Blast from past strikes with full Force

Much of Michelle Bukaty's enjoyment in life comes in quarter-mile intervals. She is what you would call a dyed-in-wool coveralls, drag racing fanatic.

When she was born, in 1971, her dad was burning rubber at the dragstrips around Buffalo, N.Y. Chuck Gioeli would burn rubber. Little Michelle would watch from her playpen.

When she was old enough, her dad helped her get a job at the raceway park in Lancaster, 11 miles from Buffalo.

Guys would burn rubber, Michelle would chase them down to hand them their elapsed time slips. This was before timing computers. Then when Lancaster Raceway got a timing system, Michelle operated it. After that, she ran the staging lanes.

Sometimes, on the one or two days when the weather was nice in Buffalo, they'd run 250 cars. That's a lot of burning rubber. For 24 years, Michelle Bukaty worked the Friday night drag races.

Then she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - Lou Gehrig's disease.

Now she doesn't work at the drag strip anymore.

Sometimes her legs get weak and she falls, because ALS attacks the part of the central nervous system that controls voluntary movement.

In drag racing, it's like not getting the power from the engine to the wheels. In real life, it's much worse. It makes it difficult to perform everyday tasks, to take care of your kids. Michelle and her husband, Jim, have two children; Amanda, 14, and Ryan, 10.

Two years ago, Michelle had to quit working the Friday night drag races, because there is no cure for ALS.

Lou Gehrig played 2,130 consecutive games for the Yankees. He was known as the Iron Horse.

But not even a locomotive engine and steel wheels can turn back the ravages of ALS. Not even John Force can outrun it.

John Force is Michelle Bukaty's favorite pro drag racer. Force, and an NHRA Pro Mod driver and engine builder from Elmira, N.Y., named Mike Janis, who also is racing in the Big O Tires NHRA Nationals at Las Vegas Motor Speedway that concludes today.

"John Force was in an exhibition race at Lancaster on the day his wife called to tell him she was going into labor to give birth to (his youngest racing daughter) Courtney," said Bukaty, 41. "I had my picture taken with him. I'd like to meet him again and get it signed."

She said that on Monday, before getting on a plane for Las Vegas.

When the people at the speedway learned about her situation - and the story behind that picture - they thought it would be neat if Michelle and Jim got to meet John Force.

The people at the speedway are pretty cool sometimes.

Michelle Bukaty also said she never had seen the bright lights of Las Vegas. That was on her bucket list, too. But she was looking more forward to smelling the nitromethane and feeling the ground shake again, under duress from those 800-horsepower engines. And if she were to meet John Force again, and he were to sign her picture, the one of them together, how cool would that be?

On Saturday, she met John Force again.

He signed her picture.

It was very, very cool.

Force's people had invited Michelle and Jim behind the ropes where his crew was tuning his Funny Car. Courtney Force, who also had heard about Michelle, came by first.

She looked at the photo and got a kick out of seeing how young her old man looked 24 years ago. And then her old man blew in from nowhere, like a tsunami, like John Force always does, and he hugged Michelle Bukaty like she was his sister or his crew chief. They chatted for a minute before Force said he had to go warm up his engine, and everybody put their fingers in their ears.

And then he was back, and so was Courtney. John Force told the Bukatys a Buffalo story, about Jim Kelly no less, because Force has a story for every occasion. And there were hearty laughs, and more hugs and smiles and pictures and autographs. And then John Force told a somber story.

He told Michelle that when he had his bad wreck, the doctors told him he was finished, too, finished racing at least. And that it wasn't the pins holding his bones together or the long hours in rehab that brought him back. It was the doctors telling him there was no way back.

He told Michelle Bukaty she was going to be OK, and she began to cry.

As I was leaving the paddock, I saw Michelle and Jim Bukaty having lunch with Jack Beckman, another Funny Car driver. Beckman had heard about Michelle's situation, too. He invited her and Jim into the hospitality tent and even arranged for Michelle to ride with him in the chase vehicle after his qualifying run.

Drag racing people are pretty cool, too.

They drive in a straight line, but the story had come full circle.

On July 4, 1939, two months after this terrible disease that would be named for him forced him to retire from baseball, Lou Gehrig told an emotional crowd at Yankee Stadium that he considered himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

When I left Michelle Bukaty on Saturday, you could smell the nitromethane and feel the rumble of the racing engines in the distance. She was smiling. She may not consider herself the luckiest woman on the face of the earth, but she looked like the happiest.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.