Dale Earnhardt Jr: My sister the protector

[Music] Kelly yeah explain the role that she plays it's a long story my sister and I when our when we so when my mom's house called fire and when you were written six years old I know I'm going way back when when our house caught on fire we were moved my mom gave up custody of us she had no money and no house and no you know no direction she couldn't take care of us you know it was different difficult but Dad was flourishing he was racing and winning and money and and all that so she gave up custody of us to dad we go over there and we he's marrying Theresa so we got this Theresa we got to get to know this and she's our stepmother and so me and my sister man we really got close like I hey man you know what do you think about what's going on and we lean on each other to sort of get adapt to that environment which was so unfamiliar Kelly really became my caretaker and and caregiver you know she she gave she made sure I had you know she made sure I wasn't dressed like a fool for school and she made sure I had money in my pocket for lunch and she made sure I'd done the homework and wasn't gonna get in trouble we're done my chores we had daily chores she made sure they were done and I was doing what I was supposed to do to keep me out of trouble and she coddled me and and really took care of me dad wasn't taking care of me I mean he was racing and gone and and Theresa was with him but Kelly was there Kelly was the one that was there with me every day we had housekeepers and we had two three four different nannies you know that that were around that we I never made or created relationships with and my sister was the one that I went to every day for everything and then she's in high school yeah you get shipped to militaries yes she did right so I go that I'm a troubled mess and creating problems in school and getting you know about to get kicked out and dad Theresa sent me to military school I was there a month and Kelly came on her own accord like who two militaries military school is like punishment Ryan midway through when she was in high school she's halfway through high school she leaves her friends and everybody to go to military school and in the tenth grade what couple kind of 10th grader says you know what I miss my brother I'm gonna go to military school where he's at I don't know what propelled me really to kind of be his protector but other than to say that they'll just always chose a different path for attention so he always got in trouble I'm not a psychologist I don't understand that but he that's just the way he chose to go about getting the attention and so I always was just protecting and protecting like how do you know I mean how much more trouble can you stand to get in kid you know and just looking out for him and feeling sorry for him and all this kind of stuff which just led into doing these different things you know following him to military school and he was a scrawny little but I mean he's seen pictures of him being he was a tiny little thing and he got called names all the time at school you know they call him chicken legs and all this kind of stuff cuz he had these little white scrawny legs and he was always you know this tall and his classmates were this tall and yeah so I just always looked out for him so I followed him around the military school and a lot of other things and eventually long long story short when I started making some money in racing she called me and she says hey you're gonna need somebody to help you with your finances and your business and what you know I've had checks that I don't even know what to do with thousands of dollars a million dollars here and there this is all I mean one year I was making three hundred fifty dollars a week and I went to making five million dollars in a year and I'm and you would think he would be like yeah like what the hell this is amazing and I'm like I don't know what the hell to do you know my sister had at this point worked her way up the chain of command in the merchandise business of NASCAR which was flourishing and she's worked to get this real genuine opportunity and she's gonna turn that up you know just give it away I said for one I can't afford you she's like I'll take a 50% pay cut to come and she did and you know what is so terrible to admit is that for years I've never once did an evaluation or gave her a raise because I had no idea that there was that come up oh it came up I don't even know what exactly when it came up but and I'm back paid her for you know for that mistake but she wouldn't even you know say hey you know I hadn't you know haven't evaluated in my performance and I haven't had a race you know haven't really gotten a raise in a long time she finally did and it and it came up but grudgingly it's like she wasn't really excited to have that conversation but I felt like a fool because she's my MVP what was your motivation behind doing it well you know Dell and I sort of I guess goes back to our childhood I became just I guess like the mother hen kind of girl and so it I mean we we've just always had that bond of taking care of each other so when our dad passed away I knew that dojin who needed someone to look out for him and so I you know taking the pay cut I guess was just part of that looking out for each other kind of thing that we had really been doing for lots of years before that his brother and sister so it really wasn't that big of a deal to me to do that you know so what were your goals at the time and then how did they evolve as time passed you know my goals when I came to work for Dell was really just to look out for him and to do things that were in his best interest and I didn't feel like that I knew my dad always did that but I wasn't so sure about the other half of that equation so you know I didn't want him to get taken advantage of and and Dell is his personality is one of no conflict so he will let people walk over him to a certain extent

Channel: Graham Bensinger

Views: 516,255

Keywords: Graham Bensinger, Dale Earnhardt Jr, Dale Jr, Dale Earnhardt Jr sister, Dale Jr sister, Dale Earnhardt Jr family, Dale Jr family, Kelley Earnhardt, Kelley Earnhardt Miller, Dale Earnhardt Jr childhood, Dale Jr childhood, military school, protective sister, protective brother, big sister, little brother

Id: 15FjRzhRtlY

Length: 6min 43sec (403 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 05 2018