A Child’s Bracelet

(I normally run this post every July seventh on my NASCAR blog. However, given that today is the tenth anniversary of Kenny Irwin Jr.’s death, it seems appropriate to run it here as well.)

The northern edge of Indianapolis is much like the outskirts of many big cities these days, a recent absorption of farmland now buried underneath strip malls and lookalike housing developments.  The usual satellite suburbs dot the landscape, enclaves for yuppiefied office dwellers who strive to be in the city but not of it.  It’s tempting to subscribe to the cynic’s voice and decry the scene as ersatz country living, but such smug generalizations are as shallow as the man-made parks developers insist on building in such areas in lieu of preserving the patches of nature that were already there, legacies of the soil workers who handed down the land through generations until the current one cashed in their family history for a piece of Starbucks culture.  Such places are what their residents make them to be, and should they choose SUVs and latte living, it is their right.

On one of the straight-edge streets that pass for major thoroughfares in such places, one sees what one expects to see: impressive homes separated from the road by massive front yards that make even the stoutest lawn tractor earn its keep, the occasional school here, the odd store or gas station or apartment complex for yuppie wannabes there.  A few yards away from an intersection, a driveway somewhat wider than the norm presents itself, flanked on both sides by stonework signs bearing bronze plaques announcing the location.

Oaklawn Memorial Gardens.

The gravesite of Kenny Irwin Jr.

We were there on a sunny Saturday afternoon in late September of 2001, my brother and I.  In all honesty I shouldn’t have been there at all, so far from my California home.  The horror of September 11th had caused me to cancel a business trip to Atlanta that week, thereby also eliminating a plan to swing through Indiana on my way back.  However, family must come before all, so I reached into my own pocket to pay for a weekend flight so I could fulfill my promise to visit my mother and oldest brother after the now-abandoned trip.

It had already been a long day for my brother and I, starting with my first visit to our beloved father’s grave since his passing away in May of 1999.  The emotions were still raw as a few hours later we made our way from sleepy Greencastle through thirty miles of quiet farms and tiny towns until we reached our destination.  We both noted earlier in the journey having glimpsed what would be the next day’s eagerly anticipated place of visitation: the RCA Dome, where I would finally see my Colts play a home game.  However, this was for tomorrow.  Today was for another purpose, a purpose that as soon as I knew I was going to Indiana became a personal obligation owed to someone I had never known.

The pleasant woman inside the cemetery office smiled at my inquiry as she handed me a map and circled our destination.  We walked up the path she told us to take, commenting how the relative newness of the cemetery — it was opened in the early ’50s — left it minus the ostentatious crypts that marked most Indiana graveyards, which usually date back to the nineteenth century.  It could have used some more trees, but it was impeccably maintained; all in all as pleasant a place as could be designed given its thankless task.

We continued up the gently curving path, following the map as it led to a tree isolated in a small island marking where the path became two.  All was quiet; with the exception of one car off in the distance we had the place to ourselves.  We went to the left, walked a few more yards, and then left the path by stepping onto the thick green grass, quietly gazing upon the brass markers below.  A few more feet, and we had arrived.  Now absolutely silent, we saw what I had come two thousand miles to see.  Rather, not what, but who.

The late Kenny Irwin Jr., killed in an accident during practice at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway on July seventh, 2000.

Kenny Irwin Jr.’s grave marker is a simple bronze slab.  A photograph of an awkwardly smiling youth is mounted underneath a glass seal, with a swinging bronze cover providing additional protection from the elements.  Some mention is made of his racing career, but no listing of his accomplishments is given: USAC Sprint Car Rookie Of The Year in 1993, USAC Silver Crown Car Rookie Of The Year in 1994, USAC Midget Car Champion in 1996, NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Rookie Of The Year in 1997, NASCAR Winston Cup Rookie Of The Year in 1998.  Instead, prominence is given to personal traits: son, brother, friend.  Then and only then, race car driver.  Beneath this, words from a hymn: “Our God is an awesome God, He reigns from heaven above with wisdom, power and love.”

Some crumbling mementos lay at the top of the marker, left there by the loving few.  A 42, the car number he drove when he died, cut out by hand of white rubber and sitting on a base of oval discs in the colors of the Bell South sponsored car that was his.  A faded photograph of a broadly smiling young woman, wearing her obviously hand painted “happy birthday Kenny” t-shirt.  A weathered Winners Circle logo pin.  Last and most touching of all, a handmade child’s bracelet, its string broken, spelling out I MISS YOU KENNY 42.  I knelt down and carefully moved the bracelet, rearranging its message into place where the letters had begun to shift out of line.

So why was I here?  I had already dealt that day with visiting the most personal, painful burial place imaginable.  Why remind myself of others’ loss?  And I wasn’t there because I was a Kenny Irwin Jr. fan.  Oh, he seemed like a nice enough kid; I remember a brief appearance he made on QVC once during the Batman and Joker special paint scheme promotion he ran with then-teammate Dale Jarrett where he came off as polite, well-spoken and pleasant.  But a fan?  No.  That wasn’t why I was here.  Paying respects to a member of the sport I dearly love?  Possibly, but there are many other fallen drivers to who I could go and pay my respects.  So why was I here?  Why was I now fighting tears?

I knew why.

It was the right thing to do.

When Kenny Irwin Jr. died in an accident during practice at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway on July seventh of 2000, the racing community and overwhelming majority of fans who before that day had derided him as a hack driver who shouldn’t be in a Winston Cup car collectively clucked their tongues, said “gee what a shame,” and then checked their schedule to see what time the race would start that Sunday.  There was no tribute lap, no silence at lap 42, no one holding up four and two fingers as they stood to honor him.  No massive floral displays of his car number, no one wearing his team hat, no plans for a memorial in his home town, and other than small stickers on the cars during the next race, no mention that he had ever been alive.  There was no intense study of the fatal accident, no safety mandates from NASCAR as a result of the crash.  No one — no one — save his team owner Felix Sabates and to the surprise of many Tony Stewart, Irwin’s arch rival across the dirt tracks of Indiana where they both honed their craft, seemed to really care all that much that a young man was dead.

Long after the fact, an embittered Kenny Irwin Sr. spoke.  He told of the people he never knew existed who had contacted him after his son’s death, telling him of his son’s generosity and charity work on their behalf.  He talked about how this news surprised him not in his son having done so, but in that his son, not only a son but also a best friend, had never mentioned he was doing these things.  He spoke of the pride he felt the day in 1997 his son was announced as the driver starting the following year of the #28 Texaco car, the car made famous by the late Davey Allison and then Ernie Irvan.  He talked about how his son took his eventual dismissal from the ride far better than he did, reassuring his Dad that it’d be all right.  Above all, he spoke of his son: his best friend, a young man of faith, and how that shared faith had carried him through the unspeakable agony of performing the act no father in his worst nightmare envisions: not preparing for the eventual, inevitable day when he would be buried by his son, but rather burying his son.  It wasn’t fair.

It still wasn’t fair, and never would be fair.  It never will be fair.  The racing world had demanded the rest of the world stop when its favorite son died at turn four of its most cherished racetrack in February of 2001, not ceasing its caterwauling over the single greatest tragedy in the history of mankind (or so it would seem given the never-ending maudlin sap parade at every race) until September 11th… and even then the meaningless tributes and ghoulish merchandising continued unabated.  Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Irwin grieved alone, politely ignored by the racing world in which their son had lost his life, a loss to which the response seemed to be “we don’t care.”

As I knelt down beside the marker and carefully rearranged the child’s bracelet, many emotions stirred deep within.  Shame, at how callously and flippantly I had once viewed the men and women who risked death every time they strapped themselves into a race car.  Resolve, a dedication to never again take these people for granted.  The knowledge that it was no cliché to say I would never watch racing the same way again, now forever mindful of the very real, very fragile humanity behind the machines and high-speed competition.  But above all else — far above all else — I felt a quiet emptiness at the realization, the full impact of the reality before me.  This was no longer an image on a television or pictures on a Web page.  This was cold, final truth.  A young man’s body laid in the ground beneath me, a young man who loved to race cars that I watched every Sunday, cars of which I collected little diecast metal replicas.  Now he was dead, and I would never see him race again.  His family would never see him again.  And no matter how fervently one believes in eternal life for those who believe, the quiet emptiness of loss remains.

I said goodbye to Kenny Irwin Jr., told him how by the grace of our God I hope to meet him in heaven one day, and asked him to forgive me.  I then stood up as my brother said goodbye to him as well, and then we left, my brother and I.  I felt shaken, yet I was okay with that.  It was good to be shaken.  For I had done what I knew I had to do.

I had done the right thing.

The Kenny Irwin Jr. Memorial Foundations operates the Dare To Dream Camp in New Castle, Indiana.  The camp offers a permanent year-round, racing-themed location accommodating underprivileged, at-risk, neglected and abused children between the ages of 6 to 17.  For more information about the camp and the foundation, please visit their Website at http://www.kennyirwinjrfoundation.org.