If you have known me for any time at all, you are aware that I am a fan of NASCAR. Now, this was true of me long before it was fashionable to be a NASCAR fan. Sort of like the Barbara Mandrell song, "I was country, when country wasn't cool."
Now, it is important to know that where I grew up, being a NASCAR fan was not optional. I grew up 15 minutes from the Charlotte Motor Speedway, now called Lowe's. I saw racing on Saturday night, I listened to races on the radio, I knew the lingo and the schedule, I kept up with the drivers when it was still considered a redneck sport. (For those who have been taking a cultural nap, NASCAR is the #3 most popular sport in the nation. Some sources put it at #2 behind only the NFL. It has left the redneck part long behind.)
This weekend is the Daytona 500. It is THE race that everyone wants to win. I vividly recall Earnhardt winning it for the first time in his storied career in 1998. I likewise remember all to vividly when he died at the race in 2001. I felt like someone had kicked me in the stomach. I thought about not watching racing any more. I just did not really care. It is hard to explain how a man who is your contemporary, whom you may not have too much in common with in reality, can affect you as an adult. But he did.
With that in mind, what follows below is the article that I posted on the web of my former church following that time. Read to the end. It probably will challenge you as it does me still.
I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. I had watched the entire race including his accident before I had left. I felt it was serious, but I was not prepared to hear those words. We never are.
“I feel like I have lost a family member,” I would later say.
I have been a huge fan of NASCAR for my entire life. When you grow up in the heart of the NASCAR country, only ten miles from its second most famous track, it is like a disease that you cannot escape. I have followed the sport very intently my entire life. Dale Earnhardt was the primary reason.
I grew up in Kannapolis, N.C., the home of Dale Earnhardt. I still recall sitting in my junior high science class and seeing him. Dale was just like any other student, except that he wanted out. He wanted to race. He was two years ahead of me, but was in this class for a reason that I can only speculate. I recall hearing him tell one of his friends that he was going to quit school because he was turning 16. To be honest, at the time, I really did not know who he was. I had been to the Concord Speedway to watch his father, the late Ralph Earnhardt race, but did not fully make the connection when we would talk in class.
It would be very unfair to say we were friends. I am sure there are thousands making that claim that cannot justify it. We chatted in class three or four times before he did quit school, just as he had said that he would. And just as he predicted, his father was not pleased in the least. (He actually used language a bit stronger to express his father’s feelings.)
In spite of (or because of) that connection I followed Dale’s career intently throughout my adult life. I recall the sadness when I heard that his father had died in 1973. I saw Dale Earnhardt race at numerous NASCAR tracks and several smaller ones before that. I watched him clinch his first championship on television at a track in Ontario, California when NASCAR was still considered a redneck sport. I watched as this man led the sport almost single handedly into national prominence. I read and watched him build a business empire in the racing community that is unparalleled.
My wife has never known a time when I was not a Dale Earnhardt fan. So when he died in turn four of the Daytona International Speedway on Sunday, February 18, 2001, I was sick to my stomach.
As I sat late into the night searching the Internet for information, I began to receive calls and e-mails from people who knew how I felt. All three of my children called, emailed, or came into the room to see me. I sat down and wrote something like the following message to each of my children and to my son-in-law.
“I am feeling a great deal of sadness right how. I feel like I have lost a family member. It reminds me how short and fragile life is. It reminds me to let the folks I love, like you, know that I love them.”
Let me ask you the obvious questions:
- Whom do you love?
- Do they know it?
Do not assume they do. Tell them. Tell them in person. Tell them by writing. Tell them by e-mail, but tell them. Tell them today. Tomorrow is not promised to anyone.
0 comments:
Post a Comment