“For us we have ran some kind of car in Breast Cancer Awareness month for some years now,” Harvick said. “All of our sponsors seem to participate in one way or another. I know this year we have a pink car for the green races during October. It is great to see them put full effort forth; pretty much every one in the sport participates in it at some way, shape, or form.”
Harvick believes NASCAR does a great job supporting different causes such as Breast Cancer Awareness.
“Obviously, you can’t do everything,” Harvick said. “If I am not doing it another driver, another team, or racetrack is always putting forth the effort to help. That is one of the greatest things about our sport. There is a lot of talk about all the negative stuff in the sport, but one of the best things about our sport is nobody supports the military as much as NASCAR does. You will be hard pressed to find another sport that participates in each other’s foundations or each other’s benefits and charities or functions to help people more than the NASCAR garage.”
Senior Manager of Public and Community Relations, Andrew Smith said painting Talladega pink is something that they wanted to do to bring awareness to the disease that affects 1 in 8 women over their lifetime according to Breast Cancer.org.
“NASCAR brings in drivers to all of the Chase markets and we were fortunate enough to have Kevin Harvick come in as ours,” Smith said. “Since we are the first race in October, we wanted to help promote Breast Cancer awareness. What we did today, Kevin came in and met with breast cancer survivors and he had lunch with them. Then, he helped turn Talladega pink by painting the logo at the start finish line. That is probably the most recognizable logo at Talladega Superspeedway. That is something that we hope will bring attention to Breast Cancer awareness.”
Vickie Prosch, who works at Trinity Medical Center in Birmingham, was one of the survivors that came out to Talladega Superspeedway. It has been nine years since Prosch’s last cancer treatment. She said she enjoyed being around all the other survivors.
“We all work at the same hospital, but I don’t know any of the other ladies,” the Cropwell native said. “It was nice to meet the other survivors, because we are from such different links of time of surviving. Some of them are just a couple of years and one lady is 24 years, so it is nice for us to know each other now. If I see any of them in the hall I‘ll know who they are.”
Prosch said enjoyed the time she spent painting the logo and eating lunch with Harvick.
“It was fun, but I messed up, but it was fun,” Prosch said. “He is cool and he is very down to earth. He is very approachable and he is just a regular person.”
Contact LaVonte Young at lyoung@dailyhome.com.
