Longtime Modified Racing Team Owner, Crew Chief Billy “Bear” Calicchio Passes 

Billy Calicchio, a fixture of the Modified racing scene as a car owner, crew chief and crew member for decades, passed away Wednesday. 

Calicchio was 62 years old. Calicchio passed away while working on the Modified race car he owned. 

In the realm of Modified racing Calicchio was for decades simply known as “Bear”. Mention the name Bear and anyone who drove a Modified or worked on a Modified team or worked in the pits at a race track knew you were talking about Calicchio. 

Mike Christopher Jr. and his late brother Ted Christopher worked together on and off for years with Calicchio, whether it was driving his cars or having him on their teams as a crew member. 

“He was a pretty [freaking] good guy,” Mike Christopher Sr. said. “I knew he had been fighting health issues. I just can’t believe this right now.” 

Asked what Calicchio meant to Modified racing Mike Christopher Sr. said: “What was Bear to Modified racing? I would ask what was Modified racing to Bear? It was everything in the world to him. He lived, ate and breathed it and most of the time he was damn good at it.” 

In a 2021 Unmuffled Podcast interview, Calicchio explained that his love for racing developed as a child. 

“I had a passion for racing at like six or seven years old and it never stopped,” Calicchio said.

“… My father, back in the day, in the 60’s, he used to work on Ray and Richard Garuti’s car that Eddie Flemke [Sr.] and Smokey Boutwell drove. That was the No. 14 that Jack Arute Sr. actually was partners with. I used to go to the race car shop on Saturday’s.” 

Asked what kept him in the sport for so long Calicchio said: “What do you want me to do, go play golf? I’m a racer. I’m a racer.” 

Calicchio fielded his familiar No. 14 Modified in Saturday’s Monaco Modified Tri-Track Series USNEPower Haunted Hundred at Seekonk Speedway with driver Andrew Molleur behind the wheel. 

“I got the opportunity to work with him back in 2018,” Molleur said. “I was only 14 years old. I definitely learned a lot from Bear right away. He treated me like I was one of his own. We had an ongoing joke where he’d call me his son and I’d call him dad. When we’d go out dinner he’d tell all the waitresses I was his son. I got to sit down and have lunch with him last week as we got prepare to go to Seekonk. I was the last to drive his car, which is certainly not something I wanted to happen. I’m speechless at the moment. You never know when somebody is going to go. I’m thankful that I was able to give him a good final run and get him a solid finish at Seekonk, which was a place he really loved to go race at. He’s going to be really missed by the entire racing community. He’s had a big impact on a lot of racing careers, including mine. I’m going to certainly miss him.” 

Calicchio worked with many of the legends of Modified racing since the 1980’s, but it was his on again, off again status working with the late Ted Christopher that made for legendary lore in the southern New England racing scene.

Calicchio talked about that relationship in a 2021 Unmuffled podcast interview.

“Everybody just saw the end results of all the fights,” Calicchio said. “Me and him would always agree not to agree. When I wouldn’t agree to it, he’d get mad at me, I’d get mad at him, blah, blah, blah, ‘Why’d you do that?’ You know. Curse words would go back and forth. [He’d say], ‘I don’t need Bear to win.’ And I would say ‘I don’t need Ted to win.’ He’d go and win in his stuff and I’d go and win with my stuff. And then six months later or three months later I’d get a phone call on the way home from a race, ‘Is that the best you could do, third?’ Stuff like that. Everybody saw that, but it wasn’t as bad you’d think. He’d get mad, I’d get mad, we just wouldn’t talk.”

Billy “Bear” Calicchio From a March 10, 2021 Edition of the Unmuffled Podcast