I've posted this story before on the site somewhere, but rather than try to search it down, I'll just give you a brief recap of the first.
I was April, 1967, and I had been serving abroad the USS Opportune, ARS-41, in the U.S. Navy since September, 1966. All of my shipmates were from Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and a couple from Ohio. My only "southern" shipmate was Ray Gentry from Danville, Virginia, but he wasn't too much into racing. All the guys from the aforementioned states were either fans of hockey, baseball, or football.
Of course, as all my friends through the years, they heard story after story after story of stock car racing and especially about Richard Petty. It just so happened that our ship was in port and I had liberty the weekend of the April 30, 1967, race on the half mile dirt track in Richmond. I also had my trusty 1961 Plymouth ready to rock from Norfolk to Richmond.
Several of my "northern" shipmates heard of my plans to go to the race and suddenly I had many wanting to go with me to see what it was all about. I had been "razzed" the entire time I was on the ship about Petty, because these guys who were hockey, baseball, and football fans had never even met one of the players they idolized. All of those "Yankees" were convinced all my talk of knowing Richard Petty was just that, talk. They had heard me talk enough, and read my racing papers and magazines enough to know that Petty was a star and that only added fuel to the conversation about there was no way I could know someone like Richard Petty.
We left the ship very early that morning to travel to Richmond. We got there, paid our tickets for the infield and drove in a parked sort of behind the pit fence towards turn one. We got our of the car and started to walk toward the pits, me and five of my shipmates. As we approached the fence, Richard, saw us coming and immediately walked over to the fence, reached through, shook my hand and asked how things were in the Navy. I introduced him to five suddenly very shy sailors and Richard took time to talk with each of them about where they were from.
Richard went on to win the race that afternoon. The conversation on the way back to base was quite different than it had been on the way to Richmond. These guys were hooked on stock car racing now. As my time passed on the Opportune, I made several more races and often two or three of the guys would come with me, to Darlington, Charlotte, Daytona, Rockingham, but it was the Richmond dirt track that brought them into the sport.
For several years after I was discharged, quite a few of the guys kept in touch. Many were thrilled when I started racing myself in 1969 but it was always about King Richard. I guess the last one I heard from was Wayne, from New York, who called me the day of Richard's last race in Atlanta in 1992. I did hear from another shipmate a couple of years ago but he had not attended the Richmond race with me. He was from Martinsville and actually lived within walking distance of the track. He came on board about four months before I was discharged but the connection with Martinsville kept us in touch. Funny how we went so many years without contact and then he suddenly calls one Sunday afternoon when they are racing at Martinsville and he talks for two hours. I guess it is true that racing brings folks together that sort of hang together for a long period of time.
I suppose it is all the emotion of Richard Petty returning to the track this weekend after losing Lynda, and that track being Richmond, that brought all this to my mind today. There is not a track on the circuit where I attended a race, and that is a good many of them, that does not bring back memories of times with so much emotion. The tracks, the cars, the friends I had back then. I can't begin to imagine the pain The King is handling after losing Lynda but he will, as always, preserve. The Pettys are like that. Then, again, so are most race fans.
Honor the past, embrace the present, dream for the future.
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What a change! It's been awhile since I've checked in and I'm quite surprised. It may take me awhile to figure it our but first look it's really great.
updated by @tim-leeming: 03/12/17 05:53:58AM
