Jerry Cook was 13 years old when he built his first race car. A few years later, one of his drivers wrecked two of his cars. That's when Cook decided, "If I gotta fix 'em, I might as well drive 'em." That's when a NASCAR star was born.

In 1963, at age 18, Cook won his first stock car feature at Utica-Rome Speedway in Vernon. When the Lockport native, who relocated to Rome in 1964, chose to park his red and white No. 38 race car for good, he was still at the top of his game. He finished as a six-time NASCAR National Modified Champ with 342 career victories.

Cook, has devoted over 50 years to NASCAR racing at the competitive and administrative levels, was named one of NASCAR's 50 Greatest Drivers of All-Time when at its Golden Anniversary celebration in 1998, and in 2016, after over 30 years of service as a NASCAR official, he joined the late Richie Evans, his longtime rival from Rome, as a member of NASCAR's Hall of Fame.

Cook is also a member of the National Motorsports Press Association, Rome Sports, New York State Stock Car Association, the Eastern Motorsports Press Association, the International Motorsports Association, the Northeast Dirt, and Fonda Speedway halls of fame, and is on North Carolina Auto Racing's Walk of Fame.

When he retired as a driver in 1982 to become NASCAR's Northeast Technical Coordinator, Cook had won six NASCAR National Modified titles. He was the national champion in 1971 and '72 and later won four straight championships from 1974-77.

Racing was about all the straight-laced, business-like "Cookie" and flamboyant "Rapid Roman" Richie Evans had in common. Unlike Evans, Cook also was a consistent winner on dirt tracks. He won nine track titles between 1964 and 1982 - seven at paved speedways in New York (Utica-Rome, Albany-Saratoga, Spencer), Vermont and New Jersey and two at New York dirt tracks in Fonda and Canandaigua.

Cook also won the All-Star Racing League championship in 1972 and the New York State Modified Championship in 73, titles that were awarded to the best driver in a series of asphalt and dirt races. The consummate point chaser, Cook then stuck to pavement racing, at times competing in as many as 96 races and traveling to as many as 19 tracks - from Canada to Florida - in a single season "when we were after it."

Besides his six national titles, he finished second in the NASCAR Modified point standings seven times and was third in 1982, his final season as a driver. He won seven times at Martinsville, including the inaugural Dogwood 500 in 1969, and he won three 200-lap races at North Carolina's Bowman-Gray Stadium. Cook also spent some time on the high-speed high banks at Daytona International Speedway, where in 1969 he drove his Pontiac to a fifth-place finish in a Permatex 300 race that was won by LeeRoy Yarborough and included NASCAR greats Bobby and Donnie Allison.

By design, Cook was a model of consistency during his 26-year career as a driver, finishing in the top 10 in eighty-five percent of his 1,474 starts. "Like A.J. Foyt said, 'You must finish before you can win,'" says Cook, now 80 years old and living in Mooresville, N.C., with Sue, his wife of 55 years. They met through a fence at Utica-Rome Speedway, long before women were allowed in the pit area. Their son David and daughter Kristi work in racing, and Jerry and Sue have three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.