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 As weekly midget racing began to drop off in
the early 50's at the Danbury Fair. John W. Leahy and Irv Jarvis owners of the fair heard
about a young group of local racers who formed an association for the racing of stock cars
S.N.Y.R.A. in the nearby town of Brewster, NY. The fair owners and the racing association
came to an agreement, and stock car racing was born in the town of Danbury, Connecticut.
Realizing
that the smaller inner track that saw years of midget racing was not suitable for these
larger and heavier "stock cars", the fair owners decided to do away with the
outer boat-racing waterway and build a one-third mile dirt oval. Since the S.N.Y.R.A. was
comprised of local drivers and crews, the grandstands soon filled with friends and
families.
As drivers
raced their home-built cars on an ever changing surface,
spectacular crashes as well as great racing, thrilled the audiences and soon
word spread. The attendance grew weekly and the Danbury Fair Racearena was soon known as
the most beautiful racing facility on the east coast. To even further delight the
grandstand audience, before a feature race was run, a 20' x 30' American Flag was lowered
in the infield, back-lit by three World War II 60' anti-aircraft search lights, it was
slowly lowered and folded as the Star-Spangled Banner played. As time went on, the
Racearena attracted up to ten thousand race fans on a weekly basis. In the late fifties,
owner John W. Leahy decided to pave the dirt track, making way for
a new one-third mile asphalt oval. Now the drivers had to run cars modified by rules
unique to the Danbury track and racing seemed to get more
spectacular.
The fair lost
Irv Jarvis in the year 1969, leaving John W. Leahy at the now age of 74 to run the fair.
With the help of Fred Fearn and Jack Stetson, the fair and the Racearena continued on
successfully. In late 1973 John W. Leahy suffered a series of small strokes.
He would overcome the effects of one, begin to turn his thoughts to the office, then
suffer another. John was admitted to a convalescent home, where he
stayed for a year before passing away on March 19, 1975. Sadly, John passed away without planning for the future of
the Fair and that eventually led to the Danbury Fair and its Racearena's demise. Johns Will left total discretion to Connecticut National
Bank, Fred G. Fearn and his wife Gladys Leahy to dispose of his estate as necessary to
satisfy the tax burden and follow the rest of the tenets of his will.
It took
several years to settle the estate as the operations of the fair and Racearena continued
on successfully. It wasn’t until the summer of 1978 when a helicopter landed on the
open midway of the grounds that something was about to happen. On May 16, 1979 the
fair directors and the lawyers entered into an
agreement with the Wilmorite Company of Rochester, NY for the sale of the Danbury Fairgrounds for
the purpose of constructing a regional shopping mall.
And so it
ended , the final stock car racing season was run in the summer of 1981, and the final day
of the fair was October 12, 1981. By the completion of a giant six day auction
that ended on Monday April 5, 1982 the
Great Danbury State Fair and the Danbury Racearena were gone forever. |
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