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WYNDHAM CHAMPIONSHIPAugust 19, 2009Davis Love IIIPattie PettyGREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA DOUG MILNE: Okay. Welcome Pattie and Davis. Thanks for joining us for a few minutes. Obviously a big part of the success of this tournament is the one of primary charities, the Victory Junction Camp. If you could just talk, maybe Davis, talk a little bit about your involvement, how you got involved and why it has such a special place in your heart. DAVIS LOVE, III: Well, I got involved because I wanted to ride motorcycles with Pattie and Kyle, and then when I got on the ride -- and it was maybe three, four, five years of trying to get my schedule worked out where I could get on the ride, then when I realized they would actually take me -- I didn't have to come from the beginning and stay all the way until the end, that some of the drivers would pop in and out, once I realized that, we've been every year for five, six years. But the biggest thing I learned is I thought I was going to ride motorcycles and maybe along the way, you know, there was a charity involved and -- but when I got there and I met everybody, they're like a big family of 2, 300 people that travel together. I realized that every person came up to me and said wait until you get to camp, wait until you get to camp, the camp is so great because they knew. I didn't know, I hadn't been there. 3,000 miles across the country talking about it and then when you get there, I remember Pattie and I hugging when we got there the first time. I was just blown away. Then it becomes part of your life. My daughter has volunteered there. She's hoping down the road to work in some -- for some kind of charity like that as her major. Robin and I, we just talked about it maybe five times in the last couple of weeks because they're working on their schedule when the ride is going to be for next year. It's become a big part of our life. I've also been a Petty fan. Richard, Kyle, Adam and it's always been a part of my life watching racing. It's been nice to get to know their family and see what they do and the hard work that Pattie puts in -- Kyle helps out a little bit -- the hard work that Pattie puts into it, it's really a lot like we do. I say at every interview I do across the country, it's so much like the PGA Tour, NASCAR does so much for charity. You're seeing that more and more and more because I just saw when I got to town Jeff Gordon Foundation commercial on TV. All the drivers are involved in NASCAR's charities which they really support Victory Junction Gang and their own personal charities. It's so much like the PGA TOUR, it was easy for me to help out and get involved and still fun to ride with Kyle even, Pattie, though. PATTIE PETTY: All our families are riding. DAVIS LOVE, III: Austin keeps telling me -- even the policeman here know he has my helmet. PATTIE PETTY: He's bringing your helmet. I think he's going to hold you ransom to come see you. Our kids love him. DOUG MILNE: Pattie, why don't you talk a little bit about your history, your involvement with Victory Junction Camp and what a special honor it is to have people like Davis and so forth that are so supportive of it. PATTIE PETTY: Well, how do you begin? We started Victory Junction before Adam's accident because it was something that Adam wanted to do. We've been riding motorcycles for years and we would stop in cities and we still do, and we leave money in the children's hospitals and the cities that we stop in on the charity ride across America. Adam was one of those that he would come out of the hospital and he would go, "Mom, I think it's great that you left that money in there" -- and you have to understand, if you go back and you do the math, you'll realize he really wasn't old enough to drive a motorcycle but he was racing cars so we figured he was safe on the bikes. But I've had that question asked to me at press conferences or different situations or interviews that go, "How did Adam do that, he would have been what, 14?" I'm like, "No, closer to 13," but it was -- he was driving cars at Talladega when he was that age. We figured he was safe on a motorcycle, and he was. He would come out of the hospitals and he would say, "Mom, all that little boy on the third floor wanted was a GameBoy and y'all just left $100,000 and he'll never see that and he may know that his family will benefit from it but he didn't. I just want to make them happy and I want to make him smile, even coming here with 300 motorcycles and bringing me in here doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy." That's what he said. So we did a motorcycle ride to the camp at Boggy Creek, which is a sister camp to ours. Paul Newman started the Hole In The Wall Gang camps in 1988. The original was in Connecticut. The other one was Boggy Creek in Florida. We're riding with Bruce Rossmeyer, a dear friend we just lost. Adam pulls up beside of me, right up beside my bike. He says, "This is what I'm talking about doing, mom, this is what you need to do. You need to be raising money. Look at all these kids and they're smiling and they're happy and excited and they're getting to do things they never thought they could do." So we started then laying the groundwork for building a camp in North Carolina and Adam was spearheading it and we had lots of meetings and I went to every hospital and I went to every camp in the country to learn about how to do that and then right in the middle of that, the accident happened and I never really thought that the people loved my son so much until the night we turned on the news and it was sports and Davis Love had on a 45 hat that day, and I will be forever a Davis Love fan. I didn't even know he knew us. And I thought my goodness, Adam has touched a lot of people. And as the days went by after that, and the months went by after that, a lot of money was raised in his name, a lot of money was raised in his honor. And you realized an 18 year old young man that walked the straight line, that lived all the right things, that loved his family, loved his dad, still said prayers at night, had a statement to make and so with that, and people like Davis, and people like the other drivers that came and wanted to honor Adam, camp was built. It's an unbelievable 75-plus-million-dollar facility and we only owe a couple million dollars left and it's because of people like Davis and Herschell Walker and Nikki Taylor and Michael Waltrip and Tony Stewart and then, you know, y'all doing this for us here, that's how camp got built. We're getting -- we broke ground, Davis was with us. We were in Kansas City in May and we broke ground for the second Victory Junction Camp in Kansas City because our children are traveling too far west of Texas to bring them here and we could see a thousand children a day and not see every chronically ill child that could stand to benefit from the Victory Junction Camp, but it is people like you with Wyndham, the people in the PGA, people like Davis have spearheaded helping us promote the camp to raise the money to grow and see the amount. We've seen over 10,000 children in the last five years. We see over 26 disease groups. So we're the world's largest medical camping facility. I don't say that pridefully, I say it proud of. The awareness y'all will give us this week, North Carolina here today, I don't think you realize the power of your pen so can I tell you the power of your pen. People will then, all of a sudden, start calling and going on line and seeing, well, if Davis did it and something Davis was involved in, then it must be really good. They'll start giving and that's what keeps camp open and keeps seeing more children. DOUG MILNE: We'll open it up for a few questions if y'all have any. PATTIE PETTY: We scared them. DAVIS LOVE, III: Pattie covered everything very well. She doesn't brag on the drivers enough but they've given Jeff Gordon, all of them, millions of their own money to get the camp started and the NASCAR sponsors again, a lot like the Tour, really stepped up and made it an incredible place. I've been a lot of special places, hospitals and things all over the country. It's one of the neatest places I've ever been. It's fun to go on the motorcycle ride but it's become more than that for I think hundreds and hundreds of people. It's a big fun family. PATTIE PETTY: This year I got to ride with Lexie, his daughter, and I promised Robin that I would ride with her through this one mountain area. I said, "Well, Robin, I learned she rides better than I do." You know, it's neat. It's neat that we've been able to become friends and family. DAVIS LOVE, III: The first year we went, we told our daughter about it. Next year she volunteered at camp and met us. When she got there she saw the motorcycles. I said, "You don't ride them." She said, "I'm going to learn and ride" on the ride the last two years, she's smart, she chickens out when it's raining or when it's really windy, she gets off but she knows her limits and -- but put maybe in two years close to 3,000 miles on her bike and I put the last two years, well, this past year I put almost 3500 on mine. She's catching up with me. It's a lot of fun. It's a great cause. I'm so happy that so many of our tournament -- this tournament is helping Victory Junction Camp. So many of our tournaments help so many great places like this. It's what makes all our hard work and success worthwhile. PATTIE PETTY: Lexie is an unbelievable volunteer at camp. We use around 100 volunteers a week to supplement the couple hundred staff that need their volunteers to help out so that we have a 3-1 ratio and Lexie is valued, valued volunteer. I think her mother would kill me if she knew I tried to talk her into not going back to school and staying and working at camp full-time and she probably -- DAVIS LOVE, III: Never. In a year and a half. PATTIE PETTY: She had to finish a year and a half. It's true. Y'all don't realize how many unbelievable individuals have helped build Victory Junction and the fact that the PGA and Wyndham would name us is incredible. DOUG MILNE: How old is Lexie now? DAVIS LOVE, III: She's 21. She's old enough to ride a motorcycle. Her brother is not but we won't let him. PATTIE PETTY: He's not driving race cars, though. DAVIS LOVE, III: No. DOUG MILNE: We sure appreciate you guys coming in and taking the time. Davis, best of luck this week. Pattie thank you for being here and sharing your stories and experiences and it's certain to be a success all the way around this week at the Wyndham Championship. DAVIS LOVE, III: How do I win the pink truck? PATTIE PETTY: You win this week, I'll give it to you. It's the last -- two years ago when we stopped on Sunday he played here that week and won so we've told him -- then I think he had a really good -- I don't know if Tom Watson is here but could y'all help me shame him into helping us be a part of the camping kids in Kansas City? Please make sure when you see him, "I hear they're building one real close." DAVIS LOVE, III: I'll remind him. PATTIE PETTY: I haven't only watched golf because of Davis, I did have to say I watched Tom Watson plow through for us with husbands and people that we want to be able to endure in their sports past 25 and it was wonderful to see someone 59 be able to play that incredible and I watched every minute of it. DAVIS LOVE, III: It was fun. PATTIE PETTY: I watched ever minute of that weekend. Tell Tom I said that so he'll want to get involved in camp in Kansas City. Q. Can you talk about the pink truck? PATTIE PETTY: Taylor Swift, if y'all have little younger children, I don't know -- I don't know. I think older men think she's pretty hot, too -- in Nashville. She's quite the flare in Nashville in country music. She picked Victory Junction as her charity of choice and the very first thing she did was when she was 18 years old, her record label is Big Machine Records. Well, they gave her a Big Foot kind of four wheel drive pink truck and she was getting recognized a little too much around and Nashville in it so she decided they would donate it to the camp. I think my husband is probably the only person that could go to Nashville, drive a pink truck back and be comfortable with that. He got pulled for running 80 something in the pink truck. But it's cool. Lexie wants the pink truck, too. If you win this week, I'll see that the pink truck gets to your house. DAVIS LOVE, III: No. PATTIE PETTY: No. If you'll win this week I promise not to park the pink truck -- you don't have to drive the pink truck. Q. Davis, how about we get Helen Ross to give you an award on Sunday morning like she did a few years ago and you went out and shot 62? DAVIS LOVE, III: Yeah. That would work, too. Any 62s will work. Q. Can you talk a little bit about the progress of the camp in Kansas City? How is that going? PATTIE PETTY: We've sold three buildings to date and we have our builder in place and it's a local builder there in the Kansas City area and I think that probably every camp grows a little different and we did an openness and we didn't start building until we had half the money in the bank, and I doubt that that's probably going to happen in this economy. So what we're going to do is build the buildings that we've sold and do day camps and since it's three minutes from downtown Kansas City, you know, three, four minutes from the new race track out there, then it's very main streamed into the Kansas City life. I think people could bring their children from 150-mile radius and do day camps until we can afford to do get every PGA Tour player and every driver to buy a cabin. So when we do, then kids could start staying over night. But I think, you know, every camp is grown different. That's going to be a very main streamed camp. It's a very philanthropic area. There's a lot of sports there, the Chiefs and Royals have showed huge interest in. Maybe it's just not racing, golf and racing and baseball and basketball and football, everything. DOUG MILNE: Okay. Well, again, guys, we appreciate your time. Davis, best of luck this week. DAVIS LOVE, III: Thanks. End of FastScripts |
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