I posted this on the Robbys Uprising last year, but I found it on my computer and thought I would post it here today...

Today marks a sad anniversary for NASCAR, and myself. 15 years ago, the improbable journey that was Alan Kulwicki’s life came to an end.
As a 13 year old, his death really affected me. I can still remember almost everything about that morning… waking up, turning on the TV and the first thing I saw was an over-the-shoulder graphic with “Alan Kulwicki 1954-1993” next to the anchor. It was completely incomprehensible to me that he could be gone after all that had happened in the past year.
I got ready for school, but couldn’t bring myself to say anything about it to my father and he didn’t mention it. This was before the Internet, he didn’t watch TV in the morning and I guess it hadn’t made it to the early edition of the NY Times that he was reading. I still don’t know if it was to this day, but he never said anything to me, and I think for some reason I figured if I didn’t bring it up, maybe it wouldn’t be real. He was the one that got me into NASCAR despite raising me in NY City (he grew up in Western NC) and we had both become fans of the guy who, on the surface, couldn’t be more different than the NASCAR driver stereotype, but for all the stuff that mattered, epitomized the true spirit of a stock car racer.
We all know the story, so there is little point in me repeating it here, but it’s also the reason a lot of us are here, on this site. No matter what happens on Sundays, I am proud to be a Robby Gordon fan for the same reason I am proud to be an Alan Kulwicki fan. People said that what Kulwicki did in 1992 was impossible, but it wasn’t. He could have taken a ride with Junior Johnson, but he didn’t and he still won the Cup. Obviously, it’s a different time now, the game has changed, the money is bigger, the cars are different, but there’s still a #7 car beating the odds, and I can’t help but root for that car, that driver. We hear it all the time now, people questioning why we cheer for the #7, but just remember that it was “impossible” then too.
Alan & Robby have different personalities and come from different places, but the challenges they chose to take on are the same. I saw a quote from Robby last year saying something to the effect of “I am not a throwback” and that it is not his intention to be a one-car team forever, but to build a successful NASCAR team in whatever form it takes to be successful. Not many people would take on the challenge of betting on himself and doing it from the ground up. Kuwicki had to do it, and even when he got the chance to take a quicker route to success, couldn’t turn his back on what he’d started. Robby might not have needed to do it “his way”, but he’s thrown everything into the effort and always will.
Alan Kulwicki is one person that I can honestly call a hero of mine. My most prized piece of sports memorabilia is the R/C car body pictured above. My father and I collaborated on it (the shoddy paint from me, the homemade decals by him when it was a big deal to make those on a home computer) since the only commercially available Kulwicki decals were the Zerex ones. At the time, my father was doing some work on the business side of a Busch North team and the owner of the team got the body autographed by Kulwicki at Daytona in 1992. I like to think that he appreciated the effort put into it. Needless to say, the body immediately went into retirement, following a successful racing career.