I had the unique opportunity to have a conversation with Linda Bloom. I would imagine that readers of the MARC Times Racing News know Linda fairly well from her column when she wrote for the paper. For those who don’t know, Linda is the daughter of Dick Beebe. Dick was the founder of the MARC Times and recently passed away. To me Linda is a woman with a great heart and she spoke about her father with a great deal of passion. I thought most people knew Dick Beebe well but Linda talked about the man that she knew. “I saw a person who had such passion for this sport that he was always worried about people’s safety. Not just his own families, but for everyone in racing because they were his family to. He took them under his wing, they were like his own kids. I remember so many people telling me Dick got after me for such and such, I felt like I was two years old. I’d tell them yeah he still does that to me. It wasn’t to be rude or mean but he thought he had to come across rough, even though he had a soft core. Every time he saw something happen to anybody in his racing community it hurt him deeply. He put everything he had into it right to the end.” Why did he decide to start the paper? “He saw a need. He had been around racing since he was a kid. He watched his dad race and even helped his dad build Galesburg Speedway when he was fourteen years old. He worked at the track, he’d flag, painted racecars, scored, and announced if needed. The newspaper was because there wasn’t anything close. He saw a lot of his hero’s who never got their names in a paper because they didn’t race over on the East side of the state where they were really advertising their people, not ours. That was what he decided to do and on a shoestring he started the newspaper.” Kalamazoo knows Linda’s brother Rick Beebe very well since he’s on top of the flag stand every week helping run a safe racing program. Recently the USAC Sprint Cars had and event at Kalamazoo and Linda’s husband Jeff Bloom was racing. Linda has stuck around racing because of the relationships that were built beginning with her parents and as a supporter of her husband. How did you meet Jeff? “We met when I was eighteen and we got married one day less than five months from the time we saw each other. I’ve been on his pit crew since 1990, before that women were not even allowed in the pits. Prior to that I would be up in the stand with our kids and take times and kept score of everything going on, and points but that was about all a wife could do back then. “ Linda, like her husband Jeff, has a ton of stories that will keep anyone captivated. At the end of the interview Linda had made me feel like family. I look forward to sharing more of her experiences with you, the reader. I want to thank Linda and Jeff for taking time out to talk with me. Your presence in this sport is powerful and anyone that has the chance to hear your experiences should listen closely. Thank you for all that you contribute to the people in our racing community.
