Remembering Brett Golik

This column originally appeared in the Newton Daily News after the death of Brett Golik. Today marks the five year anniversary of his death and looking back, Brett is still missed and I thought this serves as a good reminder of what to be thankful for today.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The community of Newton and the Knoxville Raceway sprint car family lost a courageous competitor this past week with the passing of 40 year old Brett Golik. Brett battled brain cancer for two and half years and in that time frame, Brett made an effort to try to right the wrongs in his life. He became an inspiration trying to make people aware of supporting cancer research and his faith.
I didn’t know Brett personally, but as an avid race fan I followed Brett’s career at Knoxville. I respected Brett for chasing his dream. He worked at Maytag in the factory for ten years and found a way to put a yellow numbered 5G sprint car on the famed half mile oval for 18 seasons. It took Brett a few years to become competitive but he was able to pick up three wins in the 360 division. One of those wins was a classic battle with Knoxville legend David Hesmer from Marshalltown who is a four time track champion and is the all time wins leader in the 360 class. Hesmer remembered the night Golik had the better car and beat him to the finish line.

”Brett won the A-main one night when I was driving for Archie Ergenbright,” said Hesmer. “Brett started towards the front and I made it to second but Brett had a pretty good size lead. I was catching him, but I was going to run out of time. With two laps to go there is a yellow and I thought we got this race now. On the restart I thought I could pass the 5G. I had been running low and Brett was running the cushion. The green came out, I went low, but Brett drove two perfect laps on the cushion and won the race. The fastest car won the race, but I don’t mind taking second when we were not the fastest car and the winner drives two perfect laps!” Brett won three features and finished as high as seventh in the 360 points in 2000 and won features on Sep 5, 1998, July 17, 1999, and May 20, 2000.

Another fellow competitor of Golik’s in the 360 class is Brett Mather from Ames. Mather is a quiet guy and doesn’t socialize much, but he remembered Golik as a good guy who knew how hard it was to keep a sprint car running on the track from week to week. “Brett Golik is the only person to come to me after a crash and apologize,” said Mather. “I didn’t quite know what to say because he came along and got caught up in my crash, he had no where to go. It wrecked his car as bad as mine and I should have been apologizing to him! I’ve kept my distance from fellow racers because it’s hard when accidents happen and you can cost others a lot of money but I looked differently at Golik after that day.”

There is one story that I have a personal connection with Brett that has nothing to do with racing. It has to do with his efforts to make peace with the wrongs in his life after finding out his condition was terminal. Brett showed up on the door step of my aunt & uncle in Newton one afternoon almost two years ago to apologize for bullying my cousin when they were little kids. My cousin was killed in a 1981 car accident at the age of ten. Brett had tremendous guilt for his actions back when they were kids and after nearly 30 years he felt he had to own up to it. So he apologized repeatedly to my aunt and uncle and begged for their forgiveness. My aunt & uncle knew nothing about these incidents but they said he was forgiven for whatever he had done, it was a long time ago and they were just kids after all. Brett then offered them an envelope with some cash in it. Of course my aunt and uncle refused to take the money and asked Brett to donate the money to a charity or use it to pay for his medical bills. But Brett insisted repeatedly that he had to give the money to them or he wouldn't feel like he had done right. He refused to walk away without them taking this gift, so they finally took it and later donated it to a charity of their choice. But that takes a lot of courage to do something like that, and he did this for other people as well to try to make things right before he met his maker.

Brett is a reminder that life is short, but because of his illness Brett was able to find God and the Holy Spirit was truly alive in him. Brett has inspired me to become a better person, treat people right, to be more forgiving, and give the glory to God. My prayers are with his wife Jennifer and father James. Godspeed.