|
Issue Date: October 3, 2004
USA WEEKEND'S '04 Most Caring Athletes
For their vision and hard work to open a NASCAR fantasy camp for sick kids, Kyle Petty and Tony Stewart are USA WEEKEND's Most Caring Athletes of 2004. They'll share a combined award of $10,000 from the magazine. Here's why they got our vote.
By Dennis McCafferty
The North Carolina sun is setting over kid-camp heaven as two NASCAR drivers -- one representing the third generation of a legendary racing family, the other one of the sport's top young stars -- get ready for this year's USA WEEKEND Most Caring Athlete photo shoot. The former, Kyle Petty, is entertaining everyone with stories about his latest obsession, a Discovery Channel nature show. The latter, Tony Stewart, has just walked in, straight from a flight from Chicago, where he was filming an ad for McDonald's.
Stewart is immediately met with unrestrained adulation by some of the kids at the brand-new 72-acre Victory Junction Gang Camp. The campers at the Randleman, N.C., facility deal with hard stuff every day -- cancer, HIV/AIDS, heart disease and other serious conditions. But on this night, the mood is light-hearted, almost giddy.
"Tony Stewart! Tony Stewart! Tony Stewart!" 8-year-old Nick Wright shouts as the men walk into the photographer's studio. (Earlier, Petty told Stewart, the camp's top individual fundraiser, that he had to meet Nick: "He thinks that you're capable of lassoing the moon.") Nick, who has spina bifida, doesn't hold back.
"I was drawing a picture today of a plain white car," Nick explains, "and I turned it into a No. 20 Home Depot car."
"Did you make it go faster?" asks Stewart, 33.
"Yep," Nick says. "And I drew a checkered flag and a caution flag, too."
"Well, you know, with me driving," Stewart says with a smile, alluding to his rough-and-tumble season on the track, "you're going to need that caution flag."
Throughout this exchange, Petty, 44, can't stop grinning. When Nick's leg starts hurting, Petty gently props the boy up on his No. 45 Georgia Pacific car. The driver is surrounded by kids again, just as he is most days when he's not at a track. This, Petty says, is exactly what he dreamed this camp would be -- a playground for kids that's carved right out of the same Piedmont countryside he tore up on his motorcycle when he was younger.
A son's legacy
To understand how this vision came to be, you have to go back to the beginning: It's 1998, and Petty is touring the Boggy Creek camp for sick children in Cassia, Fla., with teenage son Adam, the fourth generation of Petty racers and grandson of "the King," Richard Petty. There are 232 acres for the camp's kids, with nature trails and two huge fishing holes. Boggy Creek is a Hole in the Wall Camp, founded by actor Paul Newman.
"Dad," Adam asks, "wouldn't it be cool to have something like this in our back yard?"
"Yeah," Petty says. "Maybe after you're up and running with racing, we can start looking at some land."
That's too far off for Adam. He hasn't started making real money yet. But he convinces his dad to help scout out land, and they manage to get a lot big enough for all the ideas in their heads.
Then comes the crash. On May 12, 2000, Adam is in his No. 45 Sprint car during a practice at New Hampshire International Speedway and dies slamming against a concrete wall. At one time, racegoers had thought the son would be a great one. Now he's gone, just 19 years old.
For the father, there's silence. Kyle Petty -- the racer, the guitarist, the cross-country motorcycle trekker, the marathon runner -- shuts down. He goes on autopilot but still manages to climb into his son's No. 45 car and complete the season in it. To finish what Adam started.
By 2001, locals are on the phone: 'We're building a YMCA. Can we name it for Adam?' ... 'We're opening grandstands at a track. May we dedicate them to Adam?' Well, this is sweet. But there's more that can be done. So much more.
Finish what Adam started.
That would be: finish the Victory Junction Gang Camp. For the father, the project makes him feel alive, for the first time in a year.
Jetsons meets NASCAR
This past June, the camp opened it doors to 550 kids, and the goal is to have 1,100 there next summer. But this isn't the rustic kind of place where the biggest thrill is s'mores and ghost stories by the campfire. The camp more resembles a race-themed Disney World. There's a 50-foot-high Ropes Course with a zip line and a 180-seat theater where 364 illuminated spark plugs line the lobby. (Look up, and you'll see race-car hoods serving as acoustical barriers.) There's a memorabilia/racing simulation attraction called Adam's Race Shop, the exterior built to look just like Adam Petty's car.
Then there's the wheelchair-accessible swim area, the Kyle Petty Charity Ride Aquatic Village, a scene of blissful chaos with fountains, sprinklers, water-dumping buckets high overhead and a "lazy river"-style tubing spot. It's all centered around a giant water-spewing replica of a motorcycle, and, yes, it really does roar.
Says Petty: "We wanted this place to be "The Jetsons" meets NASCAR. We'll make a chandelier look like an engine. We're going to put a big motorcycle in the water. That's what makes it fun."
"Goody's Body Shop" -- the medical center -- operates as a hospital, where kids receive treatments such as chemotherapy, blood transfusions and kidney dialysis. "When you look at the camp, you can see this is all about Kyle and his wife, Pattie," Stewart says. "They lost their son, and now they're doing something positive in his memory. I can see the happiness it's brought to Kyle. You can see it on his face."
It takes a raceway ...
While Petty and Stewart are, officially, the co-founders of the Victory Junction Gang Camp, the facility is a testament to the entire NASCAR community -- drivers, pit crew members, owners, VIP sponsors -- which has raised more than $25 million to make the camp a reality. Jeff Gordon and Brian Vickers -- a rookie on the Nextel Cup circuit -- donated $250,000 each for two cabins. Two-time Daytona 500 winner and running enthusiast Michael Waltrip plans to raise $1 million for Victory Junction via pledges through his "Operation Marathon." Other support has flooded in from Bobby Labonte, Dale Jarrett, Ken Schrader and so many more. Stewart's commitment, however, has been staggering. He plans to raise $1 million in five years, then raise another $1 million within 10 years. "I enjoy visiting the kids," Stewart says, "to watch them after a dance taking the little sparkles out of their hair, and to see them get so excited about being here. I don't have children of my own right now, so it's nice to be a part of something like this."
Victory Junction has united NASCAR by touching on two of the sport's essential themes: racing and family. "A lot of drivers watched Adam grow up in the garage," Petty explains. "Adam was as much a part of their lives as their kids are a part of mine. So when it got out that we were doing this because it's what Adam wanted, people like Bobby Labonte and Dale Jarrett came to us and said, 'What can I do?' "
Thanks to the camp, Kyle Petty is still learning about his son. He'll get envelopes from fans with checks for the camp. There was $300 from a young man who gave his bar mitzvah money, and a child who gave $33.83 after winning a swim-meet raffle. They often include a note, often about Adam. Once, a Cuban family sent a thank-you and a picture of Adam visiting their sick son in a hospital in Miami.
"And I never knew that Adam was there," Petty says. "I get notes all the time about where people met him and where he was. And I will have no idea that he was at all these places, doing all these things." As he's saying this, you can see a look of astonished joy on his face. The joy of a proud father.
For more about the Victory Junction Gang Camp, including donation instructions, go to victoryjunction.org.
NASCAR cares
Others in the NASCAR family reach out:
NASCAR and the Make-A-Wish Foundation have been a winning team since 1985. Drivers have met with about 60 seriously ill children so far this year.
1998 Most Caring Athlete Jeff Gordon recently raised $485,000 (in only three months) to benefit youth arts, child health care and a dozen other causes.
Elliott Sadler raised $86,400 in May with his Race for Hope event in Concord, N.C., for the Autism Society of America and the Victory Junction Gang Camp.
Cover photograph and main photograph above by Peter Gregoire for USA WEEKEND
Styling by Sophie Wilson. Clothes on cover (except Petty's shirt) by Armani Collezioni, courtesy Taylor Richards & Conger.
|
