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NASCAR Sprint-Cup Series
JENSEN: RIP To A Legend
SPEEDtv.com's Senior NASCAR Editor says goodbye to his dear friend, fellow NASCAR reporter David Poole who died today at the age of 50...
Tom Jensen  |  Posted April 28, 2009   Charlotte, NC
David talks during a news conference where he helped create awareness for Pennies for Wessa as Wessa Miller and her father, Booker, look on. (NASCAR Public Relations)
It was September, 2007, out in the middle of nowhere on I-85, just north of the Virginia-North Carolina line. Deeply wrapped up in a story I was working on and foolishly ignorant of the borrowed car I was driving, I’d run out of gas, something that hadn’t happened since I was, oh, maybe 16.

For 45 minutes I stood by the road, waiting for help. All of a sudden, a Virginia state trooper pulled up, a young, earnest kid fighting to hold back the grin he wanted to shoot me for being such a dumbass that I’d run the tank dry. Within a minute or so, a car pulled up behind the trooper and David Poole climbed out. He assured the cop that he’d take care of things and left with his wife, Katy, and their passenger, Mike Mulhern, returning a few minutes later with a can of gas to help me on my way.

I thanked David profusely, but for him no thanks were needed. We’d worked in the same media centers from Daytona to Northern California since 1997, competitors and rivals, sometimes fiercely so. But I needed help and so David stopped. It’s just what you do in this business. You help people who need it, competitors or not. To David, there was no question about whether to stop or not to stop; it was as automatic a reflex as breathing or eating. Given the choice to do the right thing or not, you do it.

And that more than anything defined who David Poole was to me. He had absolute clarity of vision about right and wrong, good and evil, and he lived his life accordingly. Like all of us, David was wrong sometimes, but he was never, ever in doubt. He was certain about every facet of his life and his strongly held opinions reflected that. There was no pussyfooting around an issue with David. He didn’t just offer up an opinion, he pounding you over the head with it.

Sometimes, that made him hard to get along with. He was cantankerous, opinionated and loud. Was he ever loud. But he also tried to serve as a conscience of sorts for NASCAR, someone who would hold the sanctioning body’s feet to the fire whenever he got amped up over an issue, as he did at Talladega this weekend.

David didn’t just speak; he thundered, and his voice carried a tremendous amount of weight in the NASCAR community, with the sanctioning body, the tracks, the teams and his fellow reporters. He had a deft touch with a story and could be counted on to regularly produce significant work for his newspaper.
Charlotte Observer's David Poole talks with Marty Snider, his former co-host on Sirius NASCAR Radio's Morning Drive program. (NASCAR Public Relations)

He also helped many young reporters learn the beat, loved his Tar Heels and was a doting grandfather, who always bragged on little Eli. David could be your best friend or worst nightmare and sometimes a little of both because of his deep convictions about almost anything and everything. I will say this for the man: In the 12+ years we were both on the beat, I never once saw him phone it in or go at half speed. David Poole was on the chip 24/7.

At times like this, there’s nothing good anyone can say. David Poole is gone and we are all poorer for it. So rest easy, my friend. From now on, you fly first class exclusively, you’ll always have the best parking spot and no one will ever beat you on a story. It’s the rest of us that are poorer for your absence.

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, FOX, NewsCorp, or Speed Channel

Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief for SPEEDtv.com, the former Executive Editor of NASCAR Scene and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. He is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of SPEED,” and has appeared on television and radio shows to discuss NASCAR racing. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association. Jensen is the 1997 National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year and has won numerous national and state awards for news reporting, columns and feature writing. The Answer Man is back at SPEEDtv.com. Tom Jensen answers your questions during every race week and looks forward to hearing from you - please e-mail it to

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