“The County Commission, Lance Kearce and the Radium Springs Neighborhood Association are responsible for me getting more support than I ever dreamed of,” Pafford, the once co-owner of the Albany Motor Speedway who had an opportunity to repurchase the round track thwarted by a recent commission vote, said Friday morning. “About 99.9 percent of the comments I’m getting are favorable, and y’all’s paper must reach well outside the county because I’m getting calls of support from all over the region.
“Heck, I could probably run for office right now and get elected.”
Even with a wave of support following the commission’s vote to allow racing of vehicles other than Legends cars at the track only if a 25-foot dirt berm were constructed to cut down on noise, Pafford probably shouldn’t approach former partner Kearce for any campaign contributions.
The auctioneer/businessman said in a recent interview that, while he holds no grudges against Pafford, his former partner has problems distinguishing between right and wrong.
“Let me just say that I do not have a vendetta against Mr. Pafford as he’s said lately,” Kearce noted. “In fact, I pray for him daily. I hope one day he gets his life turned around, and I invite him to come to church with me sometime.
“But this is a man who has never been able to tell the difference between right and wrong. When we were first building the race track and he didn’t do the things he’d been told he had to do, his big thing to say was ‘I’m gonna go ahead and do it; I’ll apologize later.’ Let me just say that Dec. 4, 1999, the day he bought me out at the race track, was probably the greatest day of my life other than when my children were born and when I married my current wife.”
In the furor that has surrounded the commission’s Monday vote, Pafford has accused Commissioner John Hayes of racism, has claimed Kearce holds a personal vendetta against him stemming from their past business relationship and has promised to file multimillion-dollar lawsuits against the county and the Radium neighborhood group.
“We’re meeting Monday morning to get things rolling on the lawsuits,” Pafford said. “I plan to file a personal suit against the county, and (local businessman) Bob Brooks, (restaurateur) Bill Farnsworth (the current owner of the track whose sale of the speedway was contingent upon the county’s vote) and I will file separate suits against the county and the Radium Springs Neighborhood Association.”
Kearce, though, says not only does he not have a vendetta against his former partner, he did not work with the Radium group in its petition to the commission to stop racing at the track.
“I hadn’t said anything about that situation (at the track) for nine years,” Kearce said. “But I got word that there were some questions about the conditions the (city-county) planning commission put on the track when it opened, so I showed up at the meeting with documentation.
“Pafford told the planning commission (complaints) would not have happened if his former partner hadn’t stirred things up, so I just pointed out to that board the things that had been required that hadn’t been done. It wasn’t a matter of trying to ‘get’ Tim, it was a matter of right and wrong.”
In 1998, Pafford, who then owned the U.S. 19 Dragway that is adjacent to the Albany Motor Speedway, approached Kearce and his father, Woody, about buying Kearce Farms property to construct a round track. Lance Kearce said he and his father put in a quarter-million dollars to become partners in the project, a decision they soon regretted.
“Pafford just kind of took things over,” Kearce said. “He was about three-quarters through with building the track when my dad said he wasn’t happy with the way things were going. Me, dad, Pafford and (attorney) Craig Mathis met over at the dragway to talk about our concerns, and during that meeting Tim’s wires just got crossed. He threatened to come over a table and whip mine and dad’s a..es.
“Dad said ‘This meeting’s over,’ and we went out to our truck. By the time we got there, Pafford had gotten a shotgun and he drew down on us. When he pumped a shell into the barrel, we got out of there. We filed a report with the Dougherty County Police, but they asked us to work things out and didn’t make an arrest. Pafford apologized the next morning, and we foolishly went on with the project.”
Dougherty County Police Chief Don Cheek verified the incident Friday afternoon, reading a report that is basically a word-for-word account of the one Kearce shared.
“The call came in at 21:25 (9:25 p.m.) on Sept. 28, 1998, and we responded to the incident at 21:32,” Cheek said. “The report says that there were no shots fired and indicates that both Woodrow and Lance Kearce said they did not want to press charges.
“The file is marked as ‘investigation ongoing,’ but since there were no shots fired, no one was hurt and no charges were filed, nothing else was ever done.”
Woody Kearce remembers that episode all too clearly.
“Certainly that was a lesson learned for us, but it was a hard lesson,” he said. “We should have known right then that this was someone we didn’t want to be involved with. We should have just walked away.”
Kearce said he and his father ended up having to take out a $50,000 loan to pay off a lien on some of their own property when Pafford refused to pay a contractor who was working on the racetrack.
“He still owes us that money,” Kearce said.
After much bickering, Pafford bought the Kearces out and took full control of the track. The property was eventually foreclosed on and bought by Brooks at auction. Farnsworth purchased the track in 2006 and tried to revive it by renaming it the Suicide Circle Speedway, a name that had been given another historic track in the county.
That effort failed to maintain its initial interest, and Farnsworth sought to get out from under the property by selling it to Pafford.
For his part, Kearce says he doesn’t like being dragged into the squabble between the county and his former partner.
“I did not get involved with efforts to stop (Pafford) from buying the race track or with any groups in the Radium Springs or Putney communities that were trying to stop him,” he said. “I’ve been around racing all my life — I love racing — and the noise at that track does not bother me. But when Pafford started throwing my name around, saying I had a vendetta against him, that got my attention.
“Now, if he wants to go to the woodshed, that’ll be fine. I can take or give. But there’s no vendetta here. I just believe that if I — and everybody else — have to comply with the rules around here, then everyone should have to, including Pafford.”