Editor’s note: New Prime Video subscribers can enjoy a 30-day free trial period to see Prime Video‘s extensive NASCAR coverage, from race broadcasts to original longform content. With the first two episodes of the “Earnhardt” docuseries launching May 22 on Prime Video and two more episodes set for May 29, enjoy the story behind the statue commemorating the seven-time champ that keeps drawing fans in from all over to pay tribute to him.
KANNAPOLIS, N.C. — In the months after Dale Earnhardt’s death in the 2001 Daytona 500, community leaders in his hometown of Kannapolis, North Carolina, formed a committee to decide how best to honor the NASCAR legend. The city council, business leaders and the family were all on board. The group gravitated toward a statue.
Roger Haas, a Kannapolis councilman for 22 years, recalls the next logical question: Well, what’s it going to look like?
Plans for another monument were also taking shape in Daytona Beach, Florida. That memorial statue, which stands just outside the speedway gates, depicts Earnhardt in his driver’s uniform with his left arm raised in triumph after his 1998 Daytona 500 victory. The unveiling predated the Kannapolis statue’s dedication by nine months, but the hometown memorial would be different, especially if Earnhardt’s mother, Martha, had any say.
“I’m 76 years old, and I’ve never heard a line any better than this one,” Haas recalled with a laugh last week. “When I was telling her, I said, ‘What do you think it ought to look like?’ And she said, ‘Well, you know, he was a son a lot longer than he was a race car driver.’ So I thought, there it is. There’s the hook right there. From then on it was, he’s going to be dressed in his button-down shirt, in his Wrangler Jeans and his Justin boots and all these things as he would walk around town, not what he would look like at Daytona or Charlotte or Darlington or any of these tracks. I think that was one smart move.”
It’s that Dale Earnhardt that’s explored and discovered in the new docuseries “Earnhardt,” which debuts the first two episodes Thursday on Prime Video. The everyman qualities of Earnhardt away from the track have been forever cast in 9 feet and 900 pounds of bronze, standing sentry over the textile town that he helped put on the map as a motorsports mecca.
Many of the landmarks that helped shape Earnhardt’s story still stand along what was once marketed as the “Dale Trail” tour in Kannapolis and neighboring towns. Several stops on that route have since closed, but Earnhardt’s name and legacy have endured at the place he called home.
The welcoming smile on his towering likeness keeps inviting people to walk the same streets that he once did.
“That’s probably my favorite thing is the statue,” says Dale Earnhardt Jr., who tells the story of how an acquaintance in the sport arranged for prom pictures for his son and friends in front of the memorial. “… That, to me, those moments where someone who obviously never saw this person compete but still has this respect and appreciation for him in some way, that is so fascinating to me and something I totally did not expect to happen. I thought that once all the people, once all of us aged out that saw him compete and knew what he was like to be around, that his legacy would fade and his impact would be less noticeable. But it’s pretty cool to see this younger generation have this sort of connection to him.”
Every time Cleetus McFarland or a younger fan with a nostalgic inclination says, “Do it for Dale,” that influence rings out. “I mean, I know that’s just a kind of a motto, if you will, but it’s just neat that he’s sort of still resonating with that younger demographic,” Earnhardt Jr. says. “So the statue is so important. There’s not a grave that we can all go visit; that’s very private and not available to the public. So where can you go and be where you would be able to celebrate this individual, and I think that statue is the perfect place.”
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Clyde “Ross” Morgan recalled that he was up against “some pretty high-powered competition” when he made his presentation for what would be the centerpiece of Dale Earnhardt Tribute Plaza. Golfing acquaintances from Kannapolis had encouraged the sculpture artist to enter, and his interview was the first of the day — 8 a.m. sharp — with others to follow.
The creators of the Michael Jordan statue in Chicago were also in the running, Morgan said, so he had lowered his expectations, with the planning committee telling him it would take several weeks to reach its decision. Instead, Morgan received a phone call around lunchtime that day. An informal straw poll was unanimous, and the commission was his.
“I was just over the moon with this,” Morgan says now, 83 years old and still producing sculptures from his studio in Sedona, Arizona.
His first proposal had several similarities to the statue that would be unveiled at Daytona the following year — racing suit, racing shoes, victory stance. The family’s influence helped change his direction, shaping Morgan’s creation into a likeness that would be a more natural fit in his hometown.
The racing gear gave way to those trademark Wranglers and cowboy boots, projecting an image that was more Dale than Intimidator. The only nod to his racing persona is his signature wraparound sunglasses peeking out from his shirt pocket.
The statue’s size helps capture the larger-than-life personality that made Earnhardt a racing icon. But the choice of working-man attire has strengthened the connection, both to his fans and the community.
“I always thought that the attraction that he had to people was he was a common man, just like I’m a common man,” says Haas, who’s lived in Kannapolis the last 50 years. “So it wasn’t like he had millions of dollars and it was given to him to go racing and all of this, he pulled himself up from the bootstraps as the old saying goes and made himself into something special. So if he can do it, I might be able to do it, too. I may not be a racer, I may be a factory worker or something, but if I can pull myself up, I can make myself into something special just like he did. And to me, that was always the attraction I think Dale Earnhardt was. You come from humble beginnings, you can go as far as you want to go if you’re dedicated and you’re serious about what you’re doing.”
Martha Earnhardt waved a green flag in the plaza square to start the groundbreaking process on Aug. 21, 2002. Nearly two months later, the statue was unveiled on a Monday, one day after a 500-mile race at nearby Charlotte Motor Speedway.
NASCAR Hall of Famer Benny Parsons was among the speakers at the plaza’s dedication, and he encapsulated the bittersweet mood. “I doubt very seriously that Kannapolis has ever had a happier or a sadder day,” Parsons said. That characterization stuck with Morgan more than two decades later.
“It was surprising to me, because I was one of the speakers and I guess I thought it was more of a celebratory event, and it turned out to be quite emotional for most of the people that were there, and so I was struck by that,” Morgan says. “I could tell there was a lot of love for this man.”
Morgan’s remarks that October day hinted at the statue’s permanence. “The artist that completes a project like this will be forgotten next week, but the bronze and the memories live on forever,” he said.
Earnhardt’s legacy — and Morgan’s contribution — are still remembered in Kannapolis today. Morgan has a memento from his creation in his studio that serves as a keepsake and a reminder. Even some 2,000 miles away in central Arizona, Earnhardt remains a draw.
“When we did the original sculpture, I kept his head. It’s clay, and that’s the type of clay that doesn’t harden, and so when people come by my studio, they notice that,” Morgan said. “I’m amazed at how many people recognize him from that and it’s been a real feather in my cap, if you will. When I started doing bronzes to begin with — I changed careers at 40 — I knew bronze lasted forever, and I determined that if I was going to do a bronze, I wanted to do pieces that would mean something to people long after I’m gone, so I’ve been very careful in the pieces that I do, that I get them historically correct and that they are important in the history of our country.”
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There are worse ways to spend an afternoon than strolling the streets of downtown Kannapolis. The city’s population has nearly doubled since Earnhardt first hit stock-car racing’s big leagues, but the place has retained its small-town Main Street feel.
Find the down staircase on West Avenue and you can try your hand at slot-car racing. Legend has it that Earnhardt’s first racing trophy came in slot-car form at a long-gone track called D&D Model Raceway. That trophy was also in miniature — an 8-inch-tall token.
The minor-league baseball park in downtown is the home to Kannapolis’ Single-A affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, and though the team name has since rebranded from the Intimidators to the Cannon Ballers, the mustachioed mascot with aviator goggles still bears some Earnhardt resemblance. Across the street and down a block, visitors to veteran-owned Old Armor Beer Company can quench their thirst with an Earnhardt Outdoors altbier — a robust, malty concoction made in partnership with Kerry Earnhardt, Dale’s oldest son.
Drive a little farther out and the street names offer a hint at how Earnhardt’s career was destined. With its modest, old-school garage in the backyard, the family home still stands in a part of Kannapolis called Car Town, on the corner of Sedan Avenue and Coach Street — one block over from V-8 Street.
Old Highway 136 was renamed N.C. 3 in honor of Earnhardt’s longtime car number in 2002, and a portion of that roadway still includes Dale Earnhardt Blvd. Drive along that route and the streets click off with names like Chrysler, Dodge, Plymouth, Ford. Hit the turn signal to see Chevrolet Street, Packard Avenue and Cadillac Street. Rounding back toward downtown brings you to Idiot Circle, where Earnhardt and fellow teenage cruisers once made left turns at much slower speeds.
Those landmarks are where Haas bussed visiting tourists for years, pulling back the curtain on Earnhardt lore. Haas has since retired from the tour-guide business and his long-serving role on the city council, but he still feels the family name’s lasting influence when fans come to Kannapolis in search of all things Earnhardt.
“Here we are 20, 25 years past, and they’re still coming to town to take a look,” Haas says. “I always felt like we were trying to make him more a person than a race car driver, because people saw him mainly as a race car driver. So I thought if I could add something to it to make him more personal, then we probably did our job, because he was a great race car driver, but he was also a great person, too.”
On a random Tuesday last week, fans from all points of the map came to pay a visit to the statue at the center of it all. A man from Trinity, North Carolina, nearly an hour away stopped by for a photo. A couple from Clinton, Maine, took in the plaza as a side trip on the way to the weekend’s All-Star Race festivities at North Wilkesboro Speedway. A couple from Newcomerstown, Ohio, met up with family in town at the monument, trading their favorite Dale Earnhardt quotes before ultimately deciding that “If you ain’t first, you’re last,” was not one of them.
The points on the map are a cross-section of what Haas has seen through the years, with visitors from faraway states and foreign countries all coming to the statue at the heart of town to pay their respects. He recalled a couple getting married at the foot of the statue years ago, helping them to coordinate a reception at Martha Earnhardt’s home to watch that Sunday’s NASCAR race with her. “These people were like, if I live to be 150 years old, I’ll never forget our wedding day,” he says with a chuckle.
That legacy hasn’t faded. Folks who work downtown still gather there during their lunch breaks, sitting on the benches arranged in groups of three in a nod to Earnhardt’s car number, taking the seven steps down — one for each Cup Series championship — into the plaza grounds.
Martha Earnhardt died in 2021 at the age of 91, but the connection to her hometown and its favorite son has endured. So has the statue, created in the image that she helped shape — a hometown boy first, a racer second.
“I would sometimes go by and pick up his mother, and we’d just drive by the statue, and it was hard on her,” Haas says. “She’d say, ‘You know, Dale’s standing out there in the rain, and he doesn’t even have a jacket on,’ or ‘it’s cool today, and he doesn’t even have anything to keep him warm.’ So I always thought, wow, it’s even comforting to his own mother to go by and see the statue, and I think it gave some kind of comfort even to her. I think we didn’t know what to do, but I think we did it right when I look back on it.”
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