QUILT OF VALOR CEREMONY

Aaron Ayers & Dan Botkin Joe Maynard & Doug Englen Alicia Clark & Elizabeth Ellison Wes & Sara Golden

Gail Longton & Faye Hand Gayle Black & Paula Grounds

Story & Photography by Tony Centonze This year’s Daughters of the American Revolution Captain William Edmiston Chapter’s annual Flag Day Luncheon included a special presentation from members of Quilts of Valor.

Doug Englen, Hank Albara, Joe Maynard, David Cook, Sandra Empey, and Glen Freudenthal were presented hand-made quilts in honor of their service. Kathy Vik said to all recipients, “Thank you for your service and sacrifice in serving our nation.”

Guests at the luncheon also enjoyed food from Mission BBQ, and the presentation of colors by the Valentine Sevier SAR Color Guard.

The luncheon concluded with the installation of new chapter members, officers, and the passing of the Regent’s Pin from outgoing Regent Gail Longton to incoming Regent Cindy Smith.

Amelia Wallace & Gloria Davis Sandra Wilson & Marilyn Farley

Meet Tony Schumacher: THE MAN BEHIND THE SPEED

Just one week after it was announced that Joe and Cathi Maynard, along with their partners Eric and Kimberly Lehman, had made Clarksville history by becoming majority owners of an NHRA Top Fuel Team with the formation of Maynard Family Racing, the team brought home a massive win. Not only are they the first from Clarksville to own a national sports team, but winning a race as massive as the NHRA Northwest Nationals as first-time majority owners is essentially unheard of. So, VIP Clarksville Magazine thought to catch up with the driver for the team, Tony Schumacher. He’s an eight-time world champ and the most successful Top Fuel driver in class history with now 86 wins under his belt, including his recent victory in Seattle, Washington. Schumacher said the win at Northwest Nationals was hard-fought, but unforgettable because of the trials they’d faced as a new team the first half of this season. “We struggled this year, so that this win more beautiful,” he said, adding that it was kind of serendipitous to deliver this win for the Maynards their first race because they got into the sport due to his earlier racing career. “They got into racing when they saw the Army car, and I drove the Army car for 19 years. It got them kind of hooked on racing, and then to be able to partner up is just so great,” Schumacher told VIP.

Longtime racing fans, the Clarksville couple met with Schumacher last year in Las Vegas. Previously, the drag racer and his team had been sponsored by the U.S. Army. Then in 2018, the Army decided to go in a different direction and discontinue their sponsorship. Without a sponsor, he was essentially forced into retirement and sat a season out. “The year after that, I worked on putting a sponsor together. I was very clear that I didn’t want to hop in a jump car. I didn’t want to hop in a machine that wasn’t going to have a chance to win, I didn’t need to just sit in that thing and I wanted to find the right deal,” Schumacher said. At the time of his meeting with the Maynards, Schumacher had returned to racing under his father’s team, Don Schumacher Racing or DSR, without a sponsor. The Maynards then approached DSR with the offer to come in as a partner sponsor. Schumacher then found Scag Power Equipment to fill in the rest of the races. “And then halfway through this year, which is exactly about now, they literally said, ‘We want to buy this thing,’” Schumacher told VIP. The Maynards bought the majority ownership of the team from Schumacher’s, and then they got to work. Aside from handing over the majority of the team’s ownership, there were no major changes made to the team: same crew chief, same mechanics. “We showed up with the same good attitude and won the race,” Schumacher continued.

Schumacher describes driving a Top Fuel vehicle as exhilarating, but difficult in more ways than one. “I used to do over 200 speeches for the Army a year, and I always said that you study for this test. These are the fastest vehicles — it goes from zero to 100 in tenths of a second, and as it gets hotter out on the track, the more difficult it becomes. It’s stressful,” Schumacher said. Top Fuel drag racing also just so happens to the the fastest sport in the world: “These cars make between 11,000 and 12,000 horsepower. They accelerate faster than a space shuttle, faster than a fighter jet off an aircraft carrier — nothing a human being gets in accelerates as quickly,” he continued. The Top Fuel races are sometimes won by just tens of thousands of a second, making every millisecond of his time in the driver’s seat count.

But who is the man behind the speed? Schumacher said even though he drives a race car for a living, he’d rather drive a motorcycle to his job. He also really loves comedy movies, such as Talladega Nights and Tommy Boy. “My job is stressful, I need to laugh,” he told VIP. He is married to his wife, Summer, and counts himself as a big fan of country music. He

also has two sons and a daughter, and he’s most proud of the amount of adversity he has endured to get to where he is. “The adversity has led the championships. Even through different teams and different people, we always find a way. I just love the leadership part of what I do. Some people lead with an iron fist, and I lead with a positive attitude.” In the next year, Schumacher said he’d like to secure his ninth championship. “Nine’s a great number,” he said with a laugh. “In the next five, I’d like to race for not only another five years, but in the process, maybe train some guys and gals to come over and learn how to do this correctly and be really, really good at it,” he said, adding that no matter how many championships he secures, it means nothing if he can’t pass along what he has learned in the process. “That’s how I am with my kids. I hope my kids are way more successful than me. I hope my kids are smarter, better, more prepared, and have every bit of knowledge they’ve learned and everything I’ve learned to pass on too,” he said. He draws major inspiration from his father, Don Schumacher, who is a racing legend in his own right independently from owning a racing team. “He was a champ when he was young. He had won five national races at the time, and then left racing to take over a business, which is so hard because our job is so much fun. And so he left, and he built a business from where it was small, battery charger company to the biggest battery charger company. He gave up so much to do that for us, and then came back and built a team with me in 1999, and we went out and won the championship the first year. Since that, he’s won 300-plus races and 15 or 18 championships. He’s been a hell of a guy to watch,” Schumacher told VIP.

He wants to most be known as a good, kind person, and someone who went above and beyond to put smiles on the faces of those who watch what he does. “People forget, because our jobs are intense, but it’s really just entertainment. If you can’t make a bunch of kids smile and fans who show up for a race for one reason smile — then what are you doing. It’s expensive to go to a race, but they want to see someone go out and do something exceptional. And when they leave, I want them to go, ‘I paid $60 for a ticket, but I feel like I owe more.’” Moving forward, Schumacher is incredibly excited to continue working with the Maynard family and secure more wins for them to bring home to Clarksville. “You guys are in Clarksville, you know what they’ve done for the community. They do good things for the community, good things for racing, and good things for people. They’re caring, very passionate, and love being part of good things, good teams, and they’re quality people. When you are selecting people to be around for the rest of your career, you have to select carefully, and those are the people I want to be around. Those are the people that inspire me, they make me want to do better, and in a job where you have to perform at that level, that’s what you need.”