Family Time with the Jarretts - Q & A


By Ragan Robinson
Record Staff Writer

Q. Are you all race fans?
A. Kelley: I guess we are. I didn't know anything about racing until I dated Dale but our kids didn't really have a choice.

Q. Even when you are at the race, you watch it on TV? Why?
A. Natalee: Air conditioning.
Kelley: There was a time you could go up on top of your motor home or go up on top of the hauler. At those shorter tracks, it was a lot of fun to watch like that. But we would never go in the grand stands, never go to the suites. We'd always stay inside because if a driver falls out of the race, they do not want to wait on anybody to get out of the track. You'd best be prepared to exit.

Dale Jarrett
Q. What's a typical Sunday afternoon in the Jarrett home now? Do you have to have the TV on the race?

A. Kelley: If he's racing, yes. Since he's not racing, we find ourselves not watching.

Q. What's it like to see your dad wreck?

A. Karsyn: I remember the one where he hit the wall really hard and he didn't come out for a while.
Kelley: It was Kansas. This one was the scariest one. We were all watching. It was a pretty bad hit. He's always made us pretty aware of what is bad and what is not as far as getting injured. You knew when he hit the wall it wasn't going to be good because the driver's side hit the wall flat. He had a wreck at Daytona one time where he was just flipping and flipping and flipping but we knew, because he'd told us that's not really that bad. The car's taking all the impact. You're just in there holding on. But in Kansas he got knocked out. You're sitting there watching and nobody says a word. You just sit there and you pray that you're going to see some movement in the car. The interesting thing about that was - and he doesn't remember this statement - but he was told that when he came to they had gotten the Jaws of Life to start cutting him out. The first thing he said was, 'Do not cut the top of this car. My family will not be able to handle it. Just give me a minute.' I thought that was so sweet. His first thought after coming out of that concussion was what we were going through at home.

Q. When Dale's doing well are you exuberant fans? Do you cheer?

A. Kelley: At the end we're up and we're screaming. We're trying to help him drive those last couple of laps. I'm saying, 'Get in that corner a little harder so you can pass that guy.'

Q. What about when Dad comes to your games?

A. Natalee: He's loud.
Karsyn: He has to help the officials officiate. We help him drive. He helps the officials.
Kelley: And we tell each other before we go to the event that we are not going to yell. Then the first bad call and it's, 'You're horrible.'

Q. Have any of the Jarrett daughters considered continuing the Jarrett family tradition?

A. Natalee: I don't think we have any future Danica Patricks in this family?

Q. What about another Jarrett son?

A. Zachary (to Kelley): It'd be fun but of course you have different opinions on that.
Kelley: I'm not telling him no. He's going to do whatever he wants to with his life but it's a tough, tough sport and I don't see it getting any easier with the next generation. He's 13 and a lot of those guys have been racing go-carts since they were 5. They hire them so young now. They put them in the Nextel Cup at 20, 21. That's so different from Dale's generation when it took years and years before you got your break and you were much older.

Q. Who do you pull for in addition to your dad?

A. Karsyn: Elliott Sadler. He was a teammate of dad's.
Natalee: Bobby Labonte.
Kelley: Tony Stewart. Bobby Labonte and Jeff Burton, Dale raced with longer. We know their families and they're just really great people. Some of the younger drivers we don't know as well. I mean, Jeff Gordon and Jimmy, we're happy when they win because they're really class acts, too. That's about it.
   And we like Dale Earnhardt Jr. but you know he has enough fans. He would not miss us as fans. But he's a good guy and Dale really likes Junior.

Q. That's about everybody, isn't it?

A. Kelley: No, that's not everybody. We left many out because there are some we don't pull for.

Q. Who are they?
A. Oh, they know.

Q. What's the best part about having a famous father?

A. Natalee: We don't really think of him as famous.
Karsyn: He's just our dad. But we are very fortunate. We've gotten to do a lot of things a lot of kids 20, 18 and 13 haven't gotten to do. We get to travel a lot.

Q. What's the worst part?
A. Zach: Not getting to see him a lot.
Kelley: But the nice thing about Dale is when he's home, he's home. It's not like when he's home he's going to go somewhere else.

Q. Do you have to talk a lot of racing around the dinner table?

A. Kelley: No, we'll just tell him our critique of the day.
Natalee: It never has really dominated conversation.
Kelley: Racing has never dominated our family life. It's not what our family is about and that's probably why they don't think of him as famous. They don't think of him as any different from any of their friends' dads.

Q. He still has to take out the trash? Kill the spiders?
A. Kelley: When he's there. We give him 'honey-do's. He's not above it. Of course, his favorite three words are hire it out.

Q. Who's the coolest person you've gotten to meet because of your dad's job?
A. Zach: Probably Derek Jeter.
Natalee: We met LeBron James.
Kelley: We sat behind him at the Super Bowl. And it's so funny because they've grown up with the racing life. When they're at the racetrack and the fans want autographs, they're like, 'Why?' So then we become the fans. When we go to an event like the Super Bowl or the Yankees, we stand in awe of the athletes. It's so funny to put the shoe on the other foot. But we ask for autographs.
Natalee: We're pretty star struck.

Q. Who else star struck the Jarrett women?
A. Karsyn: Michael Jordan.
Kelley: We met McDreamy over the phone?

Q. Dr. McDreamy? As in Patrick Dempsey from "Grey's Anatomy?"
A. Kelley: He and Dale know each other so he called Dale about something. Dale kept telling us he knew him. This was when "Grey's Anatomy" first came out and we were big fans. We were like, 'No, you don't.' But Natalee got to speak to him. Karsyn was at the beach. Then he called when we were in the car and he remembered that he'd missed Karsyn so he asked to talk to her.
Karsyn: We just chatted it up. He asked if I had fun at the beach.

Q. What kind of cool memorabilia do you kids have of your father's?
A. Karsyn: He gave me a trophy. It was a green one, I think. I wanted a trophy and it was a pretty one so I asked for it. He let me put it in my room for a while.
Kelley: Zach loved going to the races but he wasn't able to go to as many. And one Sunday we were going to fly in the helicopter down to Rockingham but it was too windy to fly. Well, Zach was beyond upset. Then Dale wins the race, which meant Zach didn't get to go to Victory Lane. That trophy is where?
Zach: My room.
Natalee: I think my favorite piece of memorabilia about Daddy was an article in the paper about when he wrecked Ryan Newman. It put it up on my wall near my desk.

Q. Your favorite moments with or memories of your dad?
A. Zach: Just him being there. And before school we get to sometimes go eat breakfast and we get to talk and just hangout. Or whenever we're home together watching sports or playoffs or just whatever.
Karsyn: Every time I think of dad and I one-on-one, I think of the picture of us after an AAU basketball game in Orlando. It's that. We're walking. We had shooting jerseys and my name is on the back of mine. It's just us walking and talking. That's how it is after a game.
Natalee: There was one particular basketball game. I think it was my sophomore year and it was the conference tournament. I didn't think he was going to get to come back. He surprised me and we ended up winning the conference tournament and I got MVP. It about made me cry because I didn't expect him to be there.
Kelley: He flew back from Daytona that time. He will rearrange his schedule if at all possible.

Q. Kelley, what are your best moments?

A. Kelley: I guess my favorite memory during his professional life was in New York when he won the championship. He came out and everybody gave him a standing ovation. It was just to be able to have a dream and to be able to have met that dream. I started dating him when I was pretty young so I knew all that was involved. To come to that pinnacle for that moment, for him to be able to actually close the deal. Just to watch him take that in. And the picture they ran on the front of the trade magazine the next day was little 5-year-old Zachary standing with his dad, looking up at everybody as they were cheering.
   I love all my one-on-one time with Dale, too. I love beating him at every card game or board game we play beating him on the tennis court, ping-pong. I cherish those moments. And when I prove to be right in an argument, those are special.

Q. How does it feel when somebody says, 'That's Dale Jarrett's son' or 'Dale Jarrett's daughter' or 'Dale Jarrett's wife?'
A. Natalee: I don't dislike it because we are proud to be his children but we can be distinguished, I guess, from our father.
Kelley: People make assumptions about you because you are his wife or you are his children. Sometimes they're good and sometimes they're bad. You just sort of learn to not think about it that much. They say, 'You're Dale Jarrett's wife' and I say, 'Yes.'

Q. Natalee, Karsyn, you two are Hickory High basketball stars. Ever hear anybody say, 'That's Natalee Jarrett's dad' or 'That's Karsyn Jarrett's dad?'
A. Kelley: That has happened several times - and they say 'That's Zach Jarrett's dad.' That happened more often when we would be at national AAU tournaments. Around here they're always Dale Jarrett's daughters.

Q. Anyone ever been tempted to wear Dad's numbers on their jerseys?
A. Natalee: That's too easy to put up. They can call fouls too easily on No. 44.
Karsyn: We did have the 88s back in rec league.

Q. Does Dale always want to drive?

A. Kelley: Yes. It's not worth it for me to drive. He tries to tell you how to drive all the time. Even before you're at the stoplight he says, 'There's a stoplight up there. Are you going to slow down? Are you going to take a left?' The only time I've ever driven him is home from a hospital. The times I would drive him before, he presses his imaginary break in the floor over there like you're going too fast. He will drive 500 miles, like at Richmond and that race takes so much out of you that a lot of times he would get dehydrated. So I would offer to drive the five hours home but he would never take me up on it. That's how much he doesn't want me to drive.

Q. Who's a better driver? Dale Jarrett or Ned Jarrett?
A. Kelley: I'll tell you one thing that's the same. Neither one of them wants to stop and ask directions. They like to keep their wheels rolling and that means even when they're lost. But they both drive slower than you think they would. Dale drives much slower than I do.

Q. Besides the fact that he drives slower than his wife, what's something people would be surprised to learn about Dale Jarrett?

A. Karsyn: Despite what he likes to tell everyone, he is a "Grey's Anatomy" fan. He'll tell you differently but he watches it. He sneaks off and watches. He'll tell us, 'I'm not watching this with you. This is silly.' But really he goes downstairs and turns it on. If he thinks we're coming down, he'll change it to sports or something different.