When veteran NASCAR journalist Rick Houston first revealed his pancreatic cancer diagnosis earlier this month, the first thing he said was that he wasn’t scared. He was only thinking of his family and insisted he would continue hosting his beloved Scene Vault podcast, just as he always had, while carrying on with his life’s work. Even though Houston has since received more bad news about the disease, it has only strengthened his resolve to finish what he considers too important to leave behind.
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It’s the digitized scene archive, which was Houston and his former partner Steve Waid’s mission to save the entire 32-year run of Winston Cup Scene newspapers. Waid sadly passed away last month (also to cancer) before seeing the project completed. But Houston has pledged to fight on, while sharing news that his cancer is in stage 4.
“Of course, my thoughts are all over the place. It’s hard to concentrate on any given topic for more than a few minutes … at best. That said … what of the digitized Scene archive? Time ran out on Steve, and it may run out on me. All I know for sure right now is that when my time comes, this archive will not die with me. I won’t allow it,” Houston said via a statement on The Scene Vault’s X page.
He also asked fans not to feel sad about the situation. Houston is thinking about all the people who sacrificed a lot in their personal lives over decades to cover the sport. He will dedicate the rest of his life to preserving valuable pieces of NASCAR history.
Before the day and age of social media and the internet, Winston Cup Scene (which later got renamed to NASCAR Scene) was considered the absolute peak of NASCAR news coverage. The publication featured insider stories, garage news, iconic photographs, and behind-the-scenes accounts from one of the sport’s most successful and popular eras. From April 1977 to December 2009, the paper ran roughly 1,500 issues containing almost 100,000 pages.
Houston, who physically owns the complete 32-year collection, took on the massive project of digitizing them to keep this history from getting lost over time. As of May last year, the scanning process was officially completed. Houston’s primary focus now is ensuring that the platform where the digital archive is hosted stays permanently intact for the public.
“One way or the other, this has to happen. At this point, I don’t care how. Just that it does,” he added.
This is Houston’s promise to everyone who helped document the years that shaped NASCAR into what it is today. While he could choose to focus just on himself and on recovering or getting better, he has made one thing abundantly clear: making sure that the history survives, and he has no intention of giving up.