Knoxville Report
by Stacy Ervin
stacyerv@Lcom.net
Those who spend their lifetime as racing fans know at least one truth: Over that racing lifetime, you’ll likely watch more than one hero come to his or her final resting place. Sometimes the sorrow is made greater because if you hang around them long enough, those heroes can quickly become friends. Sometimes the shock is overwhelming, because many heroes seem invincible. After all, racers are among the toughest breeds of humans on the planet.
The same might also be said for soldiers.
In my (almost) 32-year career as a racing fanatic, I’ve seen several heroes and friends die, just like many of the rest of you. This past August, I watched in complete horror as one hero perished during what is supposed to be the happiest week of the year. I choked back the pain as I watched his wife, who I have come to know as a fellow Knoxville pressbox dweller, say her final goodbye. It wasn’t an easy day by any means, but as a lifelong race fan, it felt strangely usual. Sad as it is, we do this a lot, and we find weird ways to make it feel “normal” in our sport.
Three months later, I sat at another funeral. But it didn’t feel quite the same. Instead of the immense grandstands that look out over the Sprint Car Capital of the World, we were packed like sardines into the biggest building the 3,000-resident community of West Liberty, Iowa, can offer. Flags depicting the black-and-white checkered pattern which cruises through our racers’ blood were replaced by those with red, white and blue stars and stripes. The uniforms of choice worn by many of the mourners were not Nomex racing suits, but rather military dress blues and greens.
The only thing that felt the same was the vast disbelief and that old supposed-to-be-comforting sentiment, “He died doing what he loved.”
On that day—ironically, Veterans Day 2003—the “he” was my fellow West Liberty resident, Bruce Smith, age 41. What he loved was flying helicopters and instructing others how to do the same through his job with the Iowa Army National Guard, Detachment 1, Company F, 106th Aviation Division, based in nearby Davenport. Last February, that love and that job took him with his unit to Iraq.
On November 2, he was piloting the Chinook helicopter which was shot down by an enemy surface-to-air missile. Chief Warrant Officer Smith was one of 16 soldiers who died in that incident, and by all accounts from the scene, he died a hero. A professional pilot with over 2,000 hours of accident-free experience, National Guard officials relayed that he had brought the wounded Chinook down as carefully as possible so that the impact would be lessened for his passengers sitting behind him. Unfortunately, it cost him his own life.
Just as it happens in racing, a community rallied around the fallen hero’s wife and children left behind at home. Just as it happens in racing, many of those rallying didn’t even know the fallen hero. But the loss cut just as deep.
In the racing world, the loss of a competitor seems to really hit home when the next race pushes off and the parade lap before the feature starts assembles into a missing-man formation. It’s a poignant moment, to say the least. When F16 fighter jets and Blackhawk helicopters fly over a cemetery in a small Iowa town in the missing-man formation, it can only be described as surreal. The sound alone is enough to shake your soul to the core, and yet, at the same time, you could almost hear a pin drop amongst 800 fellow mourners.
And that was the moment that the loss hit home for many. No one from tiny West Liberty, Iowa—where I lived my whole life and grew up thinking of my second home of Knoxville as a “big” town—had been killed in combat since World War II. Who could have believed when we sent off one of the most vibrant and bravest soldiers in our little town that we would be bringing him back home from Iraq nine months later to bury him. Just as racing fans never believe when they watch a race come to the green flag that it might end with a competitor lost.
Journalists in general tend to be difficult to shock. As a racing journalist the past few years, I’ve seen a lot of good news and bad news come and go. I’ve written about lost heroes and friends on more than one occasion. As editor of my hometown weekly newspaper, I’ve seen a lot more come and go, and written about the good and the bad things that happen in my town.
But even the best of writers would have a hard time finding the words to describe the great chasm of loss that swallowed up West Liberty, Iowa, on Veterans Day 2003. We’re just not accustomed to funeral processionals that go on for 15 minutes. After all, it doesn’t even take 15 minutes to drive the 30 mile per hour speed limit from the community center on the north edge of town to the cemetery on the south edge of town. The clerk at the local Casey’s store that day remarked that if she saw one more person in full military dress and a somber face walk into the store, she would cry. Flags flew at half-staff all over town and storekeepers in the downtown area closed shops so they could line the streets holding patriotic symbols for the procession.
I’ve witnessed the fall of many heroes and friends in racing, and now I’ve witnessed the fall of a different kind of hero. Nothing felt “normal” about it. I hope I never witness that missing-man formation ever again.