Patrick Bowen depends on his dad Ricky to help him when he races.  That’s not unusual. Many sons depend on pop to get them dialed in, set just so in the water box, even on the starting line. Ricky Bowen goes several steps further, though: he literally lifts son Patrick into and out of his dragster each and every time he goes down the track. Once in the cockpit, though, Patrick is on his own, and he can quite capably go rounds --- he so impressed “Million Dollar Man” and racing promoter George Howard by going five rounds at a 2002 B&M race at Huntsville Dragway that he got free entry into the Twin 20s at the Million Dollar Drag Race in Memphis later that year.

Patrick, 28, is confined to a wheelchair. He has been since he was a child. He is fully paralyzed from the waist down. He was born with spina bifida, a birth defect in which the spinal cord is not connected. He went through several recent operations to fuse his spine, but twice the operations failed. The rods the doctors placed in his back held on the last one.

Patrick Bowen depends on his dad Ricky to help him when he races.  That’s not unusual. Many sons depend on pop to get them dialed in, set just so in the water box, even on the starting line. Ricky Bowen goes several steps further, though: he literally lifts son Patrick into and out of his dragster each and every time he goes down the track. Once in the cockpit, though, Patrick is on his own, and he can quite capably go rounds --- he so impressed “Million Dollar Man” and racing promoter George Howard by going five rounds at a 2002 B&M race at Huntsville Dragway that he got free entry into the Twin 20s at the Million Dollar Drag Race in Memphis later that year.

Patrick, 28, is confined to a wheelchair. He has been since he was a child. He is fully paralyzed from the waist down. He was born with spina bifida, a birth defect in which the spinal cord is not connected. He went through several recent operations to fuse his spine, but twice the operations failed. The rods the doctors placed in his back held on the last one.

Father and son work together in their own auto parts business, called Bowen Auto Parts, located in North Augusta, South Carolina. Mom Patricia also helps out in Patrick’s racing; they travel as a team. Patrick races his own J. Ed Horton-built four-link dragster that was bought new and is equipped with all the standard bells and whistles that any Super Pro dragster is equipped with, save for one difference --- he races with hand controls. Patrick is able to hit the top bulb on the Christmas tree with the best of them.

“My dad’s best friend, Mark Hett, who works at Kimberly Clark here, made the hand controls. My engine is a 388-inch small-block Chevy built by Abby’s Performance Engine of North Augusta, and I’ve gone 5.51 at 125 mph,” Patrick says. He has won several gamblers races and got down to the semis at more big events at tracks from South Carolina to Georgia and beyond.

Father Ricky Bowen started taking Patrick to the drags when he was real small, about five years old. They were just spectating at the time.

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But you can credit the Junior Dragster movement with getting Patrick into active drag racing.

“He started when he was 13, racing a Junior,” says father Ricky. “We went to the NHRA Southern Nationals in Atlanta and they had some on display. It was the year NHRA was getting the Junior Dragster league started, 1994 or 1995. We went to spectate, to watch John Force and the big boys race, and when he saw those Junior Dragsters, that’s all he was concerned with. He felt like he could do it. So we came back and called (famed Spartanburg, South Carolina, chassis builder) Tommy Mauney, and he was willing to build one for us. He had never built a Junior before. He was building Pro Modifieds at the time.” The Bowens had met Mauney when he came to race at Carolina Dragway, their home track.

Ricky, like all teenagers, raced a bit but nothing like they do now. He, like his son, has always loved sports --- racing, football, baseball, basketball, but especially drag racing. “And Patrick being born handicapped, he always had to watch other kids play, and when I saw this, I felt like it was something that he could do, to participate in, and I could sit on the sidelines and help him. When we got the Junior car built, he took to it like fish to water,” the elder Bowen says

They raced it as a family from the time Patrick was 13 to age 17. He won the track championship at Carolina, and they also ran some of the big Junior races, like the Turkey Nationals at Gainesville Raceway in Florida, with 300 others; Patrick got runner-up there. They also went to a big Jr. Dragster race at Atlanta Dragway, with 200 cars, and he got another runner-up. “I ran him out of gas that day, and I figure that was the only reason we didn’t win that,” Ricky says. They then went to Greer Dragway in South Carolina, and Patrick got runner-up there; his Jr. broke a chain in the water box before the final, and Ricky figures he might have won that race as well.

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When he was 17, Patrick had to have a back operation to correct scoliosis, a curvature of the spine, and Ricky says it was supposed to have been a one-shot deal, but they had back luck with it. “The rods would break, so the doctors had to take them out and put them back in three times. He was out of racing until he was about 23,” he says.

Patrick stayed in a hospital bed at home for three months, lying for all that time on his back and stomach. That time, the operation worked and his spine properly fused, so he was able to get healed up finally. After he recuperated, the Bowen’s made a call to J. Ed at Horton Race Cars for a full-sized, delay-box-equipped dragster, but J. Ed had a waiting list. “But a friend of ours had two spots for two dragsters with J. Ed, and he gave Patrick one of his spots so we could get the car built that year,” Ricky said

Horton whipped up a nice one. It’s a four-link dragster, built like any other regular bracket dragster, but the only thing different were the measurements from Patrick to build up the seat a bit off the bottom of the chassis. The hand controls were made by Mark hett, a machinist friend of the family whom Ricky has known all his life. Ricky says that Hett has always been a genius when it came to machining and fabrication, and a man who once raced go-karts and ground his own cams for his racing effort. Ricky knew that Patrick had to race with hand controls, so Hett told him, ‘Give me some time to think about it, and I’ll come up with something,’ and that’s what he did.

The car does have regular foot pedals, so it can be sold if the Bowens decide to sell it and build another. It even has another seat to go in it. Patrick uses a hand brake to stop the car, which is mounted on the left side, the same way his Jr. Dragster was built. Hett designed a throttle that is mounted to the butterfly steering wheel, and it goes down through the steering column. The throttle is a pull-up mechanism that is operated with the two fingers of Patrick’s left hand. It’s all spring-loaded, and when he lets go, it returns the carb back to idle. The trans brake and staging/bumping button are normal like all dragsters. Patrick bumps the dragster in with his left hand and cuts a light with his right hand. An air shifter shifts the car. A J.W. trans and converter complete the dragster, while the engine is a 388-inch small-block Chevy built by Abby’s Race Engines, located a mile from the Bowen’s store. The wild flame paint job was sprayed by Waters Paint and Body of Augusta, Georgia

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The rear part of the dragster is unique. “We wanted something that looked different than everybody else, so we had J. Ed and Richard Waters come up with a cover that covers the electronics and batteries. The wings give it a different appearance than other dragsters,” Ricky says. The car has gone 8.80s at 142 mph, with Patrick getting out of it on the top end. At Carolina Dragway, its usual times are 5.50s at 128 mph.

When it comes time to race, Ricky lifts Patrick in the cockpit, and when he comes back to the pits, Ricky then lifts him out of the car. “He unstraps himself. He does everything else you or I can do to bracket race,” the elder Bowen says.

His future? What else would you expect from a family so dedicated? “We’ll race as long as he wants to and as long as he is healthy enough to do it. Now he’s begging me to build a faster motor for next year,” Ricky Bowen says, smiling.

“I’m proud of him. He’s amazing,” he said. “A kid that has faced 22 major surgeries … I’ve never seen him complain, never seen him without a smile on his face, never seen him without an attitude that he can do anything anybody else can do. And that’s the way I’ve tried to raise him,” Ricky says. They are active Christians at Curtis Baptist Church of Augusta, Georgia, near their home.

“I really love it,” Patrick says. “I enjoy it and I want to let other people who are in wheelchairs know that they’re able to do anything they want to do, as long as they put their mind to it and have an excellent attitude.”

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