"It's All for the Children..."

By: Sloane Trentham

Claudia Byrd, along with her daughter and son-in-law, sat in the ticket booth of Bristol Motor Speedway in Lights on December 11, 2011 and informed everyone in line that, for that night only, their admittance would be free.
That night was Random Act of Kindness night at the Speedway, which was started in honor of Jeff Byrd, Claudia’s husband and President of BMS, who passed away from cancer in October of 2010.
“We told people that all of our wonderful sponsors have made it possible to come in for free in honor of Jeff’s birthday, which is December 10,” said Claudia, Director of the Speedway Children’s Charities in Bristol. “All we asked in return is that they do something nice for someone else during the holidays.”
They lead by example. On the 15th Annual Night of Smiles in 2011, held the week before Thanksgiving and the night before Speedway in Lights opens, Speedway Children’s Charities gave away a record $660,000 to local non-profit children’s organizations, coming a long way from the first year in which they gave away $118,000. Claudia started the Bristol Chapter of the Speedway Children’s Charities in 1996 when she moved here from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, after Jeff got a job offer at BMS.
After researching, Claudia realized that other chapters of Speedway Children’s Charities hosted several black tie events as fundraisers, but she also realized that at such formal events, the same people tended to attend.
“I wanted to do something different that not only raised money for kids but was also something kids would enjoy,” she said.
On the way to a race in Charlotte, Claudia and Jeff brainstormed and came up with the idea for Speedway in Lights, which first opened in 1997.
“The very first night we were there, everything was out of our pockets, and we had no idea if anybody would show up,” said Claudia.
That first year, the ticket booth was set up in the parking lot in a shed-like building, where the volunteers and staff wore aprons. Even though the tickets they had kept sticking together, they successfully sold the tickets and handled money out of their apron pockets the entire first run of Speedway in Lights.
Since that first year, the employees of BMS are busy in the fall because they double as decorators for Speedway in Lights. They clean up for two weeks after the August races, then immediately start putting up lights.
“It doesn’t take that long to get them down, but it takes that long to get them up,” said Claudia.
Although Speedway in Lights is the biggest, Speedway Children’s Charities also holds several other fundraisers, including, for the past four years, the Sharky 500, which was a hit with children. Claudia said that it is a lot of fun, but at the end of the race, someone has to sort the 7,100 rubber ducks into numerical order, usually the interns.
Last year, a new fundraiser was established to appeal to a different clientele: the Speedway Children’s Charities Shooting Stars tournament, held at an indoor shooting range. Austin Dillon, the grandson of former NASCAR racer, Richard Childress was the celebrity shooter.
“There were people there who had never been to one of our fundraisers,” said Claudia. “Everyone there said they’d be back this year, and this year it will be bigger and better.”
Her favorite part of her job, by far, is the Night of Smiles when she gives the money away. However, there is one part of her job that Claudia could live without.
“The hardest thing for me every year is to sign the letters that say we are unable to grant your request this year,” she said.
Even though their $660,000 year was record-breaking, $2.1 million was requested through grants, and there was no way for every agency to receive money. This worried Claudia, she said, more than anything.
“Jeff would always tell me not to dwell on that,” said Claudia. ”So far, we have raised more than $6 million for children. ‘Just think,’ he’d say. ‘Without you, that money would not be there for those kids.’”
Every year, more than $1 million dollars in grants is requested from legitimate agencies that help children from 16 counties in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. The box of grants is kept in Claudia’s office. In fact, Claudia has a copy of every single grant that she has ever received.
Twenty judges diligently read each grant, vote and fill out a list for how much each organization should get. Then they meet for lunch to privately discuss details.
“It works out beautifully,” said Claudia. “It takes a while, but it works out beautifully. My goal is to be able to give some money to every organization that requests it.”
She works hard every day because she knows Jeff wanted SCC to be successful. Claudia says that thought is what keeps her going.
“I want to do this as long as they’ll let me,” she said. “I want to be happy, healthy and spend time with my family. That is something I learned in 2010: that life is too short to take anything for granted.”
When she says “family,” she not only means her two children and 8 grandchildren, whose pictures fill her office, but she also means her family at the Speedway. She said that she could not have made it through 2010, and Jeff’s struggle with cancer, without them.
“We talk about Jeff all the time because he was an amazing person,” said Claudia. “I hear stories of things he did for people all the time. There were things he did that I had no idea. He loved to do random acts of kindness.”
Claudia said that Jeff motivated people to give back to the community, and that he did that better than anybody she has ever known. So she follows his example.
“I know every dollar we make is going to directly affect the life of a child,” she said. “And that makes you feel so good no matter how tired you are on race weekend and no matter how bad your feet hurt. You think, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ But then you look at the numbers at the end of the day, and you think, ‘I wonder how many children we can help with that.’”