Laura Kibbe Continues Angelillo NEMA Dynasty
Brockton, MA — The Dumo’s Desire team will “definitely be in monkey suits” at the Northeastern Midget Association Awards Banquet Saturday night, Nov. 20 at Whites of Westport in Westport, MA. “My mother would have insisted on it,” reports Owner champion Laura Kibbe. It is the final step in a championship effort for team and driver Russ Stoehr dedicated to Laura’s folks, long-time NEMA stalwarts Gene and Marilyn Angelillo.
It is almost poetic that Stoehr and the team took the point lead for good at the Angelillo Memorial, a race Kibbe sponsored in her parents memory at Waterford Speedbowl in September. They left The ‘Bowl with a 22-point lead. “I realized then the championship was possible,” she recalls. “I said to myself, ‘Wow, this could really happen.”
Stoehr, who now has six titles, four in Angelillo equipment, put a bow on it with a third at Thompson’s World Series.
When Kibbe gathered the gang together on the day of her father’s funeral (he died on March 1), she was not thinking about championships. She had been part of every one of the 14 NEMA titles Gene and Marilyn (who died Sept. 4, 2007) acquired. “I wanted being part of the NEMA family to continue,” she says. “I felt the No. 45 had to be at every NEMA show.” There was commitment from Stoehr and long-time Angelillo friend Joe Fiori, the latter insuring race headquarters would remain at Angelillo’s garage in Oxford, CT.
“I’ll always remember the emotional experience of watching the car take the green in the season opener at Waterford so soon after Gene died,” says Kibbe, a very successful attorney with an incredible international agenda. “Honestly, I wasn’t concerned about championships, even feature wins. I was concerned with keeping the car on the track.”
But things came together. Scottie Law, for instance, stepped up to take on tire responsibilities, something he had never done before. Jack Giannini and Kurt Kiermont, also longtime Angelillo associates, contributed as did Brian Wynn, Paul Liphardt and Nick Rinaldi.
In the final reckoning, Stoehr had three wins among nine top threes and 11 top fives and no DNFs. While the bad luck of defending champions Randy Cabral and Bertrand Racing can’t be dismissed, it was the Dumo’s Desire crew that prevailed. Stoehr, who insists “You can’t do it without a good car and those guys did the car,” was, at least unofficially, the crew chief.
“My father was like a tiebreaker,” explains Kibbe. “People on the crew would disagree about an approach to take and he would end it saying ‘do it this way.’ We didn’t have that anymore. So, I announced Russ is the tiebreaker because he has to be comfortable with equipment under him.” She “checked” with Russ after every race, learning “things were better each time we ran.”
“We never had a conversation about doing it for Gene and Marilyn,” says Stoehr who won three straight titles with Angelillo before retiring in 2002. He returned to driving and Angelillo in 2009. “We wanted to get the job done.”
In the end, Kibbe insists, it was “putting egos aside and everybody coming together. We all had important jobs to do and had we not done that, we would have failed miserably.”
And missed an opportunity to put on those tuxedos.
Sources: Pete Zanardi/NEMA PR