About Inductee

The first stock car race Ronnie White ever covered also happened to be the first stock car race he ever saw. It was the Daytona 500 in 1967, the same year White joined the sports staff of The Huntsville Times after working two years at the newspaper as a copy boy, the most thankless job in the building, while he was still playing high school football and baseball at Madison Academy. More than four decades later, White continues to cover auto racing, writing stories for the paper and serving as the chief scorer at the historic quarter-mile Huntsville Speedway, even though he officially retired in 2009. By unofficial reckoning, Alabamas dean of short track racing has covered more than 5,000 races in his long career. White, who was an up-close witness when the original Alabama Gang Bobby and Donnie Allison and Red Farmer was first making news on both the big tracks and short tracks of the Southeast, has known and interviewed many other drivers who went on to compete at the highest level of NASCAR, including Davey Allison, Neil Bonnett, Dale Earnhardt Sr., Darrell Waltrip, Rusty Wallace, Cale Yarborough, Sterling Marlin and local favorite Jimmy Smut Means, who was inducted into the Huntsville-Madison County Athletic Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2009. Born in Chicago, White moved to Huntsville with his family in 1954 and has been a resident ever since. Although best known for his racing coverage, he was also an award-winning outdoors writer, and later served as The Times managing sports editor for more than two decades. He was Systems Editor at The Times the last several years of his career. A voting member of the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, White was also a recipient of the Maxwell House Real Hero of NASCAR Award for his efforts to improve the quality of life in his community through such organizations as the Salvation Army, Special Olympics, the Huntsville Boys and Girls Club, the Madison County Commissioners Youth Fishing Rodeo, United Way and the Metro Huntsville Kiwanis Club. While The Times outdoor writer, he was named the 1978 Conservation Communicator of the Year by the Alabama Wildlife Federation and the National Wildlife Federation. He won numerous writing awards in outdoors and racing during his newspaper career. One year, he won not only first place in the racing category, but also second and third. In 1992, he received the Huntsville Track Clubs Media Award. White credits his writing success to his two role models at The Times, Bill Easterling and John Pruett, and adds: I was also fortunate to work with folks like Al Burleson and James Magness. White is married to Sherry Adcock White. He has two sons, Ron and Rodney, a stepson, Jeff, and a daughter, Courtney.