Larry Graham

Larry was born in Bowling Green, Kentucky on July 3, 1929.  At maturity he stood 5 feet 11 inches and weighed 150 lbs.  As a child he contracted polio which made it impossible for him to compete in the traditional sports such as basketball, football, and baseball.  He was looking for a level playing field in which to compete.  Stock car racing provided the outlet he needed.

Graham was always a car enthusiast, growing up with boys like Marshall Love, Jr. and Tommy Smith, also destined to become legends of Beech Bend racing.  Hugh Porter Causey got the boys interested in stock car racing when he built the first stock car in Bowling Green.

Graham got his first ride in “The Thing,” an old Ford powered by an 85 horsepower engine, owned by Raymond McClard.  Larry soon realized that “The Thing” would never, in his words, “run with the big dogs.”  He wanted to win, so he parted company with McClard and went looking another ride, finding one in Latt Upton’s 1939 Dodge coupled with a 1936 Cadillac V8.  This car was too heavy and too powerful for the one-third mile track at Beech Bend, but Larry’s love of cars was also combined with a quiet thoughtfulness that led him to be a keen observer of car performance and track strategy.  He found a way to run the track that took advantage of the car’s strengths.

These traits, along with his fearlessness on the track, ultimately propelled him to prominence in only two years of racing at Beech Bend.  Larry was the first Regional Champion at Beech Bend in the inaugural 1951 stock car season.  He was racing through a dream season in 1952 when military service ended his career.