Alan Kulwicki ~ Always a Champion

by: PattyKay Lilley

December 14, 1954 – April 1, 1993

*Author's note: At the end of the 2001 Daytona 500, I learned what it is like to lose one's favorite driver.  Alan Kulwicki was my husband's favorite, and this piece was written for him many years ago, at his request. It is offered again in 2012 in loving memory of Don and to commemorate the 19th anniversary of the day that God called home a Champion.

"I have a dream."  Those words live not only as a lasting reminder of the man who spoke them, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but as the driving force in the life of a stock car racer named Alan Kulwicki.

Alan did indeed have a dream, which started in high school in his hometown of Greenfield, Wisconsin, and it was no small dream.  Alan wanted to drive stock cars, but not just the Saturday night dirt track kind.  Winston Cup, the top circuit in the world for stockers was where he aspired to be, and not just as a racer, but as a car owner and a champion.  No small feat for a lad from the north, in what was then almost entirely a southern sport.