Saturday’s 3rd annual Legends Helping event at the Memory Lane Motorsports and Automotive Museum saw some of the sport’s biggest names from years past come out to honor legendary crew chief Jake Elder.

One of the best to turn wrenches in the NASCAR garage, Elder scored three championships and influenced many future crew chiefs along the way.  The 72-year-old is currently under the care of the Autumn Care Assisted Living Center in Statesville, N.C. and in need of financial support.  

Coming together on a cold and raining Saturday morning, some of NASCAR’s biggest stars from yesterday shared their thoughts on Elder with HardcoreRaceFans.com

 Buddy Parrott:
Jake was a one of a kind crew chief.  I think all of us learned a lot from him.  I can remember times when I would see him and he’d be sitting over on the truck and have a spring – he’d always have a spring in the spring rater.  I’d always say, ‘Jake, you got one loaded in the cannon don’t you?’  Jake was Bill Elliott’s crew chief – a lot of people don’t know that – I think he was Elliott’s crew chief, I’m pretty sure, when they won Darlington.  Having the number of people and the fans come out here is really a big deal.  I’ve been out here for each one of these and I think this is the best turn out so far.

Rex White:
I was glad to help out, if I helped.  I enjoy coming here to all these events to help out drivers that might be in need or even just for the fans. Without the fans, none of us would be here.  

Geoff Bodine:
You can’t list what he brought to the sport,” former Daytona 500 champion Geoff Bodine explained.  “‘Suitcase’ Jake, he’s been around, that shows he’s been around.  He helped a lot of teams and drivers.  What’s nice is to see – there have been some famous guys out here today.  Guys I used to cheer for and, of course, race with and against.  So it’s really nice that the racing community will support something like this.  Even us famous guys will come out and spend their time, sign autographs and see the race fans.  

What’s really neat about the race fans is there are race fans from the early days, but there’s a lot of young race fans that came out to see these drivers from the 50s and 60s and 70s.  That’s really nice to see that even the younger fans appreciate what they all did back in the day.  That’s old school racing – it started and they all helped build it up to what it is today.  

Dave Marcis:
Everyone knew Jake and he had a great reputation as a great crew chief.  Jake was a hard worker, he never believed in giving up, when they couldn’t get that car working right you could walk through the garage and the one guy that would be working hard, changing shocks, changing springs, changing sway bars was Jake.  He never believed in giving up until the car drove the way the driver wanted it to work.  He was a great guy and a great contributor to the sport for sure.

Buz McKim:
This is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever been to, Buz McKim, historian for the NASCAR Hall of Fame told HardcoreRaceFans.com.  “Number one to have the caliber of people of stars here, the number of stars here, the number of people here that came out on one of the worst weather days – this is the second year in a row the weather was terrible – just shows how much people revere the history of the sport and how they still salute their heroes and are willing to break out the wallet for the folks that really need help.  I think it’s awesome.

David Ragan:
I think if we don’t appreciate guys like Jake Elder, Sam Ard, guys like “Tiger” that are sitting here, you know they put in the hard times and did a lot of the ground work for what the sport is today and we wouldn’t be here and getting to race and getting a pay check for it at the end of the week if it wasn’t for a lot of things they did.  It would be neat to see some more of the NASCAR guys here supporting the cause.  A lot of good race fans and a lot of good racers are here.

Donnie Allison:
First of all, Jake was of the old school so to speak.  He was the kind of guy he knew what to do on a car for a guy and nothing stopped him.  I drove several cars Jake worked on and he was an extremely good mechanic, extremely good.  

Tim Brewer:
A lot of people don’t realize how far Jake goes back.  He worked for Petty Enterprises for years and he was really instrumental at Holman Moody.  In the era he was coming up he had David Pearson and he had Ford Motor Company behind him but he had some great guys that worked for him like Dan Ford, Slick Poston, Slick Owens and those guys.  Those were guys that I grew up watching and learning from.  But Jake Elder, nobody read an old race track like Jake could on race day.  To race against him in his prime and to have won some races, he’s a great guy to learn from.

Jake Elder has been a great friend in racing and someone to learn from, but we’ve also been friends away from the race track.  That’s pretty much unheard of today, because you don’t have a lot of time to share that camaraderie that some of the – like Dale Inman, Richard Petty, Leonard Wood – there some great people that came along back then that were really good for the sport, but people don’t understand that the sacrifice that was made by those older generation guys to get the sport to where it is at today.  

Waddell Wilson:
I’m happy to be able to do it, because Jake and I were able to work together for a number of years.  We worked together first at Holman-Moody when he was the chassis man and the jack man on the car and I was the front tire changer and built engines.  We won the championship with Pearson in ’68 and ’69, then we worked together again at L.G. DeWitts and again at Harry Ranier’s.  The man had an incredible feel for a race car.  He could take he knee and put it on the bumper on either end of the race car and know if it had the right spring in it, the right shock in it.  You know, he had a feel that nobody had when I was around and his record speaks for itself because he was great for the sport and a heck of a mechanic.