NAME: BOBBY ALLISON
HOME: HUEYTOWN, ALABAMA
DATE OF BIRTH: DECEMBER 1937
OCCUPATION: RETIRED NASCAR CHAMPION
SURVIVOR TYPE: REALIST
ADVERSITY: RACE CAR ACCIDENT
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Even by NASCAR standards, the crash was spectacular. The date was June 19, 1988. Bobby Allison was driving 130 miles per hour in the first lap at the Pocono International Raceway in the mountains of Long Pond, Pennsylvania. Bobby was on a roll. He had just won the Daytona 500 for the third time with his son Davey finishing in second place right on his rear fender. It had been a jubilant time with lots of champagne and celebrations. On the second turn of the first lap of the Miller 500, Bobby blew a tire. Trying to get to the pit, his car stalled and another racer bumped him. Bobby’s #12 Buick spun into oncoming traffic. That’s when Jocko Maggiacomo’s #63 Chevy smashed into his driver-side door going around 150 miles per hour. In racing, it’s called a T-bone, a broadside collision. The impact threw Bobby’s car into Pocono’s steel outer wall. In front of 70,000 fans, Bobby was pulled from the wreckage and airlifted unconscious to the Lehigh Valley Hospital Center in Allentown. He had suffered a serious head injury, broken leg and thighbone and fractured ribs and shoulder. Doctors performed emergency brain surgery to relieve pressure inside his skull. His legendary racing career was over.
When he woke up, the 50-year-old racer had double vision, his eyes ached, and his body felt like it was screaming. “How can I quit hurting?” he wondered. All he could think about was “What do I do next?” From the very start, he was realistic and practical. He spent 108 days in various hospitals recovering from his injuries. Physically, his healing was remarkable. Mentally, he says, “I really struggled.” He suffered serious memory loss and confusion. “People would ask me questions,” he recalls, “and I wouldn’t be able to come up with the answer and it would really disturb me.”
Today, Bobby is 70 years old and doesn’t remember a thing about the Pocono crash. The brain injury erased everything. Sometimes he stumbles over words and doesn’t always finish his sentences. At times, he sounds a little exasperated talking about the accident, but then his friendly southern drawl spins another story about his legendary career. His wife Judy jumps in with extra details. She’s quick to correct Bobby when he says he wasn’t too sad or upset after Pocono. She reminds him that he grew was very depressed for a while. But she was really the only one who ever saw him down. Bobby knew he had to keep up appearances. In the beginning, so no one would notice his unhappiness, he would sometimes go off on his own and “sulk,” as he says. But Judy watched out for him, lifted his spirits, and helped him through the tough times.
Bobby learned from his father that no matter what life throws your way you just have to take it and move on. Bobby’s mantra is “Just keep
going.” Over and over, he would tell himself: “I have to go ahead.” But the Pocono accident wasn’t Bobby’s only challenge. In August 1992, his younger son Clifford died in racing crash at the Michigan International Speedway and the following summer, his eldest son Davey died trying to land his helicopter at the Talladega Supersweedway in Alabama. A few years later, Judy filed for divorce. Friends and fans wondered: How much can one man take?
Bobby tried to hide his pain and suffering. People would often approach him and say, “You’re so strong.” But inside, he felt like he had never been strong enough. “I became very introverted when I realized how much incredible memory loss I had,” he says. When others tried to connect with him, he wondered: “Why are people talking to me? Where can I go and hide?”
Bobby moved home to Hueytown, Alabama and eventually lived with his mother Kittie who took care of him. She washed his clothes and cooked his meals. She’s 101 years old now, but she did everything for herself until she was 92. Bobby says she’s always been an inspiration, even though she’s struggling a bit after a fall, broken shoulder and a stroke.
Even in the worst times, Bobby always told himself. “We have today, we don’t have any promise of tomorrow, and yesterday is gone. We have today.”
Bobby and Judy reconciled. And they’ve put their lives back together. “If we’re here and we’re able to do something productive or enjoyable, then if it’s within our reach we ought to go ahead and do it,” he says. There’s no point in sitting around sulking. Bobby says his belief in God carried him through the dark times. “I think my faith really helped me accept where I was at the time,” Bobby says. “I didn’t want to be there, but still my faith said, ‘Okay, this is where I am and we’ll go on from here.’”
On the worst days, Bobby drove to the Bessemer Airport, a small field not far from his house in Hueytown. That’s where he kept his favorite propeller plane. There was a folding chair in the hangar, and Bobby would drag it near the plane and plunk right down. He’d just sit in the quiet hangar next to the 691P Aerostar, a seven-seater with a red and white body and gold stripes.
“Somewhere there was some of peace there,” he says. “That was the one thing that was the biggest attraction for me.” He loved to fly and hoped someday to get a medical clearance for his pilot’s license. Four years after Pocono, he got the okay to fly again. While he never raced again professionally, Bobby still enjoys going to tracks around the country. Today, he still wishes he could drive 200 miles an hour. Even more, he wishes his sons were still alive. To get through his days, he focuses on what’s still possible. Once, he was a rebel and a dreamer who wanted to be the greatest driver of all time. Now, he’s a 70-year-old realist.
“You must do the best you can every day,” he says. “Period.”
