The northern edge of Indianapolis is much like the outskirts of many big cities these days, a recent absorption of farmland now . . . → Read More: 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.

I will always cherish All those days gone by I thank God for the good times Every moment of my life

Everybody wants to be remembered For something good or kindness they shown I want to help this world to find the . . . → Read More: Every Moment]]>

I remember riding in the back seat
Of my daddy’s Chevrolet car
Mama laughed, Daddy told stories
We never really seemed to get far

I will always cherish
All those days gone by
I thank God for the good times
Every moment of my life

Everybody wants to be remembered
For something good or kindness they shown
I want to help this world to find the answer
No one ever has to walk alone

When my time is over
I’ll be satisfied
I thank God for the good times
Every moment of my life
Every day of my life

I don’t wanna go back
And try to relive my life
I just want to say thank you
For all those good times of my life

I will always cherish
All those days gone by
I thank God for the good times
Every moment, every moment of my life
Every day of my life
Every day of my life
Every day of my life

God speed, Dana Key. We’ll see you in the Morning.

We, of the unfortunate fellowship, understand the . . . → Read More: Christ, Soul, Rock and Roll]]> One of those noisy rock and roll bands i listen to, whose racket my mother seldom endured without commenting on same, wrote these words: “No one leaves you when they live in your heart and mind.” This is how it now is with all of us. All day. Every day.

We, of the unfortunate fellowship, understand the need to embrace both magic and loss. The latter is now our constant companion, always reminding us that the circle draws closer as daily we wake up without the one who had always been there. We now wake up with a hole in our hearts that can never be filled, and will never heal.

Yet it will heal.

No matter the depth of our loss, it can never take away the magic. Through what the poet described as the tired eyes of faith, we look past ourselves in our present form and see truth.

Our pain is but a fragment; a brief shadow soon dismissed by the Light of a risen Savior and Lord. In Christ’s assurance my mother lived. In Christ’s glory she now forever lives.

We acknowledge the beginning of the unfortunate fellowship. Yet it is a beginning we know has an end. For as our circle draws closer, another is made complete, even as it awaits continued completion when those who follow us will enter into their time in the unfortunate fellowship.

Today, the pain cuts deep. But it will not always be today. There will be, there is, tomorrow. In tomorrow, in confidence we say, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

They are not here.

They were taken away on that first Easter morning when the empty tomb of Jesus was revealed as the stone, the rock, was rolled away.

Now that is some rock and roll even my Mom now enjoys.

To my family, and me she was Aunt Beth.

The apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, said these words: “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life.” An odd way of putting it, since ambition is usually categorized as being ambitious. Not something often associated with a . . . → Read More: A Quiet Life, Well Lived]]> A few words in honor of Beth.

To my family, and me she was Aunt Beth.

The apostle Paul, in his first letter to the Thessalonians, said these words: “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life.” An odd way of putting it, since ambition is usually categorized as being ambitious. Not something often associated with a quiet life. Nevertheless, that was Beth. Someone who was thoroughly determined to lead a quiet life.

And lead a quiet life she did.

Beth never said much about herself. She could, and would, rattle off facts and figures about herself and her family. How many children someone might have had, who they were married to and when, when and how they passed away. But abut herself? Above basic biographical facts, about the most you would get out of her is a sigh and an “oh, I don’t know.” She left the ambition and the adventure and the storytelling to her brother Jack, our Dad, and her sister Hazel, both of whom she has now rejoined. Beth was quite content to get the occasional word in edgewise and leave it at that.

A quiet life.

Beth was young and in love once. Her fiancé Julius died in the Bataan Death March during the dark days of the early part of World War Two. As far as Beth was concerned, that was it. The love of her life was gone, and there would be no other. She kept Julius’ picture in his Army uniform on her nightstand, the engagement ring he gave her in a lockbox. Today, she’s once again wearing her ring; the picture of Julius by her side. It was a long time interrupted, but they are finally together. We know Christ said at the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. Still, I believe He has at the least arranged for Beth and Julius to have adjoining rooms in His Father’s house.

Beth was a woman of quiet faith. She cherished the time spent with her fellow members of the Young Ladies Institute, and when it came to attending Mass had rugged determination that would put the hardiest mountain climber to shame. Unobtrusive, to be sure. But determined all the same.

A quiet life.

Beth loved San Francisco. Odd, in that she called Indiana home. But love San Francisco she did, especially her Giants even though she arrived in the city by the bay several years before the team. She would faithfully listen to the games on the radio rather than watch them on television because, as she would often remind one and all, that’s what her father did. I regret she never got to hear them win the World Series. And with me an A’s fan.

As a circle draws tighter, those that remain draw closer. Yet even as one circle draws tighter, another grows more complete. Our loss is deep, yet momentary. For Beth, so much has now been gained. She is with her family and her beloved Julius, even as we are now here. One day we, too, will leave this circle and complete another. Until that day, we hold Beth dear in our hearts. And we will always remember a quiet life.

A quiet life, well lived.

A very sad day for all of us touched by the . . . → Read More: See You Real Soon]]>
Roy Disney, who twice saved his uncle’s legacy, has passed away.

A very sad day for all of us touched by the Disney magic.

Lou was an intellectual, the kind whose . . . → Read More: Captain Lou]]> I called him Captain Lou even though as he would oft remind me he never rose that far in the ranks. But he was a US Navy man through and through, fiercely proud of the time he spent in the service during the Vietnam Way. So Captain Lou it was.

Lou was an intellectual, the kind whose social skills lagged far behind his mental acumen. He could hold forth on any number of topics for hours on end, frequently punctuating whatever the given subject might have been with historical quotes and truly bad puns. Such niceties as knowing when to stop or start a conversation? Not his forte. Lou had the rare distinction of being fascinating and irritating company all at once.

His post-naval career was programming, specializing in a machine that was functional yet a throwback. Which was only fitting, given that Lou was something of a throwback himself. A lifelong bachelor who adored women while scaring most of them away with his klutzy interpersonal mannerisms. That was Lou.

We talked often, a natural byproduct of working for the same company and therefore being in the same building. Lou would engage anyone in conversation at any time, usually when they were at their busiest or otherwise in no frame of mind to talk. Not that this ever stopped him. Lou was the kind of person who needed to engage others, or at least get their attention long enough to make whatever point he felt important to get across at the time.

He loved San Francisco, which was somewhat peculiar in that Lou was as politically conservative as they come. We would agree on the latter while trading jests about our respective teams, he trumpeting denizens of Baghdad by the Bay with me heralding residents of the city with no there there. He had no interest in hockey or NASCAR, which was just as well. We already had enough to discuss.

Had.

Lou died from cancer yesterday morning.

We seldom discussed spiritual matters, and perhaps I’m remembering what I want to remember. That said, the one time that comes to mind when the topic was raised there was a sense of understanding. Only God knows who belongs to Him. Yet I believe my hope is not in vain that as I write this God is getting His ear talked off.

Wish I could do the same.

Godspeed, Captain Lou. I know you were a classical buff, but hopefully you won’t mind this one.

“No, so.  No, it’s not.”

My father occasionally talked about serving in World War Two and Korea, of missions flown and . . . → Read More: Memorial Day]]> It was something we did every year, my father and I.  I would call him, and when he answered would say, “Well, I’d wish you a happy Memorial Day.  But it’s not really happy, now is it.”

“No, so.  No, it’s not.”

My father occasionally talked about serving in World War Two and Korea, of missions flown and friends lost.  He spoke of the missions freely.  The friends?  Not so much.  The decades may have dulled the pain, but they could never take it away.

Which was as it should be, really.

God bless those who served and never came home.

[youtube FV_QUvcvsxQ nolink]

He was also a strong believer in . . . → Read More: Saludo]]> He was cool and collected, a man’s man who made the ladies swoon while being more than welcome to come hang out with the guys. Distinctive, dashing, and always with that voice; a cadence and timbre naturally unique, filled with graceful dignity yet with a mischevious twinkle lurking nearby.

He was also a strong believer in Christ who was faithfully married for sixty-three years until his wife preceded him into glory in 2007.

Farewell for now, Ricardo Montalban.