Surely, Kelley Earnhardt would say that the 1998 Daytona 500 was the most memorable of all her father's wins.
After all, Dale Earnhardt had tried his hand in NASCAR's biggest race 19 times before, and 19 times, he'd wound up short. For him to finally come out on top was something bigger than the sport itself. He was congratulated by members of virtually every crew on pit road and then became the first of many to cut a celebratory donut in the infield -- and maybe the last to do so spontaneously.
To this day, more than a decade later, the 1998 Daytona 500 ranks as one of the greatest races in NASCAR history.
So the event would have to be her favorite, right? Nope. She wasn't there and she can't really even remember what she was doing when he finally won the race. When asked which win stood out for her, the answer speaks volumes about Kelley Earnhardt's relationship with her dad.
She wasn't sure of the year, just that her dad had won the All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway and they were able to spend some time together afterward. That's what counted. That's what made the night special.
"Although [the 1998 Daytona 500] was a huge accomplishment for my dad and something that he worked for year after year, I'm going to go back to one of his [All-Star] wins," said Kelley, Earnhardt's second child and his oldest daughter. "It was just really cool, because all of my family was there. We were in the condo watching. Taylor [her youngest sister] was there, and I know Dale Jr. was there.
"Charlotte was really cool for us because we would go to the condo, watch the races and hang out as a family with my grandma, aunts and Teresa [Earnhardt, Kelley's stepmother]. That particular one, we all got to go down to Victory Lane. That was really special to me. My dad was just in an awesome mood from winning. It was just one of those few times we actually got to be together after a win and really hang out together. That didn't happen a lot." (Continued)
There seemed to be at least two different sides to Dale Earnhardt. One was the good ol' country boy who picked himself up by the seat of his pants to make something of himself, but the other was tougher than scrap iron and as hard to get to know. Most who came in contact with him on a regular basis remember "the stare," that gaze that seemed able to melt steel.
The stare had a way of shaking those unprepared for it to their very foundation. Kelley knew it well.
"In my dealings with him as a daughter, I experienced that," Kelley said. "You always wanted to do right, because you knew doing wrong, the consequences were bad. This is not what I think my dad was trying to do, this is how I interpreted it for me -- he wanted to make you the best person that he could, so he made you work as hard as he could to accomplish whatever it was you were trying to do."
Among many NASCAR fans, Dale Earnhardt inspires an almost religious fervor. Some of it was the way he rose through the ranks in the mid-70s, becoming the sport's ultimate rags-to-riches story along the way. Certainly, the passion Earnhardt invokes is due in large part to the way he raced. There have always been drivers who took no prisoners on the race track, and then there was Earnhardt, whose style was something even more than that. And, yes, some of it is due to the way he died -- that iconic, James Dean-style, the ultimate-hero-gone-too-soon tragedy.
That was not Kelley's father, not all the time.
At the same time, there are followers of the sport who to this day consider Dale Earnhardt a low-down, dirty, no-good S.O.B. Mention the 1987 All-Star Race to a hardcore Bill Elliott or Geoff Bodine fan, and the sparks are going to fly. Earnhardt went after that particular checkered flag like a bull in a china shop, with little or no finesse involved.
That was not Kelley's father either, not all the time.
"My dad was just as intimidating to me as a daughter as I think he was to so many people in racing," Kelley said. "I live my life to try not to do anything different than either what he said to do or what I thought he would do in that situation. I really looked up to him, because he just always knew how to come out good on a situation. I held him on a pedestal, to make sure everything I did in my life was something he would approve of."
That Kelley found her father "intimidating" isn't to say that she was afraid of the man. According to her, he just was just "right" 99 percent of the time. That is the example she's trying to follow, the high standard that he set for his children.
"He just made sense, all the time," Kelley said. "You would do something and he was like, 'Why the hell did you do it that way?' First, I didn't do it the way he thought because I didn't think of it. Then after he would point it out to you, you'd go, 'Yeah, that would've made sense.' He was full of a lot of guidance from that standpoint."
While growing up, Kelley spent a lot of time away from her father. He didn't send her off to the prom, snapping photos and worrying like any proud papa. The Earnhardts didn't come home at 5 p.m. and sit around their dinner table, discussing their day. There are no "normal" vacations to remember -- vacations for Kelley and Dale Jr. were heading to Disney World while their dad raced at Daytona.
Life as an Earnhardt seems as far from Leave it to Beaver as it could possibly be. If there's one misconception Kelley would like to correct, it's probably this one: Paris Hilton, she was not.
"We weren't handed things on a silver platter," Kelley admitted. "We worked really hard. We didn't work inside his business to where we just got a paycheck and didn't have to come to work. ... Report-card time, if you didn't have As and Bs, you were in trouble. That was expected. I didn't get extra for having As.
"With my daughter, I'm like, 'Oh, gosh ... you're on the honor roll. You deserve something for that, because you've worked hard.' That wasn't the situation with us. The situation was, 'You're expected to be on the honor roll. That's the standard I set for you. No ... you don't get anything extra for it, because that's what you should be doing.'"
As co-owner and general manager of JR Motorsports, Kelley tries to maintain the common-sense approach to business that she learned from her father. Although Dale Earnhardt dropped out of school to pursue his dreams of driving a race car, he more than made up for it with an almost unnerving amount of street smarts.
That was Kelley's father.
"I think I have a lot of my dad's street smarts," Kelley said. "So many will attest that in doing business with him, he might not always have been the smartest from a book-smart standpoint, but he had common sense that would just kill you. I think I have a lot of that from him, being able to look outside the norm and think through different ways of doing something.
"He was a hell of a negotiator, but at the end of the day, he was very fair. He never wanted to get into a situation that may have been the best for him, but it wasn't going to work out for the person on the other end. He didn't want that kind of reputation. That's the approach I take. When you're doing business with someone, it needs to be a win-win because if it doesn't work out for one party, you're going to be able to carry that business forward."