Three...........The Number

During the time since the tragic accident which took the life of Dale Earnhardt, there has been, as you very well know, a great deal of talk and discussion about whether or not his famous number 3 should be retired by NASCAR. While holding true to their strong political nature and form, NASCAR has stated repeatedly that it is NOT their practice to retire numbers, but they also stated that the number still belonged to Richard Childress Racing (RCR). Tom Sampson wrote in one of his articles, (I think it was "The Brightest Star") that he hoped that Richard Childress would retire the number himself along with the solid black. I agree with him totally and I would like to see that happen.

I would like to go back into history and take a closer look at the number three. Throughout the History of Biblical times, the number THREE was always a number that represented completion, or fullness but so also was the number seven. But I want to look particularly at the number THREE. Noah, (who built the Ark), had THREE sons. Their names were Shem, Ham and Japheth. There were THREE of the Hebrew Children that were cast into the Fiery Furnace. Jonah was in the belly of the whale THREE days and THREE nights. Jesus was in the heart of the earth (after He was Crucified) THREE days and THREE nights and then He arose. When the Great Sheet was let down before Peter in the Vision, it was let down THREE times and then it was caught back up into Heaven. I won't go any further with this, but the list goes on and on.

Now for some things from History that a lot of people don't remember. When Dale Earnhardt won his first race at Bristol in 1979, my wife and I were there. It was his THIRD race in that car with that team. But the car was NOT number THREE then, it was number TWO. It was sponsored by Wrangler, but it was number TWO. The car was owned by Rod Ostuerland who was from California, was a full sized Chevrolet Monte Carlo, and Jake Elder was the crew chief. In 1980 he (Dale) drove for the SAME team and won the Winston Cup Championship, but the car was still number TWO. In 1981 the team was bought by J.D. Stacy from Kentucky who put Joe Ruttman in the number TWO car and made him the primary driver for the team. He built another car with what spare material and parts that he had left for Dale and it was number THREE, but both cars bore the Wrangler name. After about five or six races it was obvious that Dale didn't have anything to drive, so Junior Johnson sat down and talked to Richard Childress (who was still driving his own car at that time) and Junior told Richard that he needed to get out of the car (his car was number six) and hire Dale to drive for him. So Richard did that immediately and J.D.Stacy was glad to see him leave because he had made it clear that he could not afford to run two cars. When Dale left was when J.D. Stacy found out that the Wrangler deal went with him AND he took with him the NUMBER THREE car number and Richard Childress changed his car to number THREE with Wrangler as the sponsor. The rest is history about Dale Earnhardt and the number THREE.

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