This post originally was listed on the Diecast Discussions board
late last year. Given the significance of July seventh, I felt it
appropriate to share here.


The northern edge of Indianapolis is much like the outskirts of many
big cities these days, a recent absorption of farmland now buried
underneath strip malls and lookalike housing developments. The
usual satellite suburbs dot the landscape, enclaves for yuppiefied
office dwellers who strive to be in the city but not of it. It's
tempting to subscribe to the cynic's voice and decry the scene as
ersatz country living, but such smug generalizations are as shallow
as the manmade parks developers insist on building in such areas in
lieu of preserving the patches of nature that were already there,
legacies of the soil workers who handed down the land through
generations until the current one cashed in their family history for
a piece of Starbucks culture. Such places are what their residents
make them to be, and should they choose SUVs and latte living, it is
their right.

On one of the straight-edge streets that pass for major
thoroughfares in such places, one sees what one expects to see:
impressive homes separated from the road by massive front yards that
make even the stoutest lawn tractor earn its keep, the occasional
school here, the odd store or gas station or apartment complex for
yuppie wannabes there. A few yards away from an intersection, a
driveway somewhat wider than the norm presents itself, flanked on
both sides by stonework signs bearing bronze plaques announcing the
location.

Oaklawn Memorial Gardens.

The gravesite of Kenny Irwin Jr.

We were there on a sunny Saturday afternoon in late September of
2001, my brother and I. In all honesty I shouldn't have been there
at all, so far from my California home. The horror of September
11th had caused me to cancel a business trip to Atlanta that week,
thereby also eliminating a plan to swing through Indiana on my way
back. However, family must come before all, so I reached into my
own pocket to pay for a weekend flight so I could fulfill my promise
to visit my mother and oldest brother after the now-abandoned trip.

It had already been a long day for my brother and I, starting with
my first visit to our beloved father's grave since his passing away
in May of 1999. The emotions were still raw as a few hours later we
made our way from sleepy Greencastle through thirty miles of quiet
farms and tiny towns until we reached our destination. We both
noted earlier in the journey having glimpsed what would be the next
day's eagerly anticipated place of visitation: the RCA Dome, where I
would finally see my Colts play a home game. However, this was for
tomorrow. Today was for another purpose, a purpose that as soon as
I knew I was going to Indiana became a personal obligation owed to
someone I had never known.

The pleasant woman inside the cemetery office smiled at my inquiry
as she handed me a map and circled our destination. We walked up
the path she told us to take, commenting how the relative newness of
the cemetery -- it was opened in the early '50s -- left it minus the
ostentatious crypts that marked most Indiana graveyards, which
usually date back to the nineteenth century. It could have used
some more trees, but it was impeccably maintained; all in all as
pleasant a place as could be designed given its thankless task.

We continued up the gently curving path, following the map as it led
to a tree isolated in a small island marking where the path became
two. All was quiet; with the exception of one car off in the
distance we had the place to ourselves. We went to the left, walked
a few more yards, and then left the path by stepping onto the thick
green grass, quietly gazing upon the brass markers below. A few
more feet, and we had arrived. Now absolutely silent, we saw what I
had come two thousand miles to see. Rather, not what, but who.

Kenny Irwin Jr.'s grave marker is a simple bronze slab. A
photograph of an awkwardly smiling youth is mounted underneath a
glass seal, with a swinging bronze cover providing additional
protection from the elements. Some mention is made of his racing
career, but no listing of his accomplishments is given: USAC Sprint
Car Rookie Of The Year in 1993, USAC Silver Crown Car Rookie Of The
Year in 1994, USAC Midget Car Champion in 1996, NASCAR Winston Cup
Rookie Of The Year in 1998. Instead, prominence is given to
personal traits: son, brother, friend. Then and only then, race car
driver. Beneath this, words from a hymn: "Our God is an awesome
God, He reigns from heaven above with wisdom, power and love."

Some crumbling mementos lay at the top of the marker, left there by
the loving few. A rubber 42, the car number he drove when he died,
cut out by hand of white rubber and sitting on a base of oval discs
in the colors of the Bell South sponsored car that was his. A faded
photograph of a broadly smiling young woman, wearing her obviously
hand painted "happy birthday Kenny" t-shirt. A weathered Winners
Circle logo pin. Last and most touching of all, a handmade child's
bracelet, its string broken, spelling out I MISS YOU KENNY 42. I
knelt down and carefully moved the bracelet, rearranging its message
into place where the letters had begun to shift out of line.

So why was I here? I had already dealt that day with visiting the
most personal, painful burial place imaginable. Why remind myself
of others' loss? And I wasn't there because I was a Kenny Irwin Jr.
fan. Oh, he seemed like a nice enough kid; I remember a brief
appearance he made on QVC once during the Batman and Joker special
paint scheme promotion he ran with then-teammate Dale Jarrett where
he came off as polite, well-spoken and pleasant. But a fan? No.
That wasn't why I was here. Paying respects to a member of the
sport I dearly love? Possibly, but there are many other fallen
drivers I could go and pay my respects to. So why was I here? Why
was I now fighting tears?

I knew why.

It was the right thing to do.

When Kenny Irwin Jr. died in an accident during practice at the New
Hampshire Motor Speedway on July seventh of last year, the racing
community and overwhelming majority of fans who before that day had
derided him as a hack driver who shouldn't be in a Winston Cup car
collectively clucked their tongues, said "gee what a shame," and
then checked their schedule to see what time the race would start
that Sunday. There was no tribute lap, no silence at lap 42, no one
holding up four and two fingers as they stood to honor him. No
massive floral displays of his car number, no one wearing his team
hat, no plans for a memorial in his home town, and other than small
stickers on the cars during the next race, no mention that he had
ever been alive. There was no intense study of the fatal accident,
no safety mandates from NASCAR as a result of the crash. No one --
no one -- save his team owner Felix Sabatas and to the surprise of
many Tony Stewart, Irwin's arch rival across the dirt tracks of
Indiana where they both honed their craft, seemed to really care all
that much that a young man was dead.

Long after the fact, an embittered Kenny Irwin Sr. spoke. He told
of the people he never knew existed who had contacted him after his
son's death, telling him of his son's generosity and charity work on
their behalf. He talked about how this news surprised him not in
his son having done so, but in that his son, not only a son but also
a best friend, had never mentioned he was doing these things. He
spoke of the pride he felt the day in 1997 his son was announced as
the driver starting the following year of the #28 Texaco car, the
car made famous by the late Davey Allison and then Ernie Irvan. He
talked about how his son took his eventual dismissal from the ride
far better than he did, reassuring his Dad that it'd be all right.
Above all, he spoke of his son: his best friend, a young man of
faith, and how that shared faith had carried him through the
unspeakable agony of performing the act no father in his worst
nightmare envisions: not preparing for the eventual, inevitable day
where he would be buried by his son, but rather burying his son. It
wasn't fair.

It still wasn't fair, and never would be fair. It never will be
fair. The racing world had demanded the rest of the world stop when
its favorite son died this past February, not ceasing its
caterwauling over the single greatest tragedy in the history of
mankind (or so it would seem given the never-ending maudlin sap
parade at every race) until September 11th... and even then the
meaningless tributes and ghoulish merchandising continued unabated.
Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Irwin grieved alone, politely ignored by the
racing world in which their son had lost his life, a loss to which
the response seemed to be "we don't care."

As I knelt down beside the marker and carefully rearranged the
child's bracelet, many emotions stirred deep within. Shame, at how
callously and flippantly I had once viewed the men and women who
risked death every time they strapped themselves into a race car.
Resolve, a dedication to never again take these people for granted.
The knowledge that it was no cliché to say I would never watch
racing the same way again, now forever mindful of the very real,
very fragile humanity behind the machines and high-speed
competition. But above all else -- far above all else -- I felt a
quiet emptiness at the realization, the full impact of the reality
before me. This was no longer an image on a television or pictures
on a Web page. This was cold, final truth. A young man's body laid
in the ground beneath me, a young man who loved to race cars that I
watched every Sunday, cars of which I collected little diecast metal
replicas. Now he was dead, and I would never see him race again.
His family would never see him again. And no matter how fervently
one believes in eternal life for those who believe, the quiet
emptiness of loss remains.

I said goodbye to Kenny Irwin Jr., told him how by the grace of our
God I hope to meet him in heaven one day, and asked him to forgive
me. I then stood up as my brother said goodbye to him as well, and
then we left, my brother and I. I felt shaken, yet I was okay with
that. It was good to be shaken. For I had done what I knew I had
to do.

I had done the right thing.