DJ, dad have made their mark


By J.R. MunozMcNally
Media General News Service

Respect, both giving ad receiving it, is mostly what the Catawba County Jarretts are about.

Though renowned as a racing legend and a NASCAR pioneer, Ned Jarrett said his best piece of steering was not done on the race track, but in his own house and not as a driver but as a parent.

Jarrett, who won two NASCAR points championships in the 1960s, said he actually thought his famous middle child, Dale, would make his mark in other sports but was not disappointed when he finally ended up behind the wheel of a stock racing car.

"Dale played all the sports in high school and he was good at all of them," Jarrett said. "But he really excelled at golf."

Ned said Dale is still close to a scratch golfer.

Ned Jarrett recalled that the early days of NASCAR did not resemble at all the current, highly marketed and greatly celebrated status the sport enjoys today. And when he first became a driver he had to do so on the sly.

"After my first race, my dad sat me down," Ned Jarrett said. "And we had a nice long talk."

The tongue-lashing, for which that "long talk" was a euphemism, centered on the notion that NASCAR drivers did not exactly have the best reputation in world of sports, or in the regular, law-abiding world at-large, for that matter.

"My dad worked hard to build respect for our family in the community," Jarrett said. "And he didn't think that being a race car driver was the best way to build that respect."

Jarrett chuckled a little when asked if that notion may have had something to do with moonshine whiskey.

"That was a big part of it," he said. "My dad was a racing fan but he felt that most of the racers were either bootleggers or guys who just didn't have anything better to do. And he didn't want that for me or our family."

So, for a short time, Jarrett got in the driver's seat of his team's car on the QT.

In his second race, Jarrett finished second and he won in just his eighth attempt.

"After I won, my dad came around and said, 'If you're going to do something, use your own name and get credit for it," Ned Jarrett said. "After that he became one of my biggest fans."

Jarrett said a person couldn't make a living as a NASCAR driver in the 1950s and into the 1960s.

"There was no way to do it," he said. "I still had to work at my family's saw mill."

But he saw the sport had things to offer besides the thrill of victory and, by end of the 1960s he had transitioned from using his feet and hands on the steering wheel of race car, to using his voice in the press boxes of tracks as a radio and then a then television TV race broadcaster.

Dale Jarrett got the racing bug at 20 and followed in his father's career footsteps when he signed with ESPN as a race commentator in March upon his retirement as as driver.

Aside from Lee and Richard Petty, the Jarretts are the only father-son pair to have both won NASCAR championships. Ned won Grand National trophies in 1961 and 1965 and; Dale won the Winston Cup in 1999.

But Dale speaks most fondly of Ned not as a reflection of his father's prowess at making left turns at high rates of speed or his straightforwardness as a race announcer, but rather for his integrity as a man.

"My dad set an example about how to live and he lived by it," Dale said. "He didn't say, 'This is what I say but this is what I do.' He practiced what he preached."

Dale said he learned all aspects of racing from his father.

"He was a driver but he also ran the Hickory Speedway and I learned the business of racing," he said. "I did everything from sell popcorn on race nights to cut the grass at the track."

Dale recognizes his father was on the vanguard of the various aspects of auto racing.

"I'm very proud of my dad," he said. "Most people get one career and a lot of them don't work as hard as they can at that.

"But my dad worked very hard at both his careers and I think he is highly respected in both racing and broadcasting."

And neither of the Jarretts could ask for more than that.