Maj. Dan Rooney — fighter pilot, golf pro, founder of a charity that finds itself the title presenter of a big-time stock car race — has not lacked life experiences.
Yet, Friday was a first. He climbed into a pace car and ran a few hot laps around Atlanta Motor Speedway with a leadfoot named Tony Stewart.
Rooney has had three tours of Iraq, flying an F-16 as a member of the Oklahoma Air National Guard. His jet flies at 1,600 mph, and can inflict 9-Gs upon the occupant. Riding shotgun with “Smoke” Stewart should be like standing still, right?
So, did the pilot relax, maybe put his feet up on the dashboard during the ride? Perhaps he caught a nap, like a kid on the drive to Destin?
No, he was quite alert. “What we don’t have (while flying) is the perception of speed,” Rooney said. “When we were running up there on the track, three feet from the wall, that probably felt like the fastest I’ve gone in anything.”
It is a revelation about what will take place in Sunday’s Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 when even faux laps in a street-legal car makes a jet jockey go hmmmm.
Speed is nothing new here. They have violated sanity for 55 years on one of NASCAR’s fastest tracks. The oddity of this race lies in the name.
NASCAR is one big corporate billboard, literally covered up by the famous names of American free enterprise. It makes Wal-Mart look like a non-profit. And yet here is a race that for the first time bears the name of a charity that provides scholarships for the children of military men and women who have been killed or disabled.
Through the years there have been 17 other sponsors of Cup races in Atlanta. They have included four restaurants, six tool/auto-related concerns, a cola giant and, yes, a local newspaper. But not until a new three-year deal with QuikTrip in which it donated the title sponsorship to Folds of Honor has this race gone so altruistic.
What’s in a name?
A different feel to all the hubbub around race weekend, for one thing.
When this sponsor brings its clients to the track, they are not executives out for a two-day diversion. This weekend, the guests will include Sarah White, whose father, Dennis, died in an F-15 training accident in 1995. She was one of the early recipients of Folds of Honor scholarship money while attending Auburn.
Also at the track will be 13-year-old Jordan Prince, son of Sgt. Neil Armstrong Prince, who died in Iraq in 2005. Prince goes to school at Killian Hill Christian School in Lilburn, better than half his tuition covered by the scholarship. And a little money already has been set aside for college.
Rooney’s work even will be a part of the fabric of Sunday’s race. As they enter the stands, fans will be handed a replica folded flag, which they will be asked to display while standing during the 13th lap to honor those who died in service. There are 13 folds in the flag handed to the next of kin during a military funeral.
A race called the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 wouldn’t be happening had Rooney not been on a commercial flight landing in Grand Rapids, Mich., in 2006.
Upon arriving at the gate, the passengers were asked to remain seated while the body of a soldier killed in Iraq was unloaded from below. Watching through the small airplane window while the family of Cpl. Brock Bucklin gathered on the tarmac, Rooney was moved to act. The least the children of the fallen deserved was the gift of education, he eventually concluded.
By the first year, his charity was foundering. A fundraising golf tournament had barely cleared a few thousand dollars. Rooney began to consider it a lost cause.
Then came the phone call from a fellow pilot. Did you hear what happened to Troy, his friend began, telling of another pilot killed in Iraq. He left behind five children.
“My friend was like, ‘You got to do something.’ That was my rallying cry. We had to make this work because we got to take care of these kids. That next push kind of broke the floodgates open,” Rooney said. That family is scheduled to be at the track Sunday, too, he said.
Nearly eight years later, his charity’s name is draped all over an auto race in Atlanta.
“It’s certainly the biggest exposure we ever had, we have nothing to compare to it,” Rooney said. “I don’t know what the reach is — several million households? First time ever on live television. And we have the opportunity to tell this story to a whole new group of people, a really patriotic group.”
Some drivers are just learning about the new title sponsor. “I’m not familiar with them. Saw their name out there, and I was wondering what they were,” Jeff Gordon said.
Some are heavily invested in Rooney’s work. Defending Sprint Cup champion Kevin Harvick has been active in building a relationship between Folds of Honor and various sponsors of his race team, including Budweiser, Jimmy John’s and Outback.
“Usually every time I see Major Dan, we win that week,” Harvick said. He is well-positioned to capitalize on this omen, starting on the first row.
The 42-year-old Rooney remains a reservist in the Air Guard. He has transformed into a fan of the earthbound speed junkies, Harvick in particular.
But a much quieter pursuit once beckoned. Rooney grew up in Oklahoma as a golfer skilled enough to play in college and test himself on a mini-tour circuit and then PGA Tour qualifying school in 1997.
And here we pause to trace the origins of a most unusually named race to a most curious source: a deficient short game.
“Thank God I wasn’t a great putter because I probably wouldn’t have gone in the military, and Folds of Honor would have never happened,” Rooney said.
