L
LUKE'57
Guest
EXTRA: Race Card #68-The King Dead. Long Live the King.
Forty years ago today I said goodbye to a hero and the sport of stock car racing said goodbye to its first superstar when Fireball Roberts passed away in a Charlotte Hospital.
I had just got my first real transistor radio and that was one of the first things I heard on it. I wanted to throw it in the trash and hope that I had heard wrong. Every report had him on the mend and doing better each day but even the great Fireball could only take so much.
In the end it was the infection from the massive third degree burns that did him in. The loss of a hero is something a kid never forgets and sadly it wasn't the last time. There have been many over the years and it doesn't get any easier. Actually knowing Neil Bonnett and having the news broken by a friend hours before it was released on the air didn't make that one any easier either but we go on.
I got the news a few days ago that my friend and his widow Doris had passed so I guess he is catching up on all the news. Kinda hope she mentions me when she sees him and tells him how much he meant to a kid so long ago.
Forty years ago today I said goodbye to a hero and the sport of stock car racing said goodbye to its first superstar when Fireball Roberts passed away in a Charlotte Hospital.
I had just got my first real transistor radio and that was one of the first things I heard on it. I wanted to throw it in the trash and hope that I had heard wrong. Every report had him on the mend and doing better each day but even the great Fireball could only take so much.
In the end it was the infection from the massive third degree burns that did him in. The loss of a hero is something a kid never forgets and sadly it wasn't the last time. There have been many over the years and it doesn't get any easier. Actually knowing Neil Bonnett and having the news broken by a friend hours before it was released on the air didn't make that one any easier either but we go on.
I got the news a few days ago that my friend and his widow Doris had passed so I guess he is catching up on all the news. Kinda hope she mentions me when she sees him and tells him how much he meant to a kid so long ago.