Get me to the church or Lernerville Speedway on time!!!!

Friday after hot laps, you are cordially invited to witness the marriage ceremony of Lernerville flagman Dan Hunkele and his fiancée, Heather Mayhugh, a pit concession stand employee, in victory lane at the track.

At the end of last season, Lernerville flagman Todd Beichner and race director Gregg Wheeling retired and the search to replace these two very capable people began. Dan Hunkele and Mark Hawk were hired as their successors.

Hunkele first attended the races with his dad at PA Motor Speedway when he was five years old.

“I rooted for stock driver Vince Laboon,” he said. “After a few times, I knew then that I wanted to be a flagman some day!”

When Dan was about eight, his dad, Ken, went to a craft store, bought some old bandanas and made a set of flags for him. He sat behind the PA Motor Speedway flagman, who was Gregg Wheeling, and mimed his style of flagging.

As a scorer at this speedway, I watched him week after week for a few years. He became so good that he was able to know not only how to wave the various flags, but when to use them. It looked like he was Wheeling’s shadow.

Pit Steward Smokey Schempp permitted him to flag the “Young Gun” division when he was 14. Later, he became his line-up man.

He was proud to flag the “Jook George Memorial Crate Late” race.

Hunkele said: “It is surreal, so amazing to finally be at the place where I dreamed of as a kid.”

Now on Friday, he will be marrying his sweetheart in victory lane. How appropriate!

Next-door neighbor

Mark Hawk grew up in a house located by the big white Budweiser sign at the entrance to Lernerville.

The Sarver native remembers sitting at the kitchen table when his mother signed a petition to condone building Lernerville.

Mark was so excited to have a racetrack in his back yard. When his dad came home and found this out, he was furious.

He screamed, “I don’t want a “dustbowl” in my back yard!”

Mark watched the track being built in 1967 and when it opened, his dad did not permit him to go to the races. So he sat on his garage roof and watched, since the grand stands were lower at that time, thus his passion for racing began.

Mark loved it when the pits at Lernerville were in turn one, near his house. He could sit there on his porch and watch all the cars as they drove by to enter the track.

When the attendance grew, the management decided to add more seats, raising the stand’s height and he could not see the track any more. Mark then built a tree stand.

The crew at Lernerville would remove the stands, being concerned about safety issues, and Mark would just build another one but he finally gave it up.

Eventually, his mother and dad divorced with the track being one of the main issues. Hawk was now permitted to go to the track. He admired Lou Blaney and Rick Ferkel. Danny Swartzander and he were buddies in the grandstands. One day they found a dollar under the stands.

“We went to the photo stand and bought two pictures of Dick Swartzander. I still have that picture!” Mark said.

He went to other tracks with Danny and followed Dick Swartzlander. When Mark was 16, he became a part of the track’s Buffalo Township fire crew with his brother, Ollie, at the speedway.

Eventually, he volunteered in the pits, doing odd jobs for Smokey Schempp. One day Don Martin came to him in the pits and said, “we need to start paying you.”

That comment to Mark is one of the most memorable occasions in racing for him. To have Don Martin’s approval that he was competent enough to be on the payroll at Lernerville Speedway was an endearing endorsement.

He started doing line-ups in the pits, then on the track after caution events and finally became the race director, employed there a total of 30 years. He worked for a Fire extinguisher company and made his work schedule around racing.

Soon other tracks like Challenger and Tri-City hired him. He then went on the road at times for Jeff Geesey’s “Mid-Atlantic Champion Series Late Models” for five years.

“ I enjoyed it all,” Hawk said. “Where else can you be with great drivers, owner, fans and management and get paid for it?”

Then he and his son Tyler started a tent rental business and Mark stepped away from racing for eight years.

“I missed it. I could hear the cars from my Sarver residence and I would tell my wife Beth how I could tell which division was racing just by the sound of it!”

“I stayed away from the tracks, but I was glad to have this opportunity to come back to racing when Gregg retired.”

Gregg stepped in for Mark when he left racing and now it has come full circle and Mark is back manning the headsets at the track where he once sat on the garage roof to watch the races!

Racing runs in the blood of Mark’s family, too. His daughter, Autumn, married Matt Schaeffer, Sprint driver Kevin Schaeffer’s brother. Matt races quads nationally and their 4 year-old daughter, Camryn, recently finished second in a National two-cycle quad race.

Carol Gamble is a racing columnist for the Butler Eagle