Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 15, 1993 TAG: 9307150028
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BIRMINGHAM, ALA. LENGTH: Long
"The last I'd talked to somebody was the night before, and they had said at 11 p.m. that he was doing better, that he'd moved his eyelid and his foot. So I felt much better about it," Farmer said in an emotional news conference after his discharge from Carraway Methodist Medical Center at noon Wednesday.
"I woke up [Tuesday morning] and I was expecting some good news - that maybe he'd regained consciousness or something else," Farmer said. "I was laying there in the bed by myself - nobody was there in the room - and I turned on the TV. And one of the programs came on and they said they had heard" he had died.
"A little later two of the nurses came in and told me. But I guess the shock had already set in," Farmer said.
Farmer, sitting in a wheelchair at the entrance of the hospital, broke down as he tried to continue. Family members consoled him.
And as Allison's family and the NASCAR community prepared to lay the 32-year-old stock car racing star to rest at 10 a.m. today in his hometown of Hueytown, the hours that have passed since Allison's helicopter crash Monday afternoon have turned the shock into a numbing, almost unbelieving grief.
In Charlotte, Allison's car owner, Robert Yates, and crew chief, Larry McReynolds, broke into tears several times Wednesday morning as they announced that the team will not race this weekend at Pocono International Raceway.
"This team has something missing right now and I want us all to take the time to mourn that loss," Yates said. "We need time to grieve.
"When we go to a race, we go to win. We don't think we can win this race. I didn't feel like we could get our car ready with tears in our eyes."
Yates said the team will return to the circuit with a new driver, but "we don't know who it will be or when it will be. It will take awhile, but we're going to do it."
At the crash site near the garage at Talladega Superspeedway, the National Transportation Safety Board team of investigators were wrapping up their field investigation Wednesday afternoon. The NTSB isn't expected to announce a probable cause for the accident for six months to a year.
Farmer was expecting to be interviewed by NTSB investigators Wednesday or today. But during his brief news conference Wednesday, Farmer gave the most detailed account yet of the Monday afternoon crash.
Farmer said Allison was turning his helicopter around when it went out of control.
"He came in nice and smooth and got right down in the middle of the place where we was fixin' to set down," Farmer said. "And he was going to turn it around so he could head back out the same way. And when the plane started to turn around, it just shot up into the air.
"And then it just . . . You can't describe it unless you've been in a race car that has been flipping and turning over. I could see the sun, I could see the ground, I could see the sky, I could see the dirt and asphalt. And everything was just spinning so much and the helicopter was just going crazy.
"And Davey was fighting the controls trying to get it under control. I knew we was in bad shape the way the helicopter was going, and I braced myself. And Davey was still fighting the controls and couldn't brace himself."
Farmer said he believes Allison hit his head when the helicopter slammed into the ground because he still had both hands on the controls.
Farmer said his own injuries - a broken collarbone and several broken ribs - prevented him from helping Allison.
"I told Davey, `We got to get out. It's going to catch on fire.' I hollered at him two or three times. And he was hanging straight up above me in the air. I couldn't hardly move my right side. And if they're hanging upside down, you don't undo the seat belt, because if you do, they crash down and sometimes that hurts them worse than hanging there.
"And with one arm, I couldn't undo the seat belt and hold him up at the same time."
Farmer was crawling through the broken plastic glass windshield of the Hughes 369 HS turbine-powered helicopter when NASCAR star Neil Bonnett rushed up. Bonnett and his son, David, were testing at the huge track Monday and, on a whim, Allison and Farmer had flown over to watch.
"I got about half out of the helicopter and Neil was there and Neil didn't know who I was at the time because I was face down and he didn't know who was coming with Davey," Farmer said. "And he drug me 15 or 20 feet away from the helicopter and I told him, `Neil, go get Davey because he's unconscious and he's got to get out of the plane before it catches on fire.' "
Farmer said Bonnett later came back and said they had removed Allison from the craft, whose turbine engine "was still running wide open." Farmer said he was taken to the track's infield hospital "and then I didn't see Davey any more since that time."
Allison died Tuesday morning of the severe head injuries he suffered in the crash.
Even if he had lived, the brain damage he had suffered would have left him with a "terrible" quality of life, Dr. Robert Craddock, chief of neurosurgery, said in a news conference at the hospital Tuesday.
Allison had a blood clot between the brain and skull, but that was removed during emergency surgery Monday night, Craddock said. But he also had severe damage to his brain tissue.
"He could not live with that," Craddock said. "It's the problem you can't fix."
On Tuesday afternoon, only hours after his son died, racing legend Bobby Allison met reporters in a hastily arranged news conference at Hueytown City Hall. It was a tearful, heart-wrenching session.
Allison, his voice cracking, said his wife, Judy, "is having a hard time, but I look to her for strength."
He said the family wanted to thank the thousands of fans who had inundated the hospital and the family with expressions of support and sorrow.
"I think the idea of us coming here to try to put the word out to the fans is a reflection of how Davey touched people," Allison said. "He touched a lot of people, and they love him, and we love him."
Allison, whose spectacular stock car racing career was ended by a near-fatal head injury he suffered at Pocono in 1988, lost his other son, Clifford, in a racing practice accident at Michigan International Speedway last August. His brother, Donnie, also retired after being badly hurt in a racing accident in 1981.
But in the midst of their deep sorrow, many family members still spoke publicly.
Davey's uncle, Eddie, his voice also cracking, said, "As I went to the hospital [Tuesday], down the interstate, every other car had its lights on. It just flabbergasted me."
Said Farmer's wife, Joan, "Judy keeps saying, `What have I done wrong?' But she's done nothing wrong. I have no idea why the man upstairs took her two sons."
And as he was wheeled out of the hospital, Farmer said, "The injuries and broken bones I got will heal in time, but the pain I got in my heart from losing Davey will never go away."
Keywords:
AUTO RACING
by CNB