Simply put, a great stock car driver!!
The first time I saw Dale Earnhardt was at an old dirt track in Columbia, S.C., where his gather, Ralph, had come down from Kannapolis, N.C. on a summer height in 1962 to race his stock car.  "Who's the kid on Ralph's tow truck?" I asked a mechanic.  "That's his son, Dale. He's going to be driving these things one day,"  came the reply.

The next time I remember seeing him was at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1974. Ralph, one of the best short track drivers ever to sit behind  steering wheel, had died of a heart attack the year before while working on his race car.  Dale had begun racing on dirt tracks before Ralph's death, and now he was trying to move up the ladder by entering a Sportsman race at the Charlotte track, only a few miles from his family home.

He had been down to the Winston Cup garage to bum a couple of slightly used tires from some of his dads old friends and was rolling them, one with each hand, to the Sportsman garage.  Dale had bushy brown hair, wore a dirty ol" uniform, and had a smile as wide as a 1956 Chevrolet bumper on his grease stained face.  "Who is that?" I asked  "Ralph's boy," cam e the reply.
I thought back to that night in Columbia as i watched him roll the tires away.  It was good he was finally getting to drive "these things," although there was no reason  to believe he would progress much higher up the ladder in a sport here you had to have money as well as talent to succeed.


 
Dale Earnhardt, at that time, was about as poor as a man could be and had only a ninth grade education.  At the beginning of an era when corporate America was paying big bucks to put its name on the fenders and hoods of race car, Ralph's boy seemed out on place.  BUT  Dale was able to beat those huge odds a few years later when given the opportunity to squeeze to toe thorough the door.

He had made friends with some mechanics who worked for a Winston Cup team owned by Rod Osterlund, a rich Californian who was fielding a car for Dave Marcis in 1978.  The mechanics talked Osterlund into letting them take a beat up car out of the junk pile and fix it up for Dale to drive in the October Sportsman race at Charlotte. Osterlund agreed, provided they used no new parts and did all the work on their own time.  In the race, which included the day's big name stars such as Bobby Allison, Marcis and Harry Gant, Earnhardt had the lead when his transmission tore up with 10 laps to gpo.  Still, the only guy who could beat him to the finish was Allison.

Osterlund was so impressed he provided Earnhardt a car to drive in the Winston Cup race in Atlanta, Despite being penalized a lap for running over an air hose on pit road.  The rest, as they say, is history.

I saw Earnhardt often after that ad never again had to ask anyone who he was.  In 1991, I even wrote a book,  "The Intimidator,"  about his racing career, which has been updated several times and is still in publication.  Usually then someone learns that I wrote a book about Earnhardt, auto racing's wealthiest and biggest superstars when he died in a crash at Daytona on Sunday, I'm asked, 'What's is he really like?"  The short answer is that Dale Earnhardt was a great stock car driver.

The long answer is endless, because he was a man of many moods and personalities. He would be nasty as he seemed on the racetrack when he bumped an opponent out of his way to win a race, or he could be like your best friend. For the mot part, I enjoyed knowing Earnhardt. We were never best buddies, but I went to a few of his parties. I also spent many afternoons in the back of his hauler at racetracks with a the tape recorder turned off, talking about things other than racing.

On qualifying days at Martinsville, he never failed to find me and borrow a dollar to buy a hot-dog during lunch break. I got him back in 1990 when he wrapped up his fourth Winston Cup championship in the final race at Atlanta, setting what was then a record or money won at $3 million.

"Got a dollar?" I asked when he entered the press box.  He reached into his pocket, pulled out a dollar,  and presented it to me.  Earnhardt once told me that he was born to race, and that he never had to get used to banging his way to the front.  "It was all natural," he said.

He understood the dangers of the sport, and the most depressed I ever saw him was after his best friend, Neil Bonnet, was killed in a crash at Daytona in 1994 during a practice session.  Bonnett's crash, like Earnhardt's on Sunday, did not look especially bad.  In fact, it was about the same type wreck in about the same place on the track.  "You wonder why one guy crashes and walks away and one guy crashes and there is no hope," Earnhardt said about Bonnett's wreck.  "Why not Neil?"  Now why not Dale"

Sad, it is a question without an answer.


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Roger Simms/Associated File Photo
Rusty Kennedy/Associated Press File Photo
Chris O'Meara/Associated Press File Photo
By Frank Vehorn/The Virginia Pilot

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