Jim Hunter was impossible to dislike

 

Jim Hunter, NASCAR Vice President of Corporate Communications, answers questions from media in June 2008 at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Mich. Hunter died of cancer yesterday at age 71. (photo: Getty Images)

Jim Hunter often frustrated me, and vice-versa.

If there is a positive to be derived from death — and this was richly true of my father’s demise — it is that the passage of time obscures much of the negative and enhances much of the positive. Or that’s been my experience.

For instance, these days I often find myself missing Dale Earnhardt, and it would have been something I’d never even have considered back in the mid-1990s, when Earnhardt was a force of nature that I compared more often to a hurricane than a gorgeous autumn day. I never could have imagined Earnhardt dead, even past the moment that he was.

Here’s what I think will come to mind more often than any other characteristic of Hunter: He could separate the personal from the professional, and that’s increasingly rare in the public-relations business.

From most of whose clients I’ve been critical, I get the cold shoulder. They don’t initiate contact, and if I say hello, they just look at the ground and mutter something. Most of them get over it, but some never do. Ah, well. It’s the price one pays for being honest in a politically correct world.

Crossing horns with Hunter was almost a pleasure. He might get a little mad for a while, or so would I, but in a day or two, I’d get an email that ran along these lines:

“You sure keep me in hot water, but, between you and me, I can’t help but chuckle at some of the things you write. Regards, Jim.”

Jim Hunter, NASCAR’s Vice President of Corporate Communications, died Friday night at age 71. One year ago, I came to this track, Talladega Superspeedway, hobbled by a fall I’d taken while loading speakers in the dark after a music gig. The pain got so fierce that I finally went to the Talladega infield hospital for treatment and advice. When I walked in, Hunter was standing outside. Apparently, that’s when he found out he had cancer.

A few months back, Hunter and I exchanged emails. In his reply, he wrote that he was about to go back in for more treatment but that the doctors had told him he still had a shot and he was keeping his spirits up.

I’m satisfied he was optimistic until the very end. He laughed easily and was impossible to dislike. He often frustrated me, and part of the frustration came from being unable to marshal much bitterness toward such a genial man.

When we did lock horns, Hunter would make his case that, in some fashion, I had been unfair. Then, when I would vigorously defend myself, invariably Hunter would listen and, almost every time, reply at some point by saying, “That’s fair.”

I can imagine Hunter saying those two words while strolling the streets of heaven, tipping his yellow NASCAR cap to passers-by.

The bell has been tolling much too rapidly. In three weeks, four familiar acquaintances have passed on: first the gruff, curmudgeonly writer, Jack Flowers, then Jeff Byrd, the courtly president of Bristol Motor Speedway, then Ed Shull, who represented Gatorade more in my mind than the company logo.

And now Hunter, whom I won’t miss for his ability to sell NASCAR sand to sportswriting nomads.

I’ll miss him for the laugh that was never far away, for his refusal to burn any bridges and his frantic ability to move with punches and think on the fly. I seldom bought his explanations, by the way, but they sure were fun to hear and amusing to observe.

Mainly I’ll miss Jim Hunter for his humanity.

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