NASCAR pioneer Bruton Smith’s memorial service showcases power of a great imagination
As Bruton Smith’s funeral ended Thursday afternoon in Charlotte, the Central Church choir broke into an upbeat version of the contemporary Christian song “I Can Only Imagine.”
It was a fitting tribute to Smith, because few could ever imagine like he could. Smith lived for 95 years and dreamed his way through every one of them — a NASCAR visionary in every sense of the word.
Smith built a modest car business into a national group of dealerships. He built race tracks atop red dirt in places no one thought they should go. He built condominiums attached to those racetracks in places no one thought people would want to live.
“He called me one day and wanted to talk to me about a condo at the (Charlotte Motor Speedway) track,” Rick Hendrick, a NASCAR car owner, car dealer and friend of Smith’s for decades, said after Smith’s hour-long funeral concluded. “I said, ‘The only condo I’m going to buy is one on the ocean.’ Six months later, I owned a condo at the track.”
The youngest of nine children, born on a small North Carolina family farm and with no college education, Smith became a billionaire businessman and a member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame. He got there on charisma, a “fake it ‘til you make it” bravado, a knack for negotiation and, most of all, the power of that almighty imagination.
Smith would have appreciated his own funeral. Like a good race, it attracted a fine crowd, had its moments of drama, was live-streamed in order to allow everyone to see it and didn’t go on for too long.
The three speakers offering eulogies were NASCAR CEO Jim France, Hendrick and Joe Gibbs, the former Super Bowl-winning coach turned championship NASCAR owner. No one from Smith’s immediate family spoke at the funeral, but several were pallbearers as his flag-draped casket was taken out of the church for a private burial.
It was noted a number of times that Smith had found religion and accepted Jesus Christ as his savior late in his life. It was also mentioned that on June 22nd, Smith opened his eyes, smiled and then died.
Said Gibbs during his eulogy: “I would just say that God made Bruton. He watched all that he did here on Earth. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Bruton today is sitting with God and telling him about the new project that he wants to build.”
Among a crowd I’d estimate at 700 were a number of NASCAR luminaries, including Dale Earnhardt Jr., Humpy Wheeler and Mike Helton. A number of them — as well as race car drivers like Kurt Busch, Brad Keselowski and John Force — had attended a private event celebrating Smith’s life at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Wednesday.
Smith’s public service Thursday included a number of references to his larger-than-life persona.
“You knew when he walked into the room, often with that mischievous twinkle in his eye,” France said.
Hendrick pointed out in his eulogy that Smith was an expert at “throwing deep” — taking big risks that didn’t always work out (Smith once lost the speedway due to financial reasons before regaining it years later) but that often did. Hendrick also mentioned Smith’s penchant for charitable works.
“I’ve watched him from the heart do things for people that no one will ever see,” Hendrick said after the service. “No one will ever know. They just remember the guy that built the speedway and cut down trees when they told him not to.”
When Hendrick saw Smith for the last time recently, he told me, the 95-year-old was still selling his vision. Smith kept advocating for Hendrick to use zMAX micro-lubricant in all of his cars (zMAX is, not coincidentally, the title sponsor of Smith’s dragway on Bruton Smith Boulevard in Concord).
“He couldn’t get around then,” Hendrick said of Smith. “But he took a piece of paper and he started writing. He kept talking about how zMAX makes the molecules change. They get into the metal. And that will make you have more power and make your cars better. And you can put it in all your dealerships and your customers. It will make their cars last longer.”
Hendrick smiled at the memory of a man with whom he had competed for years in car sales — they owned dealerships just a mile apart on Independence Boulevard — yet who had become a close friend.
“So when Bruton finished all that he’d written,” he continued, “I said, ‘Sign this for me.’ And he did. And that’s the last time I saw him.”
In his later years, Smith was mostly just called “Bruton,” but that was actually his middle name.
For many years before that, he would often be referred to as O. Bruton Smith. During that time, in an interview, I asked him what the “O” stood for. I knew the answer, but wondered what he would say.
“It’s just O, like ‘Oh!’” Smith said, raising his eyebrows high and pretending to be surprised. “If it ever did stand for anything, I’ve forgotten it, because I never did want to use it.”
The “O” actually stood for Ollen. But I still prefer Smith’s explanation. It was “O” as in “Oh!,” symbolizing a man who could imagine what the rest of us had trouble even conceiving.
This story was originally published June 30, 2022 at 5:12 PM.
