Chris Wertman RIP

[Mandie]

Originally Posted by Jimi B

I hope you guys continue and use this as energy to shoot for some records and some wins. I can just here Chris saying oh this is marketing genius! Im not trying to make light of the situation... I just really could see him saying this!

Originally Posted by Kenny Wigington

Absolutely shocked. What a loss for his family. David, and Mandie, we are all truly sorry for the hole you feel now. I laughed at him, and with him at some of his stuff, but enjoyed it all. Prayers for his children, from my house, too.

He's likely the best dressed one in the staging lanes there, from the Award in Denver !

RIP Chris !

You know what Jimmy, I think you're absolutely right. If he possibly could, he WOULD try and maximize this marketing opportunity.

Kenny, I'm glad you thought he was dressed well. Right before Norwalk Nationals I had taken him shopping for some spiffier clothes. We were trying to find him a new lady friend.

I really enjoy reading what everyone had posted on here. I know Chris' mom did too. I talked to her on the phone a few hours ago and she said she had read this thread and it was nice to see that even people who had never met him appreciated his hard work.

Since I started working for NHR in April, I have spent more time with him than anyone else and we became very good friends. We had a lot of conversation about a lot of things, and I certainly learned a lot from him. If there's one lesson I learned from him, as many of you have pointed out, it would be to not give up. He didn't. There were a couple times we thought we wouldn't make it to race, but suddenly he would rally and we'd figure out a way to make it happen. I remember one time in particular I was really disappointed to not be going and an hour later he called me and said "Ok, I know you're disappointed, so this is how we're going to make it work." So I put on my rally cap, and drove 45mins to the shop and we worked all night. And we did it too. Kind of like when we were pushing for Vegas my very first trip and he didn't want to disappoint his dad by not making it. He practically killed himself (and me) trying to get there.

I've been crying my eyes out off & on since yesterday Morning and my head is killing me. I'm pretty sure he'd be giving me crap about it and making fun of my boogers or something if he could. He became a very good friend to me and was always looking out for me. I'm hypoglycemic and need to eat every 3hrs or so, and you know its bad when the person who loses everything all the time can't find his phone or his wallet, but remembers that Mandie probably should eat something. LOL

I was also sad to learn that two of their cats also died in the fire. They had three, but the one had "gone on vacation" last week. (he's known to disappear for a couple months and then one day return.) R.I.P. cats Billy and Autumn. :'(

I guess the most comforting thing for me is that I know he had a really good week last week. He had told me a couple of times on Friday before I left in the evening. We had been working on his house (finally!) and had gotten a lot accomplished. He was really happy with that and as you all know he had been saying forever that he needed to get it done. Unfortunately, we didn't get that far. We were supposed to start dry walling today. I would take a month's worth of heavy drywall dust in 100 degree humid weather any day over being without my friend. :'(

[joe huestis]

A devastating loss to our racing community. My thoughts and prayers go out to Drooze and family.