RIP to legendary Bobby Allison, who couldn't remember the most unforgettable day of his life
The NASCAR great on love, death, and chasing a memory that won't come back
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This is one of the last stories I wrote for Sporting News. It’s about Bobby Allison, the legendary NASCAR driver. He died over the weekend and his unbelievable life of triumph and grief got unfortunately scant attention.
We can learn much from how he dealt with tragedy and triumph. The story chronicles the unbelievable toll the sport took on him and his family, and how he found hope, or at least a reason to keep going, amid unimaginable grief.
I interviewed Allison many times over the years, and it was always a delight. He had a roguish charm that grew even more interesting as he got older.
The interview for this story stands out, of course. Published in 2013, this is on the very short list of stories that have stuck with me long after I finished them. It was cited in the “notable mention” section of Best American Sports Writing.
Chasing a memory, outrunning his son
Bobby Allison climbs down the stairs to The Sporting News Studio to watch one of the greatest races in NASCAR history: Twenty-five years ago, he won the Daytona 500, and his son, Davey, finished second. Because of head injuries he suffered in a crash four months later, Bobby Allison can’t remember the race. He can’t remember his son inching almost equal with him coming out of turn 4 on the last lap. He can’t remember beating his son off that final corner and then taking the checkered flag. He can’t remember his son pouring beer — Miller was Bobby’s sponsor — on him in victory lane.
First he lost the memory.
Then he lost the son who made that memory so special.
Davey Allison died in a helicopter crash at Talladega Superspeedway in 1993, 11 months after Allison’s other son, Clifford, died in a crash at Michigan International Speedway.
Allison brought his wife, Judy, and a friend, Tom Ubelhour. They are here to tell a story about a race. Which they do. They also tell a story about perseverance and life and fathers and sons and memories and why we are who we are.
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Bobby sits on the couch. Judy sits to his left, and Ubelhour sits in a chair to her left.
This is not the first time Bobby has watched this race. Immediately after the June 18, 1988 crash at Pocono that caused his memory loss, he had total amnesia. As he recovered, seeing a picture or hearing a story often helped him recall an event.
He won the 1983 Winston Cup championship but couldn’t remember anything about having done so and didn’t believe Judy when she told him he had, until she showed him a program from the championship banquet with his picture on it. Pop!—that season came back to him.
He tried to force that to happen with the 1988 Daytona 500.
He watched for 15 or 20 minutes.
No pop!
He got mad and shut it off.
Later, he tried again.
He watched for 15 or 20 minutes.
No pop!
He got mad and shut it off.
He eventually willed himself to watch the whole thing a handful of times, green flag to checkered flag.
Still no pop!
Until today, Judy has never watched this race. “It’s hard for me to see Davey talking and walking,” she says. Bobby Allison is haunted by what he can’t remember. Judy Allison is haunted by what she can’t forget.
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Lunch arrives—turkey wraps, chicken salad sandwiches, Cokes and waters. Bobby asks for a turkey wrap and a Coke. A devout Catholic, Bobby leads this little race-viewing party in saying grace. Without his faith, maybe he’s not here today. Without his faith, no way is he the man he is today.
The crash at Pocono nearly killed him. He had broken bones, internal injuries and severe head trauma. For years afterward, he struggled, physically and emotionally. “I sat and cried. Like a 2-year-old. The world was really mixed up to me,” he says. “Early on, I was really mad that they let me live.”
Allison says a handful of close friends, several of them priests, helped him get through the tough times, which is not to say those tough times are over—or ever will be. “I decided I would appreciate what I had and I wouldn’t grieve what I didn’t have,” he says.
That’s a continuing process, 25 years after the accident, 21 years after Davey died and 22 years after Clifford died. The accident ruined the family financially, and Bobby and Judy separated for four years before reuniting 12 years ago. “I’ve seen a lot more tragedy and agony since I began recovering then I’ve had fun and games and success,” he says.
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Researchers separate memory into two types—procedural and declarative. Procedural memories are “knowing how” memories—how to tie your shoe, take a shower and drive a car, for example.
Declarative memories are “knowing that” memories, and there are two types, semantic and episodic. Semantic memories involve general knowledge of the world—the Yankees are a baseball team, Pepsi is a drink, there are 50 states in the United States. Episodic memories involve events that move through time and space and are what people are missing when they say they have amnesia.
Gaps remain in Allison’s episodic memory for the few years before he was hurt. Islands of memory float in the darkness. He remembers a party at Park’s Seafood restaurant in Daytona Beach the night of the race. He remembers eating deep-fried alligator there.
Two days after winning the Daytona 500, he visited his sister, Claire, in Fort Myers, Florida. He was the only person she would listen to, so her doctor asked him to deliver grim news. Allison told her she was dying of pancreatic cancer.
He remembers that.
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The only reason Allison could forget the most memorable of his 84 career Cup wins is because he’s human and the memory was there in the first place. So far as researchers can determine, only humans enjoy episodic memories.
In highly emotional situations—such as Allison winning the Daytona 500 with his son finishing second—the body releases adrenaline and cortisol. They cause the amygdala to alert the brain that something important is happening, and a “vivid autobiographical memory” is formed. Researchers hypothesize that such memories are more resistant to head injuries, though that’s not much more than a guess.
Even powerful memories are stronger than they are accurate. The brain fills in details, and sometimes makes them up, without the person knowing it. Even if —pop!—Allison suddenly remembers every lap of the 1988 Daytona 500, parts of his memory would be wrong, and he would have no idea which parts.
He’d take it.
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The Bobby Allison on the couch is 75. The one on the screen is 50 and is about to become the oldest Daytona 500 winner ever, a record that still stands. He is fast all race long. He says he doesn’t know what he and crew chief Jimmy Fennig did to get the car fast, but he knows what kind of driver he was. Some drivers coast early and surge late. Allison liked being out front.
Some drivers always run the same line. Allison searched for where his car was best. It was Allison’s style to ask for specific changes to try to get the car just right. Based on the evidence on the screen, he concludes he did just that.
So did Davey.
On the screen, Davey followed in his dad’s tracks for much of the day. In life, he did the same. “I had the privilege of having a son that from the time he was little bitty guy, wanted to be with me, and wanted to see what I was doing, and wanted to know why,” Bobby says. “As he got into this he would say, ‘Dad, how do I get better?’ In fact, one day said to me, ‘Dad, I want to beat you.’”
In 1988, Bobby Allison was near the end of a Hall of Fame career, and Davey Allison was an emerging star. He won at least two races a year from 1987 until his last full season, 1992. Was he as good as his old man? “I’m reluctant to say he caught me,” Bobby Allison says. His eyes twinkle. They always twinkle. “He was definitely on his way.”
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As the laps wind down, the Judy Allison in The Sporting News Studio scoots to the edge of the couch. She leans toward the screen—toward herself, as CBS shows her in the pit area. Across 25 years, this Judy Allison tells that Judy Allison to stop chewing her gum.
That one is nervous.
This one is, too. She is re-experiencing the tension of wanting the man she married and the man she raised to finish 1-2. She said after the race that she was pulling for Bobby because he paid the bills, and that’s still true today.
Ubelhour’s heart is pounding, too. He’s rooting for his other friends in the race. This little race-viewing party comes out solidly pro-Neil Bonnett, a close Allison friend, and anti-Darrell Waltrip, Allison’s archrival.
Watching himself turn laps, Bobby smiles broadly. But he’s not reliving the race like Judy and Tom are. As much as he wants to, the Bobby Allison on the couch can’t summon a connection to the Bobby Allison on the screen. To this Bobby Allison, it’s like that Bobby Allison is not even Bobby Allison. “That movie actor that looks like me?” he says. “Yeah, I want him to win.”
During the three-hour race, the strongest reaction he has watching himself is when CBS shows a pre-recorded interview with him in which he talks about Davey. He calls him a “competitive pain.” Judy laughs and nudges him with her elbow.
On the screen, Bobby talks about how proud he is of Davey.
On the couch, his eyes mist.
“I think that’s pretty neat,” he says. He leans forward in his seat. “I’m pleased I got the chance to say that.”
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With 18 laps left, Bobby is fourth on a restart. He charges to the front, toward a life-changing win.
What, in your life, is the equivalent of winning the Daytona 500 with your son finishing second? What is the equivalent of losing two sons? How important were those events in turning the you before them into the you after them? If you lost all of your memory—of the highs and lows and everything in between—would you still be you? If Bobby Allison had never regained any of his memory, would he still have the distinct characteristics that made him Bobby Allison?
Whatever sense of self Bobby Allison took into his wreck at Pocono, he took out with him. Judy says she could see that, even as he lay naked and otherwise absent, in a hospital bed in Birmingham, Alabama. “I could read his facial expressions, like his sub-conscious. I knew all of those things were still in there,” she says.
Stan Klein’s mind-bending work with amnesia backs that up. An expert on the relationship between amnesia and self, Klein, a Harvard PhD and professor at UC-Santa Barbara, says people who can’t remember anything about the events that shaped their lives still describe themselves accurately.
Applied to Allison, Klein’s work shows even if Allison could not remember any of his NASCAR career, he’d still see himself as having the characteristics that made him great—as innovative, hard-charging, authority-challenging. Whatever sense of pride and confidence Allison gained from the 1988 Daytona 500 survived the wreck four months later. “One of the things that I have yet to find is a situation where a person loses trait knowledge of himself,” Klein says.
Even if Allison never regained memory of his racing career, if he got back in the car, he’d drive the same way, because that is a procedural memory, which is separate from episodic memory, and would still be intact.
This is true, too: If Bobby Allison could not remember the deaths of his sons—if he could not remember that he had two sons—Klein’s research shows he would still describe himself as heartbroken.
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Bobby is first. Davey is second. Waltrip is third … and fades.
“Something happened after we got by him, that his thing started missing or went sour or something,” Bobby says.
“How do you know that?” Judy asks him
“I got that piece of information from one of the other times I watched this, or something,” he says.
“It could be a memory coming back,” Judy says.
Pop!?
“Could be,” Bobby says.
POP!?
“I don’t recognize it if it is.”
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Last lap of the race. CBS plays Davey’s in-car camera view. Judy Allison and Bobby Allison see what Davey Allison son saw: Bobby’s bumper. On the screen, Davey chases Bobby. On the couch, Bobby chases Davey.
The race is over. Bobby Allison takes off the helmet that protects his head, inside of which flow adrenaline and cortisol, which prompt his amygdala to tell his brain, “remember this.”
Maybe “this” is still in there.
Maybe it’s not.
Allison looks out his driver’s side window to see Mike Joy, the CBS pit road reporter who today is Fox’s NASCAR play-by-play man. Joy had elbowed his way through the crowd to get to Allison’s window, and he’s in a hurry. The race ran long, and CBS needs to get to a Lakers-Celtics game, so the interview is short.
Still behind the wheel, Allison unbuckles the belts that hold his body into the seat. Joy asks him a question. Allison again talks about how proud he is of Davey. If that was an actor driving his car for the last three hours, that’s Bobby Allison sitting in it now. That’s Bobby Allison pouring love onto his son. That’s Bobby Allison on the couch, his eyes glistening with tears.