Cho Lee recalls hanging around the LaQuerre garage in East Montpelier, Vermont as a youth. Firstly, the operation was run by the elder LaQuerre, but Joseph, the eldest son, was to take an active role in the family business and in auto sports from the beginning. My first familiarity with Joey LaQuerre's career is when he fielded an attractive black 1955 Chevrolet in the waning years of the original Flying Tiger series at Thunder Road and at Catamount.
         The first LaQuerre entry was jet black, beautifully - lettered, and numbered GT-1 -maybe after a motor oil of similar name. LaQuerre had long observed the successes of one Larry Granger, who had capture championships with the Libero Buzzi #93 coupe and who had also run the 46 for the legendary George Barber team, after the seat had been vacated by the legend, Pappy Forsythe. Partly because the competition had caught up with Barber and maybe because Granger wasn't getting any younger, he never did a lot with the 46.
         Nonetheless, when the LaQuerre family fielded their beauty of a car, Granger was installed in the driver's seat. Larry had a pretty good stint in the car, although NASCAR gave the team grief for not using a NASCAR-approved two digit number on the door. The following year, one of the last for the Tigers before they converted over to limited sportsman cars, LaQuerre repainted the car and re-numbered it as "HAWAII 5-0", probably the origin of the number 50 he used frequently later in his own driving career. LaQuerre seated another enormously popular but aging veteran into the car in the person of Johnny Gammell. Gammell had some wins with the car, along with a few eye-catching wrecks.
         With the conversion to limited sportsman cars, Joey moved to join the new mini stock ranks by around 1972 and became a staple there for years to come. Joey also toyed with the new Flying Tigers in the late '80's and ended up in the late model sportsman cars that took over T Road by the 1990's. He still drives in that division and the Tigers today - an ageless wonder, to say the least.

Bob Doyle Photo Courtesy of Cho Lee
Larry Granger, in LaQuerre's snazzy Race and Custom GT-1- around 1968.

Bob Doyle Photo Courtesy of Cho Lee
A very young Joey LaQuerre, left works on the HAWAII 5-0 after Gammell
dumped it at Thunder Road in 1968.

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