Auer wins one for Dad

John Auer Jr. has been celebrating since Sunday, the day he won the NHRA O'Reilly Mid-South Nationals Super Stock drag racing title at Memphis Motorsports Park in Millington, Tenn.

The celebration is greatly deserved.

Exactly one month earlier -- on July 22 -- John Auer Sr. lost a three-year battle with cancer at the age of 55.

"It's been terrible," John Auer Jr. said of the past month. "We were skeptical on even going to Memphis. It's been so mentally hard, so hard to deal with.

"We knew if we didn't go, dad wouldn't have went for that. We went for him and for the passion we have."

The Auers shared a passion for racing cars.

John Auer Sr. began racing cars in 1967, when he was an 18-year-old high school student in Cape Girardeau. One of his running buddies was Daryl Cooper, who now runs Speed Sport Automotive on Broadway.

"His dad and me started racing about 35 years ago," Cooper said. "His dad was a good engine man, a good carburetor man. He taught Johnny everything he knows."

The Auers also shared a car -- a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro that John Auer Sr. built in the mid-1970s.

"This car was his pride and joy," said John Auer Jr., 34.

John Auer Sr. raced the car on hot rod circuits for years -- he won a national race and set a track record in Louisville, Ky. -- before passing the car along to John Jr. in 1995, when he essentially became his son's crew chief.

"He taught Johnny," Cooper said, "so Johnny knows every nut and bolt on that car from front to back."

John Auer Jr. had other talents he picked up from his father as well. John Jr. showed his natural racing aptitude by winning his first event in October 1995 at Indianapolis Raceway.

But nothing in his racing career compared to this past weekend.

"This here is the first big trophy I've won," he said Thursday. "To get one of these is next to impossible."

Described by family as the "ice man," John Auer Jr. was able to hold together his emotions for six rounds of racing over three days in Memphis.

"Johnny is much calmer than his dad was," Cooper said. "His dad was hyper is how I'd describe him. John Jr. is calm and laid back."

John Jr. even had to calm his own supporters heading into the final at Memphis.

He topped a field of 52 racers in the bracket division -- in which the driver has to finish closest to a time he has selected prior to the run -- to grab a purse that will be valued at around $13,000. In the final, he covered the quarter-mile track in 10.54 seconds.

The fact that he won the championship exactly one month after his father's death was lost on no one Tuesday, when Auer gathered with family and his racing family -- friends, pit crew, people who shared the family's passion -- at Speed Sport to show off the car and bask in the victory.

"He had a lot to do with me winning this thing," Auer said of his father. "I knew he was looking down on us.

"It was so emotional. Everytime the win light went on, I had this card next to me," Auer said, holding his father's prayer card. "I embraced it and looked up to the sky. It was like he was helping me.

"Getting into the final, I was never nervous like I thought I'd be. I kept my composure well. I remembered whenever I made a final, my dad would say no matter what, he was proud. Right when I got in the car for the final, that popped in my mind."

Auer hopes to reach more finals down the road. "If I didn't keep racing, I'd have to change my name," John Auer Jr. said. "Everyone who knows my dad's name associates it with racing. He was a mechanic all his life."

Molly Auer, John Sr.'s widow, said many of the supporters who came out to honor John Jr. on Tuesday had been touched by John Sr.'s involvement with racing.

"John was good about building race cars and helping them get started," she said. "It's generational. There were a number of people who were kind of adopted by John."

John Jr.'s racing efforts have been boosted by Keith Cotner at Cotner Electric, John and Debby Brinkman at Midwest Engineering, his pit crew of Tony Brendel, Danny Eaker and Larry "Red" Blevins and, of course, Cooper at Speed Sport.

"Daryl has been a great help to my dad throughout this whole thing all these years," John Auer Jr. said. "And Keith Cotner has helped us keep this thing going."

Auer is employed in the quality department at DANA Corporation, where he has worked for 10 years. He lives in Scott City with his wife, Denean, and two children, Garrett and Andrew.