In the Blink of an Eye (10 page)
Read In the Blink of an Eye Online
Authors: Michael Waltrip
I
t was Tuesday morning in Mooresville, North Carolina. Those of us inside Dale Earnhardt, Inc. were trying to absorb all that had occurred. We had already decided we were going racing that weekend, and that meant being in Rockingham in four days. I wasn’t sure I could do that at a time like this.
Dale Junior, Park, and I were sitting around a long conference-room table at DEI. All the chairs at the table were full—except one. Dale’s.
Ty was there. Richie and all the crew chiefs and engineers. We were discussing car setups and race strategies for Rockingham. Our teams hadn’t done this before Daytona. Everyone did their own thing going there. This meeting was an attempt to make sure we had our heads in the game and we were as ready as possible.
I sat there and tried to pay attention. But it wasn’t happening. I had made it my goal to publicly say all the right things after Sunday’s tragedy. But privately, I was all messed up. I was thinking nutty stuff. That day, as I looked around the room, out of the dozen or so people who were in that meeting, I knew most of their names but I only knew a couple of them well.
What were all those other people thinking? I wondered. Did they think Dale’s accident was my fault? Were they mad at me? I didn’t know.
Everywhere I went, I wondered that. I had been that way for two days. I couldn’t get over it. There I sat, looking around. Every now and then, I’d catch a word the engineers and crew chiefs were saying. But that’s about it. I looked down at Dale Junior, and he didn’t look like he was into the meeting either. He mostly just looked down at the table the whole time. On the other hand, Park and his team seemed focused. They looked like they were into this dumb gathering.
Just down the hall
from where our group was discussing Rockingham, Teresa and the other Earnhardt family members had the somber job of figuring out the details of Dale’s funeral.
That wouldn’t be easy. So many people were flocking to the Mooresville area, there was no simple way to accommodate everyone who wanted to be part of honoring Dale. The best way to achieve that, the family decided, was to hold a small private gathering on Wednesday at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church in Mooresville just for the Earnhardt family and a few close friends. That would be followed on Thursday by a larger, invitation-only memorial service at Charlotte’s massive Calvary Church, which seats 5,800 people on three levels.
NASCAR put out a statement outlining the plan: “Because it is impossible to accommodate the tremendous outpouring of support to all those who followed Dale, we are unable to open the service to the public. With that in mind, the family has chosen to broadcast the service live on television, enabling fans across the country to share in this service for Dale.”
Buffy and I and our family attended both services, showing the Earnhardt family our love.
Wednesday night was a special time for all of us in attendance. Dale’s pastor, the Reverend Johnny Cozart, spoke about the Dale that most of those closest to him knew. Not the Intimidator. Not the Man in Black. The quiet Dale. The family Dale. The Dale who had a real spiritual side.
I can tell you Dale didn’t walk around publicizing his faith. He didn’t talk to people about what was going on inside him.
“But when it came to faith, Dale knew what he believed in,” the pastor said. “He believed in the Lord. He sinned. He fell short like all of us do. But he loved Jesus Christ. He had such a positive influence on everyone.”
The minister continued. “Whenever I’d visit with him, I’d always leave with a spring in my step.”
Dale wasn’t churchy in the traditional sense, the pastor said. “He was just a guy who loved people. He was not intimidated by anybody.” I guess we all know that, right?
That had touched the minister personally. “I grew up intimidated by certain people. He taught me to be a more assertive pastor and a leader of God’s people.”
How ’bout Dale? I knew he knew how to make me a better race-car driver. But he also knew how to make the preacher be a better preacher.
Everyone who knew Dale, the minister said, had stories of small kindnesses from him. “One day after church, this lady was out in the parking lot and her car wouldn’t start. Dale went out and tried to see what was wrong with it. He raised the hood. He looked around. But he couldn’t fix it. ‘I’ll drive you home,’ he told her. ‘I’ll see that the car is fixed.’ He took the lady home and took the car and got it fixed. That’s the kind of story I don’t think too many ever heard about Dale.”
For the memorial service at Calvary Church on Thursday, people packed all the streets nearby. It looked like about forty TV satellite trucks were parked outside the church. Dale was a huge and influential figure. However, Teresa wanted the service to be relatively subdued and brief.
She made sure the inside of the church was beautiful and dignified. Near the pulpit was a white-and-black floral arrangement in the shape of a 3. All the top NASCAR executives were there, as were most all of the race-car drivers, including Sterling Marlin. It was good to see Sterling there. I knew the rough time he’d been experiencing since Dale’s crash. Mom and children, along with Teresa, were all seated in the front row.
After an introduction by Pastor Cozart, Motor Racing Outreach chaplain Dale Beaver gave the eulogy. Motor Racing Outreach is NASCAR’s traveling church. A lot of the drivers, crew members, and NASCAR officials attend its services along with their families.
As Reverend Beaver began to speak, he described the first day he walked into the Intimidator’s hauler to ask the legendary driver to sign a permission slip allowing Dale’s daughter Taylor Nicole to go on a youth-group camping trip. “I didn’t come into the presence of a racing icon or an intimidating figure,” he said. “I came into the presence of a dad.”
The minister found a lesson in that for everyone, and he shared it with the congregation. “You and I will one day be ushered into the presence of a very intimidating force,” he said. “There’s a savior that will take you there.”
Randy Owen, lead singer of the group Alabama and a friend of Dale’s, stood and shared a beautiful song. His tribute to Dale touched all of us. “Good-bye,” Randy sang. “Good-bye till I see you again.”
I guess it’s been too much fun,
We’ve shared and we’ve won.
Yes, the best is yet to come.
Good-bye, good-bye,
Till I see you again.
Good-bye, good-bye,
I’ll love and I’ll miss you till then.
There were tears in everyone’s eyes as we said good-bye to our friend Dale.
When Randy had finished, Teresa made her way to the pulpit to speak to the assembled. It seemed as if she was there to share her thoughts with everyone, but that was simply too much. She clutched her hands to her chest and whispered two barely audible words: “Thank you.”
After the funeral and days of tears and sad faces, a group of us who worked at DEI decided it was time to smile. We had all cried enough. We gathered for a good-bye lunch, sending off Dale in our own special way, a way that I know he would have hugely appreciated.
Ty, Richie, me, and all the wives and families celebrated Dale’s life. We told stories about the fun times we’d had together, laughing and cherishing the memories.
Like the time in the Bahamas that Ty and I decided we would go jogging, and Dale said he wanted to go with us. Ty and I came out in our running shorts and shoes. When Dale walked up, he had on a big ol’ pair of fishing shorts, black socks, and a pair of those shoes you wear on a boat.
“How far you boys want to go?” he asked.
The first quarter mile consisted of two lefts and one right. The right headed you out of the marina and up toward town, which is where Ty and I were planning on running. Dale elected to make three lefts and quickly ran right back to the boat. When Ty and I got back from our run, Dale was sitting on the back of the boat drinking a margarita.
When we walked up all sweaty, Dale said: “I can’t run like that unless something’s chasing me. But I’ll bet you guys can’t climb a tree like I can. I can shimmy right up one. Without any spikes either. I’d like to see you two try that.”
We laughed that day and said: “You got us there, Dale.”
Everyone at lunch thought that story was so Dale. We couldn’t stop laughing. We had to explain to the waitress when she walked up that she’d have to excuse us. We had just come from a funeral.
Despite the laughter
and my public façade that I was at peace with Dale’s death, clearly I wasn’t. I mostly felt guilty.
I felt at least partly responsible. Had I not been there, this wouldn’t have happened. I know I was just doing what I was told. But whatever, a different Dale was racing his car that day. The Intimidator was being the Defender. He was fighting people off for Dale Junior and me.
Ultimately, being the Defender was why Dale crashed, and I couldn’t get that out of my mind.
I took that nagging feeling everywhere with me. Whether I was in the garage area or somewhere signing autographs for fans, I kept wondering: Do they think it’s my fault? Or am I the only one thinking that? I couldn’t figure it out in my mind, and it was making me crazy.
While I wrestled with these questions internally, the clock kept ticking. I knew I had to get back into that car at Rockingham. Dale’s car. Just a week before, climbing into that car felt like heaven to me. Now it was my duty. For the first time in my life I didn’t want to be at a race-track.
I didn’t want to be anywhere.
W
e were going to Rockingham?
How could we do that?
The answer was because we had to.
Plus, that’s what Dale would have expected us to do. We knew that. And Dale would have been extremely clear about his feelings, I’m sure.
“Get your asses to the track, you pansies,” he would have said. Or maybe he’d have used some other P-word. You would have definitely gotten his point. “Quit moping around the shop and go racing.”
And that’s exactly what we did.
It was a tough week. But when the garage opened on Friday morning at Rockingham Speedway, we were there: Dale Junior’s bright red Budweiser car, Park’s yellow Pennzoil Chevy, and my #15 NAPA car—all three Dale Earnhardt, Inc. teams were at the track and ready to race.
Physically there and ready, at least.
One of our three drivers for sure wasn’t able to step up and put behind him what had happened just a few days before and focus on the Rock. That was me. Dale Junior didn’t exactly seem one hundred percent either. But all of us understood, I think. It wasn’t just our feelings that mattered. We had to be there for others even more.
Our whole team thought it was important for us to share a message with the entire racing community when we got to the Rock. The message was that despite the huge loss we had all just suffered—NASCAR, the competitors, the sport, the fans, all of us—the season would go on. The sport would race forward.
To help us deliver that message, NASCAR organized a press conference for Friday morning prior to the cars hitting the track. When I got out of bed I tried to prepare myself mentally for the day. Not sleeping well was something I’d gotten used to that week, so that wasn’t a big problem. But now I had to go to another press conference and talk about the most emotionally challenging day of my life.
I said a prayer, took a deep breath, walked into the room where the media were, and took my seat. It was Dale Junior, Park, and me. We were seated in front of a huge throng of media types, by far the most I’d ever seen at Rockingham. The track is a little off the beaten path in central North Carolina—well, actually, a lot off the beaten path. Coming just a week after Daytona, the Rockingham media coverage usually consisted of the regular NASCAR reporters and the local papers, radio, and TV. That would be about it.
Not this time.
There was so much media in Rockingham, the track officials had to put up a temporary media center. I revived my Monday-after-the-race attitude. This was another opportunity to honor Dale, a man who was inspirational to so many. Dale was an ordinary guy who did extraordinary things. Big E made the American dream seem real to everyone. He was rich and was adored by the masses, yet he was still Dale from Kannapolis. I believed if those who loved him saw me being strong and showing my faith in where Dale was now, that might help them deal with this tragedy.
I started the press conference by saying that we had had an incredibly tough week dealing with the loss of Dale and explaining what he meant to all of us.
“Dale’s mom, Teresa, Dale Junior, Kelly, Kerry, Taylor, the team,” I said, “my heart goes out to each of you. Despite how painful this is, we’re here, ready to race on. Everyone at DEI knows that is what Dale would have expected us to do, and that helps a lot.”
I took a long, slow, deep breath. Then I told a bit of a lie.
“Being back at the track is a good thing for us,” I went on. “It’s a good thing for our crew and our family. When we walk back in the garage area, we’re back in our element, doing the things we’ve done for so long. It will help all of us with the healing process.”
That’s what I said that morning. It was the right thing to say. But it wasn’t exactly the truth for me personally. I was putting up a good front. Being there hurt. I wasn’t into it. As soon as I stopped talking, I knew there would be questions I didn’t want to answer, about thoughts I just wasn’t prepared to share. And I was right. It began with the first question.
“Can you talk about your emotions last Sunday?” one of the reporters asked. “You finally win, only to find out about Dale’s death?”
I knew that was coming. I also knew what I was going to say.
“The short answer is no, ” I said. “I can’t talk about that. Not this week. Maybe after we get through this weekend, we can talk about how I feel. But this week, I don’t want to do that. Let this be a week that we just talk about Dale and what he’s meant to all of us. Next week, or someday, we can talk about all that other emotional stuff.” I had no idea how far out that someday might be. Maybe it would be a book one day.
“This week, let’s talk about fun things,” I went on. “Like one of the memories that I’ll always cherish is me, these two”—Dale Junior and Park—“and Dale Earnhardt running 1-2-3-4 in the Daytona 500. For him to be able to see that and know his guys were right up there with him leading the race, he had to think that was the coolest thing in the whole world. I know there is a picture of all of us up there, and I want one. Because I can see Dale grinning now. What a special memory for the three of us that will always be.”
As the questions went to Park and Junior, I was thinking about what an overwhelming week it had been. It was just the previous Friday that Dale had given me all that direction about how we were going to win the 500. And when the checkered flag fell over me at Daytona—after the way Dale had helped me, with me having no idea he was hurt there in turn four—for a little bit there in Victory Lane, I wanted to tell the world, “Hey, y’all. I could win the championship this year. I mean, why not? I got everything I need to do it.” That’s where Dale had me.
I was so focused, I believed I could do anything. He had built my confidence to a height it had never reached before.
That’s exactly where I was mentally. It was all the way to the top. In my mind, confidence has to be based on reality. You can’t just make stuff up. And I wasn’t making any of it up.
Before Daytona, I’d had that great test in Rockingham. When that test ended, I believed I could win at the Rock too. I was that fast. There was no way things could have been any better in my world. There was a new guy in charge of my career, and his name was Dale. Together, we had done something I had never been able to do by myself—win when it counted.
The thoughts went rushing through my head.
Where to next? I wondered. Tell me how we’re gonna win Rockingham, Dale! I know you know how! I’ve seen you do it before!
Yet here I was. Instead of showing up at Rockingham thinking about a championship, I was there to do a press conference about our lost leader, my lost friend. I was there to explain that although Dale was gone, we were going to keep racing because that’s what he would have expected us to do.
I was there doing the right things—saying the right things—because of Dale and for Dale’s fans. I wasn’t there because I wanted to be. I was there because I needed to be. There were things I wanted people to hear about Dale from me. Stories like the one Reverend Cozart had told about Dale’s fixing that lady’s car and about Dale’s faith. I needed to tell stories about Dale that few had ever heard before. I needed for people to know the Dale that I knew.
My favorite was the story of Dale coming to see my mom after Dad died. People who didn’t know better might have thought the driver they called the Intimidator would be headed straight down instead of up. “That’s why they call him the Man in Black,” you’d hear people say. “He’ll straighten ’em out down there. Before you know it, he’ll be running that place.”
Actually, we called him the Man in Black because that was the color of his car.
But most didn’t know Dale. They weren’t sitting at Mom’s house when Dale came over to hug her the day after my dad died. They didn’t see him hold her hand and tell her how much my daddy meant to him and how special she and Dad were for putting up with Darrell and me all those years. Momma thought that was funny. She also thought it was incredibly sweet of Dale to drive all the way to Sherrills Ford to comfort her.
As the press conference continued, another question was directed at me. I didn’t exactly hear it because I was thinking about Dale. Instead of answering the question—whatever it was—I wanted people to hear a Bible verse that had helped me through the week. The verse came from 1 Corinthians 15. I said it the way I had always heard it. “In the twinkling of an eye, you are in the presence of the Lord when you die, if you believe,” I told them.
It means you can simply close your eyes right before you die and say, “Forgive me, Lord, I’m a sinner,”and go straight to heaven.
I could picture in my mind Dale getting turned toward the outside wall that day and looking up at it, and saying, “Here I come, Lord. Forgive me and make some room for me.” And then probably asking, “Where’s my dad and Neil?” and thinking, “I’ll bet ol’ Leroy is pretty happy up here right now.”
I believe that is what happened on February 18, 2001. Believing it allowed me to keep on living, to deal with the guilt, and to keep my head up. I believe we’re only here for a short while but are up in heaven for eternity. Eternity is a long time, from what I hear.
In the days and years since then I have had many people come up to me and say, “Your words at that press conference enlightened me. Thank you for your perspective.” People heard about a different side of Dale, and it brought them comfort.
What I wanted to say turned out to be what a lot of people needed to hear. I was proud of that. I delivered the message I had come to deliver. I didn’t lose it or break down. I said it just like I wanted to. I maintained my calm and composure. I said what was in my heart. I was holding myself together better than I thought I would.
I knew the media would have more questions for me going forward. But that press conference was the last official piece of business for me concerning what had happened at Daytona. I accomplished what I’d set out to do. I had helped people all over who were hurting to find a bit of peace.
I just wished it had helped me. I still had lots of haunting feelings that week that I needed to get over. And I needed to get over them quickly. Dealing with guilt, self-pity, and anger had led to five straight pretty much sleepless nights.
The press conference was behind me and practice was ahead.
Oh, great. Practice. What I needed was a nap.
I had no time for that. Sleepy or not, the reason I was in Rockingham was to race. I had to switch my attention to my car.
The track had always
been
where I wanted to be, where I was the happiest. However, that week, just five days since Daytona, this was not the case.
I’m not proud to say it, but mentally I wasn’t there. I tried to talk myself into it before getting in the car: “You’ve run well here before, Mike. Remember the test in January? You were fast. Your laps were better than both your teammates’. Think about that!”
Plus, I was still driving for Dale Earnhardt, Inc.
“What’s your record on this team, Mike?” I asked myself. “That’s right. A perfect one for one, undefeated. Let’s go get that NAPA car, tune it up, and do it again on Sunday.”
Sounds like I did a pretty good job of getting myself ready to go, right?
Yep. Too good.
When practice started, I was fast. I went straight to the top of the speed charts. My car felt great, and I was hauling. After a couple of laps I was back at the garage, and Dale Junior came over. He leaned in with a big smile on his face and said, “Man! Looks good seeing you up near the top. You might know how to drive after all.”
Getting Dale Junior’s approval was important to me. Us being able to laugh and joke at the track as teammates was so cool. Heck, we didn’t even do that in Daytona the week before.
But just when I really started feeling good about where I was and what I was doing, I ruined it. Flat screwed up. Coming off turn four late in practice, I lost control of my car and spun into the outside wall. Hard. My car was destroyed, along with my positive attitude and my confidence.
What Dale Junior had said kept replaying in my head. “You might know how to drive after all.” After I wrecked, I’m sure he was thinking, “. . . or not.”
I’d gotten all caught up in the moment. The positive talk about how fast I was made me push too hard. My dad would have said, “Looks like you can’t stand prosperity, son.” And he would have been right.
After my Daytona win and my early speed at Rockingham, people were maybe starting to believe in me like Dale had. I messed it all up by making a stupid mistake.
I was crushed. Just prior to that crash was the last time I felt good about racing for a long while. We unloaded our backup car and qualified seventh. I went on to finish thirteenth. I looked at the whole weekend as a wasted opportunity. Instead of having a chance to win, I finished thirteenth. Dale Junior’s weekend sucked too. He had a crash early in the race. I’m sure he was happy to get out of Rockingham, as was I.
Remember me saying Steve Park and his team seemed more focused preparing for Rockingham? Well, they were. In a dramatic finish, Steve held off Bobby Labonte and won. How about that for Dale Earnhardt, Inc.? Our team was back in Victory Lane again. Steve had stepped up and given the whole organization just what it needed.
Thanks to Steve and his team, the healing could continue, as did Dale’s winning tradition.