Say it isn’t so: Beloved Charlotte speedway ticket office employee retires 

Charlotte Motor Speedway’s “ticket to happiness” called it a career last month.

Love and appreciation for Phylis Lipford upon her retirement flowed through the walls for the woman who helped bring fans closer to racing for 39 years. She developed relationships with the fans she served, bringing them closer to the sport. She will be 16 years cancer-free on Oct. 17.

It wasn’t by accident that hundreds of thousands of fans found themselves at the track over the past 39 years, it was the bond with the woman behind the counter.

“For me, it was special to know that I was helping make memories,” Lipford said. “Watching multiple generations come out, that was the best part of it. The fans. That’s what it meant to me. Just to help create those family memories for them year after year.”

A lot of memories at the speedway

She graduated as valedictorian of her class and won the most valuable player award for the women’s basketball team at Jefferson High in South Carolina. Following high school, Lipford raised her two sons while starting work in the customer service industry with a small textile company.

Phylis, now a mother of two and a grandmother of four, was recruited by the speedway and started her tenure under Jim Duncan and former president and general manager Humpy Wheeler. When she began working at the speedway in October of 1982, ticket sales weren’t in her plans. Lipford started work in corporate sales under Duncan but made the switch to managing tickets upon Wheeler’s request in 1986.

“You can’t ruffle her. She has this wonderful ability to deal with people,” Wheeler told The Charlotte Observer in 2006 in an article whose headline called her the “ticket to happiness” for fans of the speedway.

The change aligned Lipford with those she related to the most, opening the door for a nearly 40-year career in the industry. Her kindness created lifelong friendships inside and out of the racing world, with hundreds of fans and former accounts reaching out following the news of her retirement.

“Phylis was one of one,” said Harry Wiley, a 30-plus year NASCAR fan. “She always worried about the people here, the fans. She went through some tough times herself, but the way that she interacted with our community, she doesn’t even know all of the people who were praying for her.”

Tough times came Phylis’ way with the loss of her mother and a battle with cancer, but her “track family” and the countless fans were there to keep her going. Lipford was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in April of 2005, but cancer and the coinciding chemotherapy couldn’t keep Lipford’s customer service skills at bay.

“As everybody knows, April begins our year in terms of events at the track,” Phylis said. “Every Monday I would go to work early in the morning, then leave and go to chemo that afternoon. I never missed a day of work. By the weekend I would always feel better so when the events came, I was good to go.”

Though her office has been cleaned out and family and friends snapshots have been taken off the walls, she still holds the memories of her time at the speedway, including one of the late Dale Earnhardt.

“Every time I saw him, he always made me feel like his best friend,” she said about Earnhardt. “He always came to me to get his tickets for the races. He would come into my office and sit down on the sofa and ask about my family. My staff would line up outside of my office to get his autograph or a picture made, but he was just so great.”

Time for more family time

The outpouring of appreciation from supervisors, fans, friends and family has been heartwarming for Phylis.

“It made me feel really good,” she said. “I hoped that I would be missed. If I’m not, then I didn’t do my job right.”

Before the Speedway made the announcement of Phylis’ retirement, many fans were concerned with failed attempts to get in contact with her. One phone call that stood out was from Rick Connor, a member of the Speedway’s Wall of Fame honoring those who have been attending races at the track annually for over 50 years.

“What is going on?” Connor exclaimed. “I called the office today and some guy told me that you weren’t with the Speedway anymore. I knew I had to get to the bottom of this.”

“I’ve been attending events at CMS since 1960,” said Connor in an email to the Observer. “As much of a fan of racing as I am, I am a fan of Phylis Lipford. She always came through with any of our last-minute requests and seemed genuinely concerned for her clients, who almost always soon became her friends.”

Lipford wrestled with the idea of retirement throughout 2020, a year that she was separated from the relationships and connections that she had created. Following the Coca-Cola 600 in May 2021, she was leaning toward the idea of calling it a career but was worried about all of the extra time she would have.

Nearly two months ago, she broke her shoulder on a day at the lake with her family. The injury required a sling and limited her ability to field calls and complete her job to her standards. Ultimately, it was the recovery process and the time away from the track that showed her it was time to walk away.

“God works in mysterious ways. It was just such a blessing, and look how fast it healed,” she said, raising her arms straight up in the air. “It has been nice not having to wake up as early and work the extra hours, but I would do those 39 years all over again. It was one of the best parts of my life.

“I’m looking forward to that extra time that I can spend with my family, my sons, grandsons and friends,” Lipford said. “I don’t have a set schedule now, and now I’m free to spend time with you guys.”

When cleaning out her desk and taking the pictures and notes down from her wall on her last day, she kept these last two things close: the memory of her mother in the form of a butterfly and a note from me.

Referring to her as Phylis throughout this story felt strange because to me, she’s “Grammer.” I’ve seen firsthand how much she loved her time at the speedway. And now, I see even more how much she loves her increased time around her loved ones.

“I hope that my time with the speedway and my customer service skills leave a lot of great memories with the fans that I’ve touched over the years,” she said. “One thing that I wish for every person, is to be able to work for a company like Speedway Motorsports Incorporated and to have that family feeling with everybody that you work with.”