[Fot] Paul Newman

[Joe Boruch]

I met Paul at a driver's meeting at an SCCA race at Lime Rock some years ago.  That's when he agreed to be an honerable FOT member.  He was very aproachable at the track as long as the subject was racing.  My wife started up a conversation with him later that day and called him Mr. Newman.  He replied "Call me Paul".  His wife and daughter were often up in the tower watching his race and were also very approachable.  He was still racing SCCA last year, but was doing regional races instead of the National races that he did in previous years.  He was still winning, too.  It was at an SCCA regional race in 2007 that Barbara Walters went for a track ride with Paul around Lime Rock.  She was doing a story about living a long life.   

-- "Richard Taylor" <tarch at bellsouth.net> wrote:
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />Ten years or so ago, I was sitting with a group of racers in the lobby of that Holiday Inn-type hotel at the northeast corner of Daytona International Speedway. In comes Newman and plops down on a sofa in a friendly-exhausted sort of way and starts bench racing right there. In a few minutes he and I go over to the temporary bar set up for cocktail hour. He orders a Budweiser and I order a Heinekens. Newman digs into his pocket to pay for his beer and the bartender says, “That’s okay Mr. Newman, it’s on the house.”
 
The bartender then looks at me. So I say “Well, do you know who I am?”   He says, “No, who are you?”
 
I tell him, “I’m Richard Taylor from <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Atlanta”
 
The bartender thinks a second then says, “That’s great. That’ll be $3.50.”
 
Newman, still standing there, chuckles. While I am waiting for my change he takes his free beer over to our group and tells them the story; to which they all laugh their collective asses off. 
 
Of course there was no escaping the aura of his celebrity, but somehow it never eclipsed the camaraderie of our spontaneous little group of racers.
 
If one can make a judgment of a man by an antidotal moment, in my mind Newman exhibited class in its noblest unrefined form. 
 
Richard
 
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