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This is a post from one of the racing forums
Benny Parsons’ life was a mosaic of kindnesses.
From helping young drivers like Bill Elliott and Greg Biffle get their footholds in NASCAR to pulling a wagon loaded with fresh strawberries through the garage during Daytona testing, handing them out with a smile and a handshake like some kind of Pied Piper, you got so used to seeing ol’ BP do nice things you almost stopped noticing.
Now, he’s gone.
A few hours after Parsons died Tuesday morning, I got an e-mail from David Joseph. He wanted to tell me the greatest Benny Parsons story never told. When I read it, I wanted to tell it.
It began in the 1960s. Bob Joseph was a traveling salesman based in Ohio who liked to spend his evenings at race tracks in the Midwest. One night, he went to see a race at Dayton Speedway in Ohio and stopped off at a diner on his way back to the motel.
At a nearby table, Joseph saw a group of in grimy fire suits and team windbreakers. He struck up a conversation and introductions were exchanged. One of the drivers was Benny Parsons.
Six months later, Bob Joseph is in an auto parts store in Detroit on lunch hour when he’s approached by a young man in street clothes. “Bob Joseph?” the man says. It’s Parsons, reminding Joseph of their meeting in Dayton.
Joseph began scheduling his business trips around opportunities to see his Parsons race. As their friendship grew, the two found they have much in common. Both were married, both had two children. Joseph’s grandmother and Parsons’ great-grandmother had been a large part of their upbringing. Both would lose their first wives unexpectedly far too soon.
Through all the years, as Parsons moved from racing in the Midwest to becoming NASCAR’s champion in 1973 and a famous television announcer following his career, the friendship endured.
Parsons came to the Josephs home many times, like the time he came to play golf with Bob’s wife before an International Race of Champions event on a road course at the airport in Cleveland. He arranged for Bob Joseph to ride around in the pace car at Michigan Speedway for Joseph’s 50th birthday and got Bob’s father a ride around that track in a relative’s Buick under Parsons’ supervision.
When David Joseph threw his dad a surprise 70th birthday party, he invited more than 150 people. He knew Parsons’ schedule would make it tough, but Parsons flew in for the evening and brought along his dad, Harold, along too.
After a night of story-telling and good times, Parsons gave Bob Joseph a gift. It was a photo of Parsons’ induction into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame, showing Parsons being welcomed in by Richard Petty.
“Dear Bob,” the inscription read. “Without the help of people like you, I never would have been inducted into the Hall of Fame by Richard Petty.”
When Bob Joseph died, Parsons served as a pallbearer at his funeral. After the service, he told David and his sister that their father had contributed thousands of dollars toward Parsons’ racing career in those early days. That was news to the Joseph family, although they knew their father had tried to help Parsons find a major sponsor.
“Somewhere, heaped among stacks of old mail and keepsakes,” David Joseph says, “we have a wonderful letter from Bill France Sr. saying that he was sure ‘my dad’s friend Benny was a good race car driver’ but that there was “nothing he could do to help him with sponsorship at this time.”
The note, David said, made his father laugh every time he looked at it.
David Joseph lives in California now. Last fall, he went to the race at California Speedway that Parsons was unable to attend because of his battle with cancer. When David Joseph wrote on the start-finish line “Get Well BP” he hadn’t even finished before other fans started telling him their stories about what a great person Parsons was.
David Joseph last talked to Parsons on Christmas Eve, two days before Parsons was taken to the hospital where he died on Tuesday.
“He talked about how support he had received from the entire NASCAR community during his illness was just overwhelming,” David Joseph said. “I tried to convince him that all the well wishes that were being sent his way weren’t the result of charity, but rather the offspring of something much deeper – something that was well-earned.
“Because although Benny Parsons was a larger than life racing personality, he rose to the top of his profession by never making anybody else feel small.”
David Poole
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