This article was published in the Omaha World-Herald, two years after the racing accident.

SUPPORT HELPS FAMILY COPE WITH DEATH

A RACING ACCIDENT THAT KILLED DWIGHT WRICH NEARLY TWO YEARS AGO PROMPTS SAFETY CHANGES by Craig Sesker, World-Herald Staff Writer

1- (picture of Dwight Wrich) 2- (picture & caption) Patty Wrich, center, says she is fortunate to have “two very good kids,” Morgan, 11, and Carsten, 9.

Patty Wrich would love to return to a day nearly three years ago.

The day when her husband, Dwight, and their two young children, Morgan and Carsten, sat down for a family meeting in their northwest Omaha home at the end of the 1999 auto racing season.

After 20 years of driving race cars, and with his kids becoming more involved in activities, Dwight Wrich was concerned. He wondered if the sport had become too time-consuming.

“I remember Dwight saying, ‘Do you guys still want me to race?’” Patty said. “He said he would do whatever we decided. The kids told him, ‘No, daddy, you’ve got to race.’ And I kind of said it wasn’t something I was going to ever take away from him because it was something he absolutely loved to do.

“Do I wish I would have told him to give up racing at that point? Yeah.”

Dwight Wrich never made it to the end of the 2000 racing season.

He died Oct. 1, 2000, about 25 hours after he was involved in a fiery crash while racing at Crawford County Speedway in Denison, Iowa.

The 38-year-old Wrich, a financial planner for Wells Fargo, left behind a 9-year-old daughter, a 7-year-old son and his wife of 12 years.

“It was very hard,” Patty said, fighting back tears. “Imagine losing your best friend and husband all in one day. But knock on wood, I am lucky because I have two very good kids. Plus I have a lot of help and support from family and friends.”

Wrich was killed when his Grand National car, going about 100 mph with two other cars on a straightaway, flipped several times, ended up on its top and caught fire.

Denison Fire Chief Mike McKinnon has said the fire was out in less than two minutes. Patty Wrich said she is not planning to take any legal action against the Denison Fire Dept., but she wants to set the record straight. She said a videotape of the accident proves the fire actually lasted 3 minutes, 54 seconds.

She also thinks the safety team should have tipped the car over sooner to stop the fuel from leaking, and to stop the fire.

“I think they were in a panic mode because they had not dealt with anything like this before,” Patty said. “I just want to know why this happened. Everything that happened that night went wrong.”

McKinnon, who was not at the scene, said the fire might have lasted longer than two minutes. He defended the decision of his fire and safety team not to tip the burning car over.

“We did everything we could,” McKinnon said. “NASCAR’s investigation of the accident found no fault with what we did. (National Fire Protection Association) guidelines state that we are not supposed to tip a burning car over with the driver still in it.”

An investigation of the accident found that a manufacturing defect with the car’s gas cap allowed fuel to leak out because the cap did not fit securely.

Patty Wrich said her husband “did not skimp on safety.”

“He wore something that had so many layers of protection it was like a parka,” she said. “He had the neck protector, the fireproof shoes, the fireproof gloves, everything. His dad, Bill, being a racer all his life, made sure everything on Dwight’s car was safe. Bill was scared to death of fire.”

Bill Wrich drove racers for more than 40 years and has been involved in racing since 1954. He said the fire that took his son’s life ”was the worst I have ever seen.”

“We thought we had all the danger covered and we were very safety conscious, but we had no way of knowing the gas cap was defective,” he said. “I guess I will never understand why that had to happen to Dwight.”

For Patty, proceeding with her life as a single parent has not been easy. She knows the emptiness only a widow of a young family can know.

“Moving through this is tough, but you have to,” she said. “I was brain-dead until this March. I felt like I was in a fog for about a year and a half. I finally woke up one morning and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ It was amazing. Then the cloud over me lifted, I am not totally sure why. Some people can move on a lot quicker, some people it takes longer.”

Returning to work has been therapeutic. She works part-time at Bergan Mercy Medical Center. Wrich, a registered cardiology technologist, had worked full-time until 1997 before quitting to be home with her kids.

The night of Dwight Wrich’s fatal accident, Patty and the kids were running late to the race in Denison after Carsten had hockey practice.

The Wrichs had planned to travel to Mall of America, just outside Minneapolis, for vacation right after the race.

“Right when I got out of the car I heard on the loudspeaker, ‘We will have an update of the critically injured driver Dwight Wrich,’ “ Patty said. “I thought, ‘Oh my God’ and my life flashed before my eyes. I told the kids to get back in the car and we headed to the hospital. We didn’t see the fire. We were outside the track, thank God.”

Wrich was taken to Crawford County Hospital in Denison, then to St. Elizabeth Regional Medical Center in Lincoln.

“It was a 70 percent flame burn,” Patty said. “I had actually worked with burn patients in the past and I knew what he was up against. The only other injury he had was a broken nose.”

As her husband lay in a hospital bed in Lincoln, Patty had one final opportunity to say goodbye. Dwight died at 9 p.m., the day after the crash.

“He was coherent some of the time, I don’t know how, but he knew I was there,” Patty said. “He would just shake his head ‘yes’ or ‘no’ when you talked to him. The last thing I said to him was, ‘You just lie there and get better, and I will take care of everything.’ He shook his head ‘yes’. “

Patty said 1,200 people turned out for the funeral.

“I think that the sheer number of people there reassured my children what Dwight meant to a lot of people,” she said.

Dwight’s mother, Joyce Wrich, said Patty has “done wonders with those kids.”

“She is a really devoted mother,” Joyce said. “Patty is very strong. She’s not a daughter-in-law to us, she’s a daughter. She’s a peach. Dwight and Patty were so much in love.

“We all miss Dwight dearly. It was awful what happened.”

Patty said her husband had survived a roll-over accident several years before.

“He came out of that without a scratch,” she said. “He had never been seriously injured.”

Wrich’s death has prompted more safety awareness.

Freddie Miller of Avoca, Iowa, has built a roll-over simulator that helps safety crews and drivers prepare for a crash where a car comes to rest upside down.

Miller also made a device that goes inside the gas tank that makes a car leakproof if it comes to rest upside down.

The improved safety that has resulted from Wrich’s death is similar to the emphasis on safety at the national level after Dale Earnhardt was killed at the 2001 Daytona 500.

Dwight Wrich is recognized at memorial races at Shelby County Speedway in Harlan, Iowa, and at Eagle Raceway in Eagle, Neb. A charity golf tournament at Champions Club also has been held in his memory.

“My 9-year-old (Carsten) sang the national anthem at the golf tournament,” Patty said. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.”

Going to the racetrack used to be a weekly ritual for the Wrich family. But in the two years since her husband’s death, Patty said she has been to the racetrack just a handful of times.

“I don’t like it anymore,” she said. “Before It was exciting and it was fun to watch. I watch with a different eye now.”

She said she is hoping her son does not follow his grandfather and father into racing.

“If Carsten came to me and said he wanted to race, which he has said already, I would try and talk him out of it,” she said. “If it is something he has his heart set on, I don’t think I could stop him. I know the accident with Dwight was a freak occurrence, but it still scares me to think what could happen.”

Photos of Dwight are on display all over the Wrich family’s two-story home.

“You don’t want to forget and we never will, of course,” she said. “We talk about him all the time.”

Wrich said making family decisions is challenging at times.

“It’s tough when you have to make those first decisions on your own and not have somebody to bounce ideas off,” she said. “But Dwight and I had a partnership where you could make independent decisions and know pretty much what the other person would or wouldn’t want.”

Patty still wears her wedding ring, but on her right hand now.

“I kept wearing it on my left hand for almost a year after he died,” she said. “I am not sure why I switched it. I think I will always wear it.”

Dwight Wrich’s 40th birthday would have been July 18. Patty said not a day goes by that she doesn’t wonder why her husband’s life was cut short.

“Do I ask, ‘Why me?’ Of course I do,” she said. “Why was I the unlucky one and why were my kids the unlucky ones? I don’t know. “