Race Car Driver From Floyd Co. Dies at Age 57: Roger Dalton, Who Competed at Franklin County Speedway, Had a Rare Brain Disorder.

By Mark Berman, The Roanoke Times, Va.

Aug. 23–A Floyd County man has died of a rare brain disorder.

Roger Leon Dalton, 57, died Tuesday of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, said his son, John Dalton. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is diagnosed in 250 to 300 people nationally each year, according to the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Foundation Web site.

Dalton, a truck driver from Willis who raced at Franklin County Speedway for the past 16 years, was diagnosed with the disease Aug. 3 at University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, his son said. He died at a rehabilitation facility in Salem.

Dr. Julie Massey, who treated Dalton at the UVa Medical Center, confirmed that Dalton died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Dr. Brad Worrall, a neurologist at the medical center, said CJD is diagnosed in one in 2 million people worldwide a year. He said he has treated CJD patients in the past but did not treat Dalton.

Doctors don’t know how Dalton got CJD, his son said. Dalton was diagnosed with the “classic” or “sporadic” form of CJD, his son said. According to the Web site, 85 percent of the people who have CJD have this form. There is no known reason for how people get this form, according to the Web site and Worrall.

The other categories of CJD are hereditary and acquired. One of the types of acquired CJD is variant CJD, which has been tied to the eating of beef tainted with mad cow disease. The number of people affected with variant CJD is in the hundreds, Worrall said.

Sporadic CJD is an infectious, noncontagious, fatal disease that commonly affects people in their 50s to their 70s, Worrall said. It causes a rapid form of dementia.

“Most dementias — diseases like Alzheimer’s — take years to evolve,” Worrall said. “Creutzfeldt-Jakob takes months to evolve.”

Dalton began having memory loss about two months ago. He then began having severe headaches and went to Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg in July. Doctors ran tests and couldn’t find out what was wrong, Dalton’s son said, and Dalton left after less than a week. He went back to that hospital within a week and had more tests. Doctors were still puzzled, his son said, and recommended the family take him to University of Virginia Medical Center.

Dalton, who went by his middle name, drove in the Late Model Stock division at Franklin County Speedway after moving up from the Street Stock class. He had not raced this year.

“He always had a love for race cars,” his son said. “He built the engines and set up the cars. He not only drove [the car], he loved to work on it. He always did the work himself, the engine work especially.”

Funeral services for Dalton, who is also survived by a daughter, brother and sister, will begin at 2 p.m. Friday at the Maberry Funeral Home in Floyd.

“He was a very loving and caring man,” his son said.

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