Three-Part Series Tells the Behind the Scenes Stories of Drag Racers Facing Insurmountable Comeback Odds …

Originally published November 2008

PART ONE - THE INITIAL CRASH

For every story of unprecedented courage told here on the pages of CompetitionPlus.com, there are millions of others that will go untold.

In the days to come, CompetitionPlus.com will bring you five stories of incredible bravery, dedication and determination. Stories of people who did not let accident or illness end their dreams of racing.

The first lady of drag racing Shirley Muldowney, fourteen-time world champion John Force, second-generation Top Fuel driver Brandon Bernstein and cancer survivors Jack Beckman and Steve Torrence have all shared with CompetitionPlus.com their innermost struggles and fears coupled with undying determination to live.

Their stories could easily appear on Real TV’s I Survived series.

Here’s a sampling:

One came to a stop in high grass, leaving safety crews wondering where the driver was amongst the plane crash-style setting.

Another didn’t know what had happened as safety crews cut the top of the roll cage from his mangled chassis. His only thought was, “Did I win the round?”

A rookie suffered excruciating pain as he waited for safety crews to arrive, but nowhere close to the pain he would have endured had fireworks resting in his crotch detonated.

Then there were the cancer survivors. One was 17, with his whole life ahead of him. Another had just won a world championship title only to face another race with a dangerous disease with serious mortality implications.
These are their stories.

JACK BECKMAN: FROM CHAMPION FIGHT TO A FIGHT FOR HIS LIFE

Almost twenty years after Shirley Muldowney nearly lost her life in a top end accident in Canada and just a few months after Brandon Bernstein’s season ended as the result of a crash, Jack Beckman came face to face with his own mortality.

Beckman's “moment of truth” wasn’t related to a racing accident, nor did it have anything to do with an automobile.

Beckman was good with a race car, very good. In fact, he’d just been crowned the 2003 NHRA Super Comp world champion. His celebration of the championship left hollow by the reality he had developed a high grade level 3B lymphoma, a cancer that had invaded his body from hip to neck.

“People I barely knew would come up to me at the races and tell me they were thinking of me,” said Beckman “I can’t describe what that meant to me. It’s also nice not having to die to know how much people care about you.

“When you’re faced with a life-threatening situation, there is a real temptation to go out and do everything you’ve always wanted to do in your lifetime. That didn’t work for me because all I’ve ever wanted to do is race and teach others how to race and I was already doing that.”

Beckman’s positive spirit wouldn’t allow him to quit living or racing. There were plenty of times during his treatment when the power of his spirit greatly outranked the ability of his flesh.

“Your body hurts, you have symptoms and its life threatening and that brings forward a very real physical component that you experience,” said Beckman, comparing cancer to a race car crash. “Your bones hurt and you have to heal from that.”

One of the greatest obstacles to coming back from an accident is blocking out the fear of getting back into the race car again, but in a situation where one survives cancer, re-engaging isn’t as easy.

Blocking out surviving cancer is nearly impossible.

“Once you come back from the illness, in a perfect world you never have to think about it,” Beckman explained. “If you could keep it out of your mind, it would never affect you again. In my case, whenever I get a stomach ache or whenever something hurts for an extended period of time. The psychological component is what eats you up.

“I’ve caught myself wondering from time to time if that is the cancer coming back. That causes undue stress. That’s defined as understandable stress.

“When you come back from a wreck it shouldn’t affect your driving at all. If you make thousands of runs and then something goes wrong, the chances of that bad thing happening again are minimal. If you dwell on it, that component will cause tons of undue stress. Ironically you don’t perform as well. At some point you can push all that aside, take a deep breath and go out there and become the machine.

“Frank Hawley said it best when he said the fear of poor performance often causes poor performance.”

Beckman has long been popular among his fellow racers due to his engaging personality and sense of humor. Those closest to him are amazed that he was somehow able to emerge from his near-tragedy an even warmer and more compassionate human being.

“If there’s one message I want to get across it’s that I’m not the only person in the world to get cancer, said Beckman. “I have visited children’s hospitals and have seen kids who have it much worse than I do. It is important for people to know that someone cares about them. That’s why I encourage people to go out and support great organizations like the Jegs Foundation for Cancer Research because they really do make a difference.”

When it comes matters of the health, cancer is a beast which cannot be turned on and off like a light.

“I’m still not fully out of the woods,” said Beckman, who is quickly approaching his five year mark after cancer. “I think the cancer was pretty eradicated by the fifth treatment. They [doctors] did eight heavy cycles just to be sure. I don’t want to say sure because that’s never a safe word with cancer.

“Physically I don’t know that I’m 100-percent back from it. My body still isn’t quite where it was before I got the cancer. My mind isn’t where it was before I got the cancer. I find myself struggling with memory, whereas I used to have a strong one. That’s okay, I’ll settle for 90-percent. It beats being dead.”

STEVE TORRENCE - CHARACTER CONTINUANCE

Those who believe character is developed in the middle to latter years of one’s life obviously have yet to meet Steve Torrence.

The former Top Alcohol Dragster world champion started drag racing when he was only 14 and by 15 was a full-fledged Super Comp racer. He was clearly a kid, but in his own words, “They didn’t even check my license. I guess I was big for my age and I could reach the pedals, so they [race officials] told me to go for it.”

Prior to the Super Comp endeavor, Torrence raced a stock class Chevy wagon. The challenge of driving any race car would pale in comparison to tempest he was to encounter.

As a 17-year old high school senior, Torrence was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease.

“I had a softball size tumor in my chest between my lungs and right on top of my heart,” Torrence said. “The way that they found it – I started my senior year of high school and in the first two weeks of school I gained about 20 pounds. I was really gaining weight. It looked like I had been stung by a bee because I was swollen all over – eyes legs and everything.

“I went to the doctor and they diagnosed me with walking pneumonia or maybe lymphatic syndrome. There are all these things that they diagnosed but they were just diagnosing symptoms. My kidneys were leaking protein so that’s why my body was filling up with fluid. That’s why I got bloated and puffy.”

Torrence faced major challenges from that point as doctors prescribed diuretics to lose weight, which caused even more problems like blood clots in his lungs. He remained in the hospital’s ICU unit while doctor’s racked their brains trying to diagnose his ailment.

Torrence finally underwent scans which revealed a significant mass in his chest. The doctors wanted to perform surgery to see if they could diagnose the problem better. Torrence and his parents Billy and Kay Torrence unanimously decided that wasn’t the route they wanted to take.

Torrence was transferred from Longview to the Dallas Medical Center where tests confirmed a softball sized tumor but they wanted a closer look.

“They thought it was cancer and wanted to go in through my throat, make a small incision, pull a piece of the tumor out and do a biopsy,” Torrence said. “That was a hard pill to swallow for me.”

He was forced to accept the reality when doctors confirmed what he most dreaded – he had cancer.

“That was rough because I had lost quite a few people in my family to cancer,” Torrence said. “Cancer is prominent in my family and I immediately thought that was the end.

“I couldn’t do anything. Everything was out of my hands. I had to keep my faith that God would supply me with the best doctors and all I could do was pray. I had a lot of people down on their knees praying for me and that’s why I am still here.”

Torrence often discusses his experience in fighting cancer with his new wife Amanda, who has learned through previous relationships just how fragile life can be. Years before she and Torrence met, Amanda dated Eric Medlen. Medlen was killed in a testing accident last March.

Ironically, Torrence gained his first Top Alcohol driving job in succeeding Shelly Howard, also killed in a testing accident.

“Everything is part of some plan and it happens for a reason,” Torrence said. “God uses every one of us as some type of tool to affect someone.

“I told her to look at all the people his life has affected and look at John Force and see how his life affected other people. And that’s the way I look at things now and I didn’t look at them that way before. People wonder why things have to happen to them and it gives you a different perspective. I am just happy to be here doing what I am doing because I might not be here tomorrow.”

In September of 2005, when Torrence realized his dream of driving a Top Fuel dragster, he also marked his fifth year of being cancer free.



TOMORROW: COMING BACK, PT. 2 – THE FIGHT WITH CANCER
THURSDAY: COMING BACK, PT. 3 – THE PAINFUL REHAB