The image of her son hanging limp in the shattered remains of his race car — his face a moribund shade of blue — still brings tears to Ronnie Weller's eyes.
The crash happened in a United States Auto Club sprint-car race at the Dirt Track at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Oct. 13, 2004. Without the quick and decisive action of numerous individuals, Jimmy Weller III would have died that night. It was a clear and cool autumn evening, one that changed the lives of Weller and everyone in his family circle — and his racing circle — forever.
Almost 10 years later, the Jimmy Weller who pops out of a race-car hauler in the garage at Charlotte Motor Speedway looks nothing like the shell of that 18-year-old. He is bright and handsome, funny and engaging, eager to run the next lap and generally a bundle of energy.
Many of those around him celebrate the fact that he is alive. That he races at nearly 200 mph is beyond imagination.
His parents were watching that fateful night from the grandstand when his car hit a rut, flipped and caught in the catchfence.
"When we got there, he was up in the catchfence, looking down," Ronnie Weller told USA TODAY Sports. "I knew it wasn't good. They had gotten the helmet off him. His head was big and dark. My husband and I both collapsed.
"One of the workers walked over and handed me Jimmy's glove. I looked up at him and said, 'Can I please hold my son? He needs me. I just want to hold him.' "
The brutal accident left him with a broken neck, back, facial fractures and two collapsed lungs. Now, the only visible reminder of Weller's brush with death is a slight chip on one of his front teeth — although he insists that his back scars are "cool," for those interested. He says he occasionally has aches and pains from the rods in his back.
Now 28, Weller is running a limited schedule in NASCAR's Camping World Truck Series. He finished ninth at Daytona, 25th at Kansas, and 14th in his first race on the CMS 1.5-mile oval Memorial Day weekend, just across Highway 29 from the Dirt Track. Weller had engine trouble at Dover this past weekend and finished 30th. His next scheduled race is June 6 at Texas Motor Speedway as he continues his planned 10-12 race schedule in his first solid ride on one of NASCAR's major touring series.
"I'm back to the same person I was," he told USA TODAY Sports. "I know there are kids 18, 19, 20 now who are going out and having fun. I kind of missed out on that. There's a lot about being 18 that I don't remember, but I don't think I missed out on life that much."
Sprint cars jump into the air like frogs on a hot griddle. They flip, tumble and roll. Over the course of a typical sprint car season, hundreds of cars will leave the ground and excite crowds with a series of violent rolls and bounces. Serious injuries — even deaths — occur, but they are rare.
The cars drew more attention in 2013 when three drivers — including NASCAR's Jason Leffler — died as a result of crashes. And three-time Sprint Cup champion Tony Stewart broke his right leg in August while driving in a sprint car race when the driveshaft torque tube broke free. Last week he announced via Twitter he was testing in his car again, nine months and three surgeries later.
In Weller's crash his car did not roll to a stop. Its final flip ended on the track's catch fence, and a piece of metal on the car wedged onto a fence support cable, leaving the car hanging, nose to the ground, like a suit on a hanger.
Completing the gruesome scene was Weller's motionless body inside the car in his seat harness, his head slumped forward. Weller's head had hit a fence pole during his out-of-control ride, knocking him unconscious and causing, as doctors would discover later, significant brain injuries.
Time stopped on the four-10ths mile track as safety crews, medical personnel and Weller's parents, Jim Jr. and Ronnie, rushed to the scene. The only person at the speedway who wasn't aware of the seriousness of the moment was Weller. Unconscious, his brain swelling inside his driver's helmet, he would not wake up for more than two weeks.
Horrifying scene
Jerry Kaminski, the lead paramedic at the track that night, restored Weller's breathing by putting a tube down one side of the driver's nose and pumping air into his lungs. Because of the odd positioning of the car and Weller's fragile state, workers needed about 15 minutes to free him. A helicopter was summoned to transport Weller to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte, about 15 miles away.
Track worker Tommy Williams was one of the first to arrive at the scene.
"We lifted his head up and flipped the visor, and he was blue," Williams said. "He obviously wasn't breathing. That's when Jerry went to work. It was difficult because of how the car was. ... With it hanging like that, we tied it off as best we could. I was standing on one tire and Jerry on the other. Fuel was leaking out of the car and onto the headers.
"Under the circumstances, it was one of the best extrications we've done. But I didn't think he would make it. Jerry saved that boy's life, doing all the things he had to do to get his oxygen going. That's the key. Jerry was the champ that night."
His parents watched the extrication and waited.
"At that moment, when I looked up, Jesus was on this side of him and the Holy Mother was on the other side, holding Jimmy, and I felt this peace inside of me," Ronnie Weller said. "I knew whether my son was going to make it or not that he wasn't alone."
Kaminski, now retired to a farm in New London, N.C., deflects praise, saying he responded to the circumstances and to his training and benefited from excellent work by others in the safety crew.
"As soon as I saw him, I knew he had to be intubated (breathing tube inserted) or we'd lose his airway," said Kaminski, a former military combat medic. "His face was already an ashen, blue-gray color. I got a cervical collar on him right away. Had all the intubation equipment on my belt and did the nasal intubation, getting air to a lung. In the position he was, that was the only thing to do."
When the helicopter arrived in the track infield, the safety crew put Weller on a gurney and wheeled him to the waiting hospital team.
Among the thousands in the crowd that night was future Sprint Cup star Carl Edwards, who then was a 25-year-old racing in the Camping World Truck Series.
"I went to bed that night thinking, 'What a tragedy. A young man died there in turn one,' " Edwards said. "Then the next day I heard he was in the hospital. To see him and talk to him now, it's unbelievable. "It's amazing to see him walking around. That night I thought he was gone from this Earth."
As Kaminski, the paramedic, watched the hospital helicopter lift into the sky, he had a bad feeling about Weller's chances. "I honestly didn't believe he would make it," he said. "I knew we had done everything we could. I didn't know if he had a fractured neck. ... He could have had so many internal injuries that no matter what we were doing for him he couldn't be saved."
A track official drove Weller's parents and his younger brother, John, to the hospital.
"The doctor came out and told us that Jimmy's brain had tiny tears all through it and that they had put in a probe to monitor the swelling," Ronnie Weller said. "They told us he had facial fractures, collapsed lungs, the neck and back injuries. Finally, he told us he might not make it through the night. The three of us just stood there lifeless. "He came back a few hours later and said the swelling and the bleeding had dissipated, and he said, 'I believe it's God. I've done everything I could. There's no explanation for this.' "
The family was allowed into Weller's room for a few minutes. His mother still gripped his driving glove. "I never let it go," she said. "I felt it was the only thing I had of my son."
Weller was in intensive care for three weeks. The brain trauma locked him into a coma for the first week, and doctors induced a coma for another week as his battered body began the healing process. A screw was placed in his neck to support the fractured area, and two rods were inserted in his back where the spine had been fractured. Already thin, Weller lost another 40 pounds.
"He was all ribs and bones," Ronnie Weller said. "We could see his heart beating through his chest. They had to keep everything dark and quiet in his room. It was a good four weeks before his eyes opened, and they were still swollen. When he finally came out of the coma, I was holding his hand and he gripped my hand a little. Then when he talked, the first thing he told me was, 'I have to get out of here. I have to race Friday.' "
Therein rests hard evidence that race car drivers are not like the rest of the population. They live in the subset that includes circus acrobats and fighter jet pilots. They ride with a wild gene foreign to those outside their circle. For the vast majority of them, injuries are yield signs, not stop signs. "Race car drivers are a different breed," Terry Trammell told USA TODAY Sports. Trammell, an Indianapolis orthopedic specialist who has treated many injured drivers, particularly in IndyCar racing, also was involved in Weller's case.
"I've never really had one ask me if he will be back. It's always, 'When?' From day one, it's 'When will I drive?', not, 'Will I ever drive again?' "
Hooked on racing
Racing had been Jimmy Weller's dream since he was old enough to understand what cars are and what fast means. It came naturally. It had started, oddly enough, over beers at a bar when his dad was 22. "I didn't have a lot of interest in race cars," said Weller's father. "A good friend of mine had race cars. We got drunk at a bar one night. I fly a Piper Cub airplane. He wanted to go for a ride in an airplane, and I wanted to go for a ride in a race car.
"At the end of the night, I bought a race car, and I never did take him for a ride in the plane. That's how I got into racing."
Marriage to Ronnie – and the arrival of sons Jimmy and John – would come later. Over the years, Jim Weller grew to love racing and became a reliable winner driving big block modifieds at Sharon Speedway, a three-eighths-mile dirt track near the Wellers' home in Hubbard, Ohio. He still drives there and still wins.
As has happened to so many other sons of racers, Jimmy III caught the fever. Jeff Hughes was there to see it develop. The Wellers' next-door neighbor, he has been Jimmy's friend since the day they met in second grade. "He got on the school bus," Hughes said. "I was already on the bus. He was looking around for a place to sit. I said, 'Hey, man, you can sit here.' It was kind of like Forrest Gump."
They went to the track every week and cheered for Jimmy's dad, and soon enough Jimmy was hooked. "His words to me were that he wanted to be a driver," Hughes said. "A lot of kids say that, but when he said it, I believed it." By his teen-age years, Weller had gravitated toward the speed and thrills of sprint cars, and he had success in the Midwest. A move to Charlotte and a shot at USAC sprint cars on the Charlotte dirt track was a natural progression for the 18-year-old.
Before he could solidly connect, there was the accident.
Long road to recovery
The family said doctors expected Weller to be in the Charlotte hospital and later its rehabilitation facility for six months. In seven weeks, he was well enough to go home to Hubbard. "I walked into his study at the house the day he came back," said childhood friend Jeff Hughes. "He still had a collar on his neck. But he had a grin on his face and said, 'Man, I can't wait to get back in a race car.' The first thought I had was, 'Dude, you've got to recover.'
"He didn't look good when he came home. He was banged up. His speech wasn't good. He couldn't walk, couldn't turn his head at all, could barely lift his hands. He looked like a vegetable. He recovered for two reasons — he wanted to, and God was truly with him." To underline their faith in their son's ultimate recovery, the Wellers bought a new sprint car and housed it on their property for his return home. He would never race that car, but it was the meaning behind the purchase that carried the weight.
There was hope – all across the Weller family-and-friends spectrum – that Jimmy would make it all the way back. The first get-well card, he received, Weller said, was from a competitor with whom he had argued. Rehabilitation meant learning how to talk again, playing mental games to stimulate the brain and mall-walking. There was Weller gently walking the open areas of the Eastwood Mall in Niles, Ohio, past the Radio Shack and JCPenney and Old Navy and Dillard's, with his friends drafting behind, just in case. "I had to hold the back of his shirt while we were mall-walking in case he started leaning over," said Dan Dominic, another friend since childhood. "But you could look at him and you knew he was so driven that he would get back behind the wheel.
"I'd come over to his house and hang out with him, try to keep his spirits up. We watched a lot of racing videos. I'd remind him how good he was. It was hard on me to see him like that. I skipped school a lot, to be honest, because I felt like I needed to be there." There was a wheelchair for a while, then a walker. Jimmy's brother, John, walked up and down the hallway in their house with him to accelerate the recovery. Jimmy walked along the long driveway leading to the house, over and over and over again. If physical therapists asked him to do 10 reps of an exercise, he did 12.
A year after the accident, Weller had made enough progress to return to the Charlotte dirt track for a joyous reunion with Kaminski and others on the track safety team. "I wouldn't have recognized him," Kaminski said. "That moment made all of it worth it." Others had to recover, too. The experience of watching her son almost die and then struggle to rebuild his life hit Ronnie Weller like a stomach punch. "After it happened, she couldn't talk about it for years," said Jeff Hughes. "You've never seen a mother care so much about a child. There was no talking to her at all."
Aiming for top
Early in 2006, Weller got the OK to make a limited return to the racetrack. It happened after a regular race-night program at Sharon Speedway.
The track, the town, the region stood behind him. Many of them — more than 800 people — had attended a Jimmy Weller benefit to assist with bills related to the hospitalization and rehab. His father was in the infield for the big moment. Jimmy had instructions to take it easy and not push the car — or himself.
Two laps into the "test," the warnings were forgotten. Weller was at full speed, flying into a frontier many thought closed to him forever.
"About the second lap, he's going hard, and I ran out on the track and said, 'That's it.' I couldn't take it. My legs were shaking so bad," Jim Weller said. "When he started the rehab, his legs were so tiny. He couldn't stand up. He couldn't walk. To see where he is today, to even dream that it could happen, it's a miracle." After clearing Weller to race again, doctors suggested he avoid sprint car racing because of the nature of his injuries and the rods remaining in his back. "I did a lot of praying," Weller said. "When I got the OK to race again, that's when I knew I was supposed to do it. People ask me why I'm still racing. That's why. I prayed like crazy and told God whatever he wanted me to do, I would."
Weller said his sense of racing and speed came back quickly.
"I don't know how," he said. "The first race I ran really well. Everything made sense. Once it's in your blood, no matter how hard you get hit in the head it's not going to come out." Weller began racing full-bodied "big block" modifieds at Sharon Speedway. He won consistently and branched out to other tracks and into NASCAR regional series. That opened the door to the Camping World Truck Series. He raced five times in trucks in 2013. He hopes to put together a sponsorship program to run full time in trucks next year.
He sees the future as a one-way street to Sprint Cup. If the road closes, there is a reasonable detour – a fulfilling job at his family's Liberty Steel business in Ohio. He loves it there, too, he explains, but what he wants is racing. "I've come so far. It's an awesome thing to see the progress. I didn't lose my faith. I never got down. Depression never set in. I never had that. "I want to make it to Cup. I need to get much better as a driver. I'm learning. And I've got to bring in the business side to have the sponsorship. It's up to me to go out and do it."
With the evidence of what he has done so compelling, the line of doubters might be short.
