Richard Petty did a nice thing Saturday. Typically, he didn’t say anything about it, choosing not to draw attention to himself. Petty dispatched his jet to carry a teen-ager and his mother from Charlotte to their home near Minneapolis. The boy was critically injured in an Aug. 30 highway crash that killed his father on I-77 near Charlotte. Jeff and Kyle Erickson had spent the last summer weekend at their vacation home bear Boone, N.C. Jeff was driving Kyle to Douglas Airport, where Kyle would return to start his senior year in high school. Jeff’s wife was flying in for a week with her husband near Boone. Jeff was killed and Kyle badly hurt when an SUV cross the median and hit their rental car. Petty knew the Ericksons through their long-time support of the annual Kyle Petty Charity Ride Across America. “Good people, really, really good people,” he said of the father and son. “It’s something I wanted to do for them. The family will be having a hard time with this for a while.”( Daily Press )(9-7-2003)
