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Remembering Davey Allison's family carries on with a tribute
Posted: Tuesday July 13, 1999 11:29 PM
By Jim Huber, CNN/SI NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- It is a small room in the back of the basement, barely large enough for the two children. But they come here often, quietly to gaze at the trophies and try on the helmets and gloves and remind themselves of their heritage. "There's a picture of Clifford up there at Bristol," Liz Allison says to her son Robbie as she points to the wall. "He died in a race car crash," says the young boy. "He died one week before dad." "No, almost one year," mom answers. "Oh, yeah," Robbie says. The children were tiny, just three and one years of age when their father's helicopter crashed at Talladega race track and killed him. They come to the room almost as if to school, to subtly learn of the man Davey Allison, their father the hero. It is easy for them, and it's getting easier for Liz. Every day is a little better. "I think the biggest thing they go through is that most of their friends have a daddy and they don't," she said. "And they're at the age that being different is a big thing and so they're trying the best they can not to be different. Luckily time heals just about everything and time has served us well." Liz Allison was just 28 when she became a widow. Davey had somehow survived all the horrifying crashes, all the injuries. But Allison died of injuries on July 13, the day after falling from the sky in a helicopter crash at the Talladega Speedway in Alabama. The Allison family, has been wracked by tragedy over the years. Davey's brother Clifford killed in a stock car crash, their father Bobby nearly dying in a similar accident and then Davey. The family wanted Liz to remain in Hueytown, Ala., where the Alllisons had lived forever it seemed. But she instead took the children and escaped to Nashville.
"My life was torn into a million pieces," Liz said recalling those days. "It was like somebody threw it out with the 50 mile-an-hour wind and said, 'Here, here's your life. Do something with it.' I didn't know what to do. I think the natural thing for me was get grounded in a home somewhere, get planted and make it home for the children." The children are mature beyond their ages. At 9, Krista is a budding fashion designer, drawing every chance she gets. Seven-year-old Robbie has become, by osmosis or bloodline, a racing fan. It would be difficult being an Allison and not be. But when his favorite driver, Steve Park, was injured in a racing accident last year. Liz says that was about the time her son began to rethink things. "He said, 'I don't think I like racing any more because it hurts people,' she said. "Because his grandaddy had been in an accident and he'd seen tapes of his daddy having accidents so I think that was interesting that my little seven-year old had come up with his own conclusion that racing hurt people. He'll get over it when he decides that bones do heal." Racing fans are perhaps the most unique in all of sports. They hold onto their heroes forever and thus, even after six years, have made it very difficult for Liz to let Davey go. "It's a real struggle," she says. "Because you feel like you owe this to Davey, you owe this to the fans, you owe this to the family. But then you also realize for your own mental health, you've gotta draw the line somewhere and that you can't live in the past forever."
Liz has begun going back to the race tracks again, where her extended family lives and she has nearly finished a book on Davey's life that she wrote entirely herself. It will revive the memory, but at the same time bring about some much-needed closure. There was another book, a coffee-table tribute that Liz did to Davey several years ago that the children helped pick out pictures for. And although neither remember their father very well, it is through exercises of love such as this that keep him very close to his family.
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