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jbisanz
Registered: February 2006
Location: Bartonville, IL
Posts: 4,516
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My prayers go out to Paul's family and friends. He was a truely wonderful person.
Paul will be missed greatly around the Viper community and the VCA Forums. "Mumsmack" was a fixture around here who excelled due to his rare combination of extremely high integrity and intelligence.
PMUM listed "Giving Adelberg Beat-Downs" as his hobby in his profile... Gonna miss his wry sence of humor.
He always enjoyed a lively discussion, but know exactly where the line was... a true artist of the english language.
Paul was a great person to bounce ideas off, he always gave well artiuculated and well thought out answers. I've always loved the way he promoted driving schools to new Viper owners.
Paul posted this a few weeks ago, and It says a lot about the type of person he was:
I just wanted to publically thank everybody at PVO for helping us win this weekend at Laguna. I asked for a couple of small parts changes to make the car more competitive at Laguna and they reallly came through. Peter Ford showed up with a new electric fan that pulled at least 13 pounds out of the nose of the car and the aero guy, John B (have no idea how to spell his last name) AKA Brusty did an amazing job of designing an addition to the splitter to give us some downforce up front to deal with the understeer of the 275 fronts. The very first lap I tried the new splitter pieces I dropped a full second per lap and I know Mike McCann did the same. I also picked the brain of Matt (suspension guy at PVO) for a long, long time on the phone regarding spring choices to allow the car to cope with the tire package.
I wrung that car out for everything it was worth and after 28 laps I only won by .7 seconds and there's absolutely no way we'd have been even close to a podium if it weren't for the ongoing development of that car.
I really don't know who at Dodge to specifically thank, but anybody thinking of getting a Dodge can rest assured that Eric Peterson and John Fernandes are VERY committed to winning as are the whole team of engineers at PVO.
And he posted this after the Road America event:
Thanks a lot for the encouragement I've received from everybody. I actually didn't get to see much of the crash, but knew it would happen as I had just made the pass into 3rd just before it all went down. I saw that McClure wasn't getting out of the gas and knew it would end ugly. I just got to see a ton of parts flying in my mirror. I didn't know who had hit whom, but was actually disappointed because I didn't want another yellow because I was pretty confident I'd be able to pass Galati (did it before the first yellow, but kept missing 3rd gear with all of the excitement).
I was pretty excited about being in 3rd until I came back around and saw that both of the McCann cars and Woodhouse's car were totally smashed up out of the 5 cars involved. It put a huge damper on the whole race because they were running great and there was literally nothing they could've done to avoid McClure's overexuberance. If McClure hadn't made that move, there would've been 4 Comp Coupes in the top 10 which is pretty impressive. Luckily everybody was fine (McClure went to hospital but only had a concussion), it's a shame that out of the 6 Comp Coupes that showed up 4 of them went home half destroyed. Hopefully, Dodge will do the right thing and help them put their cars back together at a reasonable cost after they showed everybody just how formidable the Comp Coupe is. Keep in mind, the Comp Coupe you buy straight from Dodge can put up a quicker lap time the day you buy it than a World Challenge spec Comp Coupe can. Anybody on the fence should get in before the multi-million dollar teams realize they only need to spend $130K.
Oh yeah, and a couple of people were speculating where I came up with #23. No, it wasn't influenced by Michael Jordan...after some guy apparently jacked my #27 earlier in the season, I had to lay props to my racing legend....Johnny Yuma!!!
His priorities were right.
GodSpeed Paul.
Jay Herbert
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jbisanz
Registered: February 2006
Location: Bartonville, IL
Posts: 4,516
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It took me some time to swim through all the emotions I felt last week in order to gather my thoughts on the loss of my friend Paul. Last Saturday I was fortunate to gather with some good friends in celebration of his life...I shared these thoughts with them and wish to do the same for those of you that were unable to join us...
On Wednesday, we all lost a great friend! Paul was a man with whom I shared many of lifes'joyful experiences and discussed some of lifes' hurtles.
We met due to a mutual passion for Vipers, which turned into a wonderfully competative rivalry over a Viper Days trophy that Skip Thomas was able to convince us was worth the steep entry fee. This intensity fueled us to bring our �A-Game� and forced us to constantly improve. No matter how much better a driver I had convinced myself I�d become, Paul just seemed to far surpass my best efforts. Everyone knew he met his competition head on and surpassed it while setting a new standard. At the track we no longer said, �what is your best lap time�, but , �Yeah, that�s good but how does it compare to Mumford�?
We all know Mumford had a crafty way with words, and enjoyed his �mumfordisms.� When he wasn�t �layin wood� to me at the track it was on the messege boards in our �smack talking� banter. Bill Pemberton once told me that people asked if Mumford and I hated each other. Of course he would say, �NO! they are great friends, just having fun�.�
We are all aware of the increadable achievements Paul has made at the track over the years, and in recent months, he further demonstrated his skill with a third place in his very first Pro World Challenge race after qualifying in 22nd position, and a 1st place in his second race. It goes without saying that he was well on his way to �shock and awe� in this elite group of world class drivers.
Now I know that some of you may disagree with me on this point, but I feel that there is so much more to a man that what he can achieve on a track or in his office. I, for one, have always believed that success is measured by how you impact and contribute to your environment and to the lives of the people that surround you. In my mind Paul's wealth was in his achievement of this goal! Not only was he an enormously generous person, but he went out of his way to express his support and to offer his help. I have never met anyone who could ever say anything bad about Paul. Even people who met him only once, were taken by his genuine nature.
Millions of people work and spend an entire lifetime trying to live a tenth of the life that Paul was able to experience. In his short time on earth, he lived each moment to the fullest. If he wanted something, he set a goal and rapidly surpassed his and everyone elses expectations.
I know my life will forever lack something without him in it to egg me on. But he is here in my heart and I will hear his voice in my mind whenever I look at a car or come after one of you guys on the race track. To Paul I pledge to do only what he would have wanted me to as I am sure will all of you the next time we meet on the track.
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