Willard Kinzer isn’t worried about having another wreck like the one he rode out in April 2013 at the NMCA/NMRA All-Stars race at Atlanta Dragway.

His Chevy Cobalt took a hard right, rolled him onto its side, slammed into the guard wall, and flipped him upside down. That was just 17 days before his 85^th birthday. But the accident, which could have done considerable damage to a much younger man’s body, left him with only a bruised hand and some complaints of soreness.

No, Willard Kinzer has had closer calls than that – the worst of which, ironically, happened when he was not the conventional age among his peers then, either. He was in harm’s way during World War II as an underage sailor in the South Pacific.

After his high school expelled him in his freshman year, he fudged his birth certificate and was drafted into the U.S. Navy. At age 16 he was shipped off to the Pacific theatre.

“On my age, they finally caught up with me. I wasn’t one of the few underage [servicemen] – there were hundreds of thousands of ’em,” Kinzer said. “Of course, if they catch up with em, they discharge ’em. I got an honorable discharge.”

Kinzer was on Manus Island, working as a naval supply depot clerk attached to the escort carrier USS Admiralty Islands for its operations south of The Philippines. The U.S. Seventh Fleet had refueled there for its invasion to liberate The Philippines from Japanese control. Stateside-bound and waiting for the ship to arrive to carry him home, Kinzer got the call one morning to help unload an ammunitions ship, the USS Mount Hood. Just before he boarded the small, eight-man raft that would ferry him to the Mount Hood, the P.A. system blared that “James Willard Kinzer, Serial Number 9292187, report back to the main office. Your orders have been changed.”

He obeyed and left his group that was headed for the munitions ship, the USS Mount Hood with its 3800 tons of ordnance material.

“They sent me home on another ship, headed towards home, the same day. The one they sent me out to was about half a mile from the ammunitions ship that I was supposed to be on,” Kinzer said. “Then all at once, it was just like Hell broke loose: the awfulest explosion I ever saw in my life. It felt like it picked that boat up 30 feet out of the water. And it killed every man on that ship. I was headed out to it, and they called me back. Oh, man, it was just a miracle that I wasn’t on it, too.

“It was one of the worst things that ever happened to me – but maybe the best,” he said quietly.

Blessed to have outlived that war and several others, Kinzer’s biggest concern as he approaches his 87^th birthday April 28 just might be how much more horsepower he can coax from his new ProLine-powered Mustang in the NMCA’s Radial Wars class in 2015. Eric Dillard took the car to Holly Springs Motorsports for a spin this fall and drove it to the eighth-mile quicker almost faster than he could say “Welcome to Mississippi.” Dillard’s 4.071-second elapsed time at 199.65 mph was one-hundredth of a second shy of DeWayne Mills’ record, making that the second-quickest ever on drag radial tires at the time.

“About two years ago, we decided to make a move in our program in a different direction. We were having lots of engine problems, one thing and another. So I went with ProLine, and they started building the engines, and Steve Petty is the tuner. They’re doing a lot of experimental work. I think, in time, it’ll be one of the fastest cars, if not the fastest car, out there,” Kinzer said.

So Kinzer has a lot to look forward to in 2015, including his 70^th wedding anniversary with wife, Lucy, Feb. 15.

“As long as my health holds up and my mental state is with me, why, I’ll still try to race,” he said, just as naturally as he would have answered if somebody asked him if he wants gravy with his biscuits at breakfast. “Active” and “Willard Kinzer” go together automatically, just like biscuits and gravy.

“I work every day when I’m not racing. I work six days a week: go to the office at 7 o’clock and work till 4,” the owner of Allen, Ky.-headquartered Kinzer Drilling Company and its family of natural gas and energy-industry firms said. Said son Terry, “Compared to the past, that’s a light day for my dad.”

Although he’s the boss and can punch out anytime he feels like it, Willard Kinzer teased about all the time he takes to race in NMCA competition, at Bristol Dragway’s Street Fights, and at the increasingly popular Hillbilly Arm Drop Drags near his Prestonsburg, Ky., home.

“I’m getting a little bit aggravated with myself. I may just fire myself. But after I get over my mad spell, I may just hire myself back,” he joked.

Kinzer is exemplary of the folks in the heart of Appalachia’s coal country, where people fear The Lord but not a hard day’s work. It’s the area that also produced country-music stars Loretta Lynn and her sister Crystal Gayle, Dwight Yoakum, Patty Loveless, Billy Ray Cyrus, Ricky Skaggs, Naomi Judd, and Tom T. Hall. And in drag racing, Kinzer has a few “hit records” of his own.

Along with tuner Patrick Barnhill (and a crew that today consists of Steve Blackburn, Reggie Caudill, Gary Hostetter, Sharon Hostetter, Jimmy Key, and James Slone), Kinzer has exceeded expectations. Among his drag-racing milestones that in 2013 caused him to say, “We’ve accomplished more in the past two years than most do in their entire racing careers” are:

• Being the first NMCA Super Street racer to run in the 6.50-second range (Indianapolis 2011)
• Being the first driver in history with a stock-suspension car to go faster than 230 mph (239.98)
• Being the driver of the first small-tire car to win an NMCA Super Street race (Bradenton 2012, in only his fourth NMCA race ever)
• Setting the NMCA speed record five different times
• Owning both ends of the Drag Radial record at the classic Orlando World Street Nationals
• Setting the Extreme Drag Radial elapsed time and speed records (6.58 seconds, 236 mph as a semifinalist at Las Vegas 2012)
• Recording the quickest and fastest pass on 29×10.5 tire (6.58, 239)
• Earning the Wally at Orlando’s last race in 2012, while setting the track’s class record in his first race on 275 Drag Radials

Kinzer said “it’d be hard to say” what his favorite racing accomplishment is, but the King of the Burnout Contests reckoned his record-setting day in the 2011 NMCA season finale on the Indianapolis quarter-mile – 6.58 seconds and a 239.91-mph speed that stood for a decent stretch and helped him to a second-place finish in the standings and a Signature Award for outstanding sportsmanship – just might top the list. His streak of 18 consecutive Street Fight victories at Bristol, where he said he has “too many wins to count,” ranks up there, too.

He said he has “just too many more memories and accomplishments” swirling in his head to recite them all. More important to him is the satisfaction that “many said we couldn’t, and that just drove us all to do more.”

That’s impressive for a driver of any age, but fans aren’t the only ones Kinzer has inspired.

“I’ve had a lot of drivers come and talk to me. They admire the fact that we’ve been able to, at our age, still participate,” Kinzer said. “One person came over to me and we got to talking. He didn’t look at me real good and had never seen me before. He was telling me about his racing career. He said he loved racing but he got too old and he just put his care away and quit. I had my helmet on, and he hadn’t really looked me over too good. And I said, ‘Well, how old are you?’ He said, ‘I’m 58 years old.’ I said, ‘Well, I got you beat quite a bit.’ I think at that time I was about 83. He said, ‘I can’t believe it. I watched you drive the car down the track and the way you were performing, I can’t believe that. But I tell you what – I’m going to go back and get my car out, and I’m going to go back to drag racing.’ I’ve had a lot of incidents like that, where I’ve encouraged people like that.”

Kinzer does his share of encouraging off the track, too. Darrell Prater, a systems analyst/gas controller for Kinzer’s Quality Natural Gas, LLC, said, “Willard truly is an inspiration . . . not only in racing and business, but I would have to say that he is the ideal community leader.  He’s active in his church. Over the years it was expanded to include a daycare/Headstart, then a kindergarten through eighth-grade Christian school and now includes a high school. He has sat on many boards, [including] the Mountain Arts Center [in Prestonsburg] and the University of Pikeville.

In addition to his ongoing involvement with the local United Methodist Church and Wesley Christian School, Kinzer also supports the Kentucky Opry and the Jenny Wiley Theater. He and Lucy were honored in November as “William Markesbery Senior Stars” by the University of Kentucky’s Sanders-Brown Center on Aging. The award recognizes those “who exemplify graceful aging by remaining engaged in active lifestyles” and make “significant, lasting contributions in professional and/or community life, and service as a volunteer and role model for future generations.”

Kinzer was unable to attend the ceremony at Lexington – he was at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, racing, that weekend.

He’s also the 2011 recipient of the Eastern Kentucky Leadership Tony Turner Award from Hazard, Ky., television station WYMT.

Kinzer said he doesn’t think the media are making too much of his age. “No, no. I’m proud of it!” he said.

He said he’s up for an “Over-80s race” with legends such as dragster drivers Chris Karamesines and Fred Farndon. He said he doesn’t know them personally but has followed their exploits.

He has a few of his own, even in the air. After he got his pilot’s license years ago, he started performing aerobatics that the FAA probably would frown on and wife Lucy certainly didn’t find amusing. And he followed son Terry as national amateur motorcycle hill climb champion aboard his 1000cc Honda. Kinzer has a garage full of classic collectibles that include a ’58 Ferrari, a Chevy Blazer that once belonged to Dale Earnhardt Sr., a Rolls Royce, Lincolns, and Porsches. He even has a helicopter and jet.

He said his fellow octogenarians Karamesines and Farndon drive “a whole lot faster than what I’ve got” but indicated that drag racing is just as logical for him as it is for them, even though he officially came to the party much later.

“Up here in the mountains, we’ve always had racing in our blood, kind of like the moonshiners, I guess,” Kinzer said. “From the time we were young, we would find back roads where there’d be a straight stretch long enough to drag race on. We’d slip out to the airports and drag race on the airport some. I really didn’t get into drag racing until about seven or eight years ago, started going to Bristol, whenever they started the Street Fights, inviting everybody to come in with street cars and instead of racing on the road to come in and do it legal. It was just a lot of fun.”

He got the itch for quicker and faster cars. But he said he sees a day when he’ll slow the pace.

“I’ll probably start backing out of the real fast racing and just race street cars at Bristol before I quit,” he said. “One of these days I’m going to have to quit. I’ll either pass on or get so old I won’t be able to do it.”

His car’s appearance just about tells all folks need to know about him. The body is black and plain, save for a cross on the hood and another on the back atop a scarlet stripe that bear witness to his Christian faith. On the sides are a whimsical label he has for himself: “Old Man From The Mountains.”

His car might not be jazzy to look at. But Kinzer isn’t one to size up things by the outward appearance. He knows inside that car sits a true racer and inside himself is the desire to go quicker and faster than his competitors. He knows it’s how many candles he has lit under the hood and not how many on top of his birthday cake.