Lyndon Amick enjoys the company of his family, 4-month-old son Jonus, wife Melanie, 1-year-old Drake, 4-year-old Billy, and Bear, the family pet. Credit: Rick Houston

Former NASCAR driver headed to Afghanistan

Amick member of National Guard unit to be deployed in Kabul

The house where Lyndon and Melanie Amick live with their three young sons sits well back in the woods, just outside of Saluda, S.C.

It is a large and beautiful structure, not a mansion, really, but a building that's obviously been put together with an eye toward warmth and comfort. There are toys here and there outside, as well as golf clubs, adult-sized and for kids. The porches are long and wide. They're perfect for watching the deer that often wander through the forest.

	Lyndon Amick recorded two top-fives and 10 top-10s in his seven part-time years in the Busch Series. Credit: ISC
	LYNDON AMICK •   Career stats

Inside, the rooms are spacious. The high-ceilinged and sunlit main living area features a couch that would sit -- and sleep -- an entire family. There's a hot tub here, a playroom for sons Billy, 4, Drake, 1, and 4-month-old Jonas. Really, this is 5,000 square feet of contented Southern living.

In ways that defy both explanation and imagination, it is a very, very long way from Saluda, S.C. to Kabul, Afghanistan.

Within just a few months, Spc. Lyndon Amick will be in the heart of Afghanistan, deployed there with his South Carolina National Guard unit, Bravo Company of the 1st Battalion -- 118th Infantry Regiment based out of Fountain Inn. A former Busch and Craftsman Truck Series driver, Amick once lived the life of a young up-and-coming racer. He gave up his NASCAR career to join the Guard, and by May, Amick will be on the ground in a country that has been ravaged by war for centuries.

Amick says that he's "very familiar" with the story of Pat Tillman, another professional athlete who gave up his sport -- in Tillman's case, as a safety with the Arizona Cardinals of the NFL -- to defend his country. A member of the elite U.S. Army Rangers, Tillman was killed in action April 22, 2004.

Amick is trained as an airborne infantryman, and in Afghanistan, will serve in security details that may range from patrols in and around the Kabul area to protecting various VIPs. The life he will lead will be light years removed from the one he is leaving behind at home. A member of what's surely one of South Carolina's wealthiest families and a successful real estate developer in his own right, Amick was most definitely not forced into joining the military in order to make ends meet.

But he did it anyway.

"I strongly believe that if I'm doing my job over there, then my kids aren't gonna have to do it over here," Amick said. "I fully expected when I signed that contract that I would be going somewhere in harm's way. That's part of the deal. That's part of the oath you take as a soldier."

'A dog-eat-dog world'

Racing had been a part of Amick's life for more than a decade. At just 18, he became the youngest winner in the history of Daytona International Speedway by taking his family owned machine to Victory Lane following the track's February 1996 Goody's Dash Series event. After capturing the now-defunct division's championship that season, Amick and his father, Bill, moved their team to a limited Busch Series schedule in 1997.

Lyndon Amich crashes the family owned 35 Chevy 15 laps into a race at Richmond in 2001. Credit: ISC

The younger Amick would eventually run a total of 93 Busch Series races between 1997-2003, with best finishes of fourth in 1998 at Myrtle Beach and fifth a year later at Talladega. In four career Craftsman Truck Series events split evenly between 2000-2001, his top showing was an August 2000 runnerup effort at Indianapolis Raceway Park.

Amick was living the dream, going to virtually every corner of the country for no other reason than to drive a racecar. His father had built a team around him, and there was a top-flight engine program in place, too. The kid had everything a kid could possibly ask for ... except, maybe, a way to figure out the sport's rat race.

"There's times I look back and I think about all the fun I had," Amick said. "I think about the good races that I ran [but] it was so intense. NASCAR's such an intense sport, and you're so focused in on being No. 1. It's just such a dog-eat-dog world.

"Actually, being out of it for a while, it's almost comical the things that I did and went through and saw happen. ... Yeah, I miss driving the racecar, but it's not worth going through everything you have to go through to go and do it again."

Asked what the down side of driving a racecar was, Amick responded, "Gee ... I don't know where to start on this." There was a constant scrutiny, good and bad, on everything he did as a driver. And while giving advice on how to get into the sport, Jack Roush once told the Amicks that "somebody has to write the checks."

Roush wasn't lying. Sponsorship was an on-again, off-again thing for Team Amick Motorsports, which attempted only one full-time season of Busch Series competition in 2000. Then, Bill Amick had his perspective on the sport changed drastically when Adam Petty lost his life during a Busch Series practice session at New Hampshire in May 2000.

Although Lyndon won an ARCA race at Charlotte just eight days after Petty's death, Bill's enthusiasm for the sport was all but gone.

"I personally had wished many times over that Lyndon had not chosen racing," Bill Amick said. "I don't know if you were at New Hampshire when Adam Petty was killed, but I was. As a father, that took about 90 percent of the passion and the zeal I had for racing away."

The younger Amick ran six events scattered throughout the 2001 schedule, and was released by team owner Dave Carroll just 10 races into the 2002 season. He finished ninth at Kansas later in the year for ppc Racing, and made one more start in 2003 at Talladega.

It would be the last start of his career. For a few weeks, the idea of joining the National Guard had been swirling through Amick's mind. He'd qualified 11th for the race that afternoon, in a Team Amick Chevrolet carrying the slogan, appropriately enough, "Support Our Soldiers" on the hood and quarter panels.

Less than 10 laps into the race, disaster struck when he was caught squarely in the middle of a multi-car accident. On his way to the infield care center, Amick made his decision.

"I was running third, and the second-place man cut a tire and spun out, [starting] a 25-car wreck," Amick said. "I got out of the car after tearing it up, and getting in the ambulance, I was like, 'You know ... I'm just gonna go ahead and do it.'"

'The price of freedom'

Melanie and Lyndon Amick

Melanie Amick is an attractive young woman who laughs and smiles easily. She and Lyndon began dating in August 1997 ... she thinks ... and they were married in April 2000. Of that, she is certain. All Melanie had known during their dating life was racing, and when he joined the Guard, she wasn't necessarily surprised.

"I know that he needs a challenge like that ... he needs some type of a dare-devilish challenge," Melanie said. "I don't know how else to put it."

Bill Amick says that's just the way his son has always been.

"He's had more courage and been, at times, too brave, I think," the elder Amick said with a light chuckle. "But as a person, that's part of who he is. That's part of what he is. He'll put himself in a situation that the body kicks in the adrenaline. He may be an adrenaline junkie, I'm not sure. He did the airborne training, and to me, they don't make a chute big enough to push me out of a perfectly good operating airplane."

Amick's last race in the Busch Series was April 5, 2003, and while his contract with the National Guard began May 23 of the same year, he didn't actually begin basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., until Nov. 12. Since then, his commitment to the Guard has been a weekend a month and two weekends a year in advanced training.

But he'd never been deployed. Maybe, just maybe, he would get through his commitment without being sent overseas. Yet just as his initial three-year contract was nearing its expiration, word came that the 1-118th was headed to Afghanistan. He had a choice to make. He could leave the Guard, but still be called to active duty at a later date, with quite possibly an unfamiliar unit.

Or he could sign up for another stretch with the National Guard, and head to Afghanistan with men he'd come to know and trust. He re-upped. Amick is scheduled to leave for Camp Shelby in Mississippi on Jan. 29 for approximately three months of training, and then it'll be on to central Asia.

Melanie Amick admits to a brief period of anger at the news of her husband's deployment. A certain sense of security had set in that he wouldn't be sent anywhere.

That sense of security was a false one.

"I was a little angry, because I thought, 'You don't seem upset about this. You seem like you want to go,'" Melanie said. "He's helped me realize I could have a bad attitude about this, and I would be miserable. We'd all be miserable for a year.

"But because he's got a good attitude about it, and he's doing all that he can to be successful at it, and be prepared for the deployment, then I'm glad he has that attitude about it. I've learned that that is better than being miserable."

Amick's father was a different story entirely. Bill Amick spent 11 years in the South Carolina National Guard, beginning during the darkest days of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s. He knows what it means for a country to be at war, and the consequences.

"Dad's reaction was pretty tough," Amick admitted. "My dad's always 'The Man.' He's raised me to be the way I am today. He always looked to God and used Him to guide his decisions. I was doing the same thing getting into the military.

"I told him I felt like God put me in this position, and He's gonna take care of me. I told him, 'If God can take care of me driving a racecar for 10 years, I think He can handle one year in Afghanistan.'"

Bill Amick has a deep and resounding voice, and when he talks of his son's service to the military, it has an almost palpable feel to it.

"I was afraid you were gonna ask me that," he responded when asked about Afghanistan, and then paused to collect his thoughts. Bill Amick is a man of faith. He believes that God is in control. He believes in his son, and is pleased with the man that he's become. But when Lyndon decided to stay in the Guard and therefore be put in harm's way, Bill Amick was, to put it bluntly, bent completely out of shape.

"This shows you how little I am, but I was literally spun out, to use a racing term, for three days," Bill Amick said. "I mean, it really set me back, and I had to get in a prayer closet and finally get it all sorted out, which I now have.

"But for three days, it really shook me up. If I'm drawing breath, I will be praying for him each and every day, along with a lot of other people that I know think a lot of him.

"Whether he's on the battlefront or whether he's at a race or regardless of where he is, his life is in God's hands. I would rather he be somewhere else. We know how brutal this enemy is. ... I wouldn't want to encourage my son to suffer that type of consequence, but it is the price of freedom, and we take that price of freedom for granted. We all do. I'm very proud that he is willing, because of his love for his sons, to go pay the price. I admire him very much for that."

Melanie Amick is one of the lucky ones. While her husband is overseas, she will have an incredible amount of support with the children in the form of family and friends.

"You'd have to spend more than a day with us to understand the depth of how close we are as a family," Bill Amick said. "I'm bragging. I'm just point-blank, brutally bragging when I say this, but our family's tight. ... We'll rally around Melanie.

"I've already explained to Melanie that if she needs me 24/7, I will be there when Lyndon's gone. I'm not the only member of the family that feels that way. We take care of each other."

'He's a soldier, first and foremost'

The citizen soldiers Amick serves with sometimes ask about his career in NASCAR. If they do ask, without fail, he says, the second question is almost always, "Do you know Dale Earnhardt Jr.?"

And, yes, Amick does know Junior.

Past that, there's not much discussion of his life as a racer and none whatsoever of his family's wealth. The men of Company B, 1-118th care not in the least that Amick is rich. His bank account won't help when their lives are on the line come mid-May or so. His ability as a soldier -- nothing more, nothing less -- will be what counts.

"He's a soldier, first and foremost," says Sgt. 1st Class Scott Sorgee, Amick's squad leader who works full time as a supervisor for an electrical contractor. "He told me about his history in the Busch Series, and he was still just another soldier to me.

"I didn't put him up on pedestal, and he didn't put himself on a pedestal. I respect him for that. His leadership skills are impeccable. He's got a natural knack for being a leader. ... He has performed as a stellar soldier."

Amick is a team leader who oversees four men in a squad of nine. As military commands go, it's as small as it gets. But it's one that Amick takes very seriously.

"I'm responsible for those guys that are under me," Amick says. "If everyone said, 'You don't have to go,' and they didn't go, then we wouldn't have anybody over there to fight. I feel a responsibility toward those guys.

"I would not want to hear that one of those guys got hurt and I was here. That's my responsibility. That's hard to say, because nothing's more important to me than my family. But it doesn't excuse me from doing what I signed up to do, either."

During the Civil War, those who could raise the money were allowed to pay other men $300 to take their place in the draft. Amick would not have been one of those making the payments. That would've been the easy way out.

"Who should be doing what I'm doing?" Amick asked. "Should it be a guy that's flat broke? ... Who should be the guys over there fighting? The answer is everybody. It shouldn't be only a certain part of the population.

"Yeah, my family has been very blessed, very fortunate. I'm very blessed, very fortunate. But, hey, I need to be over there just as bad as anybody else does because we're all Americans, regardless of background."