[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 56 (Wednesday, April 28, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4490-S4491]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        IN TRIBUTE TO THE PETTYS

 Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, this year many of our colleagues 
are seeking the NASCAR vote, but I think it would be wise if each 
member in this body, instead, sought out the NASCAR heart.
  My neighbors in South Carolina are Pattie and Kyle Petty. In May 
2000, the Pettys faced a terrible tragedy, as their young son, Adam, 
the next great racing hope in the family, died during a practice 
session. Pattie and Kyle didn't retreat after that, but have worked 
ever since to bring Adam's dream of a camp for chronically ill children 
to reality. Many NASCAR drivers, owners, sponsors, and fans have 
contributed, and the Victory Junction Gang Camp will open its doors in 
June.
  I bring to the attention of my colleagues the following article from 
the April 23 USA Today, outlining the good work of the Petty family and 
I ask that it be printed in the Record.
  The article follows:

                    [From USA TODAY, Apr. 23, 2004]

              Legendary Racing Family Hopes To Turn Corner


            kyle petty helps make his son's dream a reality

                           (By Chris Jenkins)

       As a race car driver, Kyle Petty can't hope to match the 
     success of his father and grandfather. As an executive, he 
     can't hope to compete with NASCAR's mega-teams that have 
     millions more to spend on the best cars, drivers and 
     mechanics. As a father, he can't hope to put his son's death 
     in a racing accident nearly four years ago completely behind 
     him.
       But Petty does hope, and he seems to radiate hope to those 
     around him through his sincere nature and gentle, quick wit. 
     Other drivers might be better at turning left on the 
     racetrack. They don't have his gift for turning life's 
     negatives into positives.
       ``No matter how bad your day is, when you see Kyle, your 
     day's better,'' driver Tony Stewart says. ``He tells you a 
     silly joke that makes you laugh or something that makes you 
     feel better.''
       Petty, 43, gets angry--furious, actually--when he and his 
     cars don't measure up. And he recently woke up crying in the 
     middle of the night, missing his son, Adam.
       But in the right-hand column of Petty's emotional ledger is 
     the camaraderie he feels with others in the NASCAR community, 
     optimism that his family's team eventually will return to 
     victory lane and, above all, the completion of Adam's dream: 
     a $20 million-plus retreat for chronically ill children.
       ``I've always been incredibly optimistic that as bad as it 
     is, it's got to get better,'' Petty says.
       It would be easy to dwell on what might have been. Had Adam 
     Petty lived, many in NASCAR believe his electric talent and 
     sponsor-friendly personality would have driven the Petty 
     Enterprises team back to the prominence it once enjoyed. 
     Petty doesn't allow such thoughts: ``If you do, you'll just 
     go crazy.''
       Kyle's father, seven-time NASCAR champion Richard Petty, 
     66, says it took years for Kyle's upbeat personality to 
     resurface. ``It took him a long time to get over it,'' 
     Richard says, pausing to reconsider his use of the phrase 
     ``over it.''
       ``Not to get over it. To get it beside of him instead of in 
     front of him.''
       Says Stewart: ``I think when you see what Kyle's been 
     through as a person, a lot of people at that point would kind 
     of retreat and kind of put themselves in their own little 
     hole and shut themselves out from the rest of the world.
       ``With Kyle and (wife) Pattie, it's just the opposite. He's 
     such a positive person that you can't help gravitate toward 
     people like him and you want to be surrounded by people like 
     him.''


                          ``Camp'' a misnomer

       A tour of the Victory Junction Gang Camp, a retreat in 
     rural Randleman, N.C., for chronically ill children, revealed 
     two minor flaws.
       The first is in its name: A ``camp'' has shoddy log cabins, 
     leaky canoes and a slimy pond. This place feels more like a 
     trendy suburban subdivision. There are new buildings--a 
     theater, a gym, a pool and more--trimmed in bright colors and 
     stainless steel, resort-quality guest cottages and medical 
     facilities where volunteer doctors will care for campers' 
     special needs.
       The second flaw, pointed out by Kyle and Pattie Petty, is a 
     bent pedestrian bridge girder that was rammed by an errant 
     delivery truck. It's March, three months before the camp is 
     to open. This setback doesn't seem to be stressful. Instead, 
     the Pettys laugh, reminded of the time Adam, at 15, 
     accidentally mangled the family van by running into an 
     overhang at his grandfather's house.
       Fond stories about Adam, the only one of the Pettys' three 
     children who seriously pursued a driving career, still waft 
     through the garage. Once he was spotted carrying a briefcase 
     around the infield, an accessory not often associated with 
     drivers. Bystanders couldn't let that oddity pass without 
     comment, so they asked him what he was carrying. Grinning, he 
     opened the briefcase to reveal a hairbrush and some gum.
       For Kyle, almost anything can trigger memories. ``The way 
     the sun shines, the way you see a car on the racetrack,'' he 
     says. ``I'll hear somebody holler, say a name and turn around 
     expecting to see Adam standing there. And it just tweaks you 
     just right. And it hurts you. And it just breaks your heart.
       ``And I'm not the only person in this boat, believe me. 
     There's plenty of other families out all over this country 
     who have lost kids. I'm sure they all feel the same way.''
       Adam died in May 2000 during a practice session at New 
     Hampshire International Speedway. NASCAR officials determined 
     that he died of a neck injury, the same type that would kill 
     Dale Earnhardt nine months later. Drivers now are required to 
     wear safety collars that help prevent neck injuries, and the 
     wall Adam hit is covered with an impact-absorbing barrier 
     system.
       Kyle Petty doesn't blame NASCAR. He knows it might sound 
     odd to outsiders, but being around racers offers ``a lot of 
     comfort.''
       The camp embraces racing as its theme. Used race cars will 
     be suspended from the cafeteria ceiling. An obstacle course 
     is built from tires. One building looks like a giant race 
     car--Adam's car. ``Racing is all Adam knew,'' Petty says.
       Often when something is done in someone's memory, it is 
     said he or she would have wanted it this way. In Adam's case, 
     this is literally true: After helping his sponsor, Sprint, 
     promote a product that allowed kids in different hospitals to 
     communicate, Adam became determined to do something else for 
     those kids--even if, as his grandfather says, that meant 
     offering to sign over the rights to his winnings for the next 
     20 years to a loan officer if he'd lend Adam the money to 
     build a camp. But the project never got rolling until after 
     his death.
       ``Most 19-year-old kids (are) looking out for themselves,'' 
     Richard says. ``And he was, don't get me wrong. But he had 
     feelings for other kids, too. So that just inspired us that 
     much more, that it was his idea originally. We're going to do 
     it come heck or high water.''
       NASCAR and many of its drivers, team owners and sponsors 
     have chipped in for the camp, which will welcome its first 
     group in June; Stewart has pledged to raise at least $1 
     million. Fans have donated money and time. Nursing home 
     groups have sent box loads of handmade teddy bears and 
     quilts, gifts to campers.
       The project is personal to rookie driver Brian Vickers, who 
     befriended Adam and the other Petty children, brother Austin, 
     22, and sister Montgomery, 18. All four grew up attending the 
     same home-schooling classes from a tutor. Vickers isn't 
     comfortable talking about Adam and doesn't mention the 
     significant donation he's quietly making to the camp.
       Asked if Adam was talented enough to become a star, Vickers 
     looks at the floor and says, ``Yeah.''


                           Team loses ground

       Most of today's big-time racing teams have moved into 
     gleaming buildings designed to attract tourists and impress 
     sponsors in suburban Charlotte. Then there's Petty 
     Enterprises' humble jumble of white shacks in Randleman, a 
     town short on stoplights and long on religious radio 
     programming.
       Founded in 1949 by Kyle's grandfather, NASCAR pioneer Lee 
     Petty, then made famous by Richard, the team has won 268 
     races and 10 NASCAR championships. Most of that success came 
     before the NASCAR boom of the 1990s. When corporate America 
     began waking up to the popularity of NASCAR in the late 
     1980s, Richard was past his prime, though he'd drive until 
     1992.
       Other teams were winning races, so they landed big 
     sponsors. Having more money allowed those teams to develop 
     technology to make their cars faster.
       The Pettys fell behind; they've won three races since 1984, 
     none since '99. Adam was supposed to change that. When he 
     died, the promise of a young driver who could rally 
     crewmembers and attract sponsorships died with him. ``We had 
     a lot of stuff lined up around how we were going to do his 
     career and stuff like that,'' Richard says. ``So when the 
     accident happened, everything just went into limbo. For six 
     months or a year there, we just basically survived.''
       Today the team, which fields cars for Kyle and journeyman 
     Jeff Green, 41, has funding from Georgia-Pacific and General 
     Mills, plus associate sponsors. It's significant money (exact 
     amounts are not disclosed), but nowhere near what marquee 
     teams command.
       But the team's problems might not all be financial. Years 
     ago it was common for drivers to run teams. As the business 
     of racing became more complex, other teams added layers of 
     management. Today Petty is the only driver with a major team 
     who has extensive executive responsibilities.

[[Page S4491]]

       ``Definitely, he tries to handle way, way too much,'' says 
     Robbie Loomis, who worked for the Pettys before becoming Jeff 
     Gordon's crew chief in 2001. ``He's good at about everything, 
     but when you get stretched so thin and get pulled in so many 
     directions, it's hard to tell what direction to go in.''
       Petty says he enjoys being busy but concedes that the 
     return of Dale Inman, the crew chief for Richard Petty's 
     championship teams, is making his job easier. Although Inman 
     is 67 and can't offer much in the way of technical advice, 
     Petty says Inman's presence helps crewmembers believe the 
     team can win. Petty compares it to Joe Gibbs returning to 
     coach the NFL's Washington Redskins.
       Although Petty says this isn't his last season as a driver, 
     Loomis says Petty's retirement could be the first major step 
     toward a team resurgence. When Petty stops driving and 
     focuses on running the team, Loomis says, ``You're going to 
     see a whole new Petty Enterprises.''
       The team is improving slowly; Petty's recent 12th-place 
     finish at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was cause for mild 
     celebration. The lack of research-and-development money 
     continues to show, as Petty and Green finish in the bottom 
     half of the field most of the time.
       Though nice guys, as the saying goes, might finish last, 
     that doesn't mean they have to like it; a disappointing race 
     can transform Petty from friendly to fierce. But his 
     outbursts aren't without perspective and don't last long.
       ``I can deal with how we run a lot better, sometimes, 
     because of Adam,'' Petty says. ``Because nothing is as bad as 
     Adam, no matter what. I can go to the racetrack, run dead 
     last. I can go to the racetrack, not make the race. That's 
     still not the worst day.''
                                  ____



                   gang camp's aim: helping sick kids

       About the Victory Junction Gang Camp:
       Campers will be grouped according to the disease they have 
     been diagnosed with; a group of children with hemophilia will 
     visit the camp June 20-25, and seven other groups of children 
     will visit during the camp's eight-week season.
       Campers, ages 7-15, will be selected based on their 
     doctors' recommendations and will not pay a fee to attend.
       The camp is seeking volunteer counselors and donations.
       Online: www.victoryjunction.org.

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