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I certainly am not "quote worthy", but I though I would share this little tidbit about Bryan's character.
As some of you know, we started and promoted the Indy Circle Track Expo, or as some just called it, "The Swap Meet".
Each year we would try to have some sort of entertainment, whether a round table, interviews, game show, or whatever, featuring some our sports Legends and/or current stars.
I usually would contact these folks to participate at our late January show, sometime in November (or earlier). With that said, we would usually get commitments, and then start advertising who was coming. Once in a while, we would have someone cancel because they were able to race in Australia or some other thing would come up that actually paid something (our deal was strictly voluntary, but we did try to give something nice to our participants). Totally understandable.
In fact in all those years, we only had one flat out no show (that's another story).
So as we were getting very close to the 2011 show, it was announced that Bryan would be running the ovals in the Indy Lights Series, and would be taking his first laps in a car at Phoenix the day before our show.
At that point we were bummed because of unfortunate scheduling of his debut (Jan. 28th), in relation to our show (Jan. 29th), but were thrilled that Bryan was back on the road to the bigtime where he should have been all along.
On a side note, we understood the bad timing of his NASCAR career in relation to the economic downturn, but could NEVER understand why nobody picked him up after that?... So it was great to see him getting back on path to something grand in Indy Cars!
So come show day the doors swing open at 8am. The game show we were doing started at 1pm, and I just figured I would round up a replacement for Bryan at the show.
Well, you can probably see where this is going.... At about 10am I look over to the booth his father Tim had at the show, and low and behold, there is Bryan!!
I was amazed that he was there. Not 15 hours ago, he was taking the next very important step in his career in Phoenix, but still managed to come back to Indy for our little show..... For nothing more than our gratitude, and gift certificate to Texas Roadhouse!!
I walked up to him and expressed my amazement, and he simply said, "hey, I made a commitment to be here, and I am a man of my word".
Yes he will always be one of the best ever in ANY racecar, but that little tale in a nutshell described the character, that was evidently well instilled in him by his parents, of a Grade-A human being.
Our deepest sympathies to Tim, Diana, Taylor, Lauren, and his entire extended family. May he RIP.
Craig & Tia Dori
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