Ten Years and The Pain is Still Fresh
Invincible. The man in black. Number 3. At the hight of his game. Taken from this life by the very thing and the very place that he loved so much. Richard Childress lost his best friend. The rest of America lost the last working man’s hero. Mike Helton had the worst day of his life. The same went for the France Family and Everyone else in the sport of NASCAR. 02/18/2001 a day that will live in infamy. That is the day that America lost Dale Earnhardt. The man, but the legend lives on and the pain is still fresh even ten days before the tenth aniversary.
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April 29 1951. A day that not many people thought would mean anything at the time. Well it was the day that Dale Earnhardt was born. The son of Ralp Earnhardt racecars were in the mans blood from birth.
When Dale was 16 years old he dropped out of high school. He was only a freshmen and he went racing full time. This turned out to be the best decision the man ever made. Yet what he loved cost him his life.
Dale won 35 races at Daytona International Speedway. A record. He won the 1998 Daytona 500, after 20 years of losing. The longest streak of futility in the history of the sport. He had almost every record that a driver could have at that track. Including being the only driver to be killed during the running of the Daytona 500.
It has actually been 11 years now since the death of Dale Earnhardt. But his was the last in a rash of death that started with Adam Petty in May of the prior year.
But since 2001 not a single NASCAR driver has been killed in competition.
A nice biographical tribute… thanks