Bubba Wallace made history at the YellaWood 500, becoming the first African-American NASCAR driver to win a premier series race in 58 years; after topping the podium, Wallace said: “It obviously brings a lot of emotion, a lot of joy to my family, fans, friends. It’s pretty damn cool”

Last Updated: 05/10/21 7:10am

Bubba Wallace became the first African-American to win a race in NASCAR’s premier series since Wendell Scott in 1963, in a rain-affected meeting at the YellaWood 500.

A rainstorm engulfed the Talladega Superspeedway and the race was brought to a close after 117 of a planned 188 laps.

When asked about making history, Wallace said: “I never think about those things.

“But when you say it like that, it obviously brings a lot of emotion, a lot of joy to my family, fans, friends. It’s pretty damn cool. Just proud to be a winner in the Cup Series.”

Wallace, who had taken the lead on lap 113, had to wait before learning the outcome of the race, after a crash brought out a caution, before the red flag was waved with conditions worsening.

At around 3.30pm central time, the race result was declared official because of wet track conditions and advancing darkness on a track that did not have lights.

Wallace won in a car owned by NBA legend Michael Jordan and current Cup driver Denny Hamlin, and paid tribute to his team.

“Part of me is sitting there waiting,” Wallace said. “It’s not over with. If we go back to racing, that’s fine. But we had so many cool fans behind us in the pitbox just cheering for us so it kind of amped up the intensity a little bit but, man, so proud of everybody at 23XI (Racing).

“I know a lot of history was made today, I believe, which is really cool but it’s about my guys, it’s about our team, it’s about what we’ve done.

“I appreciate Michael Jordan and I appreciated Denny for believing in me and giving me an opportunity. Like we talked, it is pretty fitting that it comes here at Talladega.

“This is for all those kids out there that want to have an opportunity in whatever they want to achieve and be the best at what they want to do.

“You always got to stick true to your path and not let the nonsense get to you and stay strong, stay humble, stay hungry.

“Plenty of times I wanted to give up. You surround yourself with the right people and it’s moments like this that you appreciate.”

Wallace also made headlines in 2020 when he successfully called for NASCAR to ban the use of the Confederate flag at all events, becoming a prominent voice in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd.

Don’t rush to judgment, and don’t ignore the details

Bill Quatman was a 23-year-old architect just starting his career in Kansas City. He wasn’t involved in the design of the skywalks, but he marveled at the way they seemed to float in the air — an unusual sight at the time, he said.

He and his wife had dined at the hotel a week before the collapse and had noticed another spectacle:

“A few thousand people were enjoying themselves at a tea dance, listening to big band music from an orchestra, dancing and laughing to tunes of Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington,” Quatman said.

“We saw this tea dance going on (and thought), ‘That looks like fun; we should come back sometime.'”

But on the evening of July 17, they had other plans. That night — after the skywalks fell — a friend told Quatman about the tragedy but mistakenly said the hotel’s roof had fallen in.

“The first 48 hours, nobody really knew the cause, but there was speculation — just like there is today with the Surfside condos,” Quatman said. “All sorts of theories floating around, and nobody knows … I think one of the similarities is the rush to judgment.”

The cause of the Surfside collapse is still under investigation.

One popular myth following the Kansas City disaster was that the song playing at the time of the collapse — Ellington’s “Satin Doll” — somehow contributed to the skywalks falling, he said.

The theory was “harmonic vibrations from the band music caused the steel to oscillate,” Quatman said. But experts and courts later determined there were fatal engineering design errors.

The original design had called for the second-floor and fourth-floor skywalks to both be supported with a set of steel hanger rods connected to the ceiling. But a design change was made over the phone between the steel fabricator and the structural engineer, Quatman said.

“They hung the second-floor bridge from the fourth-floor bridge and doubled the load on that connection, which was ultimately a fatal design change,” he said.

The resulting design was “capable of withstanding only an estimated 30 percent of the mandated minimum,” according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. A series of miscommunications and failures to double-check calculations and plans led to the collapse.

In the decades since, Quatman has spent much of his career as both an architect and lawyer speaking to engineering and architecture students to help prevent such catastrophic mistakes in the future.

“I always end my talks by saying you cannot ignore the small details,” Quatman said. “The (connection) that failed was about 8 inches wide.”

Don’t take the ‘simple things’ for granted

Brent Wright was just 17 years old when he lost his mother and stepfather. Since then, every anniversary of the collapse has been challenging.

“Even though it’s been 40 years, those memories come flooding back,” said Wright, now 57. “It’s emotional. All these years later, I still miss my mother and stepfather.”

Karen and Gene Jeter had gotten married just 16 days before the skywalks collapsed. The newlyweds spent their final moments doing what Karen loved — dancing.

It was a skill she insisted her son learn — for the sake of his future dating life.

“When I was growing up, my mom said, ‘Look, you need to learn how to dance. All the girls will love it if you actually know how to dance.’ So she taught me how to dance,” Wright said.

Footage of the Hyatt Regency’s dance party showed his mother and stepfather having a glorious time, Wright said. The event was so popular, his father and future stepmother were also there.

But Wright didn’t know that — or about the tragedy that would change his life — until the following day. On the night of the collapse, he was working the loading dock at a Macy’s store to earn money for college.

“I had the radio turned on on the dock and heard something come over the radio about some accident. It wasn’t clear what the details were,” Wright recalled.

“I called my mom because I was going to ask her about it. Nobody answered.”

Wright, who lived with his father at the time, came home that night and went right back to work early the next morning. Then his dad called him and told him to come home immediately.

“My dad just looked at us and said, ‘I don’t know any way to tell you this, but your mom and Gene were killed at the Hyatt collapse,'” Wright said. “It was absolutely awful.”

The Jeters never got to see Wright and his younger sister Shelly become adults and have children of their own.

“They’ve missed so many things through the years,” Wright said. “They missed me going to college, graduating from college, graduating from law school, getting married, having children. All those things, all those milestones in our lives. It’s difficult, even 40 years later.”

Over the years, he’s learned to cope with grief — a process he knows families of the Surfside victims are just beginning.

“You try not to forget the past but also try not to let all the grief or the difficulties from the past hold you back from going forward,” he said. “I know my mom wanted that. She would have said, ‘Go ahead and live your life and be happy. But don’t forget me.’ So we don’t.”

To ensure his mother, stepfather and 112 other victims are never forgotten, Wright became president of the Skywalk Memorial Foundation. It led efforts to create the Skywalk Memorial, which features a modern design evoking two people dancing, along with the names of those lost. It also honors the hundreds injured and the rescuers.

“Even all these years later, none of (the rescuers) have ever been able to forget what they saw, what they did, which was selfless,” Wright said.

This anniversary, Wright is also remembering the dozens of lives lost in the collapse at the Surfside condo building.

“All those people in Florida, my heart breaks for them. I want them to know that there are people everywhere who are thinking about them, praying for them,” he said.

“I hope that they get help from mental health professionals because it’s not something you can do on your own.”

And there’s a lesson everyone can take away from such tragedies.

“We all have to remember not to take those day-to-day, simple things (like) family for granted. You just don’t know when you may never have another chance to see them again,” he said.

“It’s a good reminder, and it’s something I’ve tried to do as I live my life is to try not to take those things for granted.”

The mental health needs of first responders are crucial

Vince Ortega, then 26, was the first Kansas City police officer dispatched to the scene.

On the police radio, “The way it came out was (an) elderly lady had fallen off the escalator,” said Ortega, now 66.

More calls quickly followed, but nothing prepared him for what he saw when he arrived at the hotel.

“People were running out, bleeding from the head,” he said.

“When I went in, I saw a dead body right away. The rubble had flattened the body out. I could tell it was a woman because she had a dress on.”

Ortega had no idea what had collapsed. So fearing another imminent collapse, he tried to rush as many injured survivors as he could outside to safety.

“You’re just helpless because you’re bringing out just a few at a time, and there’s a whole lobby full of people,” he said.

“Then water started coming out of the walls.”

The collapse of the skywalks broke the sprinkler system, flooding the floor with several inches of water, Ortega said.

No amount of academy training can fully prepare a first responder for such a mass tragedy, he said.

“There was this one gentleman who was underneath the rubble … ‘I need help! I need help!’ And he had his arm sticking out from the rubble,” Ortega said.

“So my (officer) friend grabbed his hand and started to pull him out, and his arm just came off. And my friend just dropped it and walked out the door. He actually never came back — he never returned to the police department.”

Such overwhelming trauma highlights the need for first responders to have adequate mental health support, Ortega said.

“Back then they didn’t really offer the mental health assistance” needed, he said.

That changed after other officers who had responded to the collapse started leaving the force.

“They did it after people started not showing up for work. And they figured out nobody wanted to admit they got affected by it.”

Ortega said he’s lucky to come from a family of first responders — including two firefighter brothers and a nurse mother — who helped him cope with the trauma.

But some emergency workers can be haunted by feelings of inadequacy despite their most valiant efforts.

“You always wish you could have done a little more,” Ortega said.

He now thinks about the first responders in Surfside, who have been digging through tons of rubble for weeks trying to find those still missing from the condo collapse. Digging through the wreckage, one Florida rescuer said, has also meant “emotionally digging for more strength to continue.”

Ortega hopes the Surfside teams can benefit from the lessons learned 40 years ago in Kansas City.

“Once it’s done, please seek counseling,” Ortega said. “Over the years, I’ve seen people leave the job with mental health issues because of the overwhelming tragedy that they see over time.”

“Everybody is vulnerable,” he said. “I was just fortunate.”

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