Montgomery Lee Petty, 14, leans on his grandfather, racing great Richard Petty, as he listens to his father Kyle Petty, not pictured, announce that the Petty family is founding The Victory Junction Gang Camp during a news conference in 2000. (Erik Perel – The KeynoteUSA)
By Jenna Fryer
Richard Petty, with a record 200 Cup Series wins, seven championships and a first-ballot induction into the Hall of Fame, is widely considered NASCAR’s greatest driver.
He’s spending the season celebrating his famous family’s 75 years of involvement in NASCAR (basically since the stock car series’ inception in 1948) and reflecting on the legacy he’ll leave behind.
As his 87th birthday approached, which falls on July 3 before this weekend’s race in Chicago, Petty realized his family should be hailed for something much bigger than anything they did in NASCAR. He pointed to the Victory Junction Gang Camp, which opened in 2004 for chronically ill children as a way to honor his late grandson.
Adam Petty was 19 when he died in a crash in 2000 while practicing for a race in New Hampshire. Not many years earlier, he had visited Paul Newman’s Boggy Creek camp on his motorcycle and became interested in starting a similar camp in North Carolina.
Petty said the family’s continued pursuit of Adam’s dream will be the family’s lasting legacy.
“This is for seriously ill kids who can’t go to camp, so it’s a very special offering,” Petty said. “The kids come from all over the country and we don’t charge them anything. We make sure they get there and they get taken home. So when I look at the Pettys’ 75 years of racing, I think they put the camp on the line and I think the biggest legacy, what we hope it will be, has more to do with Victory Junction Camp than racing.
“Racing gave us a chance to get out and do something, and it was always one of Adam’s dreams,” he added. “When we lost Adam, the family got together and said we would look into that arrangement.”
Adam Petty was the oldest son of Kyle Petty, Richard’s only child. Petty family patriarch Lee founded the racing team, and Richard’s brother Maurice, who is in the engine business, are considered the foundation of the team’s success. All three are members of the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
Richard Petty is “The King” and remains a larger-than-life figure well into retirement. His cowboy hat and sunglasses are a beloved and familiar sight at the track, where even at age 87 he appears at every NASCAR weekend and is currently an ambassador for Legacy Motor Club. That team, co-owned by Jimmie Johnson, also a seven-time Cup champion, is the backbone of Petty Enterprises.
Kyle Petty never matched his father in terms of success on the track, but Adam was considered a future NASCAR star at the time of his fatal accident. Although he had not won a race in the national series when he died, he had entered one Cup race and won two races in the ARCA Series feeder system by the time he was 17.
Had he not died so young, Adam Petty likely would have moved on to Cup to drive for Petty Enterprises and kept that team afloat and competitive for several decades.
Instead, his death helped the family create its proudest achievement.
Located on 84 acres in Petty’s hometown of Randleman, North Carolina, the camp notes that “Adam’s passion for racing was matched only by his compassion for others, especially children” and that he often visited children in pediatric hospitals.
The camp is largely funded through donations and fundraisers, including a fan walk and the annual “Kyle Petty Charity Race Across America.” The motorcycle ride began in 1995, long before the camp, but proceeds now go to Victory Junction.
Richard Petty said he’s excited that Victory Junction started long before driver-started foundations and charities became the norm.
“We had a grandson that we loved, but look at the thousands of kids – I think we’ve seen 30,000 kids and this is our 20th year – and Kyle always says when he sees one of them smile, he sees Adam smile,” Richard Petty said.
Petty is convinced the family would never have been able to launch Victory Junction without the success of Petty Enterprises, which was NASCAR’s winningest team through 2021. Once they decided to start the camp, drivers, industry veterans and fans were eager to contribute in any way they could.
“Everyone wants to leave a legacy of some kind,” Petty said. “I think eventually racing will fade away or be different. I think the notoriety of the camp is going to last much longer than anything I’ve accomplished in racing.”
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