Jim Hunters official NASCAR title is vice president of corporate communications, an all-encompassing job description that for media members includes everything from formal news conference presentations to informal golf-cart chats. A former newspaper sports writer, Hunter is a beat writers best friend, often surfacing in stories as a ‘NASCAR source’Â ‘Â the guy with the background information critical to the news du jour. Jim is also a former president of Darlington Raceway ‘Â his beloved home track. As such, Hunter is an advocate of the estimated gazillion fans who populate NASCAR Nation. But on Monday, and every day since Oct. 31, 2009, Jim is another friend fighting some form of cancer. ‘I have small-cell lung cancer in the upper right lung,’Â Hunter repeated at Texas Motor Speedways The Speedway Club [annual Media Day this week], where he had accompanied NASCAR president Mike Helton on the way home from a weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Hunter said ‘No, Im doing good. I feel good. Im looking at 2010 with an attitude of gratitude because so many people have sent me emails and asked about me. This is truly a caring industry. Its been amazing.’Â Hunter was strong enough to attend the latter portion of Speedweeks at Daytona International Speedway last month, and made the cross-country jaunt with ‘Big Mike’Â to Vegas. The illness had forced Jim to miss the 2009 season-ender at Homestead-Miami Speedway in November and the relocated NASCAR Awards Banquet in Vegas in December for the first time since the mid-1970s. Friday looms as another landmark day for Jim over at Twin Lakes Imaging Center in Daytona Beach. ‘Im going for a PET (positron emission tomography) scan ‘Â thats when they run dye through your system and find out whether the tumor is gone or in remission or whatever,’Â said Hunter, recalling how this journey began at Talladega Superspeedway last fall.
‘I was there for the race,’ Hunter said. ‘We had scheduled a funky Halloween party for Saturday night before the race. And Saturday morning I woke up and my face and arm were swollen, big-time. I went to the emergency room and I had a blood clot in my neck. And within two hours I was diagnosed with lung cancer. So they take me in the hospital, put me to sleep, took a biopsy on Monday’¦and it was malignant. And they gave me my first chemo treatment on Tuesday. So I had chemo Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and flew back to Daytona.’ See full story at Racin’ Today.(3-5-2010)
