I’m gonna bury her the way I want her buried, not what y’all think,’” Foyt said. “I said, ‘Let me tell you, you ain’t making one goddamn decision. Too many people suddenly had their own ideas about the memorial. Take Foyt’s trip to the funeral home, where a relative made an outfit suggestion for Lucy’s burial. Heck, in 1997, at the age of 62, he wrestled Arie Luyendyk to the ground at Texas Motor Speedway when the Dutch driver showed up at a Foyt victory celebration claiming he had won. He now has to handle her affairs, too, and when he talks about the challenges ahead it becomes clear that he remains every bit as ornery as he was his entire career. They owned several properties across Texas, many of them working cattle ranches that Foyt tends to to this day. The couple shared four children, eight grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren. “I’m kinda glad she died, and I hate to say it like that, but once your heart stops, your lungs, your kidneys, never recover,” Foyt said. “Me and my oldest son sat there next to the bed with her,” Foyt said, taking a long pause, “and it was hard.”įoyt said he once told Lucy she couldn’t die first, yet that’s what happened. The nurses promised to get him from the waiting room to her bedside at the end in a blink-or-you’ll miss it moment, Foyt’s eyes briefly welled with tears and his voice choked as he discussed their final goodbye. “The nurses, they knew who I was,” Foyt said, “and they came out and told me the treatments weren’t doing nothing, and they said, ‘Mr. Foyt on Tuesday finally got her into an ambulance to the hospital, but Lucy suffered a massive heart attack. He and Lucy have what he called “sugar diabetes,” and when Foyt called her over the weekend, she mentioned that she wasn’t feeling well.īy the time Foyt arrived home Sunday night, she was far worse. “Super Tex” had just spent the first weekend in April at Texas Motor Speedway, attending his first Ind圜ar race of the season to watch his two drivers compete. It’s not so easy to replace Lucy, who died unexpectedly just seven days after AP visited Foyt. “What do you do when your friends die? You get new friends,” Foyt said with a shrug. The number of those who survived is dwindling with time, of course two good friends not only died on the same day earlier this year but had funerals on the same day, too. Foyt drove during one of the deadliest eras in motorsports, and far too many of his racing contemporaries pulled off pit lane never to pull back in. The tough-as-boot-leather Texan was irreverent about death that day, too. that day, cracking jokes, talking about his ranches, career milestones and how, unlike longtime rival Mario Andretti, he had no issues with isolation or depression during the pandemic. The Associated Press recently spent a day with Foyt at his race shop in Waller, reminiscing about a colorful career that made him famous far beyond the track. But they want me to sit there another couple hours? They can go to hell.” They said, ‘No, no, no, we’re gonna get you right in.’ If it was an emergency, it would be one thing. “I said, ’You can forget it and stick it up your ass.’ I started to put my underwear and pants on and was walking out. It got to be about 10:30-11 and they said, ‘It might be another hour or two,’” Foyt recalled. “They told us to be there at 5:30, so OK. He showed up on time for the procedure, Lucy by his side, and they waited - and waited and waited.
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