NOTE: This is an article I posted after Benny's death in January, but it was posted on a site that doesn't get much traffic, so I thought I'd share it here as well.

Folks, the NASCAR community lost one of the great ones on Tuesday, January 16, 2007.

Benny Parsons was a very accomplished driver, with 21 wins and a championship (1973) in his Cup career, which began in 1970 and ended following the 1988 season. He was also a two-time ARCA champion, a Daytona 500 champion, an inductee to the International Motorsports Hall of Fame and the National Motorsports Press Association’s Stock Car Racing Hall of Fame, an Emmy winner and he is on the list of the top 50 NASCAR drivers.

Regrettably, I never saw him race. In the years that his career spanned, I was a skeptic, wondering just how the hell my Dad could sit and watch (or listen to) a bunch of guys going around in circles. What was the point in that? At the time, it seemed silly to me.

My Dad died of complications from cancer in 1991 and never knew me as the race fan I would become, but I suspect he found out just the same and that he’s pretty damn proud.

I finally began developing an interest in the sport in 1998 and became hooked after a trip to Talladega. But, NASCAR can be confusing for someone new to watching and the learning curve is huge. Luckily, I had the Professor to teach me.

The ESPN broadcasting booth of Bob Jenkins, Ned Jarrett and Benny was outstanding in any order you place them, but Benny was the guy I loved to listen to.

Long before FOX and NBC/TNT came along with their digitized visuals, Benny was illustrating terms such as “loose”, “tight” and “drafting” with no tools but his voice and his knowledge of the sport to draw the images. He did a stellar job.

Benny could describe any scenario in such clear, down to earth English that his point was easily understood, and his broadcasting style was one easily accepted by long time fans, as well as “newbies” like me. When he explained things, he never made it sound like he was “talking down” to people who didn’t know the sport and that’s because he wasn’t - he was simply sharing his enthusiasm with anyone he could.

For all of his patient teaching and brilliant commentating, the thing that endeared him to so many of us was that he WAS us - he WAS me - a race fan. Granted, he was a race fan with a really cool job, but a race fan nonetheless.

His enthusiasm and love of the sport just bubbled out of him any time you saw or heard him on the air and it was a joy to bear witness to it.

“Man, oh, man!”, he’d exclaim after a close call or a daring move on the track. Or, “How did he do that? I don’t understand how he did that!” “He’s on the apron, Ned! He’s on the apron!”

His excitement was evident in every word and it was infectious. He came across, to me, as a race fan who got invited up to the booth to call a few laps. He spoke like most of us speak, no need for big words that leave folks reaching for a dictionary or thesaurus.

He knew (or maybe just sensed) how to take himself out of the broadcast booth and literally come sit in our living rooms. He was on a national broadcast network doing commentary, but he might just as well have been sitting next to us on the couch, smiling and saying, “Isn’t this a great sport?”

Some of his contemporaries on other networks are quick to point out their own success, but Benny wasn’t. When he did mention his success, he almost sounded embarrassed to talk about it.

Bottom line, I always felt that what I was seeing and hearing was genuinely Benny Parsons. No airs, no false fronts, just the real person, and reading all the articles written about him by people who knew him, I was dead on accurate with that belief. The guy on TV was the same guy you might bump into at the grocery store or gas station.

I never met him, but he was a friend just the same. I prayed for him from the moment I heard he was diagnosed with cancer until the day I heard that his suffering had ended, and now I pray for his family and friends as they are going through a difficult time to which I can very easily relate, as I suppose most of us can.

I unabashedly admit that I shed a couple tears when I heard that he’d passed, but that’s to be expected when you lose a friend and teacher. I’ll continue watching racing for as long as I live, but I’ll miss BP in the booth just as much as I miss the black #3 on the track. There are certain icons you miss no matter how long they’re gone.

And I hope that somehow, in the great expanse of Heaven, my Dad and Benny happen to cross paths so my Dad can tell Benny how his words helped turn me into a fan of my Dad’s favorite sport, even if it is just a bunch of guys going around in circles.

Thank you, Benny, and rest in peace. You will be sorely missed.