It is my sad duty to report, to those of you who have not yet heard, that our friend and fellow slot car racer, Durfee “Durf” Hyson has left the building. Per his wishes, there will be no memorial service.
Durf grew up in Hartford, CT, always a big reader, always a debate-level thinker and talker. If a couple of things had turned out differently, he could very well have been a congressional or campaign staffer, maybe a high-level public servant. He had the necessary brains, and the strong inclination to help people, which he did often, throughout his life. He was selfless, and had an authentic soft spot for the little guy.
His grandfather nurtured a love of things mechanical, which nested nicely in Durf’s facility with his hands, and with math. In his teens, he discovered cars, and slot cars, and a dual, lifelong passion was born. He ran the NCC classes, USRA, HO Magnatraction, and SuperG cars, pretty much whatever was happening in Connecticut and environs.
When a family crisis forced him to leave university, he quickly found employment at what became a series of auto dealerships. He worked as a mechanic, but soon became a sought-after auto parts savant, and ran several parts departments, ably, throughout his career. He never went back to school, something he sometimes regretted.
Durf became a Lotus fan, and then fanatic, early on.Colin Chapman, Jim Hall, and Dan Gurney were his lifelong heroes. Independent, capable, and at times headstrong, these fellows were his personal blueprints. In tribute, he often modeled his slot cars after their designs. He knew the history of all the cars, all the drivers, and damn near all the races. It could be uncomfortable to sit or stand in the path of Durf’s accumulated firehose of information. 8-)
He became a master 1:1 mechanic, mostly on Lotuses, and a talented, trusted and opinionated member of the Elan/Elite/Europa community. His little house in Thompson, CT, overlooking the Quaddick Reservoir, sat atop a garage that was always filled with this or that fiberglass Lotus shell-in-process. Tiny, English Ford four-cylinders were seemingly everywhere. And, in the near distance, you could hear the roaring, weekend warriors pounding around Thompson Speedway. Durf knew many of the drivers of the most serious SCCA machinery there. He had wrenched and crewed for several serious national competitors, including some NIssan teams with factory ties.
I met him in around 2010, when he became a member of New England’s MARC, the Miniature Auto Racing Club. HO magnet cars, HOPRA rules, and quite a few bonafide characters, but none of them bigger than Durf. He could talk your ear off, but he also built fast cars, many of them driven for him by his loyal and very talented friend, Erik Eckhardt. If you wanted to know the science behind what made the cars work so well, you had to pull up a chair. The explanations were incredibly complete, and never short. He wanted you to understand, and made it his business to see that you did. You had to know how to get your learning done, and then slip away with enough time to apply the new-found knowledge on the track. 8-)
Durf was also remarkably kind to kids and new racers. He’d do his best to encourage anybody who showed some spark, often surprising them with a special body, or car, after he’d managed to get their address. He was remarkably generous, almost to a fault. He organized a really big benefit HO race for the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for disabled and seriously-ill children, when he was already in rough financial condition himself. Donations to the camp are the only way that Durf wanted to be remembered, so you could do that.
From the time I first knew him, Durf’s body was already rapidly failing him. One miserable, serious malady after another. These cascaded. Those of us close to him saw how truly horrible and cruel it is to be seriously ill in America, and broke. His wars with the medical and “health insurance” industries are the stuff of legend. We helped where we could, but he was deeply proud and decidedly stubborn. Mostly what he allowed us to do was to help him take his mind off his health, by working on slot cars. There was another cadre of pals that helped him keep his fingers in some 1:1 Lotus projects, too.
Many, many times the Reaper came calling for him, but he managed to talk the SOB into a hasty departure. Maybe he drove him off with a diatribe about all the things that slot car racers misapprehend about aerodynamics? I don’t know how many times we were sure that he would lose a new argument with the Old Boy, in the form of some new and seemingly insoluble health crisis. He had a powerful will, one like you’ll rarely see in this lifetime.
Throughout the pandemic, on most Thursdays, wedged in among home nursing visits, sudden trips to the ER, dialysis, and god knows what else, we’d sit together at his house for four or five hours. We’d talk about auto racing, and just build slot cars. The last few years, we shifted our efforts into 1/24 Retro racing, at Modelville Hobby, and with NERR, setting ourselves a new (to us) hill to climb.
I learned a metric ton from Durf, though his health made him crabby, short-tempered, and sometimes hard to be with. But I can say for sure that I couldn’t take what he did; I would have given up. His strength was astonishing.
So I hope you rest in peace, Durf. May whatever comes next be pain free. And this to those in charge: wherever Durf is, please, please let there be Cosworth heads and Koford gears in abundance.
