PRINCETON, W.Va. (AP) — William H. “Bill” Dalton Jr. made a transition in life that very few people make.
The Princeton resident went from being a drag racing champion to a champion quilter.
At 87 years old, he has not slowed down much.
“I am still going,” he said recently after he had donated one of his quilts for a giveaway at Princeton Health & Fitness Center, where he is a member.
Dalton said he still hunts and fishes, but also spends a great deal of time quilting, as well as designing the patterns.
“It is crazy, but I get it done,” he said of the prolific work of sewing quilts, some of which are purchased by Tamarack, and his quilts also brought him the championship at a recent quilting gathering/competition in Bluefield.
But the quilting came later in life, after he and and his family, known as the “Dalton Gang,” had made a name for themselves in drag racing, even building their own engines at Dalton Automotive in Princeton and setting records on the 1/8 and quarter-mile drag strips.
During this time, Dalton also had a job at the Pentagon for the Army.
“I came home after a period of time and helped people unload a big motor at a mine and I got hurt really bad,” he said, requiring surgeries on a shoulder and elbow as well as a knee replacement.
“That eliminated my job in Washington,” he said. “It took a long time to get straightened out.”
He got straightened out with the help of his mother as his wife, Robin, taught school.
But his mother made one thing clear when she told him: “If you are going to come here and eat my food you are going to learn how to sew.”
Dalton said his mother worked at the Maidenform plant in Princeton (now closed) and knew what she was doing, so she bought him a sewing machine.
Sewing ended up being something he enjoyed doing and he started making quilts.
Dalton said he was raised in Matoaka near Turkey Gap and his mother made much of the clothing for the family of eight, so he grew up around sewing.
“We come from a good group of people who sew,” he said.
Dalton took the same precision in building a motor and driving a car with a 762-cubic inch engine and applied it to quilt designing and sewing.
“I make quilts using my own patterns,” he said. “They tell me I am crazy but people like the quilts.”
Dalton said he creates the tops of the quilts and a “long arm” quilting machine puts in the batting and the bottom, which includes a copy of the design, but not with the bright colors that cannot be duplicated.
“It is a pretty fancy outfit,” he said of the 18-ft. long arm machine, but the main work on the top of the quilt is all his design and his sewing.
Designs vary, he said, and he just made a “t-shirt” quilt.
“It took 18 t-shirt center parts,” he said, with him selecting the design, first on paper, then making the pieces and sewing them together. “It has eight to 10 types of fabric in it.”
Dalton said anyone who does this must have a “very good taste in using different colors and putting them together.”
Many of his first quilts were given away, he said, but as they became more expensive to make, he started selling them, and they now can sell for up to $1,000.
Dalton said he has made about 200 quilts, and some are in Charleston at the Cultural Center and he has another quilt almost ready to send to a Washington display.
Quilts come in different sizes and king size is the most expensive, he added.
The quilt donated to the Fitness Center was a $1,000 quilt and won by Fred Terry of Peterstown.
Dalton said the pandemic slowed down membership, and income, at the center and he wanted to do something to help so giving away a quilt to someone who registered for the drawing made sense.
Chris Worley, the center’s executive director, said he appreciated the donation and it attracted a lot of attention and did help boost membership.
“The box was very full of names,” he said of people who filled out a card and entered the drawing. “It is very generous of Mr. Dalton to donate a $1,000 quilt. It is very nice. He has been a member here for a long time.”
Worley said things are getting “just about back to pre-pandemic levels,” but not quite there yet. “We are getting there.”
Terry said he had never entered into anything like that and was surprised he won the drawing. Ironically, his mother was a prolific quilter.
“She made quilts for fall the kids and when the grandkids were born she made them baby blankets,” he said. “I thought it was pretty coincidental for me to get the call (that he won).”
Dalton loves to talk about quilts, but he always comes back to drag strip racing.
“We were there if the track was open,” he said of the Beckley and Princeton tracks. “My brother (Oscar Lee) and I both had cars, 1968 Camaros with “big block 454 motors … we knew how to get the horsepower out of them.”
He eventually “traded out” for a 2016 Camaro, but “every two or three years you have to update the front end or the whole body.”
A top-notch dragster can cost $150,000, he said, so it is not cheap.
“I love speed,” he said. “Speed costs money … The more money you have, the faster you can go.”
And the Dalton Gang went fast, setting more than 30 records.
But it is a family tradition.
“My son (Howie) was changing spark plugs out when he was 8 years old,” Dalton said. “We were all raised up building motors.”
Howie Dalton now works in the Monster Truck business, from Kill Devil Hills, N.C. to Florida.
The pride he takes in his quilts is reflected in his pride in his cars and racing.
“We can make them go fast,” he said. “We didn’t win them all, but we won our share of them.”
He also has no plans to “retire” any time soon.
“My mother died in 2018 when she was almost 101,” he said. “The last thing she said to me was, ’Son, promise me you will keep on sewing.”
