Times-Gazette
If every person has a quota for life, Tim Richmond might have used all his in his short 34 years.
It seems a bit ironic—and tragic, all the same—that a man whose mother couldn’t bring herself to watch her own son race Indy cars and cried in the parking lot of almost every one would die from a chronic disease. Then again, not when one considers his love of life.
Today marks 20 years since Richmond passed away Aug. 13, 1989, from complications due to AIDS, a disease that cut down the man named one of NASCAR’s 50 greatest drivers of all-time in his prime.
Live Richmond did, so much so that Hollywood decided to make a movie about him.
Portrayed by Tom Cruise as Cole Trickle in the blockbuster “Days of Thunder,” Richmond was guilty of pulling quite a few shenanigans in his heyday.
Richmond had his most successful NASCAR season in 1986 when he won seven of his 13 career victories and finished third in the Winston Cup points standings. Dale Earnhardt, with whom Richmond developed a close friendship, won his second title that year.
Richmond missed the first half of the 1987 season with an illness that was publicized as pneumonia, opening the door for Earnhardt to win five of the first seven races of the season. When Richmond came back, he won twice in eight starts—his last eight starts.
Richmond was inducted into the Ashland County Sports Hall of Fame in 1996 and the Stock Car Racing Hall of Fame in 2004. He also was named the Rookie of the Year at the Indianapolis 500 in 1980 and was carted off the track on the sidepod of race winner Johnny Rutherford, finishing ninth after leading late in the race but running out of gas.
Richmond spent much of his childhood in a house that sat on top of the substation at American Augers near West Salem on Ohio 42. His father, Al Richmond, designed a machine to bore under highways to lay pipe and started Richmond Manufacturing, where American Augers is today.
Richmond went to Miami Military Academy in Florida for high school, where he was a standout football player and had his jersey number retired, before returning home for a year to attend Ashland College.
He started racing cars at Lakeville Speedway when he was 22 years old in 1976.
Like many mothers, Evelyn Richmond collected keepsakes of her son. Unlike many mothers, she had the help of hundreds of adoring fans all across the United States.
Six scrapbooks almost too heavy to lift that sit in the basement of Welsh’s daughter’s house in Troutman, N.C., are evidence of the thousands of newspaper clippings sent to Evelyn Richmond during her son’s career.
“Your mind goes back to everything that happened and how it happened and the morning that Mom called and told me that he was gone,” she said. “It’s so hard to believe that it’s 20 years. It just doesn’t seem that long ago.
