Where do we go from here?

     By now, the numbness has begun to wear off and the realization is starting to set in: We will never see Dale Earnhardt drive a Winston Cup stock car again, ever.

     I’ve often wondered what it would be like when Earnhardt was gone. But that was different, in that scenario Dale would retire but still be at the track, still around the sport, perhaps sitting on a pit box coaching his son or one of the other drivers from DEI. One could picture him on top of the box along pit road during a race, headset covering his hat looking much like Richard Petty does today. That scenario would have been much easier to swallow had it come about.

     But dear God in Heaven, not this.

     When Dale retired I expected a short, one paragraph announcement at the end of the season. No fan appreciation tour, no hoopla, nothing.

     But now Dale, this 2001 season will become your fan appreciation tour.

     At every venue that races Winston Cup this season you will be remembered. By fans, media, officials and competitors, your name, image and likeness will be everywhere.

     I didn’t cry until I saw the haulers.

      The haulers came by the corner of Bill France Blvd and International Speedway Blvd. Escorted by a single police motorcycle. First came the hauler for Michael Waltrip, followed by Dale Earnhardt, then Dale Earnhardt junior. The sad parade came past slowly in the still Florida night on ‘Black Sunday’, as if to pay a final tribute. I did the first thing that came to me, I came to attention and rendered a military salute.

          And then I cried.

     Very few people were ever let into Dale’s inner circle, I wasn’t one of them. Very few people in fact, ever knew, really knew, the man behind the number three. Sure we can tell you how many races he’s won, the names and birthdays of his children, his own birthday and where he was born, but in reality, very few people were ever really close to the man himself. Despite this, we all feel as though we’ve lost a member of our own family. That’s the kind of effect he had on us, Dale Earnhardt was our uncle, brother, father and friend.

     A working class hero for the common man, that’s how he’s being remembered.

     Because Dale represents the last vestige of NASCAR that many of us have fond memories of and now that vestige is gone.

     Yes there are others in the sport who have been around as long as he was, but none have had the impact of the 'Intimidator' and the era he represents.

      That name, Dale Earnhardt, the 'Intimidator', causes a long time fan remember a time when drivers gave no quarter, on or off the track. The media was secondary. The contest of a man trying to drive a race car to the ragged edge, trying to squeeze out one more mile per hour, came first.

      Todays ‘cookie-cutter’ driver needs to have as much talent in front of a camera as he does behind the wheel.

      The era that Dale represents harkens back to a time when Richard Petty was still running, and winning, races, Petty in the twilight of a domination of the sport that will likely never be seen again. Darrell Waltrip was the ‘Muhammad Ali’of the pits and men like Junior Johnson still held court in the garage.

      In that era, an independent driver with little more than big dreams, could have an impact and win a Winston Cup. Men nearly forty years old could come into the sport for the first time and win races, and fan, earning the title of 'Mr. September' along the way.

      The images of men with names like Fireball Roberts and Tiny Lund were still fresh in the mind, along with the memories of their on and off track antics. It wasn’t too many years before when rental cars sometimes ended up in hotel pools.

     And now Dale joins that list.

      With Dale Earnhardt gone, that era now comes to an end. He leaves the sport much different than when he started, huge, growing fan bases and millions of sponsor dollars have seen to that.

      There can be arguments made all day long about that changes that the sport has seen in the last twenty years. Are they all bad or good? Some good, some bad? A mixture perhaps.

      One thing is certain, with Dale Earnhardt gone, that era of Nascar, the era some of us grew up with, will have to be allowed to fade from our memories.

     We'll always have our safety net, the basic premise of the sport that will still be there: The basic premise that will compel men to take their finely tuned, highly engineered machines to the ragged edge, to try and squeeze out one more mile per hour, to run in front of the pack. And at the end of a long, hot day be the one to stand in victory lane and be a part of the greatest and largest spectacle in motorsports.

     And we’ll always have the memories of a simple man who rose from nothing to affect millions of lives with joy, excitement and in the end, a profound sense of loss and sadness.

     Those of us who are his fans, will always remember, always have a light in our hearts for him. For us, there will never be another Dale Earnhardt.

     Right after it happened and the worst nightmare one could imagine came true, I was mad as hell at NASCAR as evidenced by my first post on this page eariler this week. But now, in hindsight, I realize that no one is to blame.

     The drivers and NASCAR know what all of us fans who’ve been around the sport for awhile know: No matter how much you sugar coat it, no matter how much glitz and glamour you disguise it with, no matter how many pretty cars you line up on Sunday, the basic fact remains: auto racing is a dangerous game. And if you’re not careful it’ll reach out and bite you, sometimes with fatal consequences, indifferent to who you are or how big an icon you might be in America..

     There have been a lot of ‘what if’s’ since it happened; What if he’d been wearing the HANS device? What if he hadn’t tried to block the others so his friend Michael Waltrip and his son could finish first and second, showing us in the end what kind of man he really was, unselfish, sometimes putting others before him?

     All the ‘what if’s in the world aren’t going to bring him back, though, so what’s the sense? Perhaps it’s the sense that we now need to make sure we take every step necessary to ensure that racing is as safe as possible, so that nothing like this ever happens again. So let’s not be angry, because I have no doubt that NASCAR will do just that.

     Now is the time for us all to pull together. Whoever you cheer for. Let’s all be NASCAR fans first and fans of individual drivers, second. Because there’s sure to be a firestorm of controversy from the outside world. And we’ll lose some fans along the way. But only by coming together as one will this sport survive. Because eventually the pain and sadness will fade and be overshadowed by that basic premise that drew us to NASCAR in first place.

     Most of all let’s never lose sight of the fact that NASCAR is just a sport. And while we fans have lost a driver, a wife has lost a husband and four kids have lost their daddy. Let’s respect that and give them the room they need, for how ever long that might take.

     So, what does happen now?

     Life goes on, that’s the sad thing about losing someone close to you. Those of us who are left behind have to pick ourselves up and go on. We still have to get up and go to work, school... or the racetrack.

     This Sunday, the command will go out to fire up the engines and race. It has to, we have to go on, there is no other way.

     That doesn’t mean we have to like it. The tears will still be there for some time, the sadness will still be evident, but eventually we’ll have only the good memories.

     That’s the strange thing when a tragedy happens, eventually you remember only the good times. The smile under the bushy moustache (or that bare face for the short time the moustache wasn’t there). The Daytona win, the pride of a father in victory lane after his son’s first win at Texas. The image of him smiling and waving to the crowd as he was introduced, then making the walk down pit road to his car one last time.

     I won’t be at Rockingham this weekend, probably won’t even watch the race, it still hurts too much. Eventually though, I’ll jump back on this website, re-launch it in a new format and go back to a racetrack. Because life will go on. We’ll find other drivers to cheer for, I’ll find other things to write about, and NASCAR will still be NASCAR.

     But there’ll never be another Dale Earnhardt.

Thanks for your time,be strong... and pray.
Greg Engle 

An Open Letter to Dale Earnhardt

     Dear Mr. Earnhardt,

     Several weeks ago I wrote a letter to you criticizing your decision not to attend the T. Wayne Robertson preview in Winston-Salem North Carolina. Now after the events of the last few days, I look back and realize what a stupid, selfish idiot I was.

     In other words, what the hell was I thinking?

     In that letter I may have led you to believe that you owed us, your fans, something after all the years of us following you. In hindsite, I now realize that it is I who owe you something sir:

     I owe you a debt of thanks.

     A sincere and heartfelt thanks for all wonderful years of memories you gave to me and all NASCAR fans.

     When I think back to when you first started in stock-car racing, I remember how you put your competition on notice that you weren’t going to be pushed around. When the other drivers pushed you, you pushed back, earning the nickname the "Intimidator"

     I’ve seen you get into car when others would be flat on their back, but you, despite pain that would cause a mortal man to faint, you drove on, earning another moniker "Ironman".

     Over the years I’ve seen you do things with a stock car that no one thought was humanly possible. Charging through the middle of the pack at Talladega, man no one can ‘feel’ the air the way you did.

     The memories of the thrill of watching you come through the field and winning a race when others had counted you out.

     I’ll always have the memory of my daughter, then just two years old sitting on a certain someone’s lap inside one of your old Monte Carlos at the RCR shop in Welcome North Carolina in 1991.

     Also the memories of:

     You crawling out from beneath the wreckage of your car at Pocono after tangling with Tim Richmond, only to return to drive again shortly thereafter, broken kneecap and all.

     The smile you gave my four year old son, this past January at Daytona before testing.

     The one and only handshake I ever got from you. I was always too nervous to ever say anything to you when I did see you, I used to say that it "wasn’t the right time", when in fact now that I think about, maybe I felt as though I were in the presence of greatness.

     Giving me the ‘Sharpie’ you had used to sign autographs with behind the stage, just before you went up for a pre-race driver introduction.

     A pat on the back when you passed me once in the garage.

     A dousing from a water pistol in the pits.

     Giving your neighbors, farmers who had lost everything in a flood, seeds(at your expense) so they could re-plant thier crops.

     The last memory: Holding off the compitition so Michael Waltrip and your son could finish one and two in the Daytona 500. Maybe you could have set yourself up to win, I know you had the talent to, but instead you unselfishly put yourself in a position to allow someone who’d never known it, the thrill of standing in a victory lane.

     I was lucky over the years to have an access that most fans don’t. Instead of being grateful for that, I felt it gave me some kind of right to "take you to task" for what I thought was a certain ‘snobbiness’ towards your fans.

     Sometimes, you have to remember that some of us may have felt we were being snubbed when we saw you in person, when actually by your very nature you’re a very shy, private person.

     So what we saw as an upturned nose, was in reality, just you being you.

     I now know that all the stuff of yours that I’ve bought over the years, the shirts, the hats, you name it, mean nothing to you, not because you don’t care about us, because I think somewhere, you do, but because you care about only one thing, driving a race car. I know that nothing else matters to you and if you took away all the money, all the fame, you’d still do what you do best, drive a race car.

     I also know that this letter comes two days too late, and that’s a guilt I’ll carry with me the rest of my days.

     So I hope that somehow, you’ll accept something I’ve never before done. See I’m a writer, someone who stands behind what I write. And over the years when I’ve written something that happens to not be agreeable to all sides, I’ve had the courage to not back down, because my view, is just that, my view. But this time it’s different, because in all the years I’ve done this, I want to tell you something I thought I would never tell anyone that I’d written negativly about:

     I’m sorry.

     God bless you Dale Earnhardt...and thanks for the memories.

Greg Engle

Ps. God, you took someone who was very special to us. We haven’t yet quite figured out why, but You, in your infinite wisdom, decided it was time and through our faith in You, perhaps some day we’ll know the reason, but let me give you a friendly little word of advice: Don’t get him ‘riled up, because Dale Earnhardt is the one of the few people who, if you pushed him, would sure as heck not be afraid to push you back.