin drove the car to a memorable win. “It was co-sanctioned with ARDC,” Mike restarts. “Johnny Coy and Ken Brenn and all the big guns were there.” Bergin, he says, “haunted my father, ‘give me a ride in the midget’” and it actually made a difference. “My father said ‘you want a ride in my car, you have to speak up.’”
Just out of the hospital (an auto accident), long-time Scrivani associate, Blackie LaMacchia showed up. “Blackie sees the car,” says Mike Jr. “I’m there, Gene’s there and he asks ‘how’s the car?’ ‘It feels good’ Gene said but Blackie says ‘do this, do that’ and we changed it a little.”
Starting behind the ARDC cars, Bergin won the race, passing Johnny Coy Sr. with five left heading into one. “What a race that was,” says Mike Jr., still enjoying it.
Al Herman, Burt Brooks, Ray Burke, Al Pillion, Bill Eldridge, Hank Williams and Leigh Earnshaw and Coy Sr. also won in the car. Coy’s win is one of the most memorable in both NEMA and Scrivani family history.
There were two family cars, the upright wrenched by Mike Jr. and a Badger under the care of long-time family confidant Hop Harrington. It amounted to a car in each of two warring camps. They came to Stafford, stockcar ace Geoff Bodine in the Badger and Coy in the upright. Coy passed Bodine on the last lap to win.
“Hop came unglued,” says Mike Jr. “’You beat the hometown favorite’ he said and the place would have gone nuts if Bodine had won.” Coy, however, wanted none of it and Mike Jr. was in the owner’s championship battle (which he won).
At first, he says, “the old man didn’t care. It was a good race.” Then, rethinking it, he offers, “he always was an upright guy. He loved the uprights. He used to call the badgers door wedges. He liked what happened.”
Drivers Dave Alkas, Dave Darveau, Dick Batchelder and the late Howie Brown, Fred Luchesi, George Lombardo and Johnny Gammell, car owner Joe Brady, the multi-talented Dr. Dick Berggren and writer Pete Zanardi will also be inducted.
Ticket forms for the 11th annual NEAR Hall of Fame banquet will be available on the New England Antique Racers website (www.near1.com) in the near future.
Sources: Pete Zanardi/NEAR PR
1970 at Thompson Speedway: (L-R) Blackie LaMacchia, Mike Scrivani, starter Frank Ferrera, driver Dave Humphrey and Mike Scrivani, Jr., in victory lane. (Bill Balser Photo).
