Dale Earnhardt Jr. was a fierce race car driver and that part of his personality might have had something to do with how he was raised. His father, Dale Earnhardt Sr., better yet known as ‘The Intimidator’, was a strict man if stories are to be believed. So when Junior was entering his teens, he was sent to the Oak Ridge Military Academy in North Carolina. It was because he had some behavioral problems at school. His father’s busy schedule and continuous travel schedule could have been another reason.
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Elaborating on his podcast, the 49-year-old said that most of the kids at school felt the same way. There was this question in everyone’s head that they had a hard time coming to terms with – why did their parents send them away from home? Junior said that almost all of the children he met at military school cried in their first two weeks of being there. It did not sound like a fun experience.
“There’s not many kids that would go that didn’t cry the first two weeks. Terribly homesick. Just the oddest feeling. You’re 12, 13, 14 years old and your parents don’t want you at home,” he said. “And all the kids there had that reaction. They were all pissed at their parents for being put in this position, and felt less valued.”
A young Dale Earnhardt Jr interviews his dad Dale Earnhardt. pic.twitter.com/cZGGuzgtif
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However, that feeling did not last too long. Eventually, everyone got used to life in military school and some even enjoyed it. Junior said that he would have liked to do one more year and graduate from Oak Ridge as he was only there for a few years. The 49-year-old learned discipline from the place among other things that he is thankful for today.
“You had to learn to handle things. If you were in a house like I was where you were used to everything being done for you and you just worried about going and eating, and that’s all you had to worry about was getting food out of the fridge, it was great, because I learned a lot of responsibility,” he added.
He was eventually brought back home by his parents at the age of 14 and graduated from Mooresville High School in 1992. Junior revealed that had it not been for motorsports, he might have finished high school at Oak Ridge. Turns out that racing helped him get away from a place he hated at least for the first couple of weeks.
Junior’s experience courtesy his father has moulded him into one of the biggest personalities in modern-day NASCAR. Apart from being a former Hendrick Motorsports driver, Junior is a renowned broadcaster and analyst of the sport and also owns an Xfinity Series team, JR Motorsports.
