By Kayley Fraze
As a child, Joe Ostrihon loved nothing more than going to stock car races with his father once a year.
“I fell in love with it and did a lot of the Saturday night stock car racing stuff,” Joe said. “It was fun, dangerous, loud.”
That love for racing continues today, leading to Joe’s collection of 930 of what he refers to as the “bigger collectible cars.” He also has smaller cars as well as other NASCAR memorabilia, including helmets and gloves.
“I’ve always been a car nut, and when I was young, I always used to tell my dad, ‘I can’t wait until I’m 16 so I can drive.’ And he told me that if I wanted to drive, I’d have to have money for insurance and a car,” he said. “That inspired my work ethic to get a car — cars in the mid to late ’60s were the big thing.”
For all intents and purposes, Joe has a NASCAR museum in his house — or at least, that’s what his wife Marilyn Ostrihon says.
“The reason my wife calls my room a museum is when we lived in Tucson, little by little I started labeling stuff,” Joe said. “The first autograph I ever got, that’s marked — a lot of the stuff I’ve got has a story to go with it.”
Joe’s collection began in 1994, when his mother gifted him his first collectible, a Dale Earnhardt car he still has today. After that, a church friend of his — who worked at longtime NASCAR racing sponsor Interstate Batteries — helped fuel his passion, allowing Joe to meet a number of drivers.
“We were remodeling a children’s area in the church, and it was the weekend NASCAR was in town,” he said. “He felt really bad that I was working there instead of at the race, so he bought me a car.”
Joe has always loved Dale Earnhardt, and after Earnhardt died in 2001, he became interested in Kevin Harvick, as well as Dale Earnhardt Jr.
“I just find it interesting that someone can be that respected in what they do,” he said. “I feel like the ethic of a race car driver is under-appreciated. It’s finally starting to be known as a sport. Up until a few years ago, people would say, ‘They’re not athletes.’ No, they’re athletes.”
Though Joe has been collecting for nearly 30 years, he has no plans of stopping anytime soon — it’s what he loves.
“I just enjoy it,” he said. “We never had kids, and it gave me something to do. I was a construction manager for 30 years, and it was just a getaway — I could clear my mind and think about that instead of work.”
Joe also likes seeing his friends and family enjoy his “museum.” The best instance of a rewarding reaction came from a work friend of his wife.
“She knows nothing about NASCAR, but she spent more time in the NASCAR room than anyone I’ve ever seen — she was in there for about two hours,” he said. “She just came out shaking her head and said, ‘That’s just incredible, the way it’s displayed, the way it’s labeled, the stories it tells.’ I get to use an artistic design I don’t get to use anywhere else.”
