How racing bonded Collier men

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Courtesy Allen CollierSean Collier celebrates a victory at Sugar Hill Speedway in Weare, N.H., at age 16.

Sometimes as a journalist the story doesn't end when we strike the final period to close the final sentence. Sometimes the reader ingests the message and is moved to provide an unforeseen depth, a level of context otherwise unachievable.

No man has more contextual depth than a father who loves a son, who lives for a son.

And on a random Tuesday in July, I happened upon a letter that was sent to me months earlier by a still-grieving father. The father, Allen Collier, simply wanted to tell me how auto racing forged an impenetrable -- and likely otherwise unattainable -- bond between him and his sons.

It all began on a sunny day in May when I sat with Hendrick Motorsports machinist Andrew Collier and discussed his brother, Sean, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer who was killed, allegedly by the Boston bombing suspects.

Andrew was quite gracious and relived the detailed hell that was losing his best friend as best he could. We forged a bit of a relationship. We keep in touch. Andrew told me recently he wants to make a distinctive difference -- and remember his brother -- through a website he created, 2MakeAChange.org. With this site, he hopes to petition for the creation of an official federal holiday that formally recognizes first responders. This is only partly to recognize Sean, he said. He wants first responders to get their due.

I thought that was the end of the story. It was, in fact, just the beginning.

I realized this by way of that note from Andrew and Sean's father. Allen Collier opened the note by apologizing for any spelling or grammatical errors that stem from being "technologically challenged." He explained that he had been divorced from the boys' mother for 25 years.

He would later tell me that he had turned down every previous media request, but he was going to accept mine.

And he has a great story to tell.

He said he'd been fortunate to have his children on weekends -- 51 weekends a year, every year -- but that finding activities to keep them engaged was challenging, given that they'd entered the age that friends replace parents on the priority scale.

This is an excerpt from that letter, verbatim. It stopped me in my tracks:

Because of NASCAR my boys changed from two shy timid young men into the men they are today. And also because of NASCAR I was able to maintain my relationship with my children a lot longer than most parents would have. Most children their age -- early teen years -- run off with their friends. Not my sons. They always want to be with their father. It was always a wonderful feeling to know how important I was in their lives. I have hundreds and thousands of Sean and Andy stories.

I was so moved by that statement. I want to matter to my kids that much. I yearn to.

I wanted to hear those stories. I had to hear them. So I picked up the telephone.

Allen told me he always loved an underdog story. He was a walking underdog story -- a single father working 60-hour weeks as a truck driver to provide for his kids. There were days, he said, he could barely do so. There were days he bought the boys Dairy Queen chicken sandwiches for dinner, and nothing for himself.

In the mid-'90s Allen found an underdog story that would forever impact his relationship with his boys. That story would lay the path to the remarkable bond he described in that letter. He had begun reading often about a young racer who burst onto the NASCAR scene and won time and again. Not just races. Championships.

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Courtesy Allen CollierAllen Collier on Wednesday climbed Tuckerman Ravine on Mt. Washington, N.H., to place an MIT patch on the mountain his son Sean loved.

"If I hadn't discovered Jeff Gordon in the newspaper, I'd have lost my boys at 12 or 13 years old to their friends," Allen said Thursday. "Sean was 17 years old before he finally got his own car. I was so lucky to have them for so long."

Because of Gordon the family started paying closer attention to NASCAR, and ultimately the boys began participating in slot car racing. They worked at the track. They painted their cars like Gordon's rainbow No. 24 and Ward Burton's Caterpillar No. 22.

At the end of 2001, Allen introduced Sean -- "made the mistake," he jokes -- to Sugar Hill Speedway in New Hampshire, a go-kart track. At the end of that year Sean started racing karts and fell in love with the sport. Sean took his paycheck, coupled with some help from his father, and bought a wrecked chassis -- which Allen said was once stuck in a fence -- and a couple of sets of tires. They didn't even know what tire pressures to employ.

Sean didn't care. He just wanted to wheel it.

In 2001, the final race of the season at Sugar Hill was called the Coca-Cola 600. Sean had never raced. He got all the way to second place and closed on the leader. But when he bumped leader Mike Stokes, he was so nervous he backed off the throttle. He finished fourth.

The track owner stormed out and accused Allen of lying. There was no way a kid in his first race could vie for the lead like Sean did.

"I said, 'Why would I lie?'" Allen said. "He just walked away after that. I could tell Sean was talented."

In 2002, Sean wanted to race two separate divisions full time. Money was sparse, but the Colliers went for it. He won the first race -- then 24 more and both championships.

No one had ever done that before as a first-year racer. The funds ran out, but there was one race the following season that Sean filled in for a friend. He lapped the entire field up to second place, and was beating on second's bumper as he took the checkered flag.

The track tore the kart down to the bearings. Again, there was no way that was possible.

"Racing transformed him," Allen said. "He went from this shy, geeky kid to a very strong man. It was amazing -- and all because I happened to find Jeff Gordon. Without Jeff Gordon, Andy would be a cook right now."

When I spoke with Andrew in May he told me none of this. He told me his brother was humble and heroic. Both are correct. He never told me his brother was a gas man. To hear Allen tell it, Sean never told anyone, either. Allen once prodded Sean to tell the school newspaper of his racing exploits. Sean refused.

Six months ago, Allen nearly called the Sirius XM NASCAR channel to issue some beef with how NASCAR analysts tend to call the Sprint Cup drivers "the best in the world."

"I almost called in," Allen said, "to tell them to start saying 'the best drivers in the world -- that had money and great equipment.' I never got a chance to say that. That makes me sad. I miss Sean so much. I can't even tell you."

On Wednesday, as Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev pleaded not guilty to all charges against him, Allen Collier climbed Mount Washington with Sean's poles, Sean's water bottle and Sean's gear pack. He wanted nothing to do with seeing Tsarnaev.

"Instead of being out-of-my-mind from seeing the smirk on that you-know-what's face, I climbed the mountain and put an MIT patch up there," Allen said. "I'm so happy I didn't go [to the court proceedings]. Sean had just climbed that mountain four or five months ago."

Allen always answered the phone when his daughter, Jenny, called. But this time, in April, he knew something was wrong. He picked up the phone, then sat it back down. She called again. He picked it up, sat it down. She called again. He thought his ex-wife had died. That was not the case.

He was in Topeka, Kan., on business. Emotionally destroyed, he boarded a plane home to Boston. It was the most impossible moment of his life.

"It was horrible. It's horrible flying back knowing what had happened," he said.

Sean was Allen's birthday present. They share the same birthday, Jan. 3. In fact, Allen's mother also was born on Jan. 3.

"Mom's gone now. Sean's gone now. Jan. 3 ain't ever going to mean what it did before," he said.

As a 3-year-old, Sean would wait by the door all day for his father to return home. As a 12-year-old, he was eating one of those Dairy Queen chicken sandwiches at the track. He saw his father shaking from hunger. He put the sandwich down and slid it across the table.

"He said, 'Eat this, I'm not hungry,' Allen said. "That's who he was. He was an amazing kid, so humble. I just can't tell you how much it hurts."

As he says this to me, Allen pauses. He then begins again:

"I have so many pictures of his feature wins right here in my truck," he said. "I'm staring at one right now."

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Marty Smith | email

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• ESPN NASCAR lead reporter
• Former NASCAR.com senior writer
• 15 years covering NASCAR