Gwynn Hasn’t Quit the Race : Drag racing: Despite paralyzing crash, he still has sense of humor and intends to keep working. Drivers raise money for his bills.

The last time Darrell Gwynn was in Pomona, he was going 280 m.p.h. with 4,000 horsepower pushing him down the Fairplex drag strip in his gold and white top-fuel dragster. That was in February.

Gwynn is back at Pomona again this week, but when he goes down the drag strip it will be in a wheelchair, pushed by his father, Jerry, or his fiancee, Lisa Hurst.

On Easter Sunday, Gwynn was making an exhibition run at Santa Pod Raceway in England when his car broke in half and smashed into a guardrail. The impact was like a 240-m.p.h. whiplash that snapped Gwynn’s neck, paralyzing him from the chest down.

The car flipped on its side and slid along the pavement with Gwynn’s left arm hanging out. The abrasions led to massive infections that necessitated amputation at the elbow. He needed 23 pints of blood in the first two days after the crash.

He couldn’t eat or drink for more than 10 days, but his waist bloated from 32 inches to 38 as his kidneys and liver shut down.

For more than a month Gwynn hovered between life and death. When he was flown home to Miami on May 20, 14 seats on a 747 were needed to accommodate medical personnel, life-support equipment and a bed specially designed to absorb the shock of landing and in-flight turbulence. Fellow driver Kenny Bernstein raised $35,000 from the Professional Racers & Owners Assn. to finance the flight.

At the time of the accident, Gwynn was at the peak of his career. He had just won the Gatornationals at Gainesville, Fla., and set a National Hot Rod Assn. record of 4.909 seconds for a quarter mile from a standing start at Baytown, Tex. He had a 100-point lead in his quest for a first Winston top-fuel championship.

He was 28 years old, called “The Kid” by veteran drivers on the NHRA circuit, and was engaged to the Orange Bowl queen.

“Everybody likes to go out on top, but that wasn’t the way I had it in mind,” Gwynn said over breakfast Thursday before heading for the Fairplex, where he won three Winston Finals and one Winternationals top-fuel championship between 1986 and 1989.

“Every day is a new surprise for me in what I can do, and what I can’t do,” he said. “I guess life is always a learning experience, but I never thought I’d be learning how to brush my teeth and comb my hair and talk on a telephone again.”

Gwynn has regained partial use of his right arm, but still has no strength in his grip.

One thing he has not lost is his sense of humor.

When his doctor started to show him how to hold a pen to sign his name, Darrell feigned shock and said, “Anything but that. Then everyone will be wanting my autograph.”

On another occasion, when a bomb threat forced evacuation of a rehabilitation center, Gwynn said, “I bet it was Amato.”

Joe Amato was one of Gwynn’s chief rivals in top-fuel racing and is the current points leader going into this weekend’s Winston Finals, final event of the NHRA season.

Gwynn is here, not just to be on hand when Frank Hawley, a former funny-car champion, drives Gwynn’s family-owned top fueler this weekend, but also to handle a myriad of business deals.

“This is a working trip,” he said. “I’m not here to stay holed up in a hotel room and make an occasional visit to the track.

“I have two top priorities in my life now. One, as it was before I was hurt, is my car. The other is the Miami Project (to Cure Paralysis). Both need funding and I see that as my major role now.

“Funding for the Miami Project is especially important to me because as I look at it, that offers me the only possibility of walking again. Right now, with the type paralysis I have, there would seem to be no chance, but I will always have hope that scientists and doctors will find a way.

“I have a gut feeling that the breakthrough in spinal-cord injuries may come before things like cancer or AIDS. If it does, I want to be a part of it.”

Ironically, the Miami Project is something Gwynn and his family had been involved with since it was founded in 1985 after Marc Buoniconti, son of former Miami Dolphin linebacker Nick Buoniconti, was paralyzed by a football injury while playing for the Citadel against East Tennessee State.

“Back when I started racing for Coors, they encouraged their drivers to become involved with a charity, so when they asked me, I suggested the Miami Project,” Gwynn said.

“It was just around the corner from us and I’ve often gone over there and had talks with the guys in wheelchairs and taken my car over for them to see. Then, whoa, six months later, I’m one of them.

“(Nick Buoniconti) got the ball rolling and I want to take it from there and get it to snowballing. Nick hit the sports community (for sponsorship), but I’m going to start a project in my name with hopes of helping raise $13 million a year for the project. I’m going to make the Forbes 500 my project. I think when they hear my story, I’ll get some serious donations.”

One dramatic moment in Gwynn’s rehabilitation occurred June 10 when Hawley, driving the Gwynn car for the first time, won the Springnationals at Columbus, Ohio.

“From the first minute that I could communicate with my dad in the hospital in England, I told him I wanted to keep the team together and the car running,” Gwynn said. “Before I realized how bad I was hurt, when I was laying there inside the wreck, one of my first thoughts was that the boys (in the crew) back home were getting ready to pack up for Atlanta and I was going to miss the race.”

Jerry Gwynn, Darrell’s father and crew chief since the day he built his son a 40-m.p.h. dragster when he was 8 or 9, had mixed feelings about returning to racing.

“I can’t say my heart was in it, but I decided that whatever Darrell wanted, that was what we would do,” Jerry said. “And he was determined that the team would continue. I know at first he felt he would be back driving, but even when that prospect waned, he never lost his enthusiasm.”

Hawley, a two-time funny-car champion who had dabbled briefly in top-fuel dragsters for Larry Minor in 1988 and 1989, was in Gainesville running his drag racing school when he was asked if he would like the seat in Gwynn’s car.

“When I first heard about Darrell’s wreck, I was stunned, just like everyone else in racing,” Hawley said. “It was like a pall at Atlanta when Darrell wasn’t there. I was down there for my school and I gave Shirley (Muldowney) a note to give him because I knew she was flying over there to see him.

“I had no idea they would run the car again, but a couple of weeks later I got a call from Jerry asking me if I’d drive for him.

“Once I got to Columbus, I never felt such pressure in my life. It seemed like everyone was watching me. I was sort of between a rock and a hard place because my only options were to do OK or to screw up. Everybody knew the car was fast.”

Hawley did OK. He was fast qualifier and defeated Amato in the final round.

“I think I cried all day after I heard that Frank won,” Darrell said. “I knew it was going to be tough on everyone. My crew had been a bunch of pals since we were teen-agers and I knew it would be tough on them with a stranger driving. And my dad was spending so much time with me that he didn’t give the car as much attention as usual. It was unbelievable when Frank won the first time out.”

Hawley also won two weeks ago at the Texas Motorplex when he beat Eddie Hill in the final round. In the semifinals, he defeated defending series champion Gary Ormsby, preventing Ormsby from catching Amato before this weekend’s final event.

Next season, Hawley will continue to drive the Gwynn machine.

“I’d like to become the first driver to win world championships in top fuel and funny car,” Hawley said. “That gives me a little extra incentive, as if I needed any driving this car for Gwynn. There’s a certain aura about being in his car that sort of defies description. But from a personal standpoint, I’d like to have my own category in the history books.”

The closest anyone has come is Don (Snake) Prudhomme, who won four funny-car championships from 1975 to 1978 after a top-fuel career in which his highest finish was runner-up to Benny Osborne in 1967. Hawley won funny car titles in 1982 and 1983.

“Frank was the obvious choice, as far as I was concerned,” Gwynn said. “I wanted someone I wouldn’t have to worry about, who wouldn’t have to have his hand held. Not many drivers were available, and of the ones who were I knew Frank was the only one I wouldn’t have to baby-sit. When he won at Columbus, I knew I’d made the right choice because it’s always tough to fill someone else’s shoes. And he did it.”

Another emotional outing for Gwynn involved a softball game in Reading, Pa., arranged by Bernstein and John Ernesto of the Reading Eagle, between drag racers, there for weekend competition, and NASCAR stock car drivers, who were in nearby Dover, Del., for a race.

“It didn’t surprise me to see all the drag racers there, but I couldn’t believe it when every stock car driver I’d ever heard of was there, too,” Gwynn said. “Outside of a half dozen, I didn’t know any of them, but they’d all come to the game on my behalf. It was sort of overwhelming.

“Every major team in racing seemed to have someone there. Ones who didn’t play were in the stands. Even Bill France (president of NASCAR) was there. And the stands were filled, too.”

The drag racers beat the stock car drivers, 21-20, with a five-run rally in the bottom of the ninth. A crowd estimated by city officials to be 15,000 filled Reading Municipal Stadium, whose capacity for its minor league professional team is closer to 7,500.

“There were people lining the outfield eight to 10 deep,” Jerry Gwynn said.

The event, which included autograph sessions and auctions of sports gear, raised $150,000 to help defray Gwynn’s mounting medical expenses.

“Nothing before ever brought drag racers together like that,” Hawley said. “We all have friends in the business, but most of our time is spent rooting against each other. I know I never rooted for Amato or Bernstein to do well, but that night when Dick LaHaie hit a home run, I found myself jumping up and screaming like it was the World Series. Until then, the only time I’d get excited watching LaHaie was when he smoked his tires.

“All the guys had their arms around one another, cheering and yelling. It had almost a Hollywood atmosphere to it. It couldn’t have been scripted any more exciting.

“I never thought I’d see the day when a drag race took second billing to a softball game, but the next day when we were qualifying for the Keystone Nationals, all anyone was talking about was the softball game.

“When (funny-car driver) Kenny Koretsky hit that single to score the winning runs with two out in the bottom of the ninth, you’d have thought all of us had won the Winston Finals.”

Gwynn, his eyes sparkling at the memory of it all, listened as Hawley described his feelings, and added: “Winning is winning. . . . It’s what it’s all about, in drag racing or softball.”