The story behind the scar of Norfolk's early NASCAR hero
Stock Car Racing History
Interesting find Dennis. Story hits a bit close to home too. In early 1960s, four young men were riding in a car in southern, middle Tennessee. I don't know all the details. But I understand someone pulled out in front of their car, and the car's driver had no time to stop. The two in the front seat were killed. The man in the back seat behind the driver suffered a badly broken leg. The man in the back seat behind the front-seat passenger was launched through the front windshield. The broken glass severed his left leg badly, and doctors could not save it.
The 2 survivors were hospitalized together in a semi-private room. The sister of the man with the broken leg came to visit her brother and met his one-legged buddy recovering in the other bed. From that meeting, they saw each other a bit more after he was discharged. And on December 21, 1963, they married.
That one-legged man is my father. His broken-leg buddy became my uncle Ronald - and was the man who introduced me to racing in 1974.
Daddy also still has a wristwatch from that wreck after all these years. He said if flew off his wrist - apparently as he sailed through the windshield. Someone found it, and it still worked despite a scratched crystal. Somehow it found its way back to him.
