Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, April 11, 1994 TAG: 9404100136
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Bob Zeller
DATELINE: BRISTOL, TENN. LENGTH: Medium
But at least on this sunny day in April, life had granted him a small token of happiness and success.
In the face of the stiffest competition ever in the Winston Cup series, his driver, Chuck Bown, had smoked the field and captured the pole for today's Food City 500 - his first pole after only 52 Winston Cup races.
With no sponsorship for the car, and with Allison borrowing money and putting his personal assets at risk to keep the team alive, Bown showed what Jimmy Spencer had proven last year - the No. 12 Ford Thunderbird is a good race car.
Was it a relief to finally be able to come to this always overcrowded media center with something other than tragedy to talk about?
"You're telling me," Allison said.
On August 29, 1992, he had entered this same room to face the press for the first time in the wake of the death of his youngest son, Clifford, 16 days earlier in an accident during practice at Michigan International Speedway.
He talked about how he had tried to console his heartbroken wife, Judy, telling her this was life and "bad things can happen anywhere."
Eight months later, the Winston Cup series returned to Bristol and one of the most unforgettably sad days in the history of the sport - a cold, wet and gloomy Friday fresh off the death the night before of 1992 Winston Cup champion Alan Kulwicki, who was killed in a plane crash while coming here.
And then came the race here last August, and another heartwrenching visit by Allison to the media center. It was his first time back at a track after the death of his other racing son, the marvelously gifted Davey, on July 13 after a helicopter crash at Talladega Superspeedway.
Allison talked then of how hard it was to lose both sons; of how he would have a problem being around people, only to find he also had a problem not being around people. And he said, "I know that life must go on."
So now another April - the first anniversary of Kulwicki's death - and Allison's driver, ironically, had won the pole by beating Kulwicki's track record, set in 1992.
"I gotta say it does feel really good," Allison said.
Allison, in talking to the press, has had to face the most difficult questions anyone could face in the last two years, and when those queries are insensitive or unanswerable, he usually hides any irritation by responding with a quip.
It is part of what makes him such an enormously dignified figure in NASCAR racing. He simply won't quit. He won't hide. He refuses to turn his back on life and racing. He faces everything head-on.
But he is not the same man he once was. He is longer the supremely confident Bobby Allison of early 1988 - the Daytona 500 winner who in victory lane joyously splashed his face with the beer of his sponsor, Miller, and traded hugs with Davey, who had finished second.
And this worries him. It makes him think perhaps this is the reason he is without a sponsor, even with such a good car and such a good reputation in racing.
In 1987, he could look a person in the eye with that steely stare of his and say, "I will win for you." When times were tough, that alone sometimes made the difference.
Today, he doubts he has the same confidence.
He has talked with more than a dozen potential sponsors, but nothing has come of any of the discussions.
But being the man he is, Bobby Allison is not about to quit. He'll continue to use engine parts longer than he normally would, and if anyone leaves, he may not replace them. And he'll continue to look for a sponsor who wouldn't mind having their name on a quality car owned by a NASCAR legend.
by CNB