Thursday, September 22, 2011

CLIP: Safely Home

FROM PEXELS

Safely Home: Injured soldier gets friendly help in Davie

By Tom Gillispie | Special to the Journal
Published: February 04, 2008

MOCKSVILLE - During their usual four-vehicle convoys in Iraq, Cpl. Jeff Walton of Mocksville rode in the first Humvee, aiming his gun straight ahead, 12 o'clock. His friend, Cpl. Doug Roye of Clemmons, normally trailed him in a second Humvee.
 
On the night of Dec. 15, Walton and Roye both felt something was wrong right from the start of their personal-security detail to escort a captain to a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Walton rode in the second vehicle that night as the convoy headed to Baghdad at a brisk 15 mph, and Roye was in a third Humvee.

"We looked at each other and said, 'This is a bad thing,' " Walton said. "It seemed like something wasn't right."

They were right.

"We had just got to Baghdad.... Suddenly, it rocked us. Boom! I'd heard explosions before. They're always loud, but it's different when it rolls up on you,'' Walton said.

"My arm was on fire, but it was a cold fire. It was so cold. The first thing I thought was, 'This is it. It's my ticket.' "

An improvised explosive device, or IED, had been set off by a terrorist. It exploded between the vehicles just off the road. Roye absorbed the concussive part of the blast, and Walton was pelted with ball bearings and glass from broken Pepsi bottles.

The two other people in the Humvee were Staff Sgt. Scott Baker of Greenville, the squad leader, and the driver, Jessica Pessick, a private first class from East Bend. They went to Walton's aid, where they were joined by Sgt. Josh Hartsoe of Maiden.

"I said to Doug, 'I'm hurt, hurt real bad,' " Walton said.

The convoy didn't have a medic, Walton said, but his buddies, all part of the National Guard's 1132nd Military Police Company out of Rocky Mount, were there for him. They tied up the arm, stopped the bleeding and held Walton's hand to make sure he stayed awake. Then he was quickly returned to base.

Could have been worse
 
Walton can laugh about one part of the story now; as he was being treated by his friends, his MP3 wound up playing Guns N' Roses' version of the song "Knocking on Heaven's Door."

As Walton learned, his injury could have been worse. The ball bearings had split his right triceps and severed the radial nerve, but nothing nicked the bone. Walton underwent surgery in Baghdad.

"There was a huge incision in my right arm, a foot or more," he said. "They took out dead tissue, and there was a hole the size of a tennis ball."

While he was under anesthesia, someone asked if they could take his picture, and he said it was OK. The photos, taken by an Associated Press photographer, wound up on news sites, and his unit commander saw them. Walton sent a link to his wife, who had learned of the explosion from his commanders.

Walton, 35, made a stopover in Landstuhl, Germany, on the way to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland in late December. He underwent eight more hours of surgery to clean up his arm, and was reunited with his wife, Beverly, and their children, Meghan, 11, Natalie, 7, and Jacob, 2.

He made stopovers in Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg before returning to Mocksville shortly after Christmas.

"You don't really think about it while it's going on," said Beverly Walton, who took a month off from her job as a special-education teacher at Carter Vocational High School after her husband was injured. "The anticipation is worse than thinking about what happened.''

Walton had faced danger before. He was a police officer in North Charleston, S.C., and in Gastonia before he became a Marine in the '90s and then joined the National Guard. He went to Iraq in 2004. Upon his return in 2006, he enrolled in the Troops to Teachers program, and became a carpentry teacher at Davie County High School in 2006. Walton, who is 6 feet, 6 inches and weighs 270 pounds, also helped coach the War Eagles' girls' basketball team. 

It's been a whirlwind homecoming for Walton, with trips to rehabilitation and to watch the War Eagles play Reynolds in basketball.

Once, he was wearing a cap that said I'm a Purple Heart Veteran when he was buying shoes in Statesville. Someone asked what happened to his arm, and he said jauntily, "I got blown up in Iraq."

A pregnant woman was listening, and she just happened to be a former student at Davie County High School. When Walton was ready to pay, he learned that the woman had paid. He tried to catch her and repay her, but she got away.

He still jokes that he couldn't catch a pregnant woman.

Community help
 
The family has received gifts from various sources. When the brakes and rotors went out on the family's car, Mocksville Tire paid for the repairs.

Calvary Baptist Church of Winston-Salem was a support group for his entire platoon, and Reynolds American adopted the family for Christmas, buying gifts for the children and sending items to him in Iraq.

Walton has three more years of National Guard service. He'll return to duty at Fort Bragg today, and hopes to get transferred to duty in the Triad that would allow him to return to teaching this fall.

That would please Beverly Walton.

 "You fear him not coming home,'' she said. "I saw pictures, and he was alive and had his arm. What's to complain about? Other families would like to be in the situation we're at, with him home and safe.''

><

EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com  BLUESKY: PROFILE



BLOG ENTRIES FROM THE AUTO RACING JOURNAL
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)
- No comments:
Labels: , , , ,

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

BOBBY ALLISON: IN RECOVERY

(NOTE: APPEARED IN THE Winston-Salem Journal in 2003.)


IN RECOVERY

BOBBY ALLISON IS MAKING HIS WAY BACK FROM A WAVE OF TRAGEDY

By Tom Gillispie
JOURNAL REPORTER

For four years, Bobby Allison wandered through Winston Cup garages like a lost man.

Everything dear to him was gone. His sons, Clifford and Davey, were dead. His long marriage to Judy was over. He didn’t even have all of his memories.

The slide began in 1988, when he crashed at Pocono. He lost some of his memory and was forced to retire. He was lucky to be alive. Still ...

"It took away my life," Allison has said. "I was 50 years old, but I had won Daytona that year for the third time. I felt like I was still very, very competitive." After the wreck, the boys buoyed the shaky Bobby. Allison’s eyes still twinkle when he talks about them.

"Clifford, when he was a teen-ager, he was always pushing the limit of what he could get away with," Allison said, laughing. "He was pulling some kind of fun prank that was fun for him, but it caused a great deal of aggravation. It took a great deal of restraint to keep from hurting him in punishment. But the smile on his face would melt you regardless of how mad you were.

"Davey was the one who was so focused on racing, so consumed with it. He enjoyed my input, and he wanted to do everything, to work in the shop, to learn how a car was built, and he adjusted and improved. I really enjoyed that part of him."

Bobby said that, other than Judy, the person who helped him the most was Clifford. He didn’t have Davey’s commitment to racing, but he took the time to help his dad. They would talk, do father-and-son stuff. And it helped.

Then Clifford died Aug. 13, 1992, in a crash at Michigan Speedway.

A month after Clifford’s death, Bobby said, Davey began to take time from his own career to help Bobby. Bobby doesn’t know why; he just did.

It might have been the most time the two spent together. When Bobby was racing, he didn’t have as much time for his children. And when Davey said he wanted to become a driver, Bobby didn’t hand him anything. He just pointed to the garage, and said, "There it is, build something."

Maybe it was with an "I’ll show him" attitude, but Davey worked in his dad’s shop and built his own cars. He started racing at Birmingham (Ala.) International Raceway in 1979 and finished fifth in his first feature. He got his first victory that year in his sixth start.

He raced ARCA, All Pro, DIRT and ASA series races, as well as NASCAR Winston West, the Busch Series, Grand American and the Dash Series. He won more than 40 short-track races and was the 1984 ARCA rookie of the year.

Davey ran his first Winston Cup race at Talladega in July 1985, finishing 10th. In 1987, he won two races and was the Winston Cup rookie of the year.

The highlight of Bobby’s and Davey’s lives together was the 1988 Daytona 500. Bobby won, and Davey finished on his bumper. Afterward, Davey talked about his excitement over his dad’s victory and said it was better than if he had won.

Four months later, Bobby crashed at Pocono. Then in ’92, Davey won the Daytona 500, and his crash at the end of The Winston that summer scared the family. But Davey persevered, and he might have become as big a star as his father. Had he not been wrecked early in the 1992 Winston Cup finale at Atlanta, Davey almost certainly would have won the series title.

And, just as Bobby Allison had been the greatest rival for Richard Petty, Davey had the potential to be Dale Earnhardt’s rival.

But soon, it didn’t matter.

On July 12, 1993, Davey Allison was flying a helicopter — he had just gotten his license — to Talladega Superspeed-way. It was windy, and Davey crashed and suffered head and other injuries. He died a day later, exactly 11 months to the day after Clifford had died.

Again, the family was in pain. Things got even worse after Davey died, and, eventually, Bobby and Judy slipped apart and divorced. Bobby said one problem was the fact that Judy almost had to handle everything alone, but they both agreed that there was a failure to communicate.

"It was a situation that I feel like was compounded by the death of the two boys and our inability to support each other," Bobby said. "On the heels of my own injury, she had to wait on me hand-and-foot to begin with. She had a crummy deal." Once, Bobby was told that people admire him because of his fortitude. He loses his memory, his sons die, he divorces. He goes on. People look at him as a tough man. "Or incredibly stupid," he said, breaking into a grin.

Allison tried race-team ownership for a while, but sponsorship was sparse. Since then, he has done consulting work for a few teams and for an airplane company, and he still would be in the infield on race week.

For years, he has been an icon. For too long, he was also a martyr of sorts.

"I think a lot of people really feel a special friendship and special appreciation of my contribution to what racing has become," Bobby has said. "And it’s emphasized by the fact that I went through those really bad times." Talking about the past helps his memory, but it doesn’t ease the ache. Too many ghosts swirl around the tracks. Talking to Allison, you realize it’s part pleasure and part pain for him.

He enjoys remembering the good times, but he knows they’re gone.

For four years after the divorce, Alli-son searched for peace.

"It’s never easy," he said once, "but it’s something that’s there. Sometimes it seems to ease, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it really hurts. I go through phases, go up and down...." Time can’t heal the pain?

"No," he said, "and it’s not supposed to."

Still, the toughest man in stock-car racing lived on, a minute, a day at a time. He said he survived because of lessons learned from his father, Ed-mond J. Allison Sr., the namesake of Bobby’s older brother, Eddie.

"My dad’s No. 1 lesson to me was to do your best every day," he said. "That was the strongest encouragement he had, period. Take what life brings, and do the best you can. That’s what he did."

But miracles happen, sometimes in strange ways. On May 13, 2000, Liz Alli-son, Davey’s widow, was remarrying in Nashville, Tenn., and Bobby and Judy were there for the wedding. Racing folk were sad that day, because 19-year-old Adam Petty had died the day before in a crash at New Hampshire.

The Allisons, for a moment, relived their own pain with Clifford and Davey.

Naturally, Bobby and Judy gravitated to each other. Judy said she thought they should work as a team again.

"She said to me to put our differences aside and go and try to help the Pettys," Bobby said. "We felt it was exactly the right thing to do." The next day, Bobby and Judy drove to North Carolina for Adam’s funeral.

"We were able to talk about a lot of things that we should have talked about a long time ago," Allison said of the drive. "We talked about the boys. We talked about our life together, our commitment to each other. We talked about all the things that helped our marriage fall on such hard times." Nature took its course.

"It was certainly a horrible way to have a good spin-off," Bobby said, "but that tragedy did bring good fortune to us. The wedding (for Liz) was May 13, and we remarried on July 3." So how are the Allisons doing?

"I don’t know," Bobby said after the remarriage. "I’m certainly doing better than I was.... I’m through the agony part. I’m outside the agony of divorce, because we’re back in the marriage." But he said he knows it’ll take work. For Allison, each day is rehabilitation. He still aches over the loss of his boys, and he says that, even 15 years after Pocono, his memory isn’t perfect.

"I’m still playing with a short deck," he said. "I’ve found a few more cards, but I still don’t have them all. Some things are totally blank.

"People thought I was better than I was. I put on a good face. I smiled and nodded my head, and people thought I was really with it. I wasn’t. The recovery continues on." Same with the marriage.

"I feel better about it," he said. "We both had a lot of horrible times, but we both did grow through the experience. We’ll attempt to treat each other better and be better people." Do they have a better chance this time? The answer was typical Bobby.

"We might," he said. "We’ll see."

BOBBY ALLISON

><

EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com  BLUESKY: PROFILE



BLOG ENTRIES FROM THE AUTO RACING JOURNAL
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)
- No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

FOUR-AND-A-HALF VULCANS

Strange New Worlds Season 3 Ep 8: The Vulcan Transformation! I'm still trying to formulate my thoughts on episode eight of season three...