Crew chief Jim Oberhofer has that cool swagger, that strong physique that signals that he can take as well as he can give when the infamous Kalitta Motorsports moshpit erupts on the winning starting line at a dragstrip.

But he has a sensitive side, too, evident when he spoke recently with Competition Plus’ Bobby Bennett during the weekend that marked the second anniversary of wife Tammy’s passing.

At 53, Tammy Oberhofer was a vibrant woman cancer stole June 18, 2013.

Jim Oberhofer, known throughout the drag-racing industry simply as “Jim O,” is the organization’s vice-president and crew chief for the Mac Tools Dragster that Doug Kalitta drives. “Tammy-O” was the team’s longtime public-relations representative and later office manager.

At the time of her passing, Doug Kalitta called Tammy Oberhofer “hands down . . . the driving force of making things happen behind the scenes at Kalitta Motorsports. Her passion towards her family and work was second to none, and I believe we had to hire at least three people to cover the workload she did over the years by herself. I personally will miss her smiling face and that can-do, make-it-happen attitude she displayed in everything she did.”

“I feel blessed every day that I had Tammy in my life,” Jim Oberhofer said. “I still have her in my life. I’m lucky that people allow me to talk about her, because I love talking about her.

“It’s tough. I think about her every single day. I’m so fortunate to be surrounded by family out here in the racing community: the Kalitta family . . . My brother [Jon Oberhofer] works out here . . . [and Funny Car crew chiefs] Nicky [Boninfante], he’s like a brother to me and Tommy D. [DeLago] . . . I’m just fortunate, very blessed, to have such a great support group around me, behind me,” he said.

“Drag racing is just an unbelievable family. Without that, I don’t know how I would have survived, to be honest with you. But I’m very, very fortunate for that,” Oberhofer said.

Of course, his 13-month ordeal from her diagnosis to death was no match for her trial, but the encounter with this sneakthief disease and its aftermath was rough. And grief never comes with a handbook. But in Oberhofer’s case, it came with a beautiful and mature young daughter.

“I’ve got my daughter Ashley working with me. She reminds me so much of Tammy. She has so many of the same good qualities that Tammy had,” the proud papa said. “And it has been a blessing to have her out here with me all the time, going to all these races. She’s so passionate about drag racing, like Tammy was, and so passionate about the Kalitta team, like Tammy was.

“It’s funny – I get a lot of people come up to me and they go, ‘Oh my God, Ashley reminds me so much of Tammy, just the way she acts.’ So that makes me feel really good – also knowing that Ashley has kind of followed in Tammy’s footsteps with doing all our social media stuff and being part of the PR [public relations] team at Kalitta Motorsports,” Oberhofer said. “That’s how I met Tammy. She was the PR girl here at Kalitta Motorsports back in the late ‘80s. So it’s been cool.”

Like his driver said, Tammy Oberhofer was an integral part of the Kalitta Motorsports operation, and her illness and passing sent a ripple of sorrow throughout the Ypsilanti, Mich., headquarters.

“It’s something . . . It’s tough, because Tammy was such a huge part of this team, and to not have her out here anymore, it’s tough. It’s tough to not have her physically in my life anymore,” Jim O said.

“But I’ve learned how strong this drag-racing community is. All the teams that supported me . . . You know, maybe we aren’t the best of friends on the racetrack, but the support that I got from so many people was amazing,” he said.

And he has reciprocated, in his effort to help others struggling with cancer and to pay back the sport for its caring.

“People with cancer . . . .Don Schumacher, I’ve talked to him a lot, making sure he’s OK with his cancer that he’s dealing with. We’re all competitors out here, but man, you don’t want to see anything—What I saw, what happened, with Tammy I don’t wish that upon my worst enemy in the world. I would never want to see anybody go through that,” Oberhofer said. “Every time I see Don Schumacher – this might sound weird – I’m happy to see him out here. I’m happy to see that he’s doing well. It makes me happy.”

He said the fight goes on, in Tammy’s honor.

“I also know there’s a lot of other people who are fighting the same struggle, fighting the same fight, day in and day out. I wish there was more I can do to make things better for people who are fighting cancer. I’m hoping that somewhere down the road they do find a cure for it. It’s a terrible disease. Some people are able to beat it, and some people aren’t. I’m very into being able to supporting whatever I can to try to help things,” he said.

Funny Car racer Alexis DeJoria, in cooperation with Nevada Health Centers, has for the past two years in October helped in a practical way by sponsoring a “Mammovan” at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It offers free mammograms for female race fans. And Oberhofer said he’s all for it.

“When Alexis does her mammogram trailer, we do whatever we can to support her. I want to do what I can to help out,” he said. “It’s a bad disease, and I hope that someday they can cure it.”

Tammy Oberhofer helped redirect his angst during her illness by giving him and his team a specific mission at the races, ones she had to follow from home.

“Every time I left, Tammy would always tell me, ‘You and Doug go win me a Wally.’ So we would try, every single time, to come back with a Wally for her. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen,” Oberhofer said.

It was a small favor for his non-complaining wife.

“Tammy was a person who never wanted anybody to feel sorry for her. She never wanted to show the struggle that she was having. She hid a lot of things from a lot of people, including me, about how bad it really was,” he said.

“Once I finally pulled my head out of my a—and really understood what was going on and really understood this woman was dying in front of me, right in front of my eyes, it became hard. It became really hard,” he said. “And drag racing became really secondary to me. Tammy and Ashley were first, as they should be all the time.”

He called that period “definitely a learning experience for me. You always say if you had a second chance to do things over, you would. Unfortunately, there’s no do-overs in life. But I learned a lot from this experience, and I look at life differently.”

Sadly for the Kalitta Motorsports team, Oberhofer had a situation with which to contrast Tammy O’s 13-month good-bye. Just five years earlier, nearly to the day in 2008, the race team lost drag-racing champion Scott Kalitta to a high-speed qualifying accident at Englishtown, N.J. Scott Kalitta, too, was a fun and feisty presence, but his death came so fast it was difficult to get closure.  

“I look at what happened with Scott,” Oberhofer said. “You know, one minute Scott’s sitting there, healthy, carrying on, and the next minute he’s gone. And you never got to say good-bye to him. You always wish that there was something else that you could say to him before it happened.

“I know [with] Tammy . . . we got to reflect a lot on a lot of things, on our life together. So if there’s any sort of good thing about it, there was that time to reflect on our life together,” he said. “But no matter what, it’s just terrible to see somebody like her— one minute she was perfectly healthy.  The next minute, this disease was taking her over. It happened in 13 months. It’s just amazing what happened in those 13 months.

“But I learned so much about her in those 13 months and how strong she was. In my mind, she was the most courageous woman I’ve ever met in my life,” he said.

Time might not heal all wounds. It might heal them only partially. Healing might require lots of time. And healing has its awkwardness, too. Jim Oberhofer has taken those steps, guided by encouraging daughter Ashley Oberhofer.

“I have moved on. I’m so lucky because of my daughter. Without Ashley, I don’t know how things would be for me right now. She’s been so amazing through all this. Things could have gone two ways with this. Things could have gone really bad or really good. But they’ve gone really good,” he said, as relieved as he was pleased.

“And she’s been very supportive of me,” said the dad who described himself as “not 25 anymore, but I’m also not 100 years old.”

He said, “Having her blessing to move on in life is good. I just take everything day by day. I’m very fortunate right now. I feel I’ve got a great life. I feel like I’ve got an unbelievable daughter. I feel like I’ve got a great support system: my family, the Kalitta family, the NHRA family. Things, as we know, can go completely the wrong way.”

For right now, despite what he has been through, that’s the opposite direction it’s heading for Jim Oberhofer.

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