Ken Squier was the superhero of motorsports storytellers

Storyteller.

That term has become a bit overused. From social media influencers to suburban Substackers, everyone loves to declare themselves a storyteller. The great ones never need to wear that name tag, though. You know them as soon as you hear them.

Ken Squier was, above all else, a storyteller.

“Like bullets they propel themselves out of the corner!”

“He’s getting some air … gobbling it up in that car, No. 88, keeping it cool to get ready for that final assault …”

“Johnny Utsman hand grenades the engine! It detonates right at the start-finish line!”

Squier’s own remarkable life story ended Wednesday night, passing away at the age 88. But the sound of his perfectly balanced hard-yet-gentle New England voice and the stories it told us all, from the public address speakers of Vermont and MRN Radio to CBS and TBS television, will never stop echoing off the walls and halls of racetracks and the broadcast booths that look over them.

“Look at that Oklahoma land rush on the backstretch!”

“He fireballs his way into the lead!”

Squier’s story is equal parts Howard Cosell and Johnny Appleseed. He was a New Englander, born and raised in Waterbury, Vermont, the son of a radio station owner. He’d listen to auto races carried by WDEV and became enamored with the urgent, gallant descriptions of the men who piloted hurtling pieces of machinery around places such as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, devouring and studying those broadcasts like a literature professor delving into Shakespeare and Chaucer. He took what he learned to the PA microphones of short tracks throughout race-car-obsessed New England. The talent that oozed from those speakers caught the ear of NASCAR president Bill France, who was kicking around the idea of a radio network that could bring his stock car races to a broader audience.

“I think, at least I hope, that what Bill heard was something different,” Squier recalled in a 2013 conversation following his election to the NASCAR Hall of Fame as the recipient of the Squier-Hall Award for NASCAR Media Excellence. Yes, that’s his name on the award. “When we first started discussing what we could do that was perhaps a little different was focusing on the drivers….