Putting the pieces together

Buz McKim is staying pretty busy these days.

There isn’t a week that goes by that someone isn’t calling or e-mailing McKim about a piece of memorabilia for the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

“Every week, someone is coming up or contacting us,” said McKim, a historian working  for the NASCAR Hall. “There are fans, relatives of former drivers and drivers getting in contact with us.

“There is nothing we won’t look at. You never know where the Holy Grail is going from.”

McKim added another piece to the Hall on Tuesday, a 10-foot slab from the start-finish line of Darlington Raceway, which is in the process of putting new asphalt on the track.

The piece from the track “Too Tough to Tame” will be used in the Glory Road portion of the Hall. Glory Road will be an exhibit with pieces of NASCAR tracks from the past and present.

“I’m pretty tickled they carved a spot for us,” Darlington Raceway president Chris Browning said. “It’s going to be really special to have a prominent spot for us.”

McKim said he hopes to get more items from Darlington and other NASCAR tracks.

But McKim also is interested in personal memorabilia like fire suits, old T-shirts, helmets and even car parts. McKim said he won’t get in a bidding war for memorabilia and is willing to take the items on a loan basis.

“We want to gather as much as we can, then sort through it and see what the big-ticket items are,” said McKim, who hosts a NASCAR collectibles show on  Sirius Satellite Radio every Saturday morning. “You could never have enough, because we are going to be rotating exhibits, and we want to tell the whole story of NASCAR.”

Gathering memorabilia is just one part of the massive undertaking for the $154.5 million facility, scheduled to open during the first quarter of 2010 in downtown Charlotte, N.C.

What to do with all the items and how to present them is another concern.

That job lies with Winston Kelley, who left his job at Duke Power in North Carolina last June to become the Hall’s executive director.

Kelley has plenty of experience in racing, having worked with MRN Radio as a pit reporter since the 1980s. He also worked as a statistician at the Bristol and North Wilkesboro tracks.

“I love the sport, and to be a very small part of something that honors the past is something special,” Kelley said during the summer.

Since taking the job, Kelley has tried to go out and visit other venues, including the football and hockey halls and even the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tenn., to get ideas.

Kelley and his staff have been working with engineers to design the facility, which will have four levels.

“We are just trying to educate designers and make sure we get things as accurate as we can,” Kelley said.

Kelley said the Hall will be broken up into eras — pre-1947, the formation of NASCAR from 1947 through the 1970s, the 1980s through 1999, and 2000 to today.

There also will be a 250-seat theater and a spot for those enshrined in the Hall.

NASCAR will handle what criteria determine who gets inducted and what people are involved in the voting process.

The Hall’s other features will include:

- An interactive simulator for fans to ride.

- Victory Lane, where people can be interviewed as if they won a race and see how a race is produced. 

-  An oversized track for kids to race on.

- Kiosks where fans can test their knowledge of racing.

- Several hundred cabinets featuring racing artifacts.

McKim said the purpose of the Hall will be to reach out to NASCAR enthusiasts and non-racing fans.

“You always have your fans that will come, but we would like to go beyond that,” McKim said.