“Same thing; we won a $100,000-to-win race at Eldora, and by a huge margin just wiped everybody out,” Dave continues. “And my right rear tire exploded coming off of four to the checkered flag and, you know, I limped across and won. But, he‘s like, ‘Why the f**k did you hit the wall right there the last lap?‘” Dale emphasizes with a laugh. “I told him, ‘No, I hit it 10 other times — I didn‘t hit it on the last lap.‘
“But then there was a couple nights it shocked me,” he says. His voice changing as he grows more emotional. “One night somewhere…Williams Grove. We win the race and he said something like, ‘You gave ‘em a driving lesson tonight.‘ That was huge!”
Indeed, if you were fortunate enough to earn a compliment from Woodruff, you knew you‘d earned it. “I got told that one time,” Bobby Davis Jr. recalls with a hearty laugh. “We were at Hagerstown, Maryland, and man, we was racing hard. Racing hard! And, I don‘t know, I was running about fourth or fifth and I made it up to second. And, I believe it was Jimmy Sills driving Weikert‘s car, he was leading the race and he had about a half-a-straightaway on me when I got into second. And, I kept chargin‘, chargin‘, chargin‘, chargin‘, and I ran him down.
“And we took the white flag and we were comin‘ around through one and two and I got right on him going into turn three and I put a big ol‘ slide job on him and passed him and slid all the way up in front of him coming off of turn four — just barely had enough room.
“And it was really close. Really close! It was either me or him, and I won the race, OK? So, I was staying with Kenny — matter of fact in the same room — and we were driving back in the hauler. As soon as we left the race track, he said, “Hmm.” He gave me a couple grunts. He said, “You did a good job, man. That was really good what you did.” That was the only time I got it,” he concluded with a laugh.
In 1991, Woodruff suffered a heart attack at a race track in Houston, Texas. Davis was the big man‘s driver, racing for Beverly and Casey Luna. “We won the race and I‘m on the front straightaway,” Davis remembers. “We‘re all getting our picture taken, and he says, ‘I‘m not feeling good.‘” Woodruff informed Davis that he was going to take the four-wheeler and head back to their pit. “So, we got done at the celebration and everything, taking pictures,” Davis continues. “And I got in the car to come back and, when I‘m coming back to the trailer in the car, I see the ambulance was at our trailer. And, that‘s when he got really sick and feeling bad, and they took him straight to the hospital.
The Lunas were so dedicated to their crew chief that they parked their team until he regained his health and could return.
Another factor in the Woodruff success story is his wife, Annie. Of Mexican descent, she is known for her fabulous cooking, and spent many years on the road working alongside Kenny. “Annie made the best Mexican food there was,” Danny Smith states matter-of-factly.
“He wasn‘t Kenny without having Annie Woodruff,” Schatz shares. “And, in the Dave Blaney days and all those people, Annie was on the road right with him until they started to slow down later in life and she didn‘t travel as much. But they had you at their house to eat dinner every night. She made homemade tortillas, so they made you feel like you were family.”
Davis remembers, “Back in the day, when it would just be me and Kenny and a little helper, or me and Kenny and his wife Annie, it would just be us going to the races. You know, I‘d be traveling with him with the rig. And when we finally got back to the motel, everybody would race to the room,” he says with a laugh. “You had to get to sleep first, before him. Cause you‘re not gonna get to sleep if you let him go to sleep, cause he was gonna snore! That was always the joke. Everybody‘d race to the room to try to get to sleep. Poor Annie, I don‘t know how she ever got any sleep, he snored so bad,” Davis added with a belly laugh.
“I remember when I met Annie Woodruff was at the Springfield Mile in ‘97,” Schatz recalls. “And, you know, I‘d never been to the Mile before. And I get there and none of us know what to expect. All I know is I‘m wide open like I got my hair on fire, and don‘t know the difference between right and wrong. And, I went out and hot-lapped and I was one of the faster cars on the track. And, to me, it was pretty cool because, you know, I‘m around good cars. But it was just because everybody else was smart enough to not run around with their hair on fire.
“And Annie Woodruff came walking up to me after hot laps, and she was like she was carrying…she had her arms in between her legs, bent over like she was carrying a wheelbarrow full of balls. And she was saying, “Webos! Webos!” And I didn‘t know what webos was. And so, we have a joke about it. But Kenny‘s standing behind her laughing the entire time.”