Jesse Samples Jr. – The Kid from Nowhere Story and Photos by Richard Cunningham
From May 21, 1997 Issue of Racing News For Printable Version Text Only Click Here and Print
It’s race week in Charlotte and there is a young good-looking guy getting more television time than its current big star – Dale Earnhardt. There’s talk of movie appearances, billboards of him selling jeans, Buddy Baker’s getting to him complimenting him on his driving, race fans are all a buzz – he’s the next superstar of NASCAR and he’s destine to be the biggest ever.
No, its not Jeff Gordon, who won last weekend’s Winston,
not even Tony Stewart, who hot lapped his IRL car between activities at
Charlotte Motor Speedway’s Winston Open and The Winston, it’s not even
1997.
It’s 1986 and the star was Jesse Samples Jr.
He stole the headlines in the May 29, 1986 of this paper (Racing News) as well as the attention of all the media in Charlotte for the World 600 activities.
Jesse Samples Jr. in 1986 was a high school kid who had just driven his Wrangler Jeans Charlotte/Daytona Dash entry to victory at Charlotte in only his second major asphalt start. Plans were laid for a trip to the top, but somewhere the road turned and the plans all failed. Jesse Samples Jr. never made the full trip.
"I was just looking over at Winner’s Circle," said Jesse as he sat in the stands overlooking Charlotte Motor Speedway just a month ago. "It’s changed a lot since I was last standing in it. It’s amazing how the whole track has changed since I started coming here."
It has been 10 years since Jesse even was around the track where he was herald as a future star. There’s a lot of unfilled script to the racing career of Jesse Samples Jr., but he’s a different person now and has a different life than the one that was being played out as a teenager.
"I guess I actually started racing here when I was 10 years old, Jesse remembers. "In the go-karts, That was before they had the VIP suites and condos. The sport sure has grown over the past 10 years.
"When I was three and a half my uncle worked at a manufacturing facility that made the go-karts they sold at JCPenny’s, Sears, through their catalogues and things. He specially built a go-kart for me with real long extensions on it and all, I was just a kid." Jesse recalled. "My grandparents had about a five acre yard – that I basically just trashed as a child."
"When I was, I guess about seven, my parents divorced. We were living in the Carolina’s at the time and I wound up living with my father." Jesse said. "For something for us to do together, he was traveling most of the week, I guess where most fathers throw the football together on the weekend type of deal, we’d get together and go go-kart racing. He knew how much I enjoyed riding my go-kart.
"It just kind of started from something like that. It really wasn’t suppose to be anything." Jesse said. "Basically we wound up winning a track championship, then a South Carolina state championship and then we decided to try some North Carolina/South Carolina national events.
"I was fortunate enough to beat everyone at the big Carolina National events so we decided to start racing some of the national events and won the National title in 1979, I guess I was right at 11 years old." Jesse continued. "Ended up from then on being a full-blown effort. We said, ‘Hey, maybe we’re pretty good at doing this’, it still was suppose to be a father-son type of thing, that kinda’ became addictive, I guess. We won seven Grand National championships with WKA, World Karting Championships, and six National Driving Championships by the time I was 15 years old."
"Charlotte Motor Speedway and Humpy Wheeler were very supportive of me, I guess they are the home now of the WKA and doing all the karting things here then, Humpy was a big key. I went to school with his son Tripp and Bruton Smith’s son, Scott, the three of us hung out and played football together, real close friends and all. So that helped a lot being a local kid. Charlotte Motor Speedway and particular Humpy probably had as much to do with me getting as far as I did.
"Mr. Wheeler said I should start doing some Saturday
night Hickory Speedway races." Jesse explained. "And if there was
anyway I could ever get involved n racing, and anybody who could ever really
help me, there was a guy named Frank Heffner, who used to crew chief for Bobby
Issac’s race car. He had been retired about 15 or 20 years, lived in
Cherryville, North Carolina, and if I could talk him out of retirement and
helping me out on Saturday nights that would be a big help to me.
"Wonderful, sweet man. Really a gentleman." Jesse said. "He was nice enough, everybody had been after him 15 or so years, but he wouldn’t come out of retirement, but he started helping me. We bought a real old car, a 10 year old Sam Ard race car. Beat up, tore up, been owned by about eight people, run into walls, just an old Camaro.
"We started running late model stock at Hickory Motor Speedway. I got a license from NASCAR because of Humpy and some other people, giving me permission because at 15 you could have a restricted driver’s license at 15 in South Carolina then. Supposedly at the time I was the youngest person ever to be given a NASCAR Drivers License at the time. It had a big red Minor all over it.
"We started going, I guess I was a sophomore in school, we just started running a couple of races with it." Jesse recollected. "It wasn’t anything fancy. It was just something I could go knock the walls down and see if I could figure out what I was doing inside the car. I was still running the go-karts, trying to defend my title, and running four or five late model stocks at Hickory.
"I guess I could have got a mini-stock or something, but we just went ahead and got the big v-8 late model stock and started running with those guys. I can remember the car wasn’t very fast. We’d qualify at the back and the deal was be real consistent, stay out of trouble, and to gain experience." He continued. "I’d end up seventh or eighth, just kept picking them off.
"We did that a couple of races when I was 15 and then a couple when I was 16." Jesse shared. "I got to be 17 and again, talking with Humpy, he said we should try to get in the division Charlotte/Daytona Dash Division. He said I should go try to pick up a ride for that. So we went and met with a few people, tried to pick up a ride. Nothing was really panning out. When they found out how young I was, they didn’t really want me in their race car.
"It turns out there was a team based out of Taylorsville, North Carolina that was trying to get rid of their race car. The guy actually wanted to go to Daytona to sell the race car. He didn’t want to spend any expenses to get the car down there type of deal. So my dad and him worked out a deal, we took loan out and rented a ride for one race." Jesse said.
"I got down there and the guy wouldn’t even let me practice the race car. He kept saying I was going to wreck it and that there were things they had to do to fix the car, it was having problems." Jesse recalled. "We’ll we had already paid up front, plus part of the deal was what ever we won, he got all of it. I was just there to get my chance to race at Daytona, where I had already won the World Cup Championships and won seven times at Daytona, been running there since I was 11 years old and was familiar with the place, but never in a car.
"Finally it came down to the last couple of practice sessions before qualifying and I hadn’t even been in the car yet, so my dad of course was very upset and starting to jump up and down and the guy finally let me go out and practice." Jesse recalls of his first Dash experience. "My lap times were pretty good, but I was wide open all the way around. I came in and the guys were like that was pretty good and all. It was geared so it wouldn’t go full speed and the timing was turned back, so they tinkered with it a little bit. It came time for qualifying and we qualified sixth.
"The best the car had ever finished before, it was a bout a four year old car, was fifth here at Charlotte with Morgan Shepherd driving it in a celebrity race." Jesse said. "The guys got all excited then with the sixth qualifying spot and tried to get it as fast as they could. I don’t think I ever lifted and we finished fourth. That was my first time in a car on a big track."
It was during that experience at Daytona during Speedweeks that Jesse found himself, as had been his whole career, in the right place at the right time. "I met a young lady that weekend and she invited me to go to a big party that Wrangler Blue Jeans was putting on. So, I went to the party with her and it turned out that the people with Wrangler Blue Jeans had been paying close attention to me while I was out there, because on the car it was written on the very back of it- there was a little blue jeans company out of Taylorsville, North Carolina, and they were wanting to know who this blue jeans company was.
"It was just a freak, coincident type of deal, I guess the good lord looking out for me." Jesse said. "I guess they were pretty impressed with it being my first time out and finishing fourth and all."
While at the party Jesse got to talking with the Special Events coordinator with Wrangler and they told Jesse they wanted to keep in touch. "About two weeks before the Charlotte race came up, they called me out of the clear blue. They said, ‘We’re really impressed with what you did. We think you’ve got a bright future and we don’t want you racing for any other blue jeans company. What do you think about racing for us?’
"We’ll here I am, just turned 18, and I was ecstatic." Jesse beams still now. All wasn’t to be perfect though. Part of the deal was they weren’t interested in a full deal, but if Jesse put together his own team they would sponsor him for the one Charlotte race and evaluate after that.
"They didn’t know we had just rented the car for one race at Daytona. The guy wound up selling the car, so dad started talking to the guy who was actually crew chief, Charlie Sigmon, and he was willing to put up some money, along with my dad and the father of the girl I was dating at the time." Jesse said.
Jesse now had himself a Wrangler Jeans #3 just like Dale Earnhardt’s for the Charlotte Dash race. "We came to Charlotte with a one race career and a couple of thousand bucks from Wrangler just to buy some tires and things, but basically dad had to mortgage everything just to do it." Jesse shared. "So we came to Charlotte and everyone was like, Wow, we got this big sponsor and all this stuff, when really we only had a couple thousand dollars, but we were the only people in that division with a sponsor of that status.
"So we came here and I think we qualified like
seventh." Jesse recalls looking out over the 1.5-mile superspeedway.
"The race started and on the very first lap the car was shaking and
shimmying, like the wheels were going to fall off the race car. It scared me
to death. I came in on the radio and said ‘Guys, I think I got a wheel nut
that is loose’, remember I never really been in a race car t that kind of
speed, I was just an 18 year old punk. Just at that time there was a caution
flag that came out, so they were like come on in.
"I dove in the pits, no one else pitted, so when I went back out instead of being right there in the front five or so, I was back 50th or something. They used to start that many. It was 150 kilometer race, which was 57 miles or something like that." Jesse recounts of his big day. "I had about 50 laps and 50 cars in front of me. We ended up passing everybody and ended up winning the race. It was a deal like I was every lap I was passing a car. It made a pretty exciting time for the fans I guess and winning was obviously a big highlight for me."
It appeared Jesse had taken yet another charmed step toward becoming a superstar of the NASCAR circuit. He had just become the youngest driver to win on a superspeedway – be it NASCAR or Indy. "I’m doing interviews, I still remember Buddy Baker coming up after the interview saying, ‘That’s the most impressive job I’ve seen of working traffic in my whole life.’ Little things like that make me feel real good."
"We had the opportunity to go on racing with Wrangler. I ended up getting more airtime that week and Dale Earnhardt won the race and several things that week. But I guess me being a local high school kid, the local news went crazy and of course Humpy was backing me a lot. (1986 Photo by Wayne Kindness)
"With Wrangler at that point and time I had a hand shake agreement. I was kind of there young, new fresh face kid and they decided with me being the young kid, a new market, at a time when no one young was racing, there wasn’t a Jeff Gordon, all these guys, this was back when Cale Yarborough, Bobby Allison, Richard Petty all these guys wee still strong, 10-11 years ago, they shook my hand and we would finish out that year, 1986, racing the Dash car, then in 1987 and 1988 they wanted me acing Grand National, and then 1989 start Winston Cup." Jesse said.
"Dale would be my guide. He would kind of show me around the race track. Take me under his wing. They figured with me taking care of that market for them, the younger kids – the teenager and young 20’s and Dale taking care of the good ole’ boys image and Willie Nelson at the time… they had billboards set up in Charlotte with me, Willie Nelson and Dale Earnhardt and that whole deal and my life looking like it was set."
That’s where the script for Jesse Samples Jr. varied from the Hollywood success story that would have him atop the NASCAR parade of today – to where he is now.
"Unfortunately a few months later, that’s when Wrangler was bought out." Jesse explains. "Dale Earnhardt had one year left on his contract and the new owners of Wrangler said they didn’t want anything to do with automobile racing. They gave Dale Earnhardt his money for the next season, take their name off the car, and Dale was Winston Cup champion at that time, but they still didn’t want to be a part of it.
"My contract was a handshake deal. So I lost my whole deal." He continues. "We actually came back here. Didn’t have money to repaint the car. Actually, we went and raced Pocono. I missed my high school graduation. I started sixth or seventh an when the race was to start, my car wouldn’t go into gear. So I didn’t even start the race. I guess the good lord was looking out for me again, because they had a bunch of wrecks and stuff and wound up calling the race because of the fog.
"We came back here to Charlotte (in the fall of ’86) and qualified third I guess, I was racing Rob Moroso, Mike Swaim, all us guys were dicing it out and my tire started going down." Jesse said. "I came in, the guys came running around, come back around and told me to cut the car off, took the window net down, I said why, change the tire, let’s get going. They were like, we’ll I guess it was time when you had to run certain compounds on each side and they had gambled and bought left side tires because we didn’t have enough money to buy four tires, so I didn’t have right side tires to go back out.
"Humpy came running down there and was like ‘what are you guys doing, get back out there.’ I was like we don’t have the tire. So there I was watching the race." As his dash career came to an end.
Today’s legend on Jeff Gordon, document’s his stepfather’s careful planning of Jeff’s career through TQ Midgets, USAC Midgets and Sprints and on to an asphalt career. While Samples Jr. shares the direct involvement of his father, his career was one that seemed to happen throughout by accident, instead of careful planning on either’s part.
Jesse then decided to leave the racing career behind in his mind. A former high school soccer player he was being recruited to be a place kicker for football programs. With his sister attending Appalachian State University, liking to snow ski and being close to home he decided on Appalachian over places like Georgia.
"It turns out a couple of months after the Charlotte race, my dad had a broken out windshield in his street car and needed me to follow him up to the glass place." Jesse recalls, "We wound up going to Ken’s Auto Glass. While dad was signing the paper work to leave his car the guy was ‘Jesse Samples, I know that name, where do I know that name from. Do you race cars or something? I remember being at a track, but I thought he was younger than you.’ That’s my son and he was like, ‘yea, that young kid who won Charlotte. He did an incredible job coming through traffic.’ He told dad he wanted to meet me some time and dad was like he’s sitting out in the parking lot.
"Dad came and got me, we went inside and the guy was like do you ever have any inspiration to race in a Winston Cup or Busch Grand National car, I said ‘I’d love to – that’s always been my dream, but I’m young and we just don’t have the money to get in that sort of thing. If the opportunity rose I would.’ The guy was like what if I put together a Winston Cup team, ‘Would you drive for me?" Jesse continues. "I was like yea right. You hear it all when you start getting some publicity.
"He was like if I come up with a team would you drive. And I told him yea." Jesse remembers of the formation of what would be a start in Winston Cup. Allen questioned Samples on who he wanted as crew chief and came up with Buddy Parrott.
"At that point in time Buddy had been black balled out of racing. No one really wanted him, but I had known him as a child, because Todd and Brad (Buddy’s sons) we’re all close friends." Jesse says of the current crew chief for Jeff Burton. "Me and dad left and kind of laughed the situation off."
Again just like Charlotte all over again, two weeks before he was to leave for college, "I get the phone call from him (Ken), just like the Wrangler deal, I never pursued any of these people. They always just pursued me," Jesse recounts. "Just the good lord blessing me.
"I think I was getting ready to go out on a date and was running late when Ken calls." He tells Jesse that he is over at Richard Childress’ race shop and has Buddy Parrott with him and they want to make sure he still would drive the race car.
"I was like you got to be kidding me. Sure I’ll drive it." Jesse told. "I went upstairs and told my dad and he thought I was pulling his leg.
"Sure enough, we have a meeting and the guy wants me to sign a three year contract. Race five races the first year and Richard Childress has agreed to do the engines for us. He told me he bought a new race car from Richard Childress, which turned out to be a lie later, he would get three more cars, an engine program and Buddy was going to be the crew chief and he was going to let me bring all those guys from Sigmon Automotive, who I promised if I got to Winston Cup I would bring with me." Continues Jesse. "He would let Charlie be the second crew chief and do the body work. And Buddy would train the whole team.
"We’ll at the same time Buddy had an opportunity to do a deal with Eddie Bierschwale. So he was trying to do both of them at the same time, because Eddie wasn’t going to run a full season and I was only going to be able to do five races, so Buddy needed the additional money. We went to Rockingham. I had asked them if I could run my first race at Charlotte. NASCAR gave me a Winston Cup license with the help of Richard Childress and Humpy Wheeler. That’s the only reason I got my Winston Cup license at the age of 18, which again I think was the youngest they had ever issued one at for that level.
"So I started running Winston Cup. They (NASCAR) didn’t want me running to fast, so they started me at Rockingham. I was suppose to go the week before to get all this practice and all. Well, turns out the guy only has one car, limited tires and one engine." Jesse remembers. "The weather was bad and I got like eight laps before qualifying. If I hadn’t went to the Buck Baker Driving School I wouldn’t have even known how to get around the track.
"I qualified 27th out of the 40 they take. Bobby Allison came up to me and said I was getting in the corner to hard and trying to break to hard. He explained to me to go in the corner and act like there is an egg under the brake." Jesse remembers of his first time in a Winston Cup car. "I think I wound up starting, because of some lineup shifting going on, right next to Cale Yarborough and I believe Richard Petty and I think Alan Kulwicki were behind me. So here I was with these guys (Yarborough and Petty) who were my heroes as a seven-year-old.
"I started the race, we just guessed at the setup. Buddy has set the car up to be real fast. I went out there and was driving the wheels off the car. He had set it up loose and then they were telling me over the radio to back off. Well, it turns out the radios weren’t working. I’m screaming at them asking for pointers and they are screaming at me to slow down. I think I went door-to-door with Alan for several laps, every time coming off the corner sideways, but not giving up an inch." Jesse recalls of his duel. "Going off in to turn one about the ninth or tenth lap of the race I tried to outbreak these guys, loose control of the race car and wind up backing it into the wall. It wasn’t that bad of a deal. I should have been able to continue, but the way it hit, it pierced the oil catch can in the back of the car and there was a leak in it."
So after a storybook beginning to his other career starts, Jesse faced the true reality of racing in his Winston Cup debut.
"Our second start was at North Wilkesboro. Again we had no practice. The guy said he couldn’t afford to rent the race tracks, couldn’t put much wear and tear on the race car. Well the car he bought was a superspeedway car." Jesse explains. "I got 12 laps of practice. I got so nervous qualifying, since it was one lap and one lap only due to the weather. I forgot to put the car in fourth gear. I kept the car wide open all the way around. I come in and Buddy Parrott’s like, ‘What are you doing?’ and I was like what do you mean. ‘You never took the thing out of third gear!’ and I was like yes I did, as he told me to go over and look at the rev limiter. So sure enough the rev limiter is pegged but I had qualified 25th by going so fast through the corners somehow.
"I worked my way up to about 17th and I still remember going into turn one, I had just caught up to Richard Petty and he let up before I thought he was going to and I just all but knocked him into the wall." Jesse smiles. "So here I am this 19 year old kid, going oh my gosh, I just hit the King!"
"I was able to keep going and was actually running pretty well, working my way up. I think we got up to 14th or 15th before we started having transmission problems. The rear end started overheating, so I came in and we missed some 150 laps while they replaced the transmission. I got back out there and actually Rusty Wallace was blitzing the field and I dropped in behind him, of course I had on new tires I guess, but I stayed right on his butt for about 25 laps and we were just lapping and passing cars and I thought it was a great experience, but NASCAR started giving me the wave off because I was to close, they started giving the spread out signal, here I was this guy some 200 laps down running all over the leader. About 10 laps later a bolt came through the engine and we were threw.
"We got the engine rebuilt, because we couldn’t afford a new one and went to Charlotte. We were going to run the Winston Open for practice." Jesse remembers from some ten years ago this week. "The guy wouldn’t let me practice. Actually we did the first two days, I was running about 168.5, which Bill Elliott set the track record that year at 170. I was quick as anybody. Dale was running about 168. We really felt good because those guys weren’t even going to be in the Open; they were in the Winston.
"With about two or three days to go in practice. They said you are fast enough, let’s not take a chance with the engine until qualifying. I was like you got to be kidding. He was like the money didn’t come through and all the financial part started coming through." Jesse continues. "He finally let’s me practice the day before qualifying and we are down to 165 with the weather and track changes over the past couple of days. So we are trying to catch back up and end up making the car slower. Buddy’s sick in the hospital and I’ve got the dash guys, who have never had Cup experience trying to help make this Winston Cup car fast. We ended up messing up on qualifying and wound up 14th, which was still okay, but we should have been in the top five.
"I move up to eight position in the first part of the race, passing cars like crazy, Buddy’s back and gets on the radio and tells me to back off, with me being in the top draft." Jesse recalls. "I’m right on Eddie Bierschwale’s bumper and Michael Waltrip is on mine. We are making a run on the car in front of us. Eddie signaled me we would make a move out of two and draft on. Well another rookie Steve Christian comes pulling out of and pulls right in front of the lead group. Everyone starts slamming on the brakes. Here I am having gone in a three year period from running go-karts to these 3,700 pound cars, trying to make the change, realizing I didn’t know how to stop. Just like at North Wilkesboro when I hit Richard. That thing was like a freight train, when it started going I couldn’t get it whoaed down. Well I ended up getting sideways and Michael Waltrip tagged me. I tried to get it back around and wound up sliding down on the inside in turn three. It tore it up, we came in and made repairs and went back out.
"As I got back up to speed, every time down the backstretch the car wouldn’t go straight. It kept hunting for a line, back and forth. I couldn’t get up to speed. I just limped it around to the end of the race." He recounted. "We’ll we figured we would try to get he car back together and try the 600."
"He would be bumped from the field by Bobby Allison and not qualify for the 600. He kept complaining on the handling, but the crew blamed him for losing confidence, not wanting to go fast enough through the corners after his first major accident. "I had a lot of people looking down on me. Wound up they found out the frame was cracked, and it turned out the reason it was cracked was because Dale Earnhardt qualified for Darlington and in the first lap set a new track record and on the second lap destroyed the car. It had been straighten up and refixed and sold. I also found out that the new engine had actually been raced before."
"That’s basically my Winton Cup career." Says Jesse. Allen would fold his efforts due to personal problems and Jesse was released out of his contract.
From there Jesse became hooked up with an Indy car team sponsored by ICI. Johnny Dumphries, a member of the royal family in England, was to be teamed with Jesse. "They felt I had a lot of promise as a driver. We met three or four times. I flew over to England. We were going to run some Indy Lights for two years and then we would move to Indy cars. They had a 12 million package from ICI, pay me two million a year, plus my winnings, all this stuff for a 19 year old!" Jesse shares. "Everything was set, the contract were signed by me and they were going back to England to finalize the papers. Four days before they were to return the big stock market crash happen and ICI backed out. They had lost millions of dollars and they were scared.
"A week later, here I was a 19 year old young man, basically been to a race track every weekend of my entire life since I was seven years old, kind of like the gymnast who gets all the way to the Olympics and realizes they are burnt out and really didn’t know what they were going to do, I was 19 years old, interested in girls, my grandparents were wanting me to go off to college, my father basically had driven himself in to bankruptcy, trying to keep me racing, and I was wanting to be a kid and do all the things that I didn’t get to do. Basically I never really was a teenager so I decided I would get out of racing, go to college." Jesse explains of his turn in fortune. "If something happen, something happen. Maybe finish college up and try to get back in racing.
"Basically I was an idiot. I thought, hey, I’m so good, everybody’s gonna remember me and I can get my college education done so if something happens I wouldn’t have to worry. I actually have a letter from Humpy he had written me when I was 15 or so and he said the most important thing you can have is an education. That was ringing in my mind, maybe I should get my education and try to race part time, get something going, basically I had made my whole family suffer. You know I've got a stepmother and a little brother who didn’t get to see my father very much, because he was gone with me. He had to sell his big house, sell his Mercedes. And I just thought I could go off to college and then come back. I was really wanting some time off anyway, because I had been racing every weekend of my life for 10-11 years. I wanted to have a life. I would be 20-21 years old and still be young enough to race.
"NASCAR really wasn’t accepting young guys then. Besides me there was only Davey Allison and Bobby Hillin Jr. They weren’t looking for young guys. Basically I was five years to early, so I kind of walked away from it and decided I had to either do it or not do it." Jesse firmly says. "I told myself I would never go to another race track.
"So that was it. I’ve never been back, except for my friend Rob Moroso’s memorial reception. I walked away." Jesse states. "I went to college, got a job, I never pursued anything – all along."
Today Jesse is where he wants to be in the furniture
business, like his dad, "I’m very fortunate. If I wasn’t in racing,
this is where I would want to be.
"All my life I’ve dreamed and worked and been so blessed in the racing arena, I couldn’t ask for anything else. I have a good job, I work, I make good money, I travel, and I can set my own schedule. I met a beautiful girl, got married, hope to have kids, do all those sorts of things, but I do miss it, looking back I am the classic "what-if", where would I be now. This would be my 11th year almost of Winston Cup. I’d be a very seasoned, very old veteran all at the age of 29. You look back and say, man, what would have happen with 11 years of experience as fast and as much as I accomplished as I did as quick as I did.
"I know it was my fault, I know that I made the decisions. I know that I probably could have gone back to Busch Grand National or back to Dash and knocked on doors. I screwed up and I walked away from it. I probably let a lot of talent go to waste." Jesse deeply revealed.
"There were a lot of scenarios… a lot of things happen. I got a little disenchanted, dishearten, you know when you are an 18-19 year old kid you are pretty sensitive to what happens to you. I mean if I had been a 35 year old man and been in the position I was in I would have pushed harder, continued to work, try to get a sponsor, knock on doors and done all that sort of things, but I was a 19 year old kid that had lucked in to everything. The lord has blessed me. I was given everything. It seemed like I had the golden spoon in my mouth. I was a kid from nowhere."
Click to read the Simply Rc Column wrote about this interview