ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 10, 1996 TAG: 9603110095
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: HAMPTON, GA.
SOURCE: BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
IT'S BEEN MORE THAN 30 YEARS since Fireball Roberts died, but he's still a legend in Winston Cup racing.
Two Sundays ago, on race day at North Carolina Motor Speedway, an elegantly dressed older woman came into the infield media center and took a seat among the reporters covering the NASCAR race.
This is where she watches every Winston Cup race at the Rock. A few old-timers, such as veteran motorsports journalists Bob Myers and Benny Phillips, greeted her warmly. Some of the newer folks no doubt didn't even know who she was.
A name tag on her blouse identified her as Doris Roberts. Her husband's name was Glenn. He was better known as ``Fireball.'' But she always called him Glenn.
``He told me his name was Glenn Roberts, and he wanted to be called that,'' she said.
He has been gone now for almost as many years as he was alive. Fireball Roberts died at 35 from the burns he suffered in a fiery crash on the backstretch at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Memorial Day in 1964.
The manner in which he died, of course, was the ultimate tragic racing irony, made doubly so by the fact that his nickname came not from driving stock cars fast, but from his skill as a teen-aged baseball pitcher.
At Indianapolis that same Memorial Day, there was another fiery crash that killed Eddie Sachs and Dave MacDonald. It was one of the most tragic days in the history of American automobile racing.
Fireball clung to life for six weeks after the crash. Eighty percent of his body was covered with second and third degree burns. But pneumonia and blood poisoning set in, and he died on July 2, as the NASCAR tour returned to his hometown, Daytona Beach, Fla., for the Firecracker 400, which he had won the previous two years.
Today, almost 32 years later, the sadness of his loss is still right below the surface for Doris Roberts, who is 67. The mere mention of his name can make her emotional. But she harbors no bitterness. She is proud to be in the NASCAR family, and thankful she hasn't been cast aside in the sport's headlong rush toward the 21st century.
Fireball is now a part of NASCAR history, but he is still relevant today, she said, because the sport has reached the stature he always felt it deserved. As a stock car racer, he wanted to be taken seriously when the sport was widely considered buffoonery.
``Glenn wanted so badly for stock car racing to come into its own, rather than having a carnival atmosphere,'' she said. ``He was very adamant about it.''
Roberts started his racing career in 1947 at age 18. His era was the era of the Flock brothers and Lee Petty, Junior Johnson and Speedy Thompson. He made his reputation on the way he drove.
``It was the way he came through the turns on the Daytona Beach course,'' Doris said. She was 19 when she convinced her parents to make the trip to the beach in 1948.
``We were sitting in the North Turn grandstand, and the way he came through the turn, my mother thought he was the most exciting thing she had ever seen,'' Doris recalled.
``It's a pity she didn't feel like that after I brought him home.''
She met him on Memorial Day, 1950, at a track in Charlotte. She was there with some of her girlfriends, sitting on the hood of her car. She had blonde hair and blue eyes. She already had decided she wanted to marry a race car driver.
They went to dinner, and he swept her off her feet.
``I was so impressed by him in person,'' she said. ``He was a classical music fan, and so am I. I could not get over that - and his intelligence. He was really a fascinating person. He could talk about anything.''
Their first formal date was at Buddy Shuman's garage in Charlotte.
``I sat there while he changed the engine on a race car,'' she said.
``He didn't apologize for his racing in any way, shape or form. There was work to be done, and I ran second to the race car.''
He courted her for three weeks, then asked her to marry him. She said yes. In 1951, they had their only child, Pamela.
``Of course, I had to do little boy things to spend time with my Daddy,'' said Pamela, 44, who was with her mother at Rockingham. ``He'd pick me up from school and we went out to the speedway and took the dogs. And he'd shoot the guns sometimes, to keep the dogs from being gun shy.
``He was a great daddy. We went to the beach all the time. We'd go flying, too. We'd take the plane up and he would play out over the ocean until the tower told him to quit.
``When he was at home, he would lift weights in the backyard in the afternoon and all the neighborhood kids would gather there.''
Roberts won 32 races in what is now the NASCAR Winston Cup series. But he made his greatest mark at Daytona International Speedway, even though he raced there less than six years.
It is difficult to adequately describe how terrifying Daytona was when it opened in 1959.
Lee Petty may have said it best: ``There wasn't a man there who wasn't scared to death of the place. We had never raced on a track like that before. What it amounted to was that we were all rookies going 30 to 40 miles per hour faster than we had ever gone before.''
``It was very scary,'' Doris Roberts said. ``The tires were my greatest fear. I worried more about the tires than anything else.'' The tires were passenger car tires back then and were not designed for the stress of high speeds on a high-banked track.
Roberts won the first Firecracker race - then a 250-miler - in 1959. But his greatest Daytona performance was in 1962, when he swept all the races he was in, including the Daytona 500.
``I was so proud of him,'' Doris said. ``And 1958 was a banner year, too. He won every race he entered that was 500 miles or more.''
But Fireball was not a good loser.
``I always wanted to know how well he did,'' Pam said. ``If he did bad, I'd just stay in my room.''
The family dealt with the risk of racing the way racers always do - they dismissed the possibility of death.
``I told myself and Glenn also told me that nothing would ever happen to him,'' Doris said. ``And I decided it would never happen to him. And that's how you lived with it. But deep down, you knew there was a possibility.''
``I was 13 when he died,'' Pam said. ``That Sunday, I was learning how to surf on the beach for the first time. My boyfriend came out to the water and told me he had crashed.'' She thought it was just another routine accident. She kept surfing.
Doris was at home, listening to the race on the radio. ``I couldn't do anything until Pamela got home,'' she said. They flew to Charlotte that evening.
``I'll never forget that night,'' Pam said. ``We got there and that waiting room was full.''
In the final six weeks, Roberts ``went in and out,'' Doris said. ``We could talk to him sometimes. We didn't talk about the crash. But the first couple of days, he thought he had won the race. He asked about Indy. We did not tell him about MacDonald and Sachs. It was a day-by-day thing, even up until he died.''
Roberts had invested wisely, so he left his his wife and daughter in good financial shape. But it was an emotional struggle, and Doris had to fill the role as mother and father.
``I gave her a present once on Father's Day,'' Pam said. "I had a lady design a race car and stitch it. And when I gave it to her, I told her, `You were just as good a daddy as you were a mommy.'''
In February, 1965, Bill France, Jr., who is now NASCAR president, called Doris.
``He asked me if I wanted to come out [to the Daytona track] and I said no,'' Doris recalled. ``But I told Pam and she said, `Mother, I want to go.' So we did. Everybody was just so wonderful. Actually, they were just very protective.''
``NASCAR is really very good to us. The people involved are just so terrific. They make me feel a part of it.''
But Doris never returned to Charlotte Motor Speedway.
``It always makes me feel so good for someone to say to me, `Fireball was my favorite,' Doris said. ``I've had people say that after he was killed, they never went back to another race. I wish they would.
``I cannot believe the things that are happening in NASCAR racing today. I'm so pleased that racing has come as far as it has. Glenn worked so hard for it to reach this.''
``You know, Don Garlits [the drag racer] told me once, `Doris, we can look in a mirror and see how old we are. But Fireball's image is frozen in time.'''
LENGTH: Long : 157 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE Doris Roberts says her deceasedby CNBhusband, Glenn ``Fireball'' Roberts, ``wanted so badly for stock
car racing to come into its own, rather than having a carnival
atmosphere. He was very adamant about it.'' KEYWORDS: AUTO RACING