At the Finish Line
Cancer Claims Benny Parsons
It’s been a tough couple of weeks to the start of 2007 in the NASCAR “family” of racers. First, former Cup racer and 2004 Truck champ Bobby Hamilton, 49, lost his battle with cancer on January 7. Then, on January 16, the 1973 Cup champ and current TV and radio race analyst Benny Parsons, 65, passed due to complications from fighting lung cancer. I want to illustrate some of Benny’s character and try to do justice to how special he was to stock car racing and its community.
 Benny Parsons had a very successful "old school" Cup racing career, and later helped build NASCAR's modern TV growth as “BP" or "The Professor" with his astute and folksy telecasting style. (image courtesy BennyParsons.com) |
Fortunately for me, I got to be around Benny Parsons when he worked with TNN and ESPN as a race analyst for those TV networks. I’d be at TNN-telecast races writing for a then-new website for then network, and Benny would be up in the booth making the race action and racers more meaningful to the TV viewers.
Benny was an old school “wheel man.” He was a bootstrapper who came from humble beginnings and advanced to the top racing ranks of his profession through driving talent, hard work, and a bit of luck or “capitalized opportunity” if you will. He embodied what exists in the U.S. – you can build a life superior to the one you might have been fated to live if you were in another country. He did not settle for what he was dealt.
Many newer NASCAR fans today know Benny Parsons from his self-depreciating role in his “Buffet Benny” turns on TV, or his folksy, yet insightful, race telecasting as BP. The generation of fans and racers is going away that knew of his stout race credentials.
Those fans and racers knew him when he put “taxi-cab driver” (and wasn’t making it up) as his occupation on his racing applications.
They knew he came from two consecutive championships in ARCA to earn a Cup ride.
They knew he won the ’73 Cup championship because a bunch of fellow competitors cannibalized parts on other cars and helped him rebuild his wrecked car at Rockingham (last race of the season). Thus, he would go back on track and complete enough laps to win the Cup championship! We won’t see that again. This all happened in the last race, after he won only one race the entire season, but took the championship by racing consistently.
 Parsons won the '73 Cup Championship in the #72 Monte Carlo owned by the independent L.G. Dewitt. Image courtesy BennyParsons.com |
They knew he was in second place at the ’75 Daytona 500 to David Pearson, who spun out with two laps to go, and Benny went on to win -- the first time Chevrolet had won the race since 1960 for cryin’ out loud.
They knew he was included in the list of NASCAR’s 50 greatest drivers in 1998.
They also knew he was as decent and generous a racer and man as they will likely ever meet.
He helped the “little guy” racer because he had been one himself. I asked a friend of mine, Butch Bass, to tell me a couple of “Benny” stories for this article because Butch and the “little guy” race team he crewed on had a relationship with Benny when he was racing Cup in the mid-70s.
