This is a story I saw this morning on one of my favorite websites, Jayski.com.  Racing was a pretty rough and tumble way to make a living in it's early days, it's cool to know that Cotton Owens of Spartanburg sttod out not only as a competitor, but as a gentleman.

Cotton Owens Was Gentleman Competitor In NASCAR's Early Era: Through stock car racing's rough and tumble, formative years Everett "Cotton" Owens stood out for a multitude of reasons: among them, winning driver and owner and master mechanic. But perhaps most of all, he was a gentleman. "He was such a nice guy, one of the nicest I ever drove for," said David Pearson, whose first of three NASCAR Sprint Cup championships was won in 1966 at the wheel of Owens' #6 Dodge. "He was a real smart, sensible man. They (his competitors) liked him as much as he liked them. If somebody wanted to know something, he'd answer them." Owens, who died last June at the age of 88, will join Pearson in the NASCAR Hall of Fame on Friday, Feb. 8 as one of five members of the Hall's fourth class. His fellow 2013 inductees are NASCAR premier series champions Buck Baker, Rusty Wallace and Herb Thomas and master crew chief Leonard Wood. Owens' NASCAR premier series driving career spanned 15 years  160 races, nine victories and a second-place championship finish to NASCAR Hall of Famer Lee Petty in 1959. Faced with diminishing depth perception coupled with the need for his cars to perform on superspeedways, Owens began his transition to owner/builder/crew chief. His cars won 38 times, the last in 1971 in a Daytona 500 qualifying race  which at the time awarded NASCAR premier series points  by Pete Hamilton. Among those who drove cars fielded by Owens were NASCAR Hall of Famers Junior Johnson and Bobby Allison, Glenn "Fireball" Roberts, Marvin Panch, Bobby Isaac, Ralph Earnhardt, Charlie Glotzbach, Mario Andretti and Al Unser. See much more of the story, history, stats and more on Cotton Owens and the Class of 2013, see my NASCAR Hall of Fame Class of 2013 page.