The King and I

Mike Wright considers Richard Petty his absolute hero in life.  Aside from his dad, no one comes close. “What’s great is, Richard is a hero you can literally touch,” Wright says.  He has asked for Petty’s autograph more than one hundred times.  The King has never once said no. 

“If you want Richard Petty’s autograph, and he is physically in the area, you will get it.  I don’t even ask for the signature any more.  I’ll shake his hand and take a photo.  It’s kind of neat that your hero knows who you are.” 

Wright has met the seven-time NASCAR champion countless times – at the track as a boy then as man structuring his trucking runs to include a pit stop at Petty’s race shop in Randleman, N.C.  Wright stopped off most Mondays to say hello and grab an autograph.  “I have a gazillion of them, too many to even count, but the piece of paper is less important than a reason to ask the King about Sunday’s race.  Richard doesn’t hear so well, and sometimes you’re not having the same conversation.  But that’s okay.  I mean, you’re with the King!  You’re talking to history! You just learn to let him go on.”

Before Wright married his wife Karen in 1997, he made sure to have a clear agreement on one crucial matter: he would continue to go the races – more than a dozen per year.  “That was definite, everything else was negotiable,” he explained. 

Karen understood, and would be awed by, Mike’s extraordinary passion. She became a NASCAR fan after discovering the cars weren’t just numbers but driven by real personalities. She got in touch with the Petty shop and asked if the King could call his biggest fan who was about to get married.  Richard couldn’t do that, she was told; he had difficulty hearing.  The King couldn’t speak with anyone on the phone, not even the president, if he were to call.  Karen didn’t tell Mike.  Her fiancé would understand, and he probably knew about the King’s aversion to phones, but what was the point of admitting to a failed plan? 

When the Wrights checked into the hotel in Daytona Beach for their honeymoon, however, the phone in the room was blinking.  An envelope was waiting at reception.  It was a beautiful wedding card, signed by none other than Richard Petty.

“Richard Petty is the nicest man I’ve ever met,” Wright says.  “He’s been my hero since I’ve been a little kid, and he’s never let me down once. When I see Richard, it is literally like the rays of heaven shine down on him.”

Wright was delighted to discover he and Petty share a passion for collecting Civil War memorabilia.  Using a metal detector, he’s found many Union and Confederate uniform medals, buttons, bullets, and shells from the battles fought in southern Virginia, most from the Siege of Petersburg, where his great grandfather served in the Confederate army.  He’s presented medals dug up from that bloody 10-month battle to Petty, who displays them in the Richard Petty Museum.

Wright has made his own mini-museum a display most noteworthy for well over 100 Petty autographs garnered over the years.  It’s clear none of the signatures were rushed.  Each was carefully signed in elegant, looping Palmer-method cursive script school kids were taught when penmanship counted before computers invaded the classroom.  The autographs are showcased in three distinct styles.  “There’s ‘Richard Petty #43’ at the beginning of autograph sessions, then ‘R. Petty #43,’ and finally ‘RP #43’ when he gets really tired,” Wright explained.  “The King considers it his privilege to sign.  He says every autograph is his way to say ‘thank you’ to each fan for letting him do what he loves.”

The room has sheet metal from the famous No. 43 car, ticket stubs, programs and other NASCAR memorabilia collected over the years, sometimes with the help of Wright’s dad, who passed on a fascination with the Petty’s.  Jerry Wright was a fan of Lee Petty, who bought a street car for $900 and won the first Daytona 500 in 1959.  At the same race two years later, Lee’s car jumped the flimsy guardrail at Daytona, and literally flew from the track, corkscrewing over the high-banked turn and beyond the reach of the cameras filming the race.  Lee survived the incredible crash, but he traded places with his son, who’d been serving on his dad’s crew.  Richard became the bread winner for the family business as NASCAR’s first “second generation” driver and the first to follow in a champion’s footsteps.  Winning 101 races and two championships in the 1960’s, he’d also become the head of racing’s royal family, and known to all fans as simply, “The King.”

When little Mike came along, father and son enthusiastically rooted on Richard Petty for the second phase of his 200 career wins.  Before each race, Jerry would compile a ledger of statistics – how many laps the King had led at that track, prior races he’d won.  On weekends, Mike would lay on his dad’s bed for hours discussing the numbers.

Wright attended his first NASCAR race in September, 1968.  Jerry had bought good seats, right near the flag stand at Richmond Fairgrounds Speedway.  But Mike didn’t see a thing from the wooden grandstands.  He was in his mother’s belly.  “I’ve always been old school,” Wright proudly stated. 

On weekends, other families would go to the beach or the mountains.  The Wrights, who lived about a half hour south of the track, went to the races, even with mom bountifully expectant.

                The tracks, the cars, the people, the whole NASCAR fan experience was different in the late 1960’s.  The world beyond the sport’s dusty race tracks was bursting into color.  NASCAR was a few steps behind, still locked in the old black-and-white traditions.  The sport was then called the NASCAR Grand National Series. (Winston would later come on the scene as NASCAR’s title sponsor after cigarette ads were banned from television and racing provided the perfect marketing outlet.)  If fans didn’t watch a race live at the track, they likely didn’t see the sport at all; a NASCAR season on network TV was still 30 years away.  Many drivers got behind the wheel in short-sleeve dress shirts.  “You took your shirt and a pair of britches, dumped it in starch, and that was supposed to make it fireproof,” Richard Petty said.  “You put on a seat belt and a helmet, but you didn’t look at the safety of it.”  Flimsy metal guardrails rather than today’s flexible barriers ringed the tracks, which were mostly dirty, grimy places with barely edible concession food and dank, pungent bathrooms.   At the track, no one was ever tempted to call the ladies facility the “powder room.” 

A tough expectant mom could get by, but the track was no place for an infant.  The Wrights waited until Mike was three years old to bring him to the races. The abundant sights and sounds infused the lad to the core.  Since that day, Mike has been to more than 250 NASCAR races.  He has yet to celebrate his 40^th birthday. 

Wright’s voice carries a pitch of wonder and delight when summoning the sights and sounds absorbed at the race track as a young boy, like hanging out on the backstretch of Richmond Fairgrounds Speedway, outside the ticket gates, where enterprising fans with little money and less fear would climb trees to watch the races. “I remember one gentleman had a cooler tied to a rope.  He’d pull the rope, and up the tree came the cooler.  He’d reach in for a beer, close the lid and expertly lower the cooler halfway to the ground.  It hung there in the air, until the next refill. As a kid, I thought, man, that’s ingenious.” 

Track president Paul Sawyer could have sent the police to shake the freeloaders from those oak trees.  But he didn’t, and the sight of fans perched in the leafy branches like big exotic birds nipping canned beer was one more thing little Mike Wright filed in his mind about this marvelous sport beginning to cover him like a second skin. 

Wright would later meet Sawyer after a Hurricane Fran blew through in 1996.  “Our camper rocked back and forth all night long.  There were tents hanging in the trees the next morning.  Mr. Sawyer came through the camp grounds checking to see if everyone was OK.  That was some unforgettable gesture showing he cared about us.”

The track, now known as Richmond International Raceway, with 80,000 seats and no more trees to offer a free, unobstructed view, was where Wright fell in love with NASCAR.  He has also been ritualistically attending the Memorial Day race in Charlotte for more than 30 years.  But his personal racing Mecca, where memories are the fondest, and his gratitude the deepest, is Darlington Raceway.  Since 1980, Wright hasn’t missed a race at the unforgiving, egg-shaped course, known as “The Lady in Black.” 

Darlington Raceway is NASCAR’s Lambeau Field, a storied venue loaded with history and charm in a small market that many believe will always have a place on the schedule even if it’s difficult to get to and lacks the big-city attractions of newer stops on the circuit like Las Vegas, Kansas City and Miami.  The track, built on a cotton and peanut field, took on a curious egg shape to protect a minnow farm the land owner had refused to relocate.   Wright enjoys the history and lore of Darlington and will explain how the track’s retaining walls, white before the race, turn black by the day’s end due to a multitude of tire contact. 

“This is a track you have to battle all day long; there’s no riding around by anyone on any lap,” he says.  Because of its unique configuration – with one turn, tighter, narrow and more steeply banked, shooting cars down the straightaway like an amusement park carnival ride, Darlington is also known as “The Lady in Black,” giving drivers coming off that wicked turn and scraping up against the wall their inevitable “Darlington stripe.”

Wright won’t be denied in attending races at Darlington.  One rare year when he and Karen weren’t camping or RVing at the race, they stayed at the Diplomat Motel in Myrtle Beach.  A bad storm came and lightning struck the hotel.  All the building’s emergency sirens were blaring. People were screaming to get out as the building filled with gas.  Wright ran from the hotel in his underwear, holding his race tickets and scanner.  “I could go to Wal-Mart and get clothes; I couldn’t get another race ticket,” he explained. 

                Jerry, who worked with the Virginia Dept. of Corrections, would buy his race tickets at automobile dealerships or right at the box office.  A signature family outing trumpeting the arrival of summer was waking up at 3 a.m., and heading to Charlotte for the World 600 race on Memorial Day weekend.  “We weren’t poor, but driving to Charlotte was a big deal,” Wright said.  “Six of us would pile into a Pontiac big as the Titanic, four hours to Charlotte, then back home after the race.” He still carries the ticket stub to one of those World 600 races, now called the Coca-Cola 600 – a $40 ticket on the start-finish line, 40^th row.

As NASCAR barnstormed the south east, the boat-like Bonneville took Jerry and Anne Wright, Mike, his sister Susan, and their grandparents to stops in Atlanta, Bristol, Tenn., Martinsville, Va., Rockingham, N.C., and North Wilkesboro, N.C.  To newer NASCAR fans, places like Rockingham and North Wilkesboro are romantic-sounding names and fading images on grainy highlight reels.  For Wright, the memories are clear as yesterday.  After one particular race at North Wilkesboro, a frustrating traffic jam leaving the North Carolina track kept the family car hemmed in going nowhere.  Jerry had to work the next day.  He wasn’t going to patiently sit in a seemingly endless line of immobilized cars.  Jerry jerked the wheel and pulled the Pontiac onto the grass.  He drove through a creek leading into someone’s back yard.   He tore through the unkempt grass and blew past the house, down the gravel driveway with a cloud of dust.  “Chickens were scrambling, dogs were barking, it was just a mad scene,” Wright said.  “I peeked out the back window and saw a shot gun pointed at the car.  But before you knew it we were back on the highway, sailing home.”

The races were held on Sunday, but fans didn’t wear their Sunday best. “The bottom five rows in Rockingham, you had to wear a helmet with all the chicken bones and beer cans raining down,” Wright recalls.  “By the end of the race, you’d be covered in red mud.”

He was still a wide-eyed kid in 1978 at Richmond when Darrell Waltrip used his “chrome horn” to move Neil Bonnett out of the way for the win.  On pit road, an incensed Bonnett, acting as proxy for thousands in the grandstands, then smashed into Waltrip, who had a reputation for being a quite a loudmouth.  In fact, when Steven Spielberg had made a summer blockbuster film about a large man-eating shark, the motor mouth driver was dubbed “Jaws.”  Waltrip was brash, but backed up the entertaining bravado with a pedal-to-the-floor “out of my way” driving style that won many races like this one. The Richmond crowd was still buzzing about his use of the chrome horn and Bonnett showing enough is enough by knocking into DW’s DiGuard Chevy near Victory Lane.  The race winner had to climb the steps of the grandstand and walk through the crowd to get to the press box for post-race interviews. 

“Waltrip was heading up there and fans were throwing anything not bolted down at him.  Next to me, a woman who must have been 80 years old gets up and shouts, ‘I hate you Darrell Waltrip!’  She hurls a hand biscuit at him – hits DW right in the shoulder!  The roll came apart as it hit him.  You could see the ham fly out.  I was about 10 years old watching this, and my eyes must have been half as big as my head.”

Another time, a woman too well dressed to be walking through the gate at Martinsville was accompanied by a man in a Rusty Wallace t-shirt with big sunglasses and his cap pulled over his eyes. “I recognized Bobby Labonte right away,” Wright says.  “When Bobby passed me, I whispered in his ear, ‘nice disguise.’”

NASCAR was a smaller, more personal sport when drivers walked among the fans in disguise and elderly ladies pelted drivers with dinner rolls.  The campgrounds were more intimate.  The RVs and campers weren’t quite so lavish.  The chasm between rich and poor, the haves and the have nots, wasn’t quite as large.  It was easier to meet new people and look back 15 years later to realize you’re still sending friends met at the track Virginia country hams for Christmas.  The pace was slower.  Fans weren’t quite as busy, seemed to have fewer worries.  There were no cell phones and blackberries to chirp strange electronic tunes that interrupted warm conversations over cold beers in front of crackling wood fires.  Access to the sport and its drivers was loose and informal in innocent, less guarded times.  NASCAR today is bigger, faster, safer, higher stakes, more competitive, and higher-profile.  The “small fraternity” to which Wright proudly belongs has progressively grown into a larger and therefore more impersonal NASCAR Nation.  The sport is no longer an undiscovered secret except to those in the South lacking big city baseball and football teams. 

NASCAR is now for all Americans.  Wright realizes giving the sport to everyone, meant taking part of it away from some.  Westward expansion meant Rockingham and North Wilkesboro would lose their race dates.  What used to be two Darlington races a year for Mike Wright, especially the marquee Labor Day race, an important end-of-summer ritual for tens of thousands of NASCAR fans, is now the lone spring event – the storied track’s remaining single date on the Sprint Cup schedule.  After NASCAR moved its Labor Day race date to Auto Club Speedway near Los Angeles, Wright attended the last Southern 500 with a heavy heart.  Following the race, when others had left for the parking lots, he sat in the stands and cried. 

The sport has changed.  The world has changed.  Wright accepts all of that.  He understands change is part of life – not a part he necessarily fully understands or always wants to embrace, but a constant force any American who appreciates progress learns to deal with.

“I’m a southerner.  It’s no secret we’re not much for new things.  Yeah, I’d like to have the way it used to be with fans up in the trees and the garages open to everyone.  Back in the day, after the race, they’d open the gates, and you go could right into the pits.”   Wright often found himself standing next to legends like to Junior Johnson, David Pearson, Bobby Allison, and most importantly, Richard Petty.  “I realize it’s all gotten too big to allow that now.  There’d be a riot down there. But heck, today you can be a driver’s friend on Facebook or listen to their crew conversations on your Sprint phone.  NASCAR has figured out how to keep the fans close to the drivers.”

If the world was to end tomorrow, Mike Wright wouldn’t miss the race today.  He still finds himself reminiscing of the “old days,” like the first race he and his dad saw on TV, the 1979 Daytona 500, the first flag-to-flag NASCAR race carried live.  The heat had gone out in the Wright’s house on that snowy Sunday in February, forcing his mother and sister to flee to warmer confines at their grandparents’ place.  The men stayed behind glued to the TV, bundled in hats and blankets, not wanting to miss a lap.  “When the King won, we were hugging one another, because we were happy and because it was so darn cold.”

In those days, NASCAR was rarely on TV.  Long car trips were planned to listen to the races on the radio. Thanks to the radio broadcast, the young lad was able to see just about every major attraction in the Southeast. When Petty won at Daytona in 1977, the Wrights were on the way to Virginia Beach. When he won at Michigan in 1981, they were listening in the parking lot at historic Colonial Williamsburg.  When Petty won his final race, the Wrights had the radio up loud at an I-95 truck stop on the way to Gettysburg.  “My dad turned around, gripped my knee and announced, ‘That’s 200!”

Wright’s mom enjoyed listening on the radio and going to the track mostly because it was something the family could do together every week.  Sometimes, there were surprises. At one Bristol race, she found an abandoned kitten by the dumpster of their hotel.  “Mom took that cat home, and we had it 17 years,” Wright said.

Jerry stopped attending races in the mid 1980’s.  The crowds had gotten too big as he was physically slowing down.  Mike began going on his own.  During college, he and a buddy drove ten hours in a Ford Thunderbird from North Carolina to Daytona Beach, to see the annual Independence Day race.   They had just enough money to cover the tickets, gas, beer, a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter.  After the race, they drove ten more hours, straight home.  Like the NASCAR commercial says, this is a sport where the fans drive 700 miles to watch their heroes drive 500 miles.  How many do all that driving on the same day?

“There’s people who have more money and can buy more souvenirs than me, go to more races than me, but no one loves this sport more than me,” Wright says.

In 1999, he took his dad back to the track at Richmond.  It had been 15 years since Jerry had been to a race. Mike was walking toward the seats and noticed dad was missing.  “I looked around, and he was 50 yards back, stopped in his tracks, standing with his mouth wide open, looking at all those souvenir trailers like he was gonna pass out.  The last race he’d been to, the drivers had set up card tables to sell a t-shirt, a hat, maybe a bumper sticker.  You’d get one shirt, and that would be the driver’s design for the whole season.  Dad said, ‘Is there something special going on?’  He’d never seen these huge merchandise trailers for every driver with different shirts and jackets and all the mementoes available now.”

One of my fondest memories in researching this book was to sit with Wright on a clear and chilly night in the Blue Ox campground on a hill behind Bristol Motor Speedway in front of a snapping wood fire he’d built.  He spoke seriously about how NASCAR has defined him as a person.  He admitted to the sport’s undeniably large and forceful role in his life, discussing the life-shaping aspects of the sport thoughtfully, in a tone ranging from solemn to joyful.  Serious words came from the heart, a timber of revelatory conversation that wouldn’t be out of place in a church confessional.

“Racing has given me a lot in life, taught me valuable lessons about friendship and being a good person,” Wright said. “I think I’ve experienced everything racing has had to offer over the years. Anyone who knows me knows racing is such a big part of my life.  Me and racing are the same.  I love the fires and the steaks and the cans of beer and the people.  This is my lazy boy chair.  I’m home here. When I sit and hear the ‘Gentlemen, start your engines’ I forget everything.  Nothing else matters.  I’m a kid again.  My heart starts pounding and I can’t sit still. By the second pace lap, when you can smell the fumes of the gas and the rubber coming off the tires, oh man, it is instant adrenaline.  If that smell could go into my alarm clock, I’d always wake up happy.”

“What if you could wake to Richard Petty’s voice?” I asked.

“The King?  Oh, Heaven.  Yeah, that’s waking up in heaven.”

Reprinted with permission from The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans by Andrew Giangola (Motorbooks, 2010)

The Lucky Penny Girl

You can’t use them in vending machines.  On the street, few people bother to bend over and pick them up.  They cost more to make than they’re worth.  It will surprise no one when the U.S. penny goes out of commission. 

But a penny can be worth more than one cent.  Sometimes, a penny can have value beyond measure, like the one brought to a NASCAR race by an extraordinary little girl whose lucky coin found its way into the sport’s lore and the hearts of millions of fans.

The little girl, Wessa Miller, was born with spina bifida, a birth defect of the spine.   Doctors gave her three days to live, a grim diagnosis based on dire medical facts.  But there was a lot about Wessa the doctors couldn’t see.  X-rays, scans and blood samples can’t detect courage, determination and faith. 

Wessa fought hard and made it home, and the doctors said she’d live only two years. Wessa again proved them wrong.  After she celebrated a second birthday, the specialists called that a gift; she probably wouldn’t make it to five.  Wessa had that birthday, too, and the medical experts said 10 would be a miracle. When the girl who wasn’t expected to make it out of the children’s ICU ward was named eighth grade Homecoming Queen, doctors finally had the good sense to stop setting a time frame on a miracle life.

“Wessa is tough, she doesn’t complain. She lives by God’s good grace, that’s the only way I can explain it,” said her dad, Booker Miller.  Twice, Wessa’s wheelchair tipped over and she busted up her mouth and teeth.  Wessa didn’t utter a cross word.  “I could have sued, but I’m not that kind of person to put blame on someone else,” Booker said.  “Wessa’s tough.  She healed up.”  

Booker left high school at 16 to work in a Kentucky coal mine.   He spent 26 years below ground, narrowly escaping cave-ins and tasting copper for three days afterwards.  Consider him a credible authority on human toughness and grit. 

Wessa attends church “every time the doors are open,” according to Booker.  Besides her religion and family, NASCAR is Wessa’s great source of comfort and joy.  “She doesn’t get to enjoy a lot in life, but she does get a lot of pleasure from racing.”

From the time she could watch television, Wessa had been a fan of Dale Earnhardt.  So when she was chosen for the Make-A-Wish program, which grants wishes for seriously ill children, the six-year-old didn’t hesitate. She wanted to meet Dale Earnhardt.  

Wessa’s mom Juanita was concerned.  Her precious daughter had so much vested in a man Juanita knew little about other than a gun-slinging reputation for aggressive driving.  Earnhardt was aptly nicknamed “Ironhead” and “The Intimidator.”  He wore the sport’s black hat, unafraid to move anyone out of the way, even if it wrecked the field.  His hair-trigger temper and swinging moods were difficult to predict.  Who knew what he’d say to Wessa?  She might wind up greatly disappointed, maybe even emotionally hurt.

“I knew Dale from the TV, and was worried he’d be moody and mean to Wessa,” Juanita said.  Yet she wasn’t going to try to sway Wessa from her dream.  Juanita knew how much the driver meant to her daughter.  A trip was scheduled for the family to attend the 1998 Daytona 500, where Wessa would meet her idol at a crucial race.  

Earnhardt, a seven-time NASCAR champion, had won 30 races at Daytona International Speedway, but never when it counted most, at the Daytona 500.  He appeared to be cursed in NASCAR’s marquee event.  Despite winning every possible important race in all possible ways, he’d always been denied at the Great American Race.  “We’ve lost this race just about every way you can lose it,” Earnhardt said after one of his 19 unsuccessful tries.  “We’ve been out-gassed, out-tired, out-run, out every-thinged.”  Once, his tire went down, and Earnhardt claimed a chicken bone cut it on the backstretch. Twice, he clearly had the best car and after driving 499 miles, still didn’t win.   What Dale lacked was luck.  Little Wessa Miller wanted to bring him some.

“Dale was my favorite race car driver, so I wanted to give him my lucky penny,” Wessa said. “I thought it would help him win the race.” 

The day before the Daytona 500, the Millers waited for Dale in the garage area as he finished his final test runs.  Booker was uncharacteristically anxious.  He heard Dale was upset with his sputtering car.  There was talk the engine might have to be replaced.  As the minutes ticked down before the meeting with Wessa, he wondered if Earnhardt would be tense and distant.  But the Intimidator strode in wearing a wry smile.  He got down on one knee, right beside Wessa’s wheelchair.  It was like no one else in the room existed.  He spent 15 minutes with her. 

“When Dale met Wessa, I saw such a different man,” Juanita said.  “He had a heartfelt goodness. They made a connection you could see.”

“I guess Dale was a mean person on the track, but he had a soft spot big as heaven,” Booker said.  “He got right down to her level and had nothin’ to say to nobody but Wessa.   There was a real gentleness in him.  He told her, ‘Wessa, you can do anything you want.’  He meant it.  She’s never forgotten that.”

            As Wessa reached from her wheelchair to hand over her lucky penny, the driver was hatching a plan.  When the crowds dissipated and the cameras went away, crusty old Earnhardt rummaged around the garage for some adhesive and secretly glued the copper coin to his dashboard.  “Dale had enough yellow glue smeared around to put about 100 pennies on that dash,” said his crew chief Larry MacReynolds. The next day, after 19 years of heartbreak and futility, Dale Earnhardt finally won the Daytona 500.

The Millers watched an unprecedented celebration.  As Earnhardt drove down pit road toward Victory lane, hundreds of crewmen from every team lined pit road to congratulate him, touching Dale’s outstretched hand as he drove by. 

            Saturday’s meeting with Dale had already been the best day of Wessa’s life.  Sunday’s win slathered icing all over the cake.  The family left Daytona Beach for Disney World without knowing Wessa’s penny was in Dale’s car.  The secret didn’t hold for long, and the dream trip would get even better.  The next day, the news media tracked the Millers down, and NASCAR Nation learned of The Lucky Penny Girl. 

            But her story didn’t end there. Two months later, to say thank you, Earnhardt arranged for the family to attend the NASCAR race at Bristol.  It was his turn to present a gift.  With no fanfare, he gave the Millers with a much-needed Chevy van for frequent trips to doctors 175 miles away.  He even made sure the van was blue, Wessa’s favorite color.  The vehicle was a godsend for two or three weekly treks from their home in Phyllis, Ky. to the University of Kentucky Medical Center.  The Millers have put more than 150,000 miles on the van getting to Wessa’s medical appointments.

            Two years later, to celebrate Wessa’s ninth birthday, Juanita planned a special gift – a trip to Earnhardt’s Chevy dealership for its annual open house. Mother and daughter quietly joined the back of the long line cueing for Dale’s autograph.  When they got to the front, Earnhardt shouted out, “Wessa!” and gave her a big hug.  For the rest of the meet-and-greet, Wessa sat next to her hero who was wearing his patented crooked smile underneath that bushy mustache which could have swept a city street clean.

            That would be the last time Wessa spent time with Dale.  She was at home watching the 2001 Daytona 500 when the black No. 3 car crashed in the final turn on the last lap.  The announcers weren’t saying much.  The car was crunched against the wall.  There was no sign of Dale.  Wessa was crying as the family prepared for church.  Juanita said she’d find out how Dale was doing after church.  There, the Millers heard Dale was gone.  “When we got home, I said, ‘Wessa, baby, mamma’s got something to tell you…’”

Wessa cried for days. She stayed away from NASCAR for a year. Gradually, the sting lessened.  She reclaimed her old spot in front of the TV on Sunday afternoons, and grew to become an avid fan of Dale Earnhardt, Jr.

“Dale’s death is something we’re reminded of every day,” Booker said.  “He’s the best there ever is.  He was a big part of Wessa’s life.  And he still is part of her life.”

Seven years after the tragic accident, Wessa would be reminded of that, and again enter the consciousness of NASCAR fans, thanks to motorsports reporter David Poole.  As the 2008 season approached, Poole was preparing a tenth anniversary story of the 1998 Daytona 500 for The Charlotte Observer.  Other reporters were covering Earnhardt’s emotional win.  Poole remembered the lucky penny girl.  “Every reporter who’s ever written a story knows the ‘Where are they now?’ one,” he said.  “The problem was, I literally didn’t know where Wessa lived.”

Scouring the internet, Poole found the name “Wessa Miller” on the blog of a professional wrestler who had appeared at a middle school festival in Kentucky.  With the Millers home state revealed, Poole was able to get the family’s telephone number from the Kentucky chapter of Make-A-Wish. 

He and Juanita spent two and a half hours on the phone.  “I walked downstairs and told my wife, Katy, if I can’t write this story, take me off this job,” Poole said.  “I felt like a stenographer; Wessa’s story wrote itself.”   

The article ran on the front page, and offers to help the Millers poured in.  Caring for her daughter was always a daunting task for Juanita, who drives a handicapped-accessible school bus Wessa rides to school when well enough to attend.  Now Juanita also had to worry about Booker, who’d gone through emergency heart surgery. 

In more than 15 years covering NASCAR, Poole had seen race fans and drivers give millions of dollars to the sport’s charities. It was his time to give back.  He established the “Pennies for Wessa Fund” to assist the Millers with medical bills, travel expenses to faraway doctors, and home renovations for Wessa’s special needs.  A special online auction also raised funds for the family.  One of the items for bid was a lunch and race shop tour with David Poole. 

“You’re not supposed to be part of the story,” the veteran reporter and SiriusXM radio personality said. “But sometimes the story becomes part of you.  Every one of us has good days and bad days. A good day for the Millers is when nothing really bad happens.  The things they deal with on their good days would be a pretty bad day for anyone else.  But they look at every single day as an absolute gift.  If all of us thought like that it would be a much better world.”

Working with the “NASCAR Angels” TV program, the NASCAR Foundation and Motor Racing Outreach, Poole arranged to bring Wessa Miller and her family back to Bristol Motor Speedway in 2008.  Wessa was featured in a “Heart of NASCAR” segment on the show and was introduced during pre-race ceremonies, waving to the cheering crowd with the breezy confidence of a president at his inaugural parade.  She also met Dale Jr., giving him a 1988 penny to match his car number, 88.  Lightning didn’t strike twice – Earnhardt had a tough race – but no one really expected it to.

There really can only be on Lucky Penny.  The coin Wessa handed to Junior’s dad is the one NASCAR fans remember.  It remains glued to the dashboard of the No. 3 Goodwrench Chevrolet, now on display in Childress Museum, in Welcome, N.C.

Wessa Miller often thinks about that day, and the wondrous time spent with a hero who declared she could do anything.  She’d always liked Dale because he was so tough.  Now she’d be like him. Wessa had had been suffering regular seizures before coming to Bristol, where Dale once brought her family.  Back at that track, she didn’t have a single one all weekend.  When the Millers returned to Kentucky, so did the seizures.  Wessa didn’t complain.  Dale wouldn’t. 

Juanita and Booker continue to live one day at a time, appreciating each as a gift to spend with a courageous daughter who defies the odds while delighting and surprising whoever she meets. Like that penny which softened even the Intimidator, they consider themselves very, very lucky. 

Less than two months after arranging for the Millers to return to Bristol, David Poole died of a massive heart attack.  He was 50 years old.  Fans who wish to honor David or help the girl who found a place in his hear can donate directly to the “Pennies For Wessa” Fund by visiting www.penniesforwessa.org, or by mail at Pennies For Wessa, Attention: Mike Damron, Community Trust Bank, P.O. Box 39, Mouthcard, KY 41548

For more stories like this, The Weekend Starts on Wednesday: True Stories of Remarkable NASCAR Fans by Andrew Giangola is available on amazon.com and wherever fine books are sold.

Hearts Big and Brave

NOTE:  Craig Reda passed away this past weekend, with Jackie by his side.  Here is their story from The Weekend Starts on Wednesday. We love you, Craig.

His name is Craig, and he “lives” just down the road from Bob’s Party Bus.  His neighbors at the track, who visit bearing strong peach-flavored drinks in mason jars, call him “Braveheart.”  It’s the beard and charged-up Zeus hair.  His wife Jackie will sometimes call him “babe.”  She is a beautician who wears long flowing flower child dresses, serves food and drink like a one-woman 24-hour diner, and correctly refers to herself “the hostest with the mostest.”  I’m happy to call Craig and Jackie my friends.  

The couple from Frankenmuth, Mich. (a place not to be forgotten since Jackie presented and "forced" me to break in a Frankenmuth Brewery shot glass) collects NASCAR signatures on the inside of their converted yellow school bus.  More than a hundred cover the cream domed ceiling.  There are shiny black names of Goodyear tire changers.  There’s driver David Starr and crew chiefs Harold Holley, Brad Parrott and Todd Parrott.  There are John Hancocks from track workers and guys who used to sling gas cans for Jimmy Spencer.  It is a roster of marvelous signatures forming a tapestry of lives intersecting at the race track, some scribbled with the fine-art intricacy of Arabic, some in chunky bold caps, could be a back-of-the-pack, over-the-wall jack man not getting much attention but now the recipient of a special moment immortalized on the sloped roof of the 1972 Ford bus, courtesy of two down-home NASCAR fans. 

I had been taking pictures of buses in the infield at Michigan International Speedway, and between turns two and three I spotted a large “3” carved in wood, mounted on a picnic table attached to the top of a school bus.  Most fans who buy an old bus for the races re-paint the hull, usually the color of a favorite driver.  This one proudly holds its original yellow.  I head over and through the open rear emergency exit see a gent sporting a bushy pony tail.   He’s kneeling on the shag to put on a new record – yes, a grooved black vinyl platter on a real turntable next to long row of albums housed in flaking covers with photos of the Allman Brothers, Creedence, Mott the Hoople, Led Zeppelin, Foghat, Neil Young, the Beatles, the Stones, the Who. 

“Hey man, I’m taking pictures of buses.  I dig them, can I take a shot of yours?” I ask. 

            With an easy smile, Craig Reda waves me in. He’s a carpenter who has built a few churches.  I had already detected a mellow, charitable, judicial, Jesus-like presence, and that, along with Craig’s barely tamed Woodstock era ‘do, may explain why I was slipping into hippie speak, leaking out “Hey man can you dig it” intonations and tie-dyed inflections you’d imagine from Sadie Atkins and Squeaky Fromme on Charlie’s Ranch.

Far out.  

Craig saw the bus abandoned in the woods in 1995, found its owner and bought it for a few hundred bucks.  It was to be used to transport tools and materials for his construction business.  A race at Michigan was coming up, and the Redas brought the bus into the infield.  “Three laps in, Jackie announced, ‘This is our race bus.’”  Craig put in a queen size bed, a sofa, a deck on the roof, and the stereo below.  The signatures were an idea that took a life of its own once a few guys from Roush Racing signed.  Craig pulls out a marker and asks for mine, too.  I protest.  Well, it was a half protest.  OK, it was an extremely lifeless rebuff.  I say “no, no I can’t, no thank you” in a lame, uncommitted way to ensure I’d get to sign.  Never turn down a chance to be on TV to give an autograph.  

Craig doesn’t have to work hard to lead me to an open spot, and Jackie easily talks me into specially signing a die-cast car for an eight year-old in the camper across the way.  I proudly squeak out my name with a moist Sharpie, thereby devaluing the NASCAR-licensed merchandise.  But what the heck, it’s invigorating to be seen as “someone” and at the same time I want to take a shower. 

The prevalent feeling is odd discomfort to be considered a minor celebrity among the population of several camping slots on the big backstretch at Michigan.  To all their friends, Craig and Jackie introduce me as a NASCAR PR Director, as if I’m a dignitary from an important faraway government.  Jen Ireland is a Dale Jr. fan from Traverse City who’s been a regular at the track since she was two years old.  Pete Monahan lives on a 1961 Crisscraft boat, only touching dry land during the summer for the races at Michigan.  His girlfriend Erin Glauch sits on the horse saddle mounted next to the Reda’s wooden bar next to the bus, grabbing the horn when laughing to keep from falling off.  A parade of friends will drop in throughout the weekend, taking a seat at the bar to catch up since the last race, ask how good is it to be back, and isn’t your worst day at the track a thousand times better than your best day at work?

With the fans out in these parts, you’re introduced as a NASCAR executive and it’s as if Oprah has instantly become your aunt.  There is prevailing faith you can grant special wishes and impart general wisdom.  Folks hang on your every word.  To work for NASCAR is to be seen as pulling levers behind the curtain at Oz.  For a fringe player  like me to be paid somber respect like this is a tribute to the honor and appreciation NASCAR fans have for the sanctioning body even while all the thanks goes to them; that’s the twisted part of a NASCAR PR guy hit up for an autograph, the fan is the star here. 

            You bet, these folks are highly impressed with NASCAR.  They are here to see a race put on by NASCAR in the Kingdom of NASCAR and are grateful for the presence of an employee in a NASCAR shirt wearing credentials that say NASCAR.  But then you become friends with these fans, and you do the ordinary things friends do and joke around about the stuff friends kid about.  You love them for the normal reasons any friends converge; the Redas are fun people with big, generous hearts and a knack for making you laugh.  And you also get mildly annoyed at the routine minor perceived transgressions among friends.  Like snoring.

            Jackie had generously invited me to crash on her couch, a world-class idea following spirited revelry for Craig’s 50th birthday. As the clock flirts with 4 a.m., I sink into a surprisingly comfortable sofa next to the stereo in the rear, ready to chainsaw a stack of logs.  We’re on our backs cracking each other up like 12 year-old kids up way too late at sleepaway camp when Jackie, whose voice was now crushed auto glass soaked in whiskey, issues a warning: “Andrew, it is deathly hot in here.  I’m taking off my clothes.”

Cool and quiet, the Redas plunge into deep sleep.  Within minutes, a foghorn sounds.  Then another.  Inside the bus, it is like angry dueling foghorns.  One trying to outperform the other in a longstanding global grudge match.  Craig lets out a prodigious full-air gurgling blast that could have burst his uvula.  He may swallow his tongue, I’m thinking.  His whopping wail is like a taunt, prodding and coaxing Jackie to return volley.  And his beloved wife of 18 years doesn’t disappoint, coming with aircraft carrier guns ablaze, unleashing a fearsome cruise ship-worthy blast that would have blown the Gorton’s Fisherman from his boat. 

I don’t recall sleeping much, and at the first glint of light peeking through the bus curtains made of aprons rescued from a Frankenmuth German restaurant, I nearly tumble out the back exit in order to freshen up and meet a CNBC crew for interviews with Tony Stewart, Carl Edwards, and our vehicle partners as media here in Michigan are doing the “fate-of-Detroit-in-NASCAR” story.  (Chevy, Ford, Dodge and Toyota sell a heckuva lot of cars to NASCAR fans, and are getting a significant return in the sport.) 

That evening I return to see the Redas, and our deep sleepers just eat up the eyewitness account of the grudge match and how the Gorton’s dude is now hard of hearing and soaking wet after their blasts knocked him off the fish stick boat and me from the bus at the crack of dawn. 

“Yeah, if Jackie wakes me up, I’ll just turn her over, and she does the same for me,” Craig says, sipping homemade wine from an old man he does work for.   He met Jackie on Ladies Night at a local German beerhouse nearly two decades ago. “She was the funniest, prettiest loudest girl in the bar.  I could hear her over the band. I was single with a boy and she fell in love with my kid…and me, too, I guess.”   They’re now inseparable.  During a race weekend about the only time you won’t see them nearly attached at the hip is when one trudges toward turn three for the bathrooms and showers.  In fact, Craig was offered a garage pass on a Saturday but declined because he didn’t want to spend a few hours away from Jackie.

I’m not the only NASCAR person observing this true love story while welcomed with open arms into the wide and expanding circle of Craig and Jackie Reda.  They’re good friends with Michigan International Speedway President Roger Curtis, first meeting in 2006 when security stopped their bus entering the track gates.  Craig wondered which rule he’d broken.  He pushed open the tall double door like a driver picking up a kid on the way to school, and the new track president bound up the stairs, introduced himself, and thanked them for coming to the race.  “Right there, we knew Roger was a different breed,” Jackie said.  

At his June 2009 Sprint Cup race, as Curtis worked the infield, catching up with friends and thanking new fans for their patronage, he rolled up to the Redas campsite in his Chevy Tahoe.  He motioned for the Redas to jump in.  They got a big surprise when Curtis pointed the vehicle onto the track and floored it.  “He was laughing the whole time, saying, ‘Oh boy, we’re gonna get in trouble for this!’” Jackie said.  Track security came blasting onto the scene as the president and his fan friends barreled around the oval.  The men in badges started to reprimand Roger, then realized it was the boss man wheeling this late-night hot lap.

Curtis once came by the camp site for one of Jackie’s steaks.  He asked Craig to name the one thing that would markedly improve his fan experience.  Reda has been at these races since getting the bus in 1995.  His friends like Jen Ireland, a fixture in the infield a lot longer, remember when “European sun bathing” was allowed for the ladies.  There’s a lot of history at the Reda’s bus.  This was a no brainer.  “A Big Screen TV right over there,” Craig said, pointing to the outside wall in the middle of the 2,200-foot backstretch. 

The next race, pulling the bus into his spot, Reda looked up and there it was: a giant screen right where he wanted it.   It was of course for every fan’s viewing pleasure but damned if Craig didn’t accept it as a personal gift from Roger Curtis, the darn coolest racing executive around, especially when Roger stopped by, elbowed him in the ribs and said, “Hey, what do you think of that!” 

Of course, it was a typical Curtis upgrade for the entire back half of the infield.  For his pal Craig Reda, Curtis had something more personal in mind, showing up on the night of the carpenter’s 50th birthday celebration at his camp site with a sheet cake made to look like a race track.  Roger and Craig locked elbows and fed each other the way newlyweds will do before smashing it into one another’s faces, which they did as well.

            “Roger sees his job as ‘How do I make you happy?  What can I do for you today?’” Craig said.   For his part, Curtis says he’s simply a fan at heart who has never let a pursuit of “market share” cloud a much more important goal: making every single ticket holder’s experience memorable.  From his office in the administrative building, Curtis can see the seats he had as a fan for so many years near the start-finish line.  He remembers what it’s like to buy a ticket simply to have a blast at the track…and what it’s like to be caught in traffic afterwards.  His first time at Michigan, it took seven hours to make it to the highway, an untenable situation he’s helped fix.

Also in Craig and Jackie’s NASCAR circle is International Speedway Corp. PR man Lenny Santiago and Michael Printup, president of Watkins Glen International.   After spending time with fans at Craig’s birthday bash, Printup has a handful expecting to drop the green flag, drive the pace car and sing the national anthem.   Printup, who was asked to run Watkins Glen in summer of 2009, is learning how to delight and amaze fans at the knee of Roger Curtis, so expect he unexpected.  At the next road course race in western New York, if you see a long-haired guy resembling Braveheart shouting, “Gentlemen, Start Your Engines,” with a smiling woman in a flowery sun dress by his side, that may be Craig Reda.  The honor will be well deserved.   

Tom Cruise's Days of Thunder

To be a famous Hollywood actor, a fellow has to have a big head. Not a humongous ego. I’m talking about basic cranial measurements calculated with an old-fashioned tailor’s tape measure. Think about it: Bogey, Groucho, Kirk Douglas, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, Burt Reynolds, Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks – all blessed with giant heads which come across larger than life on the big screen.

Of course, equally successful mega-stars like Tom Cruise defy the trend. Cruise’s head may be smaller than the average Joe’s, if you’re gonna go crazy in the tape-measure comparisons. But here’s the thing that’s always struck me about Cruise, whether he’s on the red carpet or leaping off a talk show host’s couch: He looks and acts like a modern-day race car driver.

And that, my friends, is a blessed condition to be born into.

Resembling a race car driver is more than having a certain body type. Sure, it helps to be on the small side, taut, rangy, cagy, wiry. More than that, the “look” includes a certain self-possessed, devil-may-care attitude.

Cruise has the full package. He oozes confidence and swagger. He drives too fast. He jumps from airplanes. He’s a natural in aviator sunglasses. He’s short. His electric, larger-than-life presence fills an entire room even when he’s physically small enough to slide lithely from a car’s driver’s side window. And then there’s that killer grin.

Tom Cruise doesn’t just smile. He aggressively flashes his teeth in the instinctive way an animal on the range would ward off predators or attract a mate.

That special smile brought a lot of new fans to NASCAR in the 1990 film Days of Thunder, which Cruise created.

Growing up, he’d always been attracted to muscle cars. In fact, after hitting it big with Risky Business, the young actor on the edge of superstardom didn’t want to buy an expensive house or fancy clothes. He only wanted a fast car. As Cruise’s movie career was taking off in the late 1980’s, he landed a big break in working with on The Color of Money with Paul Newman, a serious professional race car driver who regaled his protégé with romantic racing tales.

“For me as a kid growing up, I always wanted to race cars,” Cruise said. “Toward the end of shooting on The Color of Money, Paul really got me into car racing, and I ultimately raced on his team. The last time we raced was a few years back. We were trying out different cars at Willow Springs Raceway in California. Per usual, I thought I had him beat … but suddenly he comes around the corner. His car is next to mine. Then he flips me off and blisters past. You’ve gotta love it. It was pure Newman.”

Through Newman, Cruise met NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick. The two drove in the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) Showroom Stock Series and became tight. Cruise would spend time at Hendrick’s North Carolina lake house, and tag along when Hendrick Motor Sports drivers tested at different tracks. “We’d pick a track for a test and would ask Tom if he wanted to come play,” Hendrick said. “Many times he did.”

Sports cars were a panic, but Cruise knew that kind of racing was viewed by the public as more a niche for rich guys approaching a proverbial midlife crisis. He wanted a bigger, broader canvas. In NASCAR, he saw a sport tip toeing out of the Southeast, and he ran to it.

The actor hatched a compelling idea – to make a movie about stock car racing based around a cocky outsider coming in to rile the rank and file. Of course, he’d play the brash young buck turning the sport on its head. His friend Rick Hendrick would be the model for the team owner, and Rick’s crew chief, Harry Hyde, the prototype for the young driver’s crew chief.

“We were testing at Daytona, and Tom was out there playing around in one of my Busch Series cars,” Hendrick said. “He pulls into the pits, pops out all excited and says, ‘Man, we need to make a movie!”

Cruise wanted to capture NASCAR’s earlier bare bones, good ol’ boys period. “You know it’s just America,” Cruise said. “It’s something about driving in a car. I came up with the idea to make this movie about NASCAR, and these icons in the beginning who created this sport. (Through NASCAR) you just see our history through time, our love affair with the automobile. It’s a very unique kind of racing that feels very American. Rubbin’s racin’, you know.”

Days of Thunder was an ideal vehicle for the 28 year-old whom Newman had dubbed “this generation’s biggest film superstar.” With his all-American looks and middle-American appeal, young Cruise had already built a reputation as a box-office sensation playing the swaggering overachiever who is knocked down a few pegs and humbled by life lessons. By the time the credits role, Cruise’s characters emerge more likeable than when the house lights went down two hours earlier.

In Days, Cruise repeated that formula, playing Cole Trickle, a vainglorious Indy car driver who lost his ride and headed to NASCAR with team owner Tim Daland, (Randy Quaid) and salty crew chief Harry Hogge (Robert Duvall). During the Daytona 500, Cole and his nemesis Rowdy Burns tangle in a nasty wreck threatening to end their careers. Rowdy and Cole form a friendship, while Cole comes to grips with his own mortality.

When Tom Cruise sets his mind to do something, he famously goes all out, whether it was taking on odd jobs as a kid to help his divorced mother put food on the table or landing his first acting roles in The Outsiders and Taps. Cruise was so determined to make Days of Thunder, the crew dubbed him “laserhead.”

Just as he had spent weeks in a wheelchair alongside paraplegic veteran Ron Kovic to get ready for his previous film, Born on the Fourth of July, Cruise immersed himself in NASCAR to learn how drivers spoke in their cars and around the garage. The NASCAR crash course began at the Watkins Glen road course with screenwriter Robert Towne, who had won an Emmy for Chinatown. Towne clipped a microphone to his cap with the wire running into his shirt. While the writer recorded racing conversations, the actor, in a floppy sweatshirt and with a ball cap pulled low over his eyes, intently watched the pit stops.

Dr. Jerry Punch, a South Carolina emergency room physician during the week, was announcing for ESPN in the pits on weekends.

“I’d talk to Earnhardt and Jeff Gordon and Davey Allison, and Tom would eavesdrop,” he said. “It was his first up-close introduction into the culture of NASCAR, and he was absorbing it like a sponge. About halfway through the day, one of our ESPN handheld camera men recognized Cruise. He spun his camera around and started screaming, ‘Tom Cruise is here. We know he’s here!’ Cruise had to leave at that point. I’m just a pit announcer in an ESPN fire suit, and fans start screaming at me for being important enough to be near him. That’s when it stuck me how big his celebrity was.”

The impression Cruise left on Punch, and NASCAR drivers like Rusty Wallace, whose race shop he visited for a tutorial, and Greg Sacks, who in a two-seater at Volusia Speedway taught Cruise the finer points of handling 800-horsepower Cup-level stock cars, was that of a perfectionist hell bent on understanding every detail of the sport.

“Tom developed a real respect and appreciation for the sport,” Dr. Punch said. “What seemed to me to be merely a movie was for him a passion to get it right. He got in the racecar and actually drove it. Granted, these cars were pretty much nailed to the ground in their set up, but they still ran some hard laps. He knew the more they let him drive the car, the more realistic the film would be.”

It was turning out Cruise not only looked like a race car driver, he was performing like one. “Tom could drive a car,” Rick Hendrick said. “He’s got a lot of talent and absolutely no fear. He’d always drive over his head, whether it was a stock car, a street car or a boat on the lake. He enjoys speed.”

“Oh yeah, Tom likes speed and is very racy,” agreed Greg Sacks who was driving the Slim Fast car for Hendrick in the Winston Cup Series and in Days exclusively drove the City Chevrolet, Exxon and Super Flow cars. “The first time I met Tom he jumped into a Corvette and did burnouts right there in the garage. He started racing around the garage looking for any new piece of asphalt he could find, going way too fast.”

Valuing the expertise of Hendrick, Punch and Sacks, the filmmakers made them technical advisors. Sacks became the sounding board and racing conscience for Robert Duvall, whose wrinkled, pitch-perfect character, Harry Hogge was modeled after the legendary crew chief Harry Hyde. “(Director Tony) Scott would call a wrap, and Duvall would look over at me and say, ‘Greg, is it a wrap?’ I’d give a thumbs up.”

But sometimes he didn’t. When Hogge says, “Boys, we got ourselves a sponsor,” for the first take, he was walking to Victory Circle at Darlington with champagne and paper cups. Sacks told everyone to lose the cups and spray the champagne around like they meant it.

In Punch’s case, after putting in 12 hours in the ER, the doctor would arrive home and field Robert Towne’s questions on the telephone deep into the night. Unbeknownst to him, the screenwriter was sketching out scenes. For example, Hogge was involved in a real-life racing episode that seems too outlandish to have actually happened.

“I was working the pits for MRN radio in Pocono, and Benny Parsons lost a lap and the caution came out,” Dr. Punch said. “Benny was on that long 7/10 of a mile backstretch, and he wanted to pit. Harry, who was his crew chief at the time, wouldn’t let him. Benny thought it was a race strategy. He cruises by during the caution, looks over at his pit and sees Harry and the entire crew eating ice cream. Not many people know it, but the ice cream scene in the film was a true story.”

The mock arrest in which a female cop pulls over Cole Trickle only to disrobe for the young driver actually happened, as did a much-recalled line of dialogue with Hogge telling Cole, “I want you to go out and hit the pace car because you’ve hit everything else.” Harry Hyde had once sarcastically barked those instructions to an erratic Buddy Baker at Martinsville Speedway.

Many characteristics of the flamboyant, good looking, and immensely talented Tim Richmond fed the development of Cole Trickle. Like Cruise’s character, Richmond, who learned to drive a car under Harry Hyde’s tutelage, was a flashy young hotshot long on talent and short on experience.

“Tim had no idea what made the car fast and loose,” Dr. Punch said. “He could just get in the car and drive it.” Hendrick said Richmond would certainly have won many races and a few championships had his life not been cut short from AIDS, just as he was coming into his own as driver.

Dr. Punch’s medical background would help Cruise and Towne cast the female lead – an aloof neurosurgeon who’d fall for Cole Trickle…and the actor playing the character. “A list” Hollywood beauties of the day wouldn’t cut it as a serious surgical resident.

“We wanted an attractive woman, because she’d fall for Tom Cruise, but also someone who had a pasty complexion, because she’d be in the hospital 24/7, and maybe an accent to make her sound especially astute and intelligent,” Dr. Punch said. “When we found Nicole Kidman, who had been a premed student at UCLA and didn’t have to pretend to be intelligent, the decision was pretty much made right there.”

Days of Thunder exposed the sport to a whole new audience, while those already inside the tent were excited to have “their own” NASCAR movie. Stock car racing had been portrayed in films like Thunder in Carolina, Stroker Ace and Speedway with Elvis Presley, but there hadn’t been a true big-budget NASCAR flick in a while; certainly, none generating Tom Cruise-portioned hype and headlines. As Paramount rolled Days into thousands of theaters across the country, NASCAR itself was rapidly growing in popularity. Now it was reaching people with no interest in racing who merely wanted to see Tom Cruise. Corporate and ad types who hadn’t given a second thought to the sport were rapt in attention watching good ol’ boys rubbing fenders on the silver screen. Rick Hendrick says a handful of new sponsors signed on to be part of this big and exciting sport they previously had no clue existed.

No doubt, Days of Thunder was entertaining; NASCAR fans would begin an ongoing debate about the film’s accuracy and which parts represent the “real” NASCAR. According to driver Kyle Petty, “Well, we both drive cars around tracks…and that’s about it.”

As much as Cruise wanted perfection, his best laid plans went astray in the editing suite. Dirty cars became clean around the next bend. Cole Trickle jumps into the car wearing black shoes and emerges with white ones. Cars magically switch positions in the running order. Harry Hogge’s cap changes logos mid scene. Most famously, at one point, Nicole Kidman’s character turns to Cole and calls him, “Tom.”

“That is one of the best continuity errors in film history,” said NBC Anchor Brian Williams. “I can watch Days of Thunder just waiting for Nicole Kidman to call her future husband, ‘Tom’.”

On the heels of Cruise and director Tony Scott’s runaway success with Top Gun, racing purists derisively called the film Top Car. They took umbrage at fantastic scenes like race cars built on a dirt-floor barn, drivers threatening one another over the radio, or when Cole spins out at Daytona but is able to get back to speed and pass other cars in only few laps.

“A lot of NASCAR fans thought the movie would be like a regular Sunday race with movie stars,” Dr. Punch said. “But Hollywood has to make it into a compelling story where boy meets girl. You can’t have all racing in that kind of film. And then you had a director (Tony Scott) who had made Top Gun, and wanted more demolition derby than NASCAR racing as we knew it. But they did the best they could, and it was a step ahead of Stoker Ace. For me, it’s a loveable campy look at our sport that gets more entertaining every year.”

On the track, filmgoers were drawn to a hefty share of fireworks that might not have reflected the real NASCAR each week but were nonetheless revolutionary at the time. The demolition crew put behind the drivers a sawed-off telephone pole attached to a half-stick of dynamite. The explosives would blow the pole into the ground, launching the car into an end-over-end barrel roll. Stunt drivers, who Rick Hendrick calls “absolutely crazy,” would on the director’s command hit a switch to deploy the bombs, making their cars go airborne. A sticker on the cars’ dashboards read: “PRESS BUTTON, TURN LEFT AND GOOD LUCK”.

Most NASCAR fans view Days, with its careening barrages of twisting metal and unmistakable Winston Cup engine noise, as mindless, shut-off-your-brain entertainment. Scott’s car-mounted cameras shot the fierce racing action so intimately, fans can practically smell the danger. “My favorite part of the movie is how they got the smoke to look in the corners,” said Rusty Wallace, NASCAR’s champion the year before Days started filming. “Going into the corner after someone’s blown an engine, it’s a wall of smoke. They captured on screen exactly how that looks to a driver.” In theaters, some fans rose from their seats when seeing Days’ old-school, put-up or shut-up, get-in-your-car-and-drive-the-wheels-off-it racing. Plus, the sound simply rocks; Days was nominated for an Oscar for “best sound.”

While Days of Thunder wasn’t the ideal racing movie the NASCAR community wanted, it was closer than what the sport had in a long while. There was no riding around in this film – the steel-smacking racing was absolutely fierce. And the relationship between upstart Cole Trickle and veteran Rowdy Burns captured the influx of fresh-faced drivers from different parts of the country about to change the sport.

Twenty years later, Greg Sacks still smiles when recalling how Tom Cruise would sneak skydiving jumps into the busy filming schedule. In all, Cruise secretly made dozens of jumps from Deland near Daytona International Speedway. Sacks tried it himself with Cruise and Tony Scott, the trio free-falling from 13,500 feet and landing in the track’s infield grass. To say the least, the money men behind the film, Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, were not pleased. “We were like three amigos landing in the grass,” Sacks said. “Tom had this completely mischievous look in his eyes.”

Rusty Wallace, who had a small role in the film playing a NASCAR driver, still watches Days from time to time to remember the brash, colorful Harry Hyde. With 55 wins of his own, Wallace is one of the sport’s greatest drivers. He took more than $50 million in purse money over his career but still appreciates the $5.60 royalty check which turns up in his mailbox like clockwork each month.

Tom Cruise would go on to make many more blockbusters, including and A Few Good Men, The Firm, Jerry Maguire, War of the Worlds, and the Mission Impossible franchise. Fifteen years later, he’d return to NASCAR races in Daytona and Auto Club Speedway outside of LA with his son, Connor, who has become an avid NASCAR fan. Cruise still hangs out at Rick Hendrick’s pit stall and sat at his friend’s table at the Waldorf=Astoria when the most successful team owner in NASCAR’s history celebrated Jimmie Johnson’s third straight championship. Looking back two decades to the NASCAR film he lovingly made, Cruise fondly recalls going hard into the corners and getting to know the very special people who were taking a regional sport into the mainstream.

“My personal Daytona memory is getting up close to 200 mph, personally driving on that track in the car, and meeting those drivers that I got to meet,” he said. “Making movies, I love it because I get to enter into a world and you meet these generous people. It’s a great life because I’m interested in life and in engaging in life, and to have those experiences I feel very privileged.”