Gone Too Soon: Kyle Busch (1985-2026)

“But is there someplace far away, someplace where all is clear 

Easy to start over with the ones you hold so dear

 Or are you left to wonder, all alone, eternally 

This isn't how it's really meant to be

 No it isn't how it's really meant to be”

- “Always on Your Side” – Sheryl Crow

Although singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow’s single “Always on Your Side” from her fifth studio album, “Wildflower” released in 2005 was more about the deterioration of marital relationships than mourning a loved one, I’ve found it hard not to get emotional anytime I’ve heard it. Especially when I learn of someone, whether I knew them personally, or an icon who had legions of devoted followers, passed away too soon.



The list of iconic legends in politics, entertainment and sports who went before their time as a result of either an assassin's bullet, a devastating auto or plane crash, or a terminal illness is endless. Charlie Kirk. President John F. Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy. Martin Luther King Jr. John F. Kennedy Jr. Diana, Princess of Wales. Gene Siskel. Chris Kyle. John Lennon. Kobe Bryant. Payne Stewart. Dale Earnhart. On May 21, NASCAR legend Kyle Busch joined the list at 41.

Lives unfinished.

I confess I knew almost as much about stock car driver Kyle Busch as I did about Charlie Kirk, the conservative political activist who founded Turning Point USA in 2012. Which is less than zero. As unfortunate as it may sound, I didn’t learn about the impact Charlie Kirk had on conservatives at college campuses and Kyle Busch’s racing fans until barely 24 hours after their untimely ends.

Kyle Busch with wife, Samantha, and their two kids.

Among the less than handful of fun facts I learned about Kyle Busch was the nickname, “Rowdy”, that was bestowed on him as a result of the run-ins he had with fellow drivers on the track. Busch’s nickname was inspired by Rowdy Burns, the villain race car driver Michael Rooker played in “Days of Thunder (1990).” A nickname the NASCAR legend had no problem living up to.

“You come to the point where you’re like, ‘Okay, I’m going to wear this black hat. They want me to be the villain? Let’s do it.’ I went full in just being ‘Rowdy,’” Busch said on the “NASCAR Full Speed” television series. “I’m not going to say it wasn’t fun being the villain, because I was also winning. I don’t care. I’m going home with the trophy, and I’m going home with the check.”

As for Busch’s many achievements and awards he earned over the course of those 24 years on the track, information I had to do a google search on, go to Wikipedia, if you’re too lazy to get your information from a more trustworthy online source. You won’t find that list here. I’m sure if there are any NASCAR fans reading this blog, I wouldn’t be surprised if they asked themselves, “Why is he even writing a blog about Kyle Busch if he never followed much less heard of him?”

Charlie Kirk, with wife Erika, and their two kids.

There’s nothing wrong in shedding a tear for someone you didn’t know whether you were a fan or not or whether you liked their right or left leaning opinions that could often alienate their fan base. 

The reason I got emotional for Kyle Busch as I did for Charlie Kirk was because of the gaping void they left behind leaving two grieving widows, Erika Kirk and Samantha Busch, who’d now be raising their kids alone. It’s heartbreaking to know Charlie and Kyle, much like countless others who went before their time didn’t live to see their kids grow up. I can’t look at the YouTube video showing Kirk’s three-year-old daughter greeting her father on the “Fox & Friends Weekend” show last July now without my eyes watering just a little.

The same goes for Kyle Busch’s 11-year-old son, Brexton, who posted the photo of him hugging his dad Feb. 21 earlier this year on social media two days after his father's passing. The photo was taken moments after Kyle won the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Fr8 Racing 208 at Echo Park Speedway in Georgia.

The shot reminded me of that photo, taken Oct. 10, 1962, showing John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Caroline Kennedy playing in the Oval Office as the President clapped. A brief moment capturing happier times.

It’d be easy if I said how when such admirable figures pass away that most of us are realizing we are reaching the age, if we haven’t already, that life stops giving us things and starts taking them away. That may be so in the cases of notable Hollywood legends we’ve lost since last year (Gene Hackman, Val Kilmer, Diane Keaton, Robert Redford, Catherine O’Hara, Robert Duvall, Chuck Norris). Except those actors passed away in the twilight of their years leaving behind decades of movies and/or television shows to fondly look back on.

Kyle Busch’s sudden passing is like watching a biographical movie like Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” (2014) about Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle where I already knew how it ends and was unable to get that unsettling feeling I had in the pit of my stomach of what was to come two hours before the end credits rolled.



I wanted to yell at the screen near the film’s conclusion as Kyle (Bradley Cooper) kisses his wife, Taya (Sienna Miller), goodbye and heads out the door that fateful morning of Feb. 2, 2013, to meet a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at a shooting range. Kyle, 38, along with his friend, Chad Littlefield, 35, were shot and killed by Eddie Ray Routh, the person Kyle was attempting to help.

If only such shocking moments can be permanently rewritten using a time machine. The most we can rely on is for overrated directors like Quentin Tarantino to rewrite tragedy Tinseltown style as he showed in his less than stellar and overhyped “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” (2019) where pregnant actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) lives to give birth and Charles Manson’s cult followers meet justifiably grisly violent ends.

If only…

A lot has been said in the sports world since the events of May 21 about Kyle Busch’s final days and hours dating back to May 10 where he finished eighth place at Watkins Glen in Charlotte, N.C. in which he was heard radioing his team on the track requesting a doctor.

“Can somebody try to find Bill Heisel? He’s the kindred doctor guy. Tell him I need him after the race please,” Busch was heard. “I’m gonna need a shot.”

“I’m still not great,” Kyle told reporters on May 16. “But the cough was pretty substantial.” His final competition was the NASCAR All-Star Race May 17 at Dover International Speedway.



According to the Associated Press, Busch became unresponsive while testing in a Chevrolet racing simulator at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina May 20.

When Busch’s family released a statement on social media hours before his death May 21 that Kyle had been rushed to a Charlotte hospital in what was reported at the time a severe illness and would not be competing in any scheduled races Memorial Day weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway, there’s no doubt his wife and kids, his racing team and the thousands of fans thought this was just a temporary setback.

“He will be back in no time,” wrote one user on X. “Probably just a stomach virus.”

It wasn’t to be. By May 23, the racing world learned of "Rowdy's" cause of death.

“The medical evaluation provided to the Busch Family concluded that severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis, resulting in rapid and overwhelming associated complications,” Busch’s family said in a statement.

I won’t be surprised if a year from now if Kyle Busch’s final days and hours become tabloid fodder for the REELZ show, “Autopsy: The Last Hours of…” where forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Hunter gives a much more graphic hour-long rundown of what killed the husband and father of two at just 41-years-old. A show that is NOT a celebration of the lives such notable figures lived as it is a warning to viewers of what NOT to do to your bodies. When your body’s telling you something isn’t right, one should listen. A lesson not all of us heed, myself in particular. Ignore the problem. It will go away has always been and continues to be my motto.

The lesson learned from Kyle Busch is perhaps the temporary realization of how fragile life is. Here today. Gone tomorrow. Time is a luxury none of us have.

When asked by a reporter why winning never gets old, Busch said “Because you never know when the last one is.”

A comment that was much more about the thrill of winning a race at the time seems more prophetic now in its finality.

NASCAR fans are not the only ones reeling from their sudden loss. For someone who wasn’t a devoted follower, the next time I open up a bag of peanut M&M'S that my doctors list as the treats they don’t want me chomping down on because of my high blood sugars and out of control A1C levels related to my continuing battles with diabetes, I’m going to find it hard not to recall that yellow M&M’S car Kyle Busch rode on the track promoting the much popular candy product.

©5/27/26

My First "Remember Where Were You When So-So" Happened Moment

Everyone has a “remember where you when so-so happened moment.” Most of them, if not all, are ones that brought the nation and possibly the world to a halt. The Hindenburg. Pearl Harbor. JFK’s and John Lennon’s assassinations. Challenger. O.J. Simpson’s Bronco chase and not guilty verdict. 9/11.

For me, my first remember where you when moment happened locally on the afternoon of May 25, 1979. I don’t think I’d be far calling the moment Chicago’s 9/11 when American Airlines Flight 191 with 272 passengers and crew aboard crashed into a nearby hangar and trailer park 31 seconds after takeoff from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport killing all aboard and two more on the ground after its left engine separated as the aircraft taxied down runway 32R.

Unlike the passengers and crew aboard the doomed DC-10 bound for Los Angeles who no doubt had holiday plans that three-day weekend in what officially marked the start of summer, I had nothing on my agenda. My being only nine-years-old then I am not even sure what an agenda was. What I did know upon coming home from school at 2:30 that Friday afternoon is that I didn’t expect to be glued to WLS-TV channel 7 news.

Living in Chicago at the time, Channel 7 news was my preferred station (in Dallas, Texas where I live now, the local station is WFAA on channel 8). I watched veteran news anchors Fahey Flynn (with his signature bowtie) and Joel Daly anchor the special report back and forth from the news desk to the live coverage from eyewitness reporters on the scene at the northwest corner of Lee and Touhy Avenues near the airport.

The first images I saw on TV were of billowing black and white smoke as first responders descended within minutes of the crash only to be told within almost a half hour of their immediate arrival their rescue services would not be needed.

The scenes seen live of the smoldering remains of what was a DC-10 and then the next morning on the front covers of the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times that showed a front landing gear, the tail engine and a piece of fuselage that landed on a trailer home, let alone the left engine lying on runway 32R were not what haunted me. Not even the photos of first responders placing numbered flags at the crash site marking fatalities who would soon be moved to a makeshift hangar to serve as a morgue near the airport.

The picture, taken by pilot Michael Laughlin, was what would haunt me. The shot would join other infamous front-page photos of troubled jetliners that got readers attention seconds before disaster struck that would of course include 9/11, Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 in September 1978 and Air France Flight 4590 in July 2000.

My morbid interest in the nation’s worst air disaster would not come up again until 15 years later on Halloween night October 31, 1994. For some reason early that day my mind was on American Airlines Flight 191. I couldn’t put my finger on it as to why other than the fact my parents were coming back from Chicago that night after visiting my grandparents in the “Windy City.”

While I didn’t think anything tragic was going to happen to my parents aboard the flight coming home, I still had this ominous feeling something else was going to happen that night.

When I came home on a lunch break from work, mom told me that an American Eagle twin engine Aerospatiale ATR-72 carrying 68 passengers and crew went down in a field in Roselawn, Indiana killing all aboard.

This wasn’t the first time I found the events surrounding the May 25 jet crash to be more than just a series of coincidences.

Wreckage of Delta Airlines Flight 191 - 8/2/85

I’d have thought nothing when DFW like Chicago experienced its own 9/11 moment six years after the O’Hare jet crash the early evening of August 2, 1985. During Friday evening rush-hour traffic, a Delta Airlines Lockheed L-1011 TriStar arriving from Fort Lauderdale, Florida crashed in a freak thunderstorm as it attempted to land at Dallas/ Fort Worth International Airport killing 137 passengers and crew and one on the ground. Of the 163 aboard, 24 survivors, all of whom sat in the charred tail section which was intact upon impact survived.

The number assigned to the ill-fated L-1011 was “191.”

Mention Lee and Touhy Avenues let alone May 25, 1979, to someone and chances are they will have no idea why you’d even mention the place or date. They wouldn’t understand the significance.

Lee and Touhy Avenues, let alone O’Hare airport are not Pearl Harbor, Dealey Plaza, Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. Lightbulbs don’t immediately turn on when one mentions May 25, 1979, the way one knows what happened and where they were on Dec. 7, 1941, Nov. 22, 1963, or 9/11.

The ones who know the significance of Lee and Touhy Avenues if not May 25, 1979, are those like me who lived in Chicago at the time and recall the eyewitness news reports, the front pages of the city’s newspapers in the days to follow, and/or knew someone aboard the flight.

For a lot of people Memorial Day weekend is nothing more than another holiday to mark the beginning of summer vacation – a chance to hold family barbecues.

Memorial Day is not, however, like July 4 or Labor Day. The holiday has always been a time to honor the men and women who died during their service in the U.S. military. The day has never been a time for celebrations.

For the families of the 274 lost over four decades years that sunny Chicago afternoon, the three-day weekend is as much a time for mourning and reflection as it is for the ones who died in the line of duty.

©5/25/26