Shortly after I moved to Lexington in 1976 to become the new wet-behind-the-ears sports writer for The Dispatch, I was assigned to do a story on Welcome's Ralph Brinkley.
It seems that Ralph was something of a local legend even by then, winning modified stock car races at Winston-Salem's unique Bowman Gray Stadium at a prodigious rate. In 1976, at the age of 37, he'd won the third of what would be an incredible eight championships on the unbanked quarter-mile asphalt track. Before his career was over in 1998, he'd won 64 feature races there (a record that lasted seven years).
Like I said, local legend.
For my part, I knew next to nothing about stock car racing. I was a 25-year-old Yankee from Pennsylvania who grew up on baseball, football and basketball and regarded almost everything else as an unworthy diversion.
And so when I went out to Ralph's automotive machine shop in Lexington for my first ever interview with him, I told him all that. He smiled. He said he'd learn me.
Did he ever.
Ralph died on Wednesday at the age of 84, and while I always thought we had a terrific professional relationship between athlete and journalist, I also felt that he was a friend. He just made most people feel that way, I guess.
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| Ralph Brinkley |
A few years later, I was assigned to do an in-depth piece on Ralph. That meant riding with him and his crew to Bowman Gray Stadium, watching them set up the car (a modified Corvair), watching him race from the pit, then from the stands and then talking with his fans. It was an incredible experience. We didn't get back home until midnight.
What amazed me more than anything is that Ralph was as successful as he was in spite of being blind in one eye. When he was nine years old, he lost his right eye to cancer. Logically, you'd think that depth perception would be an issue for a one-eyed stock car driver, but that never seemed to be the case for Ralph, who would later get a private pilot's license to fly his cherished Piper Cherokee.
There's a great story out there that highlights both Ralph's personality and life perspective. He was once asked by fan Mark Benson if having one eye hindered his racing. "No," replied Ralph. "I just close my good eye and look out of my glass eye."
When Kim and I purchased a classic 1966 289 Mustang convertible, we needed to have the engine overhauled. The guy that was working on the car for us subbed it out to Ralph Brinkley & Sons Automotive. "Oh," I said. "I know Ralph. Thanks for that."
When I ran into Ralph a bit later, he told me several of the pistons had hairline fractures in them. He replaced them with durable racing pistons. The engine was never a problem after that.
He later went on to build his own airplane, an RV 7-A that he put together from a kit in the Lexington airport hanger.
He also became a certified advanced scuba diver. Never saw that one coming, but I think the endeavor established him as something of a multifaceted renaissance man. Something more than a stock car driver anyway.
But the best part of all came in 2012. I was the secretary on the board of directors for the Davidson County Sports Hall of Fame back then. I added Ralph's name to the list of candidates for that year and we, the board, unanimously voted him in without debate.
When it came time for the induction ceremony, Ralph was as grateful and as appreciative as any inductee we ever had. He brought his family. He brought his pit crew. He brought a large number of his fans. He even brought his race car, which he had on display outside of the building that evening.
During the ceremony, Ralph easily spoke to the audience without notes. He was a natural speaker who was comfortable within his own skin. He regaled us with racing tales, with humor and with sincere emotion. By the time he was done, he had us in tears, including himself. Tears of happiness, mostly. "Who would think a person with one eye could ever be inducted into a sports hall of fame?" he asked, seemingly incredulous about his own induction.
I will always remember his induction ceremony as one of the best we ever had, if for no other reason than the sheer joy he exuded that night. I'd never seen anything quite like it before.
The other day, Kim called me from work. She'd seen a story about Ralph's passing and she wanted to let me know. I felt a tinge of sadness, of course, but it also occurred to me that Ralph had lived his life to its absolute fullest. And so I smiled.
What more could a man ask?
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