ON THE DEATH OF
DALE EARNHARDT

I don't follow racing. I'm not a big fan of the sport. I was, of course, saddened to hear of Dale Earnhardt Sr.'s death even though I did not follow his career. My wife, Pam, said, "Isn't that a shame." when we heard it on the news last night.

I stopped being any kind of a race fan since Indy in 1964. My Uncle Richard Emert was a huge Indy car fan. He used to take my father and I out to the Hatfield Speedway, a dirt track for Indy midget racers from the late 50s to the 60s. Richard would always get passes which, allowed us to go down into the pits and meet the drivers and their crews.

As a kid (I was 16 at the time) cars held little fascination for me, but talking to the drivers did. Knowing the people involved made a difference. I had autographs from A.J. Foyt, Roger Ward, Dan Gurney, and Parnell Jones, but my favorite driver was the veteran Eddy Sachs. Eddy always took the time to shake my hand and stand and talk to me and answer my questions. And that's saying something because drivers are extremely busy in the pits before qualifying runs. So I got to know Eddy on a personal basis.

During the 48th running of the Indianapolis 500, Eddie Sachs and rookie driver Dave McDonald were killed. Reports called it, "A spectacle of the magnificent and the macabre." The deaths were blamed on gasoline and few drivers used it after this race, most switching to methanol as a fuel. In the photo of the Sachs accident below, you can see the flames and black smoke that shot high into the air when his car exploded.

Not only did my friend Eddy Sachs die that day, but so did my enjoyment of the sport of auto racing. I haven't watched a race since. A.J. Foyt won at Indy in 1964. His comments after the race said it all, "I am sorry those guys died. We are all sorry they died. That is racing."

The death of Dale Earnhardt Sr. yesterday underscored those remarks. Over the years, things change and things remain the same. One thing that has changed, unfortunately, is the reactions of fans. Instead of only mourning the loss of a great driver, thousands of racing fans decided that blame for the accident should fall upon another driver who bumped Earnhardt's car just as it went into it's spin into the wall. The bumping incident was no worse than thousands of similar incidents that occur in racing at tracks around the world. But many fans decided this driver was responsible for the death of Dale Earnhardt, and they flooded his Web site with abusive hate mail. So much so, in fact, that the site had to be shut down. There was even a death threat sent to his email box. Obviously this uncalled for behavior is a disgrace to racing fans everywhere.