“What teenage boy doesn’t like fast cars?” Justin Spencer said. And so began Spencer’s lifelong love affair with  NASCAR, which led to a surprising friendship.

Spencer, who teaches World and American Literature, grew up in the Midwest where, he said, racing is a part of the culture.

“My best friends and I used to attend races on an 1/8-mile dirt track on the weekends. Once you watch wives beating each other up because one’s husband wrecked the other’s husband’s car, you quickly learn to love the sport,” said Spencer, with a smile.

But Spencer had an even better reason for going to races. It was a chance for him and his stepfather, Roger, to get away and spend some quality father-son time together.

“We attend at least two races a year together,” Spencer said. “We always go to Atlanta Motor Speedway and then we pick a new track to travel to each year.”

“This [summer] we went to Eldora Speedway [in Rossburg, Ohio] to see the NASCAR trucks race on dirt for the first time in 50 years, and next year we are spending a week in Charlotte for the Memorial Day races there,” Spencer said.

It was during one of his race weekends in 2008 that Spencer met Eric McClure, a NASCAR Nationwide driver, at a race in Bristol, Tenn.   

“They hold sort of a festival in downtown Bristol where you can meet the drivers,” Spencer said. “When I met him, he was so down-to-earth, no real hype about him, and no chip on his shoulder.”

A few years later in 2012 Spencer started communicating with McClure through Twitter. 

“He started replying to my tweets and then he followed me, and we began talking back and forth,” Spencer said. “Now it has blossomed into emails and text messages.”

When McClure was in Atlanta for the September 2012 Nationwide race, he and Spencer started talking about barbecue. Spencer told McClure about his favorite restaurant in Griffin, McGhin’s Southern Pit Barbecue, and that’s when Spencer said he got the idea to take McClure’s team out for dinner the next time they came to the Atlanta Motor Speedway.

“This was an opportunity to thank [McClure] for entertaining us, his fans,” Spencer said.

His next thought was discussing his idea with his wife, Erica.

“She was a little shocked,” Spencer said. “It was a ‘say what?’ kind of moment. At first, she wasn’t too happy about spending $400 for a meal, so I put aside $40 a month each month for a year to pay for dinner.”

However, when the 2013 Atlanta race schedule was posted, it soon became evident that going to the restaurant wasn’t an option. “With appearances, practices, and qualifying, it just didn’t work out well. We couldn’t get everybody together, so we [Spencer and his wife] decided to take the food to the team,” Spencer said.

After all the plans were set and all the food ordered, Spencer soon learned that McClure couldn’t attend. According to Spencer, McClure was suffering from acute renal failure, possibly resulting from a wreck he had at Talladega in the spring of 2012.

“I was [at that race] and saw my favorite athlete airlifted from the track to a local hospital,” Spencer said. “It was scary.”

After McClure’s wreck, he was unable to race for six weeks, but according to Spencer, McClure went back to racing until more health problems related to the wreck put him out of racing again.

Spencer still went ahead with his plans and spent Labor Day weekend with McClure’s Hefty racing team.

Weeks after the race, Spencer reflected on his reasons for catering the luncheon, and he realized that while he was a fan of the race, he was more a fan of the man.

The more Spencer got to know McClure, the more he learned about him as a man of family and faith.

“He is a man who puts his faith and principles before everything else,” Spencer said. “We all could learn a lesson from that. As we started talking, I grew to respect him, but I also learned that he needed someone, even if that someone is just a fan, standing in his corner providing him encouragement. We all need that,” Spencer said.