HOMESTEAD, Fla. — Joe Gibbs keeps mementos of his late son on his office desk. There’s a photo of a little girl who could barely walk but whose day brightened when J.D. Gibbs surprised her with a tour of the Joe Gibbs Racing shop. Hundreds of letters are stacked on the desk, written by fans, friends, strangers, all wanting to say thank you to J.D. for acts of kindness, big or small.
Gibbs turns 79 later this month and has spent a lifetime as a leader of men, notably as a three-time Super Bowl champion coach for the Washington Redskins and a four-time NASCAR Cup Series championship owner. He has three shots to win a fifth title Sunday at Homestead-Miami Speedway with a loaded lineup of Martin Truex Jr., Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch in championship contention for the winner-take-all race.
Though the championship push comes tinged with sadness for Gibbs, those daily reminders of the difference his son made to others have helped ease the pain of his January death. He was 49 when he died from complications a long battle with a degenerative neurological disease.
“I think it made a big impression on me from the standpoint (that) I’m kind of doing big things and big this and big that,” Gibbs said. “J.D. would take individual time, and it comes back over and over again.”
Gibbs quit the Redskins twice, each time surrendering the high-profile job to devote more time to his family. Gibbs’ sons, J.D. and Coy, followed him into JGR, and it was J.D. who discovered Hamlin at a late-model test at Hickory Motor Speedway in North Carolina in the early 2000s. Hamlin dedicated this NASCAR season to J.D., and Hamlin opened with a bang: a Daytona 500 victory that has propelled him to the brink of his first career Cup title.
Gibbs even channeled his son’s ethos during the season when Hamlin was going through a rough patch in his personal life. Hamlin and Gibbs had the kind of heart-to-heart talks that hadn’t necessarily defined their 15-year working relationship.
Gibbs supported Hamlin just as he believed J.D. would have been by the driver’s side.
“I leaned on him quite a bit. He helped me through. He really did,” Hamlin said. “I think oddly enough, as all that went on, my performance went straight up, very linear. He’s a person that, although I don’t talk to much outside of racing, when I needed him, he was there and he helped.”
J.D. Gibbs played defensive back and quarterback at William & Mary (1987-90) while his father coached the Redskins. He transitioned into NASCAR and the family business when the elder Gibbs launched his NASCAR team in 1992.
J.D. Gibbs was eventually co-chairman of JGR but began with the organization as a part-time driver and over-the-wall crew member. He even made 13 NASCAR national series starts between 1998 and 2002. He stepped away from JGR in 2015 when it was announced he was suffering from “conditions related to brain function.”
