News
Email
Print
Childress' story shows that patience, hard work pay off
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: May 12, 2008
DARLINGTON, S.C. -- Late Saturday afternoon, Richard Childress walked through the chain-link gate to the NASCAR garage wearing sunglasses. Everyone seemed to know who he was.
Childress strolled behind one of his employees, nodding to fans who called his name.
He nudged a startled friend in the back and initiated an on-the-move conversation. A bystander took a picture. Childress thanked the amateur photographer and kept on going.
He always keeps on going -- to big tracks where his three Sprint Cup teams work or to small tracks where his grandson Austin Dillon races; to Africa, Alaska and Afghanistan, where he hunts big game; to corporate board meetings and country pig pickings; to his racing shop and museum in Welcome or his winery in Lexington or the cattle ranch he and his wife Judy own outside Clemmons.
On Thursday night, in the latest testament to an incredible stock-car career that began under a shade tree, Childress will walk into the N.C. Sports Hall of Fame, a member of the class of 2008.
A terrible loss
Any number of obstacles could have stopped Childress, born 62 years ago in a Winston-Salem hospital. His father died when he was five. He never graduated with the high-school class of 1963, having dropped out. He never really had enough money to start racing or buy top-notch equipment for the No. 3 cars he drove or finance his fledgling NASCAR team or pay young hotshot Dale Earnhardt, but somehow Childress managed.
Earnhardt drove Childress' Chevrolets to six championships during their partnership, and on a horrible February afternoon in 2001 he drove the black No. 3 head-on into the wall at Daytona, a fatal final-lap accident that ripped open Childress' heart and frayed the racing operation. For a long while, Childress wasn't sure he wanted to keep riding around the same oval.
"It was the toughest decision," he said. "Actually, in 2001 I sold a little bit of the company to investors because I just didn't feel good about racing. I had lost the drive, had lost the desire. I had lost one of my best friends. I just didn't even want to be going to the races. Then -- it was the fall of 2004 -- I started going through our shops and seeing some things, knowing that if we were going to stay in it, we had to make changes."
A new beginning
Childress, confronting issues raised by rivals' success and by driver Kevin Harvick, reorganized Richard Childress Racing, improved the engineering department and put different people in new jobs. He eventually hired Jeff Burton to drive the second car and developed Clint Bowyer, a young driver he noticed five years ago at an obscure ARCA race in Nashville, Tenn.
After 11 races this year, Childress drivers rank second (Burton), fifth (Bowyer) and ninth (Harvick) in Sprint Cup points, tangible evidence of a comeback based on consistency, a hallmark of Childress' driving days. Burton leads the series in laps completed, with Bowyer fourth and Harvick fifth. Childress soon will hire a driver for a new fourth team.
His fame, fortune and far-flung business interests reaffirm the notion that anything's possible under the stars, especially for people who take on responsibility, work hard, make friends and appreciate folks around them.
Life rocked Childress early when his father, Robert Reed Childress, died.
"At that point," Childress said, "I think I became a man. I had to fight my own fights, fight my own battles. I'm not proud of it, but I dropped out of school in the ninth grade. It was one of those things that I'm definitely not proud of, but it's a fact of life. I started working and trying to bring in any kind of money I could to help everybody out."
His mother, Virginia, remarried. She took five children into her second marriage, and then had three sons with Kenneth Hodge. "She had her hands full looking after the kids," Childress said. "She was a great woman, the greatest in the world, in my opinion."
Hodge took Childress and his two brothers to Bowman Gray Stadium for the first time. The stepfather returned to the races infrequently, but the Childress boys became regulars who discovered heroes in driving pioneers Curtis Turner, Bobby Myers and Billy Myers.
"When I was a kid about 11 years old, I'd go over there and sell peanuts and popcorn," Childress said. "I'd watch the races and the drivers, what they did and all the fun they were having, and I'd watch the fans. I'd sell peanuts, and when a race would start, I'd sit down and watch it. We'd jump the fence and work and make some money, and we'd come back and divide it between everybody."
Paying dues
Childress' driving career began when he paid $20 for a 1947 Plymouth taxi and entered a Bowman Gray race. He later borrowed $400 from Wachovia Bank and bought a used Modified car.
"I told them I was going to do some remodeling around my house," Childress said.
Childress and his brothers worked on the car under a shade tree at the house on Wayside Drive, past Five Points. There were other motors and increasingly bigger races at a time when a modestly financed independent could turn a stock car into something marginally competitive in NASCAR races.
"I had a lot of breaks that put us where we are today," Childress said, "but I think one of the biggest was when I ran the race at Talladega when all the drivers boycotted in 1969. I ran both races, and Bill France Sr. gave me some money to race in both. I probably left there with 10 grand and felt I'd never have to work again. Little did I know. I took that money and bought another race car and built a shop over on Highway 109. You get a lot of breaks in life, but that was probably the first one I got that I really took advantage of."
There were many more. He got sponsorship money from Piedmont Airlines. He drove for L.C. Newton one year and bought the bare-bones team the next, which made Childress a Winston Cup car owner. He conserved equipment and never won a race but finished as high as fifth in points (1975).
With the sport's money threshold rising in 1981 and Earnhardt's owner selling, Childress had a chance to hire Earnhardt for the last 11 races. Childress wasn't ready to quit driving, but buddy Junior Johnson talked him into climbing out of his car. Childress hired Ricky Rudd the next two years. The team won two races and finished among the top 10 27 times.
"We became a factor people would look at," Childress said. "The whole time, I was hunting with Dale and spending time with him. We wanted to get back together, but I knew I didn't have the money or the stuff to race him. Then we got back together in 1984 and things really started to click."
Fourteen years after their sixth and final championship together, Childress has expanded his business horizons and turned his hunting obsession into a global safari. He has returned to racing's front page, which makes his personal achievements and comebacks more remarkable.
"It's just life," Childress said. "Everybody's dealt a different hand every day. It's how you play it, how you move forward with it. I was just fortunate for a lot of things. My granddaddy was a preacher -- my mother's daddy, Clarence Harrell. These are the people that teach you right from wrong.
"There's always a path that we all have, a choice when we're young, where to go. I'm just fortunate I was able to take the right path. I had plenty of opportunities to take the wrong path, but I was taught the difference between right and wrong."
Childress learned quite a few lessons along the way. He may not have earned a high-school diploma, but those life diplomas keep piling up.
■ Lenox Rawlings can be reached at lrawlings@wsjournal.com.
Email
Print
