May 26, 2007

By Sharon Sherwood

Teresa Earnhardt

With the 2007 All-Star Challenge already in the history books the Nextel Cup invasion of Lowe’s Motor Speedway continues this Sunday with its traditional Memorial weekend event, the Coca Cola 600. But this year the excitement of NASCAR’s summer kickoff and perhaps racing’s biggest weekend has been somewhat overshadowed by “The Question”.

‘Where will Dale Earnhardt Jr. go?’

The story has dominated print and Internet motorsports media ever since Junior announced his departure from the company that bears his late father’s name.

Did Junior make the right decision? It may be a long time -- years perhaps -- before that question can be answered. Meanwhile, life goes on.

But in the wake of Junior’s defection the venomous bashing of team owner and step-mom Teresa Earnhardt has been ugly and shameful, driven by a lynch-mob mentality that seems to surface whenever you mix ignorance with large groups of people just looking for someone to scapegoat.

Wicked stepmother. The black widow. Gold digger. These are some of the more glowing terms being bandied about the water cooler lately. It’s hard to believe that the target of such hatred is the beloved wife of racing legend Dale Earnhardt, stepmother to Kerry, Kelley and Dale Junior, mother to Taylor Nicole, and keeper of the DEI flame.

Some of the hostility is overt. Some, like the bias revealed by certain members of the NASCAR broadcast contingent, is slightly more low-key but no less cruel for all its veiled subtlety.

To all those who think they know “What Dale would have wanted”, I can tell you what he would not have wanted, and that is to hear people -- people who claim to be his fans and people who claimed to be his friends -- trashing his wife. Hypocrites.

“Teresa is the best thing that ever happened to me” – Dale Earnhardt

Gold digger, you say??

It’s public knowledge that Dale and Teresa were barely making ends meet in the early days. Dale once recounted the couple’s less than glamorous living conditions, which included a lone mattress on the floor of their mobile home and bed sheets instead of curtains at the windows. They built DEI together in 1980 when Dale Junior was just six years old. The man they called The Intimidator was not too proud to openly credit his wife at every opportunity for her love and support through the lean years, and for her huge role in his phenomenal success both as a race car driver and a businessman.

One of Dale’s most oft-repeated quotes was “Before I met Teresa, I owed the bank money, now the bank owes me money.”

Not only did Teresa help Dale build DEI from scratch, she was the one who convinced her husband to take a chance putting the young Dale Jr. behind the wheel of a race car.

Now this woman is being castigated for not handing over to Junior the keys of the company she and her husband built brick by brick. Excuse me?

It was both Dale and Teresa’s plan that DEI would one day be passed down to all four children in equal measure -- via the natural order of things -- not by having control wrested away simply because Junior and his sister Kelley felt they had the power to do so.

I was a race fan long before I began writing NASCAR commentary. My driver – Dale Earnhardt. Like most fans that were impacted by his death, various scenes are imprinted forever in my memory:

Dale in victory lane and the way he always first looked around for Teresa, and Teresa lifting up baby Taylor Nicole with a congratulatory kiss for daddy.

Dale and Teresa walking hand in hand prior to the start of the 2001 Daytona 500 and that tender, lingering hug and kiss before Dale climbed into a race car for the last time.

I can remember the first photos of Teresa after Dale’s death, her face a mask of anguish as she is escorted from her husband’s memorial service by a member of the North Carolina state police.

Teresa in court, asking a Florida State judge not to release her husband’s autopsy photos, testimony which was directly responsible for the “Earnhardt Family Protection Act” which makes accessing autopsy photos without a court order a felony.

Teresa on the cover of NASCAR Illustrated after being cited as an “Outstanding Mother of the Year” for 2002 by the National Mother's Day Committee, an organization that honors deserving mothers of high accomplishment in their chosen fields who have also exhibited enormous achievement as parents.

This is a woman deserving of respect -- a woman who knew better than anyone, the heart, mind and soul of Dale Earnhardt. No one should presume to question her integrity or commitment to his dreams, his intentions, or his legacy.

The thoughts and ideas expressed by this writer or any other writer on Insider Racing News, are not necessarily the views of the staff and/or management of IRN.