Ken Squier, Legendary NASCAR Broadcaster, Dies at 88

Mike Barnes
·3 min read
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Ken Squier, the famed NASCAR broadcaster who called stock car events on television for more than three decades and coined the phrase “The Great American Race” for the Daytona 500, has died. He was 88.

Squier was in hospice care and died Wednesday night in Waterbury, Vermont, according to his hometown radio station, WDEV, part of the Radio Vermont Group that he owned.

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Squier started with CBS in 1973 and six years later was in the booth when the network became the first to air wire-to-wire coverage of the Daytona 500, the crown jewel of NASCAR. A large portion of the country was snowed in that day, giving CBS an eager audience.

“It was a new game for most of this crew, yet it was much the same as a game that CBS did better than anyone: golf,” Squier wrote in a first-person piece for The Hollywood Reporter. “There, the stroke that could change the leader board could happen anywhere, and the ability to show it was something CBS dined on. The difference at Daytona was that rather than walking to the next shot, these players would be topping 200 mph.”

The race was won by Richard Petty in a duel with a young Darrell Waltrip but also was known for a brawl on the backstretch featuring Cale Yarborough and brothers Bobby and Donnie Allison following a late wreck. The telecast, directed by the NFL Today’s Bob Fishman, drew a 10.5 rating for its four hours, including a 13.5 in the final half-hour.

“While perhaps best known for his memorable last lap and postrace descriptions of the 1979 Daytona 500, [Squier] had the incomparable ability to so effectively articulate the human side of all NASCAR competitors,” NASCAR Hall of Fame executive director Winston Kelley said in a statement.

“Among his signature phrases, used at just the right time, was ‘common men doing uncommon things,’ which helped audiences and we mere mortals understand the unique skills, risks and gravity of manhandling a 3,400-pound racecar at speeds in excess of 200 mph with 39 other snarling competitors entrenched around one another.”

Squier, inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2018, remained the lead announcer for the Daytona 500 on CBS through 1997, then was a lap commentator at TBS from 1983-99. He also worked for TNN.

NASCAR has named its annual award for media excellence after Squier and fellow broadcaster Barney Gall.

Kenley Dean Squier was born on April 10, 1935, in Waterbury. His father, Lloyd, owned and operated WDEV.

He called his first race, from the infield at Morrisville Speedway, when he was 14. “I did it off the back of a logging truck, using a bullhorn,” he recalled in 1975. “It ended in a riot involving about 400 people, and the Vermont State Police had to be called out to stop it.”

He worked as a pit reporter for ABC for his first NASCAR race in 1971.

For Hollywood, Squier appeared in such films as The Cannonball Run (1981), Stoker Ace (1983) — watch him in that here — Rad (1987) and Citizen Toxie: The Toxic Avenger IV (2000).

Squier was one of the founding owners of the Thunder Road Speedbowl in 1960 in Barre, Vermont, and he formed the Radio Vermont Group in the 1980s. He also was a longtime supporter of the Vermont Symphony Orchestra.

“Though he never sat behind the wheel of a stock car, Ken Squier contributed to the growth of NASCAR as much as any competitor,” NASCAR chairman and CEO Jim France said in a statement. “Ken was a superb storyteller, and his unmistakable voice is the soundtrack to many of NASCAR’s greatest moments. His calls on TV and radio brought fans closer to the sport, and for that he was a fan favorite. Ken knew no strangers, and he will be missed by all.”

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