'Fireball's' daughter wants to document 'Daddy's' life

Rockledge resident plans to write book

BY MARK DeCOTIS
FLORIDA TODAY

ROCKLEDGE - There is a reality to Pam Roberts Trivette's life that she'll never be able to leave behind: She is the daughter of NASCAR royalty.

For that reason, her late and beloved father, Glenn "Fireball" Roberts, will never simply be just her Daddy.

He was, is -- 43 years after his death -- and will forever be linked in name and spirit to stock-car racing's formative, rough-and-tumble years, and is one of the giants to whom the sports and marketing monster that is NASCAR will forever be indebted.

But it goes further than that.

Because Roberts, a son of Central Florida, was synonymous with NASCAR, the public will always believe his memory belongs as much to them as it does to this daughter of the South. She lives with her husband, Rick, in a Rockledge home full of memories -- literal in the trophies and the mementos, and figurative in that they'll always be as fresh as the dawning day.

Now, as the 49th running of NASCAR's biggest race -- the Feb. 18 Daytona 500 -- approaches, fans will once again climb the stairs of the Roberts Tower. They'll enjoy the view from the Roberts Grandstand, and perhaps wonder just what it takes to have sections of stock car's equivalent to Yankee Stadium named in one's honor.

Roberts Trivette knows what it takes and now wants to write a book to share her side of the story about the man whose friends knew as Glenn, his family knew as "Bubbie" and Daddy and the millions of old-time NASCAR fans knew as "Fireball."

"The title is 'Fireball Roberts, his Daughter's Story of his Career,' " Roberts Trivette said.

"This is letting everyone know this is coming from me who lived it, who is living to tell it. Mother (Doris) told it in any interview she was ever asked to do, whether it be newspaper or television, and she did an awesome job with it because my mother dedicated her life to preserve his memory."

For those new to the sport and for those whose memory might not go any deeper than Richard Petty or Darrell Waltrip, Roberts, born in Tavares and raised in Apopka, earned his nickname not from racing but from his prowess as a pitcher on a local American Legion baseball team.

He went on to become one of the sport's premier drivers, winning 33 races -- including the 1962 Daytona 500 -- before being fatally injured in a fiery wreck at Charlotte Motor Speedway in 1964 when Pam was 13 years old.

He accumulated a deep and loyal following throughout the sport, but especially in Daytona Beach where Pam was surfing the afternoon of May 24 when she received the news of her father's accident. Being the daughter of racer, she didn't give it a second thought. That changed as soon as she realized the gravity of her father's injuries. He died 37 days after the wreck, and to this day Pam can recall the scene at the Daytona Beach airport as she and her mother returned from the funeral in Charlotte.

It was but a prelude of things to come.

"I always knew my daddy was extra special in racing, and I don't think I really got the gist of it until we flew back," she said.

"I had flown into that airport 100, 200, 300 times in Dad's plane and in Eastern Airlines," she said. "Coming home from Charlotte in the NASCAR plane and flying over and I saw thousands of people. And I said 'Mommy, why are all these people here?' And she said 'honey, they're here to welcome your father home and welcome his family home.' And you know that was right at the 4th of July race (at Daytona).

"And then, when the plane landed, we were met by police and put in a limo and taken and they just kind of took care of us for the next four or five days. That's when I realized it was big. It was hard; it was hard. I just lost my daddy. I didn't know I was going to share this."

Through the years, that's what Roberts Trivette did. It took words from a high school friend, who was much in the public eye and also was forced to grieve in public.

"(Rock star) Greg Allman was the one who really helped me realize: He said it in the words I understood: 'The public will not allow you to bury your daddy,' " Roberts Trivette said.

Now, Roberts Trivette wants to tell his story and perhaps her own as well.

"I guess after he was gone I realized the impact he had had on other people's lives," she said.

"When I moved to North Carolina in the middle 1970s and people found out who I was . . . it was overwhelming to me. I always discussed this with my mother and she just, through the years, just let me know through each and every incident that he was who he was and this is just something we live with. It was hard to share my daddy with the public."

Through the years, she has become more comfortable.

A mother and a grandmother, Roberts Trivette lives quietly. Some of her neighbors know who she is and are respectful of her privacy. There are no lines at her front door, no autograph seekers, no souvenir hunters.

That being said, Roberts Trivette is well known in the NASCAR community and active and comfortable in a group of pioneer racers who gather along the sands of Daytona Beach that spawned stock car racing and provided the grist for the foundation of a sport that stretches from sea to sea.

She follows racing, and has her favorite and not-so-favorite drivers. But she will forever be loyal to one in particular, who could, in his prime, leave any modern-day hotshot in his dust.

"My father drove with his brain," she said. "My father was one of the first of a different breed. I am very proud of that.

"Daddy was very educated. He was like one semester short from getting an engineering degree from the University of Florida."

That's where the divergence lies. To many NASCAR fans, Roberts will always be "Fireball" the dashing hero, and to some, the best driver to never win a championship.

But to Pam he will always be "Daddy," and she hopes the book she eventual wants to publish will tell that story.

FLORIDA TODAY