I’m blessed to have my dad still around after all these years. He turns 88 today, the second day of July. He’s always been such a big part of mine and my sisters’ lives that I know they feel the same.
My dad didn’t exactly choose the world’s safest profession in which to make a living. He just followed in his father’s footsteps. And I grew up following my dad’s.
My mom and my sisters followed also. I can remember as a child playing with the kids of other drivers in the infield at places like Daytona, Charlotte and Martinsville.
I can also remember the silence of a quiet track and a crying mother coming to get her children, the ones only moments ago I was playing with. Their father had been in an accident and they had to hurry to get to where he was. Sometimes I didn’t see those children again for many, many years.
We were always shielded from the sadness by my dad and mom on the long rides home. But we knew and we always said a prayer.
My dad still goes to 20-some-odd races a year. It’s not uncommon to see him walking the garage areas at tracks from Daytona to Sonoma and from New Hampshire to Miami. You see the cowboy hat first, then the shades, the boots and the long lanky build of a man a few years younger than his actual age.
He’ll stop and talk to anyone that stops and talks to him. From the fans to the gate guard to Roger Penske, it doesn’t matter. He’s the same person to everyone.
To me, that’s the most fascinating thing about my dad — he’s Richard Petty, and he always has been.
Sometimes these days when I go home to see him he’s sitting in his den watching NASCAR Classics on Tubi. He still remembers almost every race he ever ran. He remembers the ones that got away in a lot more detail than the wins, but he remembers.
I watch him watch the 1962 Southern 500, flashes and snippets from the 1960 World 600 and the 1964 Daytona 500, his first Daytona win.
I can’t see his eyes because of the ever-present shades, but I watch him watch, and he never moves. I can’t know for sure, but I like to think that in those moments he’s a young Richard Petty, chasing not only every car on whatever track, but chasing a dream that he had always dreamed.
The one thing I do know for sure it that the Richard Petty in those old black-and-white films is the same Richard Petty sitting and watching on a couch in Level Cross, North Carolina.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Richard Petty turns 88: Son Kyle tells us what makes the King so special
Reporting by Kyle Petty / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
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