Pettys try to move on

Michael Vegas

Sunday, July 2, 2000 | 2:51 a.m.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Kyle Petty was in London attending an equestrian event with his 14-year-old daughter, Montgomery Lee, when he got the phone call every parent fears most.

Mike Helton, NASCAR's chief operating officer and senior vice president, was on the line from New Hampshire International Speedway with the devastating news that 19-year-old Adam Petty, Kyle's son, had been killed driving his Busch Series car during practice May 12.

Helton reported Adam had been killed when the throttle of his car had apparently become stuck as the vehicle entered Turn 3. With virtually no time to react, Adam was sent into the wall.

Thursday, in an interview in the lounge of his team's hauler at Daytona International Speedway, Kyle Petty put on a brave face and remained remarkably composed as he discussed a wide range of topics, all related to his late son.

"Is it something I dread? No, I don't dread it," said Petty, of discussing the accident. "I mean, I like to talk about Adam. In a lot of ways, when I talk about him, then I feel like he's still here. I don't have that problem. It's not like I don't want anybody to talk about him, because I don't want you to not talk about him, in any way, shape or form. I don't dread it, though."

Petty talked about the future of Petty Enterprises, the difficult decision to return to the track and drive Adam's No. 45 Sprint-sponsored Busch car for the remainder of the season, the impact of Adam's death on a family that has suffered a string of tragic events in the last year, his thoughts on the NASCAR Winston Cup race at NHIS next Sunday, and the struggle to make it through each day while shepherding his racing team and his family through this difficult period.

"I get up in the morning and I look to the afternoon, and once I get through the afternoon I look to the night," he said, while wearing a black No. 45 cap as a reminder of his son. "Once the night comes, I'm looking to the next morning. I'm not thinking that far ahead on where I'm going next week or where I'm going in two weeks or three weeks. It's just, 'Where am I going to be tomorrow?' I know for the next two or three days I'm going to be here (at Daytona), and then I'll go from there."

After driving in Saturday night's Pepsi 400 at Daytona, Petty flew to Milwaukee, where he is scheduled to drive Adam's No. 45 car in a Busch Series race Sunday.

Beyond that, it's a day-to-day proposition. Petty is focused on the precious present. The needs of his wife Pattie, his 18-year-old son Austin, who is spending the summer working as a lifeguard at a camp for sick children 30 miles south of here, and Montgomery Lee have superseded all others, even his own. Family decisions now dictate the course of his day and his schedule.

That's why he has not allowed himself to be consumed with thoughts about a return next Sunday to NHIS, where his son was killed. Adam would have celebrated his 20th birthday July 10, the day after the Loudon race.

"I haven't thought about it, and I know that sounds bizarre, to think that we haven't thought about it, but we really haven't because, like I say, I think a lot of factors go into what we do," Petty said. "It goes into what I do every week."

So, as of now, NHIS is not even registered on Kyle Petty's radar.

He figures he'll cross that bridge once he gets to it.

To illustrate the point, Petty told the story of a former garagehand who worked at Petty Enterprises, Bruce Owens, who was killed on North Carolina Highway 62 while driving to the Krogh Brothers Busch shop.

"I travel Highway 62 every day and once every couple of months I think about him when I cross the bridge where he got killed," Petty said. "Do I look at it and do I say, 'Well, when I go back to New Hampshire I will think about it?' I don't know, because I don't think about it every time I go there; I just cross this bridge.

"Will I think about it every lap? Or will I think about it the first time I get there? Or will I think about it on the last lap, or on the first lap, or will I think about it 20,000 laps down the road? I don't know. I can't answer that question."

But does he really want to go back to New Hampshire?

"I really haven't talked to any of the doctors or the nurses (in Concord, N.H.) that were at the hospital with Adam, and I haven't really talked to any of the guys from the rescue squad who were there," Petty said. "I'd really like to talk to all of those people and tell them, just knowing they were there, how important it was to me.

"I talked to (NHIS owner) Bob Bahre from the racetrack; he called a couple of times. He's an incredibly nice man. If all Winston Cup promoters were as nice as he was, it would probably be the greatest sport in the world, not one of the greatest sports. Everybody in New Hampshire has gone over and beyond everything. The people in New Hampshire have always been incredible race fans, and I like the racetrack.

"I don't look at the racetrack and say, 'That's what killed Adam.' I don't look at the state of New Hampshire and say, 'That's what killed Adam.' I don't look at any of that. That's not the way I look at it. Eventually, I know it could've happened here (at Daytona) or at Charlotte or anywhere.

It isn't just a sobering reality of the sport, but of life in general.

That much has hit home with the Pettys in the last year, a trying time that has put their faith through the ultimate test. Last year, Pattie's father died. Then, last summer, their beach home near Charleston, S.C., burned to the ground. Three days after Adam made his Winston Cup debut at Texas Motor Speedway, becoming the family's fourth generation driver, Lee Petty, the 85-year-old patriarch, died April 5 after he had been in failing health following abdominal surgery.

"I don't think I've ever questioned, 'Why did this ever happen to us, God?' " Petty said. "If you're going to question, you have to (ask), 'Why, God, did you ever put us in racecars to begin with? Why did you bless our family in so many different ways?'

"When bad things happen, people question their faith, or they question what went wrong. But when something good happens, they never question it. You've got to look at both sides, and I think you've got to think about things like that. I think I do.

"The way I look at a lot of things that have happened since the accident, in a lot of ways I look at it that it was a blessing (Adam) was here for 19 years, and that we had him here (for) the time that we had him. I don't think Pattie, I don't think Austin, or Montgomery Lee, has ever questioned why did this ever happen to our family or why this even happened, period. We just didn't look at it that way."

Kyle and Pattie wrestled with the decision to continue with Adam's Busch program, but when they discussed it with team members and their primary sponsor, they all came to the same realization: Adam would have wanted them to continue racing. "Personally, Pattie and I said from the beginning that we would've had an incredibly hard time seeing somebody else get in Adam's car," Kyle said. "I don't care who it was. I don't care if you put Jeff Gordon or Dale Earnhardt, it doesn't make any difference to us. If somebody else was in that car, it would always be Adam's car to us."

So, Kyle made the wrenching decision to drive Adam's car for the remainder of the season. After sitting out The Winston and the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, Kyle returned to the track for the first time at Dover, where the crowd stood on its feet and treated him to an ovation when he took the track and qualified Adam's car. At Michigan, as he was leaving the track, Petty was stopped by an autograph seeker. He obliged not just that fan, but everyone who asked, receiving in return words and stories about Adam that seemed to console him.

"I think sometimes when I go talk to fans, I'm looking for something," Kyle said. "I don't know what I'm looking for; I don't. Maybe there's a hole there that I feel like they can fill, because a lot of fans have stories about when they met Adam . . . Maybe that's what I look for a lot of times with fans now, to some degree. I don't know what it is, but there's something that kind of draws you and makes you want to talk to them more."

Petty acknowledges that it hasn't gotten any easier with each trip to the track. The littlest thing can trigger a memory of Adam. A trip to Pocono, where Adam had never raced, touched off a strong emotional reaction when Kyle arrived at the track on Thursday afternoon. It was a quiet time, Kyle remembered, he often shared with Adam at the track.

Now the trip to New Hampshire looms and Kyle Petty is uncertain about whether he'll make it and, if he does, how he'll react when he takes the track for the first time and passes the same corner where his son lost his life.

"Emotionally, it's like crossing that bridge on 62," Petty said. "Sometimes you think about it, and that's why I say, 'Do I want to go back?' Yeah, I want to go back at some point in time just to tell everybody how much I appreciate everything they did for Adam . . . I want to go back and I want to go back and race.

"But, yeah, that's going to be a hurdle for me. It's going to be a hurdle for Pattie, and for all of us. It's got to be a hurdle for them, too, for me to go back and race on that racetrack.

"In a lot of ways, Adam's death, intellectually, is easier for me to deal with than it is for Pattie or Austin or Montgomery Lee, because I know what it's like to drive a racecar. I know what it's like to be on a racetrack, I know what it's like to ride around out there. They don't know what it's like to be in a car. They don't know what it feels like. They don't know what the sensation is. They don't know what it's like to be in a wreck; they don't know any of that.

"It's all an unknown, and I think that's what scares people in the first place: It's the unknown. So, for people to say, 'OK, they're sending their father or their husband back to the place where Adam was killed,' it would be hard on them. So I think it's an emotional step for them, too, that they've got to overcome.

"It's one for all of us."

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