RIP David Poole

I needed to pass through here to pay my respects.

David Poole owned that beat. Owned it. Ed Hinton may have had a broader view of the sport when he was at SI, or a longer view of it when he was at the Sentinel; and Monte Dutton may have had more colorful stories of the lifers down in the sheds at Martinsville or the snuff dippers out behind the big red barn at Bristol - but David Poole owned the NASCAR beat. For years.

David and I never hit a friendly stride. We both got wrongfooted somehow the season I was out there with the tent show, crossed up. But we righted things enough over the years to correspond some. Lord knows both of us came here often enough.

But whenever I needed an ironclad reference for anything happening on that circuit, or was asked whom to trust for honesty and insight and perspective in that world, I always went back to David Poole.

He was a great reporter and a fine writer and a good man. He was a friend to journalism and journalists and to the truth. He was an artist and a craftsman and a confessor, a storyteller and a poet and a master mason. Take comfort if you can that the things he built will outlast him. That he was a keeper of the flame and the old original wisdom. That he was a newspaperman.

He will be very much missed, even in places he'd never expect. Like the East Village.

For his family and his friends and his many admirers and students, I enclose the warmest wishes and deepest regrets of this tiny household.

 

http://nascar.speedtv.com/article/jensen-rip-to-a-legend/

 

Linked off the thatsracin.com tribute to Poole, a piece he wrote after Earnhardt's death.

It's incredibly fitting for Poole himself.

http://www.thatsracin.com/158/story/7996.html

 

Very well written Tom. The last paragraph is especially poignant.

 

I don't cover sports, so I don't much about anybody. But damn, reading this thread and others like it over the last two years makes me sad. Sadder than one would think. Sad to see a great writer go. Sad to see a great person gone.

RIP Mr. Poole. Sorry I didn't know you.

 

http://www.thatsracin.com/158/story/8042.html

Visitation tomorrow night, services Thursday afternoon. Information on donations for anyone so inclined.

 

David was a mensch. Always helpful, both wise and funny, and respected by an entire sport, as the above comments show. An incalculable loss for everyone, most of all his family.

 

Posnanski chimes in:
http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/2009/04/28/a-non-poetic-goodbye/

 

We on the NASCAR beat referred to him as "the Godfather," and there was a reason why. No one covering the sport had as much leverage as Poole. The drivers all read him, they all knew him, they all respected him for the fact that he could give it right back to them. He almost always was the first questioner in press conferences, opening with deep, layered, on-topic queries that would elicit answers all of us would use. He was the guy who shouted at the hangers-on in the media room to quiet down, we were working. He was the guy who hammered NASCAR about why it took so long for the race winner to finish in Victory Lane. Nobody else did that kind of stuff. We all knew Poole would do it. We all worked with him, but we all looked up to him at the same time.

Yes, he could be gruff. But he was also funny as hell. He loved chiding a bunch of us who stay out late on race weekends with, "So what are the cool kids up to tonight? Getting a patch of P.J. together?" One time at the Cheesecake Factory, a waitress asked if anyone wanted dessert. "Well, they don't call it the Entree Factory," he said. Often when he ranted, whether he was going off on NASCAR or ACC basketball or George W, he'd pull a comb out of his pocket and comb his hair as he spoke. It was an endearing Poole characteristic. I'll miss it. I'll miss him. Ten years on this beat, and there were still tidbits of information I occasionally couldn't find anywhere. I always went to Poole. He always knew. He never minded. He was that kind of guy.

David was a tremendous writer, a tremendous person, and his passing is a tremendous loss. It will be a very difficult -- and strangely quiet -- race weekend at Richmond.

David Caraviello
NASCAR.com

 

Very classy mac give his well documented disdain for your work on NASCAR.
He seemed like the type of man you would want to have a beer with. I will miss his work.

RIP