MungoZ06

Mebbe this is not the right place, but this is where his fans are, I think ... hope it's OK to post the thread and link here ...

Paul Newman says goodby to Lime Rock
http://www.trackpedia.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4485
From the link in thread:
"LimeRock was closed down today Wednesday [Aug 21] or an hour and a half so Paul Newman could take a few last laps there in his GT1 Corvette and say goodbye. He was diagnosed with cancer 18 months ago and is not expected to make it past September."

wtknght1

I met him at Road Atlanta several times. He still raced SCCA National events into his 80s. His car number was his age and the last one I can remember, his number was 82!!!! We should all be so lucky!

95jersey

That is SO sad. Can't begin to image how one can deal with such a situation.

He was a great actor, and an ambassador to road racing. He is one of the last of his kind of the 60's actor/superstar/racer like McQueen, James Dean, and James Garner

jasonberkeley

So sad. T1 raced with GT1 at Lime Rock for a number of years, so we had the "cool factor" of being on track with Paul- who ALWAYS kicked-butt in the GT1 SCCA Nationals there in his late 70s and early 80s. He even finished 5th in the last real Trans-Am race there in the rain at the tender age of 78!

John Shiels

I saw him run at LRP in 05 and in his 80's he was still slightly past mid pack. Very good person and charitable. Plenty of money and how many woman could he have had? He was a great family guy with all the fame and fortune he had. He is nothing like most of the people in Hollywood which is trash to a great degree. I can't be to sad as he had a good long life and was blessed. Some of the blessings he brought upon himself with his great character and morals.

I just hope he gets to pick his favorite ride to run at his favorite track after he leaves here. He deserves it from what I know of him, all Checkered flags! I hope people continue to buy his salad dressings as it all goes to charity and always has. Life is never long enough I guess but his ride was great.

FasterIsBetter

Well said, John. Nothing to add as you made the points well. It will be very sad to see him go, but I like his moxie -- going out with his boots on.

BrianCunningham

I saw him race his GT1 car at LimeRock, he's quit the driver.

He will surely be missed

John Shiels

one bad thing about his movies when I watch them I realize how old I'm getting too. I look at Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid like it was yesterday but it's not It was 1969 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butch_C...e_Sundance_Kid

Hey I have had a good run too and if tomorrows the end so be it. My father told me if you live to a 100 your would be bored anyway.

I think if I was him I would have run it into the woods topped out and said "I'll skip the hospital bed thank you". Hopefully they can put a plaque up at Lime Rock in his honor. Not just for racing alone but for class most can envy..

0Randy@DRM

This is very sad news. Paul has lived here in MN for a long time. I grow up at the track watching him race. Doug and him were good track buddies for a long time. It wasn't uncommon to see him just hanging out like one of the guys, not like some star. I'm glad that he got out and had one more good run on the track, because he loved racing!!!

Randy

Wicked Weasel

As sad as it is everyone's day will come sooner than they want to admit. We can all just hope that we live life to the fullest and leave this world with something more than we came into with.

I know Paul has done that.....

VetteDrmr

Never had any direct contact with him, but his racing career was at least as bright as his acting career, IMO.

He'll be missed, but as Randy said, I'm glad he got to make one last run. My wife's family is dealing with Alzheimer's, that's a horrible disease.

Have a good one (Paul certainly has!),
Mike

Mikelly

Yup, I followed his career thru Datsun, Nissan and Porsches. Paul Newman should be an inspiration to us all. Live your life to its fullest. Life is a race to the death... We'll all finish in the end.

Mike

0Randy@DRM

Have you guys tried his pasta sause. It in the best one in the whole store. About 50 cents more, but damn good stuff. I use a 1/3 jar in my super sauce that I have been working on for years.

Randy

MNCrystalRed2011

I used to go to BIR to the TransAm and IMSA races in the mid-80's and he was there every year driving TransAm. One year I was in the paddock looking at the cars and the IMSA GTP race was starting. Everyone in the paddock ran to the fence coming out of turn 10 to watch the start. After the cars took off up the 5200' straight I looked at the guy next me as we were walking away, and it was Paul Newman. Like someone else mentioned above, just one of the guys.

Mikelly

Yup. Between his pasta sauce and salad dressing, I have it covered.

I just wish he'd be around for another ten years, as lnog as they're "good" years...

Godspeed Paul Newman!
Mike

John Shiels

AP


Paul Newman
Ailing Paul Newman Turns Over $120m To Charity | Coldplay, Beatles Lose Leader | Spielberg's Gift; Diddy Graduation; Polanski Update; World Turns Slower; Old Lox

Ailing Paul Newman Turns Over $120m To Charity

Movie star Paul Newman has quietly turned over the entire value of his ownership in Newman’s Own — the company that makes salad dressing and cookies — to charity.

Completed over a two-year period in 2005 and 2006, the amount of his donations to Newman’s Own Foundation Inc. comes to an astounding $120 million.

This is unprecedented for any movie star or anyone from what we call Hollywood. Of course Newman and actress wife Joanne Woodward have never been Hollywood types. They’ve lived their lives quietly in Westport, Conn., for the last 50 years. (They were married in January 1958. And people said it wouldn’t last!)

This column learned about this extraordinary gift as news started coming out recently about Newman’s battle with lung cancer. This is not news to my readers. I told you several months ago that Newman — who has five grown daughters — was seeing an oncologist, that he’d been in and out of Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital on many visits from Westport. Like everything else, the Newmans tried to keep Paul’s illness a private matter.

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Video
Billy Preston Tribute But a tip-off that he was maybe not doing so well came in late May. Newman announced that he would not direct a production of “Of Mice and Men” later this summer at the Westport Country Playhouse, where Woodward is the artistic director.

News of his illness seems to have been exacerbated by none other than neighbor Martha Stewart. She recently published pictures of Paul on her Web site from a party she hosted. He looks gaunt but nevertheless smiling his trademark smile. Nothing will set him back. This racecar driver and adventurer should not be written off as “dying.”

“He’s a fighter,” one of his close friends told me Tuesday morning. “And he’s going to keep fighting.”

In the meantime, I also told you last August that in Botswana, the Newman name is known not for being a movie star. It’s known for his famous Hole in the Wall Gang camps. The camps go to Africa every summer to run programs for impoverished and ill children. It’s the same program they run in dozens of similar camps all over the United States.

The Hole in the Wall camps are just a few of the places the hundreds of millions of dollars have gone that Newman has raised since he got the idea to bottle salad dressing for charity.

According to Newman’s Own federal tax filing for 2006, the actor personally gave away $8,746,500 to a variety of groups that support children, hurricane relief in the Gulf Coast, education and the arts.

Some of Newman’s recipients are well-known: He gave Rosie O’Donnell’s children's program $5,000 and even donated $25,000 to his pal Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. But most of them are for the kinds of programs that we never hear about, the kind that simply keep people alive.

But don’t think that Newman — who received his Kennedy Center honor in 1992 and deserves a Presidential Medal of Freedom — did this because he suddenly thought he was dying. When he set up the new foundation, he hadn’t yet been diagnosed with lung cancer. It was just in honor of his 80th birthday, and an acknowledgment that he wanted to make sure his charities would continue receiving his largesse.

johninar

Thanks for posting. I never met him, but I feel like I know him.

68sixspeed

He was at LRP on 8/13 when I was up with the SCDA boys and girls for a HPDE... someone brought him up in his motorhome anyway to check out the paving job we were told and watch a car run that was being built as a suprise for him. Too bad, I've a heard only good about the man as a racer and a person.

ghoffman

I am very sad to hear this. I don't know what to say.

MazdaRob

I used to watch him race Mustangs and then Nissans at Mid-Ohio. I was hoping the stories weren't true about his being sick. He is one class act.