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• ERIC MEDLEN PROJECT - MUSEUM - STATUE DEDICATION- August 31, 2007 |
John Force Big Thanks to Eric Medlen Five days after the spectacular crash that landed him in Baylor University Medical Center, John Force again credited fallen teammate Eric Medlen with saving him from more serious injuries. Force's crash last Sunday at the Texas Motorplex was eerily similar to the one in which Medlen suffered fatal head injuries in a testing accident last March at Gainesville, Fla. In both instances, for whatever reason, a tire failed, setting up a chain reaction that culminated in a chassis failure. In last Sunday's incident, which occurred in the second round of the 22nd annual O'Reilly Auto Parts Fall Nationals, Force's Ford Mustang broke in two with the front half veering across the center line where it collided with the Dodge of Kenny Bernstein. The other half of the car, with Force still strapped inside, his legs exposed, came to a stop against the left guard wall. "The work we've already done through The Eric Medlen Project saved my head," Force said. "I'm all broken up in my arms and legs, but my head's fine, my back and neck are fine. That was what really excited John Medlen (who heads up the John Force Racing, Inc., safety initiative begun after his son's death)." Nevertheless, with his family around him, including oldest daughter Adria Hight, who flew in Thursday night with his youngest daughters, Brittany, 21, and Courtney, 19, Force acknowledged Friday that the rehabilitation process is going to be long and arduous. To underscore that reality, doctors concerned with swelling in his right foot Friday ordered additional X-rays that may identify yet another break. The bigger right leg problem for the 58-year-old drag racing icon is the deep laceration to the right knee, a knee weakened by childhood polio and injured 18 years ago in a fall. Unfortunately, that's the foot with which the 14-time series champion mashes the gas pedal on the Castrol GTX High Mileage Ford Mustang. Beginning to recover from the effects of anesthesia and pain medication, the 125-time tour winner acknowledged for the first time Friday that he won't be able to drive next week in the TORCO Racing Fuels Nationals at Richmond, Va. He is withholding judgment on his status for the last two races of the season until he consults next week with Dr. Terry Trammell, a noted orthopedic surgeon who specializes in motor racing injuries. It was Trammell who repaired three-time former NHRA champion Shirley Muldowney's badly mangled legs and got her back into a Top Fuel dragster following her accident at Montreal in 1984. She returned to the winners' circle at Phoenix in 1989. "I couldn't have wound up in a better place than Baylor," Force said. "The doctors and nurses have been great to me and my family and I'll always be grateful for that, but I'm a race car driver and I need to talk to someone that understands racing. That's why we're going to Indy." As originally diagnosed, Force's injuries included a compound fracture of the left ankle, broken and mangled fingers on his right hand, a deep laceration in his right knee and a severely dislocated left wrist. "As soon as they release me, my game plan is to go to Indy to get updates from all my crew chiefs -- Austin Coil, Bernie Fedderly, Jimmy Prock, Dean Antonelli and John Medlen -- on the changes we've made to our race cars," Force said. "After that, I'm going to meet with the doctors (Dr. Trammell has offices in Indianapolis) and see about getting me back in my race car. "I want to thank all the fans," Force said. "I know a lot of them wanted to come by (the hospital) to see me, but right now I just need to focus on getting my strength back. I'll be in Richmond, but I just won't be racing. "I want to wish everyone good luck in the Countdown. I'll be rooting for Robert Hight, my son-in-law, but I want everyone just to be safe. I've seen all the footage (from the crash) and I don't want anyone else to go through this. I'm really proud of John Medlen and what he and his team are doing to make these cars better. We've done some good work protecting the head. Now we need to focus on protecting the arms and legs." JOHN FORCE PRESENTS “THE ERIC MEDLEN PROJECT” It’s more than a building for John Force –
John Force said the Eric Medlen Project is one that will enable lives to be saved through safety research and innovation. John Force firmly believes that you don’t have to see something to believe it. Guided by what he can only describe as divine intervention, Force will announce his latest project, The Eric Medlen Foundation, at the US Nationals in Indianapolis. The sole purpose of the Foundation is to further the development of safety in drag racing. Force gave Torco’s CompetitionPlus.com an early look at his plans, just days before the debut of an Eric Medlen tribute car, one which he’ll drive. It is the culmination of a project that he’s personally commandeered since March. “Immediately after the Gainesville tragedy, we started looking towards the future,” Force said. The first place Force looked was at blueprints for an existing 65,000 square foot building that he had earmarked for rental income once he retired. This was before Medlen’s tragic passing. A lot of things changed in Forces’ life after Medlen’s passing. All of a sudden, retirement planning seemed like such an empty future to the 14-time champion. Force said his wife Laurie intervened with a humble and thought-provoking suggestion. “You know, John,” Laurie said to him about the project. “It isn’t to have money in the bank and have security in the bank when you know our children are out there racing. Not just our kids, but all of these other kids, are out here in racing.” Force laughs at her maternal instincts but gives reverence to her voice of reason with her nickname “Mother Teresa.” “When she wanted to invest our family money as well as her own personal money into something to save lives, it got my attention,” Force said. “We had already been involved with Dr. Melvin and John Medlen running a safety solutions project from helmets to chassis to roll cages and things we’ve already seen that has made the sport safer.”
It may be only a 65,000-square foot building of concrete and steel for some, but to Force and his team the building is a message-sender. It sends a message that what goes on inside is intent on saving lives and making drag racing safer and more innovative. Force said he didn’t have to look far for a reason to make her intuition a reality. After all, son-in-law and team driver Robert Hight had struck the concrete retaining wall in Topeka with enough force to move it back two feet. Hight’s misfortune was just one of many that Force saw with the potential to have a tragic outcome like Medlens. When Hight emerged without a scratch and not even the slightest headache, it proved they were on to something with the new safety changes Force had implemented in all his race cars. Force will tell you that Laurie was right, yet again, when it came to investing in safety over the nest egg. “We started with what we could do in a short amount of time,” Force said about the team’s focus on safety. “I had both a shop and a building in Los Angeles. But, we needed a building to work with all of the properties that needed to be involved like Ford, NHRA, SFI, PRO and SEMA. I needed another facility to accommodate that much of a demand.” Force then went to work on the building, which he calls The Eric Medlin Project. He said this building would house a large machine shop to build the special safety equipment and a newly designed safer race car. “Don’t get me wrong,” Force said. “I am still working with Murf McKinney, the current builder of Force’s cars. But, one day we plan to evolve to doing everything in house like they do in NASCAR. It will have a fabrication and paint shop.” Force said the new shop will be the ultimate Eric Medlen Tribute. “You’ll see the big signs everywhere,” Force said. “We are going to give him the recognition. He is our inspiration.” Force said the new shop would also feature a bronze sculpture of the fallen driver in a prominent role. That work of art has already been commissioned. “We’re going to present it to the fans, so that they may come and pose with pictures by it,” Force said. “The apparel shop is going to be converted into a small museum honoring Eric. It will feature all of the gifts from the fans. Everything we can get in there, we will get in there.”
Force credits wife Laurie with coming up with the idea and the spirit of Eric Medlen for making it happen. Force admitted the shop would be revealed on August 30th in Indianapolis. The event will only be open to members of the media, sponsors and Medlen’s family. He said he would love to open up to the fans, but space limitations at this time make that idea prohibitive. “If you saw the funeral, you would understand,” Force said. “Eric was a beloved member of the drag racing family just like Dale Earnhardt was to NASCAR. When you lose someone of their stature, you can never throw a party big enough. You just can’t house them all. “Our purpose is to show everyone that we at John Force Racing will never forget Eric Medlen and the impact he made on all of us.” Force pointed out the Eric Medlen Project is the only way that he can really show how much of an impact that Medlen made on him. He was more than a friend to Force. Medlen was a solid plan for the future and someone who to this day had a strong spiritual effect on him. Force said before a packed press conference in Sonoma that Eric had been sent to him by God to allow him to see the other side of life. He said he knows that we are put here for a purpose and that is to serve God. “I believe that God took Eric Medlen to heaven for a reason or otherwise, I’m gonna be mad at Him,” Force said. “The only way I can rationalize is that God was taking him to heaven to save a lot of lives in the future. That’s any way you take it. I believe it works that way, otherwise I just don’t understand it.” Force said he was always a God-fearing man, but maybe he didn’t pay enough attention to the importance of it all until Medlen’s passing. “I’m not going crazy, He hasn’t spoken to me,” Force said. “He ain’t jumped out of the sky and I haven’t seen aliens. I haven’t seen the face of God, but there are a lot of messages sent my way. Those messages are more valuable than a championship or an ET slip. That’s about saving people in the future. “That ain’t just for my own children. This is for all the mothers and fathers and their children out there. That’s why I am investing my money as well as my sponsors in this.” Force said that he’s serving a purpose and sometimes that means reacting to things you can’t see. He said faith in trusting instincts and those messages being sent his way are as real as the sun in the sky.
Force said the Eric Medlen Project is about faith. Faith in believing without having seen in the physical realm. “I was having a meeting with a fella that questioned the existence of God,” Force said. “I told him that I have those same feelings.” Force continued, “’He hasn’t opened the sky and talked to me,’ is what I told him. “But I know he created the heavens and the earth. Somebody did. There’s a lot of scientific theory out there that is true, but this is one that you can’t convince me otherwise. Am I keen on the words handed down? No I am not. But, most of those words are interpreted differently as they are handed down. How can you understand every single word? But in the end, that book serves that greatest purpose to mankind. It has kept the balance in this world between good and evil. If we didn’t have faith in God or a Supreme Being or religion, this world would be in a lot worse shape than it is now.” Force said the man just listened as he spoke on the topic. Then the gentleman said to Force that he just didn’t believe a lot of that to be true. Then the gentleman made the one statement that stirred Force to the next level. “You just can’t see him,” the man told Force. “Why?” Force said he responded. “You just can’t see Him because you choose not to see Him. The guy laughed at me and said, ‘That’s funny because I’ve seen you drunk in bars and fist-fight in the streets. I saw you whistle at a pretty girl.” Force said he promptly told the man that he wasn’t intent on preaching, but then the man’s cell-phone rang and it provided the perfect opportunity. “I sat there and asked him what he just did,” Force said. “He told me it was a friend calling to ask a few questions. I then asked him how he spoke to that man in that box. I asked him how he got in that box. The guy laughed at me. He reminded me that it was a telephone. “I told him that I was confused as to how that man got in that box. The man told me that someone had invented telephone airwaves. I asked him if he could see an airwave. He opened his phone and said no. He reminded me that it was sent with a signal.” That’s when Force launched his point. “But you can’t see it,” Force said. “He said he couldn’t see it. That’s when I told him that we couldn’t see God either but is it any different that what he is seeing through the phone? I told him that maybe he just believed in the phone and that’s why it worked. I told him that God has sent me as many signals as he has gotten through that phone through many pictures and many voices. I told him that I thought he was the one confused. “I let him know that if a phone call came from California through that phone and you can’t see it and believe it, then tell me why you can’t believe in God?” Force said the man got up and walked out of the meeting and left looking at him as if he were bearing eight heads. That’s when Force resumed studying the blueprints on his desk. He said he studied them and just thought to himself. “I can’t see Eric in the physical sense, but I know he’s here with all of us … I’m looking at a part of him right now,” Force said.
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