them for everybody else. He’d say, ‘What size shoe do you wear?’ ‘Ah,
size 11.’ He’d go out to the trunk of his car and he’d have a set of 11s for
you. He must’ve bought thousands of pairs of tennis shoes for people.
“He helped people and kids with money or whatever it took. Even
later in life when he wasn’t doing so good himself, he was always quick
to pick up the check or help someone out even if he couldn’t afford it.”
That soft side also came across in McEwen’s interactions with his
legion of fans. Between promotional tours for the 2013 release of the
Snake & Mongoose film and even recent appearances on the NHRA
national-event circuit as a part of the NHRA Legends Tour, McEwen
was always eager to please the people who idolized him.
“He knew how to promote and he knew how to keep the fans happy,”
Prudhomme says. “We would go places and sign autographs together
and it’d blow me away because I won 20 times more races than he
did, but the fans liked him every bit as they liked me, if not more in
a lot of cases.
“He just had a way about him. He was the ‘Mongoose’. I’m sure going
to miss the guy.” - NATE VAN WAGNEN
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