Dale Earnhardt Jr: My sister the protector

Kelly, yes, explain the role she plays, it's a long story, my

sister

and I when we were, when my mother's house burned down and when they wrote to you six years ago. I know I'll come back when our house caught fire. We were touched, my mom gave up custody of us, she had no money or a house and no, you know, no address, she couldn't take care of us, you know, it was different, difficult, but dad was thriving, he was running, earning, and money . all that, so she gave custody of us to dad, we go there and he's going to marry Theresa, so we have Theresa, we have to know this and she's our stepmother, so my

sister

and I became very close like me, hey. man, you know what you think about what's going on and we lean on each other to adapt to that environment that was so unfamiliar.

Kelly really became my caregiver and caretaker, you know, she gave me, she made sure that I had, you know, her. 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 had done my homework and didn't get in trouble, we already finished my chores we had . daily chores she made sure they were done and I was doing what I was supposed to do to stay out of trouble and she spoiled me and really took care of me daddy wasn't taking care of me I mean he was running around and he left 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 babysitters, you know, those were around and I never made or created relationships with my sister. was the one I went to every day for everything and then she's in high school yeah they send you to the military yeah she did good so I say I'm a mess and I'm making trouble at school and making you knowing that they are going to kick you. came out and dad Theresa sent me to military school I was there a month and Kelly came on her own like who two military military school is like a punishment Ryan halfway when she was in high school she's halfway through high school lets his friends and everyone go to military school and in tenth grade what couple says the tenth grader do you know how much I miss my brother I'm going to go to military school where he is I don't know what really drove me to be his

protector

but other than to say that they always chose a different path to get attention, which is why he always got into trouble.

I'm not a psychologist, I don't understand it, but that's the way he chose to get attention and so he was always protecting and protecting, like how do you know? I mean, how much more trouble can you take to get into with a kid? You know, and just taking care of him and feeling sorry for him and all these kinds of things that just led to doing these different things, you know, they followed him to military school and he was a skinny little guy, but I mean, he's seen pictures of him when he was a tiny little thing and they called him names all the time at school, you know, they call him chicken legs and everything.

This kind of thing because he had these skinny little white legs and he was always, you know, this tall and his classmates were this tall and yeah, so I always looked out for him, so I followed him through military school and a lot of other things. and finally, long story short, when I started making some money racing, she called me and said, hey, you're going to need someone to help you with your finances and your business and what do you know, I've gotten checks that I don't have. I don't even know what to do with thousands of dollars, a million dollars here and there, this is it.

I mean, one year I was making three hundred and fifty dollars a week and I made five million dollars in one year, and you would think. He'd be like, yeah, what the heck, this is amazing and I'm like, I don't know what the heck to do. You know, at this point, my sister had moved up the chain of command in the NASCAR merchandise business, which was booming, and she's worked to get this real, genuine opportunity and she's going to take advantage of it, you know, just give it away. I told him I can't let you. She said I will take a 50% pay cut and she did.

You know, what's so terrible to admit is that for years I never gave him a review or gave him a raise because I had no idea that thing came up, oh it came up, I don't even know exactly when. she came up but and I paid her again for, you know, for that mistake, but she wouldn't even say, hey, you know, if she hadn't done it, I haven't evaluated my performance and I haven't had a career. I know she really hadn't gotten a raise in a long time she finally did and it came up but reluctantly 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 it your motivation behind? doing it right, you know, Dell and I guess it goes back to our childhood.

I became, I guess, a bit of a mother hen girl, so I mean we've always had that bond of looking out for each other. When our father passed away, I knew that dojin that he needed someone to take care of him, so, you know, taking the pay cut, I guess it was just part of that kind of thing that we had really been doing for many years. years before, his brother and his sister, so it really wasn't a big deal for me to do that. You know, what were your goals at the time and how did they evolve as time went on?

You already know my goals when I arrived. Working for Dell was really just about taking care of him and doing things that were best for him and I didn't feel that way. I knew my dad always did that, but he wasn't so sure about the other half of that equation. So you know, he didn't want to be taken advantage of and Dell has a conflict-free personality, so he'll let people walk all over him to a certain extent.