Racing photographer-craftsman Thomas Taylor Warren dies at 83

Two eyes who helped shape and record the history of racing in America are now closed.

Thomas Taylor Warren, a photographer who captured thousands of enduring images during his brilliant career, passed away Wednesday night. The man known throughout the NASCAR garage as T. Taylor was 83.

Warren’s most famous image was taken at the inaugural Daytona 500 in 1959. Earlier this year, Warren shot photos at the 50th running of that race. He never missed one in between.

In 1959 he was positioned on pit road to shoot the winner’s car as it came to the finish of the first Daytona 500. But three cars wound up in his viewfinder. Lee Petty and Johnny Beauchamp were battling side-by-side on the final lap. Petty had Beauchamp to his inside and the lapped car of Joe Weatherly to the outside.

Petty and Beauchamp both thought they’d won, but NASCAR called Beauchamp to victory lane. Petty immediately lodged a protest.

Warren took his cameras and film to NASCAR’s offices on South Peninsula Street in Daytona Beach and went into the darkroom.

“I started looking through my negatives for some reason, I don’t know why,” Warren recalled in an interview in February. “I saw a frame from the finish and made a print. I ran it through the chemicals real quick and looked at it.”

Uh-oh, Warren thought. The image showed Petty’s No. 42 car a hood ahead of Beauchamp’s No. 73 just a few yards short of the finish line. Warren took the still-wet print upstairs to the office and found Pat Purcell, NASCAR’s executive director and Bill France’s right-hand man.

“I said, ‘Pat, we’ve got a problem,’ ” Warren said.

Three days later, NASCAR reversed the ruling and named Petty the race winner.

Warren was born July 4, 1925, in Wyoming, Delaware. He lived in Florence, S.C., at the time of his death.

Warren started shooting photos as a boy and studied the craft at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York. His brother bought a Midget race car and Warren went with him to the track. Once he started taking motorsports photographs, Warren never stopped.

He worked in Milwaukee and Kansas City before getting a job with a Kodak lab in High Point. There, he made friends in the stock-car world and was hired part time to shoot photos at a race on the old Daytona beach and road course in 1952. He eventually got fired from his regular job because he spent so much time at race tracks, but it worked out just fine for him.

Warren, who almost always had on a fisherman’s-style hat with a Goody’s logo and a khaki photo vest, was in 2006 given the Henry T. McLemore Award for achievement in journalism from the International Racing Hall of Fame in Talladega, Ala. He was the first photojournalist to receive that honor.

A memorial service will be held this Sunday at 4:00 p.m. at the Trinity United Methodist Church, 126 Pearl Street in Darlington, S.C. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the National Motorsports Press Association, P.O. Box 500, Darlington, S.C. 29540. Kistler Funeral Home will be directing the service.

In addition to being one of the most respected people in the NASCAR garage, Warren was also one of the most likeable. It is not enough to say that he will be missed. T. Taylor is a man who can never be replaced.