Shortly after that, Sheaffer's time with Smith at the track came to an end, but the two remained avid hunting buddies, frequently teaming up to hunt pheasant at Sheaffer's Oriental homestead.

Smith retired from the sport in 1978 and was felled by a heart attack 10 years later. He was posthumously inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 1995. Today, Sheaffer and his wife of 51 years, Sue, remember those days at the dusty dirt tracks when along with their five children, they watched and helped Mitch Smith make history.

"Mitch was a very aggressive driver and if the car wasn't handling quite right, there were times that he took it upon himself on the speedway to make it handle right. Sometimes he would make it through and sometimes he wouldn't," Sheaffer said of Smith's style. "Regardless of where he started in the field, whether a heat or a feature, at the drop of the green, he only saw one position and that was to get to the lead as fast as he could. All the victories were special.

"Mitch was a soft-spoken individual who garnered quite a few fans from that, and he had a lot of respect from his fellow drivers."