WEEDSPORT, N.Y. – Pat Ward of Genoa, N.Y., a longtime stalwart on the Central New York racing scene, has been selected for induction into the Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame.
Ward, the only addition for this year, will join the held-over Class of 2020 — including drivers Brett Hearn, Harold Bunting and the late Joe Donahue — as they are honored on July 22 at the Museum and Hall of Fame on the grounds of Weedsport (N.Y.) Speedway.
Tentative plans call for pre- and post-program festivities, sponsored by the speedway, with formal ceremonies at 7 p.m. The free event is open to the public.
Ward grew up surrounded by race cars in King Ferry, N.Y.
“My dad raced, all my uncles raced. I can remember ‘em all having cars out in our yard — we had no garage or nothing,” reflected Ward. “When I was six or seven years old, they used to set me in the seat and I used to ‘steer’ and ‘race’ while they were working on ‘em.”
Ward’s father Bud raced an old Hudson hobby with a flathead six at tracks in Waterloo, Weedsport and Dryden in the 1960s.
“My dad won 11 out of 17 races one year with his Hudson, I remember that,” Ward noted. “My uncle Chet won a lot of championships at Skyline. He used to dominate there for a lot of years, driving for Jimmy Podolak. Good memories, right there.”
Ward followed his family into racing when he was a high-school sophomore.
“In 1973, my dad and I built a late model Mustang — got it out of the junkyard, put a roll cage in it,” he said.
Starting out at tracks like Weedsport, Skyline and Rolling Wheels, “we didn’t have a lot of success,” Ward admitted.
“That was when they were beginning to build late models at Show Car and other places. I just had a junkyard car.”
By 1979, Ward moved up to the modified ranks, running a blue No. 43 Pinto as his dad was still racing the family’s No. 42.
“I don’t think I ever qualified for a race with it, to be honest. It was hard times,” Ward conceded. “I had absolutely no money.”
Nonetheless, Ward managed to scrape enough together to buy a used modified from Show Car Engineering’s Howard Conkey.
“Howard had a car in the shop for sale — Wes Moody had flipped it at Syracuse, he only ran it one time. Howard rebuilt the whole thing and talked me into buying it,” Ward recounted. “I had to go to the bank and take out a loan — it was maybe $5,000 or something.
“That’s when I started running really well,” he noted. “We weren’t winning because I still had our homemade motors, but I was running top five at Canandaigua against some really good guys.”
The “good guys” Ward was pitted against each week were the best in the business: Alan Johnson, Will Cagle, Bob McCreadie and Danny Johnson. Yet, Ward was able to qualify each week and finish in the top 10 consistently.
People began to notice.
“I actually started to get some sponsors out of it,” he said.
In 1982, Ward went to work for Howard and Aida Conkey at Show Car.
“That’s when things really started to turn around for me,” Ward said of the opportunity.
“At first, he was building chassis and fabricating. Pat was such a good employee that Howard taught him how to use the CNC machine after we started the machine shop,” Aida Conkey recalled. “He was a fast learner — and so happy to do whatever Howard asked. It was a very, very good relationship.”
Howard Conkey, a Hall of Fame builder with a reputation for innovative engineering, took Ward under his wing.
“I’d walk in there Monday morning and he’d call me over first thing — ‘What did you think? What was going on?’ He’d tell me what to do, I’d do it — and it always helped,” Ward said. “He never drove a race car, so I don’t know how he did it. But he had it figured out.”
Plugging away, Ward won his first modified feature in 1987.
“Howard let me build a new car at the shop during weekends and after hours. Brought it out and we started running Fonda regularly,” Ward noted.
He scored that first win in a twin 20 program, over all-time Fonda favorite Jack Johnson, who became a friend.
“Jack was really helpful — always gave me used tires that he was getting rid of,” said Ward, who also picked up support from Dick Myers and Gorge View Lanes for the Fonda effort. “We won a couple races there that year.”
That momentum was accelerated by a B&M motor Ward purchased from Alan Johnson.
“Alan sold me one of his motors that his dad had built. I think I won four or five races the first year out with it,” he said of his first professionally-built engine. “Alan was sorry he sold it to me, I know that!”
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