Dr. Jerry Punch, the veteran ESPN reporter, makes his living telling other people’s stories. But his own stories may be the best of all, and many of them are from Atlanta Motor Speedway.
As a young man, he raced stock cars at Hickory Motor Speedway near his hometown of Newton, N.C., running against some of the best drivers ever to sit behind a steering wheel.
At North Carolina State, he had a brief stint as a walk-on back-up quarterback on a team coached by the legendary Lou Holtz. He went on to become an emergency-room physician, then a radio and TV reporter covering NASCAR races as well as college football games.
His medical training has been the difference in life and death for several drivers who crashed in races Punch was covering. He saved Rusty Wallace after a crash during practice at Bristol Motor Speedway, and he and another doctor saved Bill Dennis after a wreck at Daytona.
Punch also is credited with saving the life of ARCA driver Don Marmor, who crashed at Atlanta in 1988. Punch was on the Turn 1 side of pit road of the track, then under its original configuration, when another car veered into Marmor’s path as he exited Turn 4 sending him head-on into the blunt end of pit wall. Tires from an earth mover had been placed there to absorb impact, but Marmor’s car took a savage hit anyway.
Since the ARCA broadcast wasn’t live, Punch started walking down pit road during the red-flag period.
“I got about midway down pit road, and I see an ARCA official,” Punch said. “I asked him: ‘Hey, what happened?”
“He said: ‘A boy hit the pit road wall head-on. He’s gone.’
“I said: ‘What?’ He said: ‘He’s gone.’
“I took off running.”
When Punch, a trauma specialist, arrived at the car there was a paramedic already in the right side of the car. Punch climbed through the windshield opening.
“The paramedic recognized me, and said, ‘Doc, it’s a bad deal,’” Punch said.
He was right. One quick look told Punch that Marmor was unconscious and had multiple broken bones. The steering wheel was impaled in his chest, and he was barely breathing.
Punch’s first move was to get an airway opened. Then he had to make the risky move of inserting a large IV into Marmor’s heart before pulling the steering wheel away from his chest.
“Putting a line to feed a catheter into the heart of a guy sitting in a race car is risky, but you’re dealing with life and death,” Punch said.
Eventually Punch and the paramedics got Marmor out of the car and to the track’s care center.
Punch directed Marmor’s care, and talked to him throughout, knowing that Marmor likely wasn’t hearing a thing he said.
“I was giving orders and talking to him in his ear: ‘You have broken extremities. You’re out of car,’” Punch said, adding that he received great assistance from the Atlanta South crew on the scene that Saturday morning.
Marmor spent weeks in the hospital, but he survived. He never raced again, and today works as a body and fender repairman in his hometown of Northlake, Ill.
“I’m very lucky that Jerry Punch was working the race that day,” Marmor said by phone this week. “He got my heart going. It’s because of him that I’m still around.
“I’ve got some imperfections, but I can live with them.”
Marmor said he ran into Punch years later and thanked him.
“He just said: ‘No problem,’” Marmor said.
It also was at AMS that Punch was involved in an incident that led to TV pit reporters wearing fire suits.
He was covering a pit stop by Richard Petty in a 1989 race when the car backfired and ignited spilled gasoline. The crew radioed Petty to take off, but the gas man and the contents of his spilled can were on fire. Punch, his assistant Nelson Crozier and a Petty crewman managed to wrap the gas man in a blanket and extinguish the flames.
Then Punch returned to his reporting duties.
“My moustache was singed, the hair on the back of my hand was gone, the windscreen on my microphone was melted, part of my polyester jacket was melted and my forearm was burned a little bit, but I gave a report,” he said.
Afterward, he got a call from his producer, Geoff Mason, who was watching the race from New York. He congratulated Punch on his reporting, but ordered him and the rest of the pit road reporters to start wearing firesuits.
“From that week on we’ve worn them,” he said. “I was in a fire in Terry Labonte’s pits at Michigan a few years after that, and I probably would have been burned without one.”
But not all of Punch’s Atlanta stories involve life-and-death situations.
It was at Atlanta in 1982 that Punch, then a radio reporter, did his first TV broadcast.
And it was at the season finale at Atlanta in 1992 when Punch made one of his more memorable calls.
He was working Alan Kulwicki’s pits when Kulwicki beat Bill Elliott for the championship by leading one more lap than Elliott in what many describe as NASCAR’s greatest race. It also was the final drive for Richard Petty.
Just after the finish, the cameras turned on Punch, who was standing by Kulwicki’s car.
“The producer said to say something profound.” Punch said. “I don’t remember what I said, but I remember how emotional it was to see Alan Kulwicki ,the ultimate underdog, climb out of his car and do the interview.
“Then I turn to right, and I’m feeding the PA and national TV, and I tell everybody: ‘Direct your attention to the garage area. For final time the King, Richard Petty, is going to come out and make one ceremonial lap.’
“I walked down pit road. Richard’s in tears. I’m in tears. I’ll never forget that 1992 race….
“Atlanta is a very special place.”
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