05-19-2024 Harford Magazine - Flipbook - Page 30
BY ABIGAIL GRUSKIN Harford Magazine
Racers line up, above,
at the starting gate
during the Bel Air
Lions Club inaugural
Bel Air Town Derby
in October of 2023.
PHOTO COURTESY OF
THE BEL AIR LIONS
CLUB
30
n the stretch leading up to last year’s inaugural
Bel Air Town Derby, Ben Meyer started “trash
talking.”
“I was trying to stir up some energy,” the
Vagabond Sandwich Co. owner said. His derby car,
piloted by a boy from Meyer’s neighborhood in Bel
Air, sped down Main Street in late October bearing
the sandwich shop’s logo and orange flames, and
propelled only by gravity.
It didn’t win a single race. But this year, he’ll have
a second shot at leaving the competition in the dust.
The Bel Air Town Derby, a Soap Box Derby-style
racing event hosted by the Bel Air Lions Club, is
returning to Main Street June 23 — with double the
number of participants as the town celebrates its 150th
anniversary this year.
The race is a new tradition that harks back to a
spectacle not seen in Bel Air for more than a halfcentury, uniting residents of different generations
in the process.
“In today’s environment, where people are just
so busy … this is a really neat way of bringing the
community back together,” said Town Administrator
Edward Hopkins.
A town official floated the idea for a derby to the
Bel Air Lions Club around the beginning of 2023,
said Lions member Dave Guzewich, who took on the
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| Summer 2024 | harfordmagazine.com
responsibility of organizing the Bel Air Town Derby
with fellow member Amy Biondi.
“We’ll give it a try,” Guzewich, 73, recalled saying.
The new wave of races — though they use official
Soap Box Derby cars — isn’t sanctioned by the Soap
Box Derby organization, meaning the winners in Bel
Air don’t advance to compete in championship races,
Guzewich explained.
But the Bel Air races in the 1960s started by the
Optimist Club were.
At 12 years old, Forest Hill’s Larry Harkins flew
down Main Street one summer day. He emerged the
winner in his first and only time competing in the Bel
Air Soap Box Derby in 1966.
“When you’re first going down Main Street,
