Paul Newan dies at 83

[Racerbvd]

Originally Posted by carr914

I met him a few times at the 24 of Daytona and always got to wish Happy Birthday (we both shared January 26th). He remembered me.

The reason he didn't sign autographs is in the 60's he was a tavern, went to the restroom and some asshat asked him for an autograph while he was taking a piss. He later said he and his autograph were not that important. 2 months ago I was searching for the helmet that Graham Rahal wore that honored Paul. There were tons of autographed pictures - all fakes. If you looked at a few, they were all different.

R.I.P. Paul

T.C.

I was there, very cool and truly a huge loss. A friend owns & races his old Triumph race car

[nut11]

His class, humanity and life perspective contrasts so with the greed and narcissism of wall street and the effects we are now facing. He was such a refreshing human being always giving more than he took.

87 blk coupe

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by tcar

Remember reading somewhere (car mag) that he was the first (they said) to put a hopped up Porsche 356 motor in a Beetle. He said he very, very quickly learned that he needed to put Porsch brakes on it, too.

Supposedly made several of these for friends.

When you watch him acting, it looks like Tom Cruise gestures and expressions. No guesses as to who is copying whom.

I've heard that story over the years. It was a VW convertible, IIRC. He had a house out in Malibu and enjoyed driving the hopped up bug to work at the studio thru the twisties.

[Sarc]

A nice obit. RIP my friend. Thank you for 'the nod' that day.



Paul Newman
He used his fame to give away his fortune.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Saturday, Sept. 27, 2008, at 10:20 AM ET
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp opened in Connecticut in 1988 to provide a summer camping experience—fishing, tie-dye, ghost stories, s'mores—for seriously ill children. By 1989, when I started working there as a counselor, virtually everyone on staff would tell some version of the same story: Paul Newman, who had founded the camp when it became clear his little salad-dressing lark was accidentally going to earn him millions, stops by for one of his not-infrequent visits. He plops down at a table in the dining hall next to some kid with leukemia, or HIV, or sickle cell anemia, and starts to eat lunch. One version of the story has the kid look from the picture of Newman on the Newman's Own lemonade carton to Newman himself, then back to the carton and back to Newman again before asking, "Are you lost?" Another version: The kid looks steadily at him and demands, "Are you really Paul Human?"

Newman loved those stories. He loved to talk about the little kids who had no clue who he was, this friendly old guy who kept showing up at camp to take them fishing. While their counselors stammered, star-struck, the campers indulged Newman the way they'd have indulged a particularly friendly hospital blood technician. It took me years to understand why Newman loved being at the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp. It was for precisely the same reason these kids did. When the campers showed up, they became regular kids, despite the catheters and wheelchairs and prosthetic legs. And when Newman showed up, he was a regular guy with blue eyes, despite the Oscar and the racecars and the burgeoning marinara empire. The most striking thing about Paul Newman was that a man who could have blasted through his life demanding "Have you any idea who I am?" invariably wanted to hang out with folks—often little ones—who neither knew nor cared.

For his part, Newman put it all down to luck. In his 1992 introduction to our book about the camp, he tried to explain what impelled him to create the Hole in the Wall: "I wanted, I think, to acknowledge Luck: the chance of it, the benevolence of it in my life, and the brutality of it in the lives of others; made especially savage for children because they may not be allowed the good fortune of a lifetime to correct it." Married to Joanne Woodward, his second wife, for 50 years this winter, Newman always looked at her like something he'd pulled out of a Christmas stocking. He looked at his daughters that way, too. It was like, all these years later, he couldn't quite believe he got to keep them.

Of course, it wasn't all luck. He lost his son, Scott, to a drug overdose in 1978, so in 1980, he founded the Scott Newman Center, which works to prevent substance abuse. When he first began to donate 100 percent of the proceeds from his food company, Newman's Own, to charity, critics accused him of grandiosity. Grandiose? Tell that to the recipients of the quarter-billion dollars he's given away since the company's creation in 1982. First Paul Newman made fresh, healthy food cool, then he and his daughter Nell made organic food cool. Then he went and made corporate giving cool by establishing the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy. And all this was back in the '90s, before Lance Armstrong bracelets and organic juice boxes.

But Newman never stopped believing he was a regular guy who'd simply been blessed, and well beyond what was fair. So he just kept on paying it forward. He appreciated great ideas for doing good in the world—he collected them the way other people collect their own press clippings—and he didn't care where they came from. Whether you were a college kid, a pediatric oncologist, or a Hollywood tycoon, if you had a nutty plan to make life better for someone, he'd write the check himself or hook you up with somebody who would.

Today there are 11 camps modeled on the Hole in the Wall all around the world, and seven more in the works, including a camp in Hungary and one opening next year in the Middle East. Each summer of the four I spent at Newman's flagship Connecticut camp was a living lesson in how one man can change everything. Terrified parents would deliver their wan, weary kid at the start of the session with warnings and cautions and lists of things not to be attempted. They'd return 10 days later to find the same kid, tanned and bruisey, halfway up a tree or cannon-balling into the deep end of the pool. Their wigs or prosthetic arms—props of years spent trying to fit in—were forgotten in the duffel under the bed. Shame, stigma, fear, worry, all vaporized by a few days of being ordinary. In an era in which nearly everyone feels entitled to celebrity and fortune, Newman was always suspicious of both. He used his fame to give away his fortune, and he did that from some unspoken Zen-like conviction that neither had ever really belonged to him in the first place.

Hollywood legend holds that Paul Newman is and will always be larger-than-life, and it's true. Nominated for 10 Oscars, he won one. He was Fast Eddie, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy. And then there were Those Eyes. But anyone who ever met Paul Newman will probably tell you that he was, in life, a pretty regular-sized guy: A guy with five beautiful daughters and a wonder of a wife, and a rambling country house in Connecticut where he screened movies out in the barn. He was a guy who went out of his way to ensure that everyone else—the thousands of campers, counselors, and volunteers at his camps, the friends he involved in his charities, and the millions of Americans who bought his popcorn—could feel like they were the real star.

[widgeon13]

Very nice obit, he was truly one of a kind.

[Brian 162]

[Sarc]

Here's a nice writeup about his infamous hot-rod volvo wagon.

http://www.swedespeed.com/news/publish/Features/printer_33.html

[carr914]

@ Petit LeMans, they had the Hudson Hornet and the GT-1 that Paul raced at Daytona. Also all the cars in the race wore a PLN decal in tribute.

T.C.

[Baz]

It will be 5 years in September since we lost him.....always good to remember human beings like Mr. Newman......they don't come along all that often.

[Stutzdriver]

RIP Paul.....He was an instructor at 2 of the SCCA driver's schools I attended at Nelsons Ledges in the late 1970's...He always remembered me when I saw him thereafter...Nice guy, Joann was always a lady too...

[L8Brakr]

Back in the early 90s I was entered in the USAC ProFF2000 race that was one of the prelims at Road Atlanta for the Annual IMSA/Trans Am weekend. Was walking through the pine trees below the upper pits wearing my drivers suit and almost walked into PLN as he was leaving the tower. The typical..."pardon me" as I introduced myself and offered a handshake apology.

He had his suit on and I made some initial comment about the track conditions and we proceeded to have a memorable conversation for about ten minutes discussing the rumble strips at turn X, the new concrete patch at turn Y, the slick spots in the esses that were still weeping from the overnight rain etc... Just two equal drivers comparing notes and looking for a quicker lap time.

Eventually he was spotted by a casual spectator. A woman approached him and asked for his autograph. He politely declined....saying something like...."I'm sorry but I have to concentrate on getting back on track, so I can't give any autographs"....or something like that.

He then shook my and hand and apologized saying he needed to get back to his trailer now that he had been spotted, as a crowd would be quickly forming. We wished each other good luck for the weekend and that was it.

Amazingly the next day as I was walking past his pit complex, he happened to see me and made a point to wave and smile as we made eye contact. Exchanged a "thumbs up" without stopping. A true gentleman and one of a kind!!!

Rest in Peace Mr. Newman.

[Wilywilly]

in 1979 He was a co-driver with Dick Barbour and Rolf Stommelen in a 935 which took 2nd Place Overall at Lemans. The 935. finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd that year. I think Newman raced 3 times at Le Mans.

[livi]

One of the greatest.

[Baz]

Thanks everyone for posting your stories and memories....this footage is pretty classic - especially at the 2:30 mark from "The Verdict" - a great movie.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Wilywilly

in 1979 He was a co-driver with Dick Barbour and Rolf Stommelen in a 935 which took 2nd Place Overall at Lemans. The 935. finished 1st, 2nd and 3rd that year. I think Newman raced 3 times at Le Mans.

Good thing he didn't drive that 935 at Riverside where Stommelen died.

[weseeeee]

I got to see him drive a few times during some races in Daytona. He walked around the pits like he was a just another driver, not some big star. Class act!