Ken Squier dies at 88: All about the legendary NASCAR broadcaster
Ken Squier, the iconic broadcaster who catapulted NASCAR into the mainstream of American culture during the 1979 Daytona 500, died on Wednesday. He was 88.
Dave Moody, a longtime friend and MRN colleague, revealed Squier's death early Thursday morning November 16.
It was later confirmed by WDEV, Squier's Vermont radio station. According to Moody, he had recently been transferred into hospice care due to a number of health difficulties.
Squier began announcing races in Morrisville when he was 14 years old.
In 1971, he worked as a pit reporter for his first NASCAR event. For nearly 20 years, he was the voice of NASCAR on CBS and TBS.
Squier has an indisputable influence on NASCAR. Squier anchored the inaugural flag-to-flag coverage of the Daytona 500 in 1979, after helping to start the Motor Racing Network in 1970.
As luck would have it, a massive snowstorm on the East Coast aided in delivering massive ratings as Squier called the now-iconic last-lap struggle between Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison, which resulted in a fight following a collision. That race has long been regarded as the spark for NASCAR's expansion in the 1980s and 1990s, and Squier is credited with coining the term «Great American Race» for the Daytona 500.
With news of Squier's declining health breaking earlier in the week, Earnhardt Jr.
discussed some of the personal influence he has had on his own broadcasting career.
Dale Earnhardt Jr. made this statement on X, the social media network previously Twitter. «If Ken hadn't been our main storyteller, I'm positive that race would not have had such a profound effect,» Earnhardt added.
