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Remembering Spencer Clark, the kid who should have become a NASCAR star

In the median of a desolate stretch of interstate highway just east of Albuquerque, New Mexico, are two makeshift crosses. They usually have plastic flowers placed about them, or small photos, or — if the big NASCAR teams have been racing out West — auto racing trinkets.

One of the crosses is for Andrew Phillips, a former offensive lineman at Hawaii, who yearned to be a NASCAR crew member. He was driving the truck that had a racecar in back, on a trailer.

The other cross is for Las Vegan Spencer Clark, who, at age 19, was on the fast track to becoming a NASCAR star. Spencer had driven most of the way from North Carolina, but was riding as a passenger when New Mexico state police said the truck and trailer must have caught a strong wind gust.

T.J. Clark is a former driver in the NASCAR truck series. He drove in the first truck series race ever, in Phoenix. He was Spencer Clark’s father.

On Saturday, it will be exactly 10 years since that gust of wind outside of Albuquerque snuffed out the life of his son and the big football player from Hawaii.

T.J. Clark says he is beyond crying now.

But he still gets emotional when he talks about the drivers of those NASCAR haulers stopping alongside the road in the mountains east of Albuquerque to pay respect and homage to his son.

 

It was only a few weeks before that Spencer Clark had driven in his first Busch (now Xfinity) Series race, at his home track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. T.J. had purchased an old NASCAR West series car that he had gussied up in the race shop behind the home he shares with Debbie, Spencer’s mom.

OK, kid, let’s see what you can do against the big boys on the big oval.

“I rented a motor from (Jack) Roush with the idea of getting him exposed in that big world, knowing that his equipment was not on (par) with everyone else’s,” T.J. said at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Bullring last Saturday.

He was tuning up three Legends cars, including the white-and-red No. 23 Spencer drove, the car in which his son would give Kyle Busch all he could ask for and then some — the car that T.J. would drive to second place on this night to honor his son’s memory.

“He qualified that car against 15 Cup drivers,” T.J. said about his boy driving the wheels off that slapdash Busch Series ride to make the starting field. “That brought the kid into the limelight. They (NASCAR car owners) looked at him and said, ‘If he could do that in this stuff, what could he do in our stuff?’

“Unfortunately, God’s plan was a little bigger. Because two months later, he was no longer with us …”

That was 10 years ago, and it seems like yesterday, and isn’t that always what people say in times like these? It’s still difficult for T.J. and for Debbie, especially with the auto racing and the constant reminders.

T.J. said he doesn’t mind going to the Bullring, because that was Spencer’s playground, and those were the best memories — even when Spencer and Kyle Busch were having their weekly battles, and tensions ran high, and they either finished 1-2 or crashed each other out.

Debbie struggles at the Bullring. She sees all those youngsters and the older, familiar faces, and she hears the sound of the engines and then all the memories come flooding back, and they are bittersweet.

“Everywhere you went there was a memory,” she said. “It’s still hard.”

Debbie said she watches NASCAR on TV. T.J. doesn’t watch auto racing on TV anymore. He sees Kyle Busch winning races and championships and thinks that easily could have been Spencer Clark winning those races and championships. Or at least battling Kyle tooth and nail for them.

“When you see two kids like Kyle and Spencer when they were 12 or 13, (you knew) if they both stayed in tune and stayed focused and didn’t get distracted, you could see they were going to both have a career in NASCAR,” T.J. says wistfully. “Kyle is proof to that — he is the best driver out there, period.”

And Spencer was taken from the Clarks when he and they were young, much too young, and so we’ll never know.

But Kyle Busch believes he knows.

“Spencer was fast, and he showed that he was good in Legends cars and the Super Late Models at the Bullring,” the reigning Sprint Cup champion said from Charlotte, North Carolina, where the NASCAR stars were gearing up for their annual All-Star Race.

“Unfortunately his tragic accident happened too soon to show the national sport how good he could have become and how far his potential would allow him to go.”

Debbie says she has painted Spencer’s bedroom, turned it into a sitting room. But if you go out back toward the race shop, there are reminders, dozens of reminders, hundreds maybe — trophies lining shelves, framed photographs of Spencer and his racecars, decals with his name and number, posters of Spencer that show him being oh-so-fast and oh-so-handsome. In one, he is sporting a short haircut and a sly smile and looks a bit like Tom Cruise during his “Top Gun” days.

Debbie Clark met her husband when she was attending Clark High School and he was at Western. They have a 25-year-old daughter, Candice. She also raced and is married to short track driver Darren Hagen, a two-time winner of the “Night Before the 500” at Indianapolis.

Debbie scrolls for a particular photograph on her cellphone. She finds it. It’s a picture of Dale Earnhardt in his racing prime, and of Spencer, when he must have been 11 or 12.

It had been an overcast day, but the sun finally had broken through clouds. There was a big Cadillac and industrial-sized pickup trucks and racecars all over the place, and racecar parts, and racecar people working on the cars. Somebody fired up a power tool, making it difficult to carry on a conversation.

This must have been what it was like 10 years ago, when Kyle Busch and Spencer Clark were battling tooth-and-nail, but now his absence remains palpable.

Now there are two crosses on the side of the road outside of Albuquerque, and a memorial stone behind the grandstand at the Bullring with a big number 23 and an inscription that says Spencer John Clark is forever a champion, that he ran the race and finished well.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski

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