(CNN) -- Ten years ago, stock car racing's last great roughneck hit the wall and the wall won. Dale Earnhardt would not grow old and slow, clogging up life's left lane. He would not gracefully slide into a senior citizenship of driving to the Wal-Mart in a Grand Marquis with plastic flowers waving from the antenna. He would die a legend's death at the age of 49, on the last turn of the last lap of the greatest race his kind knows. He died running, as he used to put it, WFO -- Wide (Bleeping) Open. In third place of the 2001 Daytona 500, shielding the two cars ahead of him -- both owned by him, and one driven by his namesake son -- Earnhardt yielded not an inch of asphalt. Sterling Marlin bumped him ever so slightly from the rear, and in the ensuing chain reaction of bumper cars at 160 mph, Earnhardt's famous black No. 3 Chevy was sent up the track and nose-first into the wall.
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Stock car racing legend Dale Earnhardt died February 18, 2001
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Crew chief: "Dale Earnhardt was to NASCAR what Elvis Presley was to rock-and-roll"
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NASCAR.com's Earnhardt tribute includes photos, memories, and reflections on his legacy
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Some will come from the television booth on February 20 at the next running of the @placeholder.
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"When @placeholder passed, rock-and-roll didn't stop, but it was different.
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@placeholder's was the fourth death suffered on a NASCAR track in nine months.
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"I wasn't trying to wreck him, I just wanted to rattle his cage," The @placeholder said then in one of his classic utterances.
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His father's death "is part of a process that @placeholder is really suffering from now," Pierce said.
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But the thing that caught my eye when I first went to races was how that was even more characteristic of @placeholder.