R.I.P. Paul Dana
03-27-2006, 04:57 PM
#1
Senior Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Jan 2006
Posts: 368
R.I.P. Paul Dana
"Paul Dana had a passionate desire to race instead of write"
BY DAVID HAUGH
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO - During dinner on Saturday night, Paul Dana celebrated qualifying his race car higher than he ever had during his young Indy Racing League career and repeated to friends how lucky he felt to be chasing a dream around an oval track.
"Paul was on cloud nine after getting the ninth spot (for Sunday's Toyota Indy 300 in Homestead, Fla.)," said Tom Slunecka, the executive director of the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council, Dana's primary sponsor. "His spirits were at an all-time high."
Slunecka clung to that small consolation Sunday after Dana, 30, died in a two-car crash during the warm-up for the season-opening IRL IndyCar Series race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Dana, a 1995 graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, went airborne as the nose of his No. 17 car pointed toward the sky after he rammed into the car driven by Ed Carpenter around 10 a.m. near Turn 2.
Five cars safely had passed Carpenter's car, which slid back into traffic after spinning out and bouncing off the wall, and five seconds had transpired when Dana collided with Carpenter going nearly 200 miles per hour. The impact nearly sliced Dana's car in half and scattered debris around the track until what was left of the vehicle landed on its wheels before skidding to a stop.
A medical helicopter took both drivers to Jackson Memorial Hospital in downtown Miami, where Dana was pronounced dead around noon. Carpenter was listed in stable condition.
The Rahal Letterman Racing team, for which Dana was driving his first race, pulled teammates Danica Patrick and Buddy Rice from the event out of respect for a driver who had achieved modest success after abandoning journalism for racing a decade ago. Dan Wheldon eventually won the race.
Injured last May
Sunday was Dana's first IRL race since he broke two vertebrae in his back last May during practice for the Indianapolis 500. He had to spend three months in a back brace.
"But Paul wanted to come back so badly from that that he attacked every workout like it was his last day on Earth," said Jim Leo, the president of PitFit, a fitness company in Indianapolis geared toward motor sports.
Leo developed such a close relationship with Dana that he had to pull over and ask his girlfriend to drive after Dana's wife, Tonya, broke the news to him on his cell phone. It was just three years ago that Leo's best friend, IRL driver Tony Renna, died in a crash during testing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway - the last IndyCar driver until Dana to die behind the wheel.
Once he composed himself, Leo quickly went over to the Danas' home where he joined a home full of stunned mourners.
"Tonya was still in shock; we all are," said Leo, who had spoken to Dana on the phone Saturday night. "He had worked harder than any driver I've ever had to get back behind the wheel."
Driven to race
That drive is what led Dana to choose making news over reporting it when he turned down a job 10 years ago at Autoweek, the magazine where he had interned. Gifted enough to have been published in Sports Illustrated and Maxim, Dana accepted the job at Autoweek before returning within the hour to renege because his heart was in the pits, not the newsroom.
"We stood out in the parking lot for a couple hours talking about his decision, but he said, `I can always go back to writing, but I can't always do this,''' Larry Edsall, the former managing editor at Autoweek, recalled Sunday. "I was personally disappointed because I had had too many friends in racing who had died and didn't want another one, but he was driven."
Once Dana left Autoweek to enroll in the Bridgestone Racing School in Shannonville, Ontario, where he built gear boxes and worked odd jobs, he never second-guessed his career path.
"He chose a route deep in his soul and always felt like he was the luckiest guy in America," Slunecka said.
Indeed, Dana sounded like someone who had won the lottery at a news conference earlier this month when he was asked to explain his motivation.
"If there was nobody in the stands and somebody still gave me the keys to a 250-horsepower IndyCar, said go play around, I'm here," he said.
Drew praise at Medill
That never stopped his Northwestern buddies from kidding Dana about the sanity of his career choice. Mick Dumke, a `93 Northwestern graduate who was a groomsman at Dana's wedding, remembered his friend developing a reputation at Medill for having an eye for detail and a knack for bringing people to life on the page.
"We all though Paul was completely nuts for turning to racing, but not because of the danger - but because he had so much talent as a writer," said Dumke, a faculty member at Columbia College who is a noted freelance writer in Chicago.
Steve Bogira, Dana's instructor for a writing course at Northwestern in the winter of `92, agreed as he leafed through his files Sunday. In his notes, he had recorded that Dana was a perfectionist who loathed deadlines and called himself "hopelessly indecisive."
"Paul was a wonderful writer whose writing was vivid, fresh and funny and he had an eye for irony," Bogira said. "He did seem driven to be the very best."
Dumke reminisced about buying Dana his first beer as a college student and the nights early in Dana's racing career when he stopped by on short notice for the night as he chased sponsorship deals in Chicago. He also recalled a man known by his circle of friends for his dry wit, literary flair and a social conscience strong enough to question whether his sport had "the best environmental footprint."
Dana's concerns over the environment steered him to help produce documentaries for Fox News and the BBC on global warming as well as become one of the IRL's leaders in its partnership with Team Ethanol to reduce the amount of oil used in auto racing.
"I found his social awareness to be extremely rare among drivers I've worked with," Slunecka said.
Friends say the St. Louis native simply was content pursuing his goals on the track and enjoying a quiet life with his wife of three years, Tonya Bergeson-Dana, a Northwestern grad and professor in the department of otolaryngology at the Indiana University Medical School in Indianapolis.
Tonya was in church Sunday when she was notified."
BY DAVID HAUGH
Chicago Tribune
CHICAGO - During dinner on Saturday night, Paul Dana celebrated qualifying his race car higher than he ever had during his young Indy Racing League career and repeated to friends how lucky he felt to be chasing a dream around an oval track.
"Paul was on cloud nine after getting the ninth spot (for Sunday's Toyota Indy 300 in Homestead, Fla.)," said Tom Slunecka, the executive director of the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council, Dana's primary sponsor. "His spirits were at an all-time high."
Slunecka clung to that small consolation Sunday after Dana, 30, died in a two-car crash during the warm-up for the season-opening IRL IndyCar Series race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Dana, a 1995 graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, went airborne as the nose of his No. 17 car pointed toward the sky after he rammed into the car driven by Ed Carpenter around 10 a.m. near Turn 2.
Five cars safely had passed Carpenter's car, which slid back into traffic after spinning out and bouncing off the wall, and five seconds had transpired when Dana collided with Carpenter going nearly 200 miles per hour. The impact nearly sliced Dana's car in half and scattered debris around the track until what was left of the vehicle landed on its wheels before skidding to a stop.
A medical helicopter took both drivers to Jackson Memorial Hospital in downtown Miami, where Dana was pronounced dead around noon. Carpenter was listed in stable condition.
The Rahal Letterman Racing team, for which Dana was driving his first race, pulled teammates Danica Patrick and Buddy Rice from the event out of respect for a driver who had achieved modest success after abandoning journalism for racing a decade ago. Dan Wheldon eventually won the race.
Injured last May
Sunday was Dana's first IRL race since he broke two vertebrae in his back last May during practice for the Indianapolis 500. He had to spend three months in a back brace.
"But Paul wanted to come back so badly from that that he attacked every workout like it was his last day on Earth," said Jim Leo, the president of PitFit, a fitness company in Indianapolis geared toward motor sports.
Leo developed such a close relationship with Dana that he had to pull over and ask his girlfriend to drive after Dana's wife, Tonya, broke the news to him on his cell phone. It was just three years ago that Leo's best friend, IRL driver Tony Renna, died in a crash during testing at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway - the last IndyCar driver until Dana to die behind the wheel.
Once he composed himself, Leo quickly went over to the Danas' home where he joined a home full of stunned mourners.
"Tonya was still in shock; we all are," said Leo, who had spoken to Dana on the phone Saturday night. "He had worked harder than any driver I've ever had to get back behind the wheel."
Driven to race
That drive is what led Dana to choose making news over reporting it when he turned down a job 10 years ago at Autoweek, the magazine where he had interned. Gifted enough to have been published in Sports Illustrated and Maxim, Dana accepted the job at Autoweek before returning within the hour to renege because his heart was in the pits, not the newsroom.
"We stood out in the parking lot for a couple hours talking about his decision, but he said, `I can always go back to writing, but I can't always do this,''' Larry Edsall, the former managing editor at Autoweek, recalled Sunday. "I was personally disappointed because I had had too many friends in racing who had died and didn't want another one, but he was driven."
Once Dana left Autoweek to enroll in the Bridgestone Racing School in Shannonville, Ontario, where he built gear boxes and worked odd jobs, he never second-guessed his career path.
"He chose a route deep in his soul and always felt like he was the luckiest guy in America," Slunecka said.
Indeed, Dana sounded like someone who had won the lottery at a news conference earlier this month when he was asked to explain his motivation.
"If there was nobody in the stands and somebody still gave me the keys to a 250-horsepower IndyCar, said go play around, I'm here," he said.
Drew praise at Medill
That never stopped his Northwestern buddies from kidding Dana about the sanity of his career choice. Mick Dumke, a `93 Northwestern graduate who was a groomsman at Dana's wedding, remembered his friend developing a reputation at Medill for having an eye for detail and a knack for bringing people to life on the page.
"We all though Paul was completely nuts for turning to racing, but not because of the danger - but because he had so much talent as a writer," said Dumke, a faculty member at Columbia College who is a noted freelance writer in Chicago.
Steve Bogira, Dana's instructor for a writing course at Northwestern in the winter of `92, agreed as he leafed through his files Sunday. In his notes, he had recorded that Dana was a perfectionist who loathed deadlines and called himself "hopelessly indecisive."
"Paul was a wonderful writer whose writing was vivid, fresh and funny and he had an eye for irony," Bogira said. "He did seem driven to be the very best."
Dumke reminisced about buying Dana his first beer as a college student and the nights early in Dana's racing career when he stopped by on short notice for the night as he chased sponsorship deals in Chicago. He also recalled a man known by his circle of friends for his dry wit, literary flair and a social conscience strong enough to question whether his sport had "the best environmental footprint."
Dana's concerns over the environment steered him to help produce documentaries for Fox News and the BBC on global warming as well as become one of the IRL's leaders in its partnership with Team Ethanol to reduce the amount of oil used in auto racing.
"I found his social awareness to be extremely rare among drivers I've worked with," Slunecka said.
Friends say the St. Louis native simply was content pursuing his goals on the track and enjoying a quiet life with his wife of three years, Tonya Bergeson-Dana, a Northwestern grad and professor in the department of otolaryngology at the Indiana University Medical School in Indianapolis.
Tonya was in church Sunday when she was notified."
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
got rice?
5th Generation Maxima (2000-2003)
14
10-05-2000 04:15 PM