She spent eight years as chairman and chief executive officer of Victory Junction Gang Camp, the free camp in North Carolina that she and her husband, NASCAR driver Kyle Petty, built after their teenage son died in a racing crash. In April 2012, the board of that same camp voted to remove her from the role.
She said the decision came with no real explanation. “They gave me not one reason,” she told reporters that week. “The word came back to me I was making irrational decisions.”
Pattie Petty had run Victory Junction since it opened in 2004. Her son Austin, then the camp’s chief operating officer, was the one who confirmed the change publicly. Her marriage to Kyle, thirty three years by then, ended in divorce later that same year.
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Fast facts
- Full name: Patricia “Pattie” Petty, nรฉe Huffman
- Married Kyle Petty on February 4, 1979; divorced in 2012
- Children: Adam Petty (1980 to 2000), Austin Petty, and Montgomery Lee Petty
- Ran Victory Junction Gang Camp as chairman and chief executive, 2004 to 2012
- Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in September 2011
That fight over who ran Victory Junction was decades in the making.
Marrying Into the Petty Family
Before any of that, Pattie Huffman worked as a Miss Winston, one of the promotional models who appeared trackside at NASCAR races in the 1970s. Kyle has said the two actually met somewhere else: through horse shows, introduced by his sister, who competed in equestrian events. They married on February 4, 1979, in Daytona Beach. Kyle was eighteen. Pattie was about a decade older. His father, Richard Petty, NASCAR’s winningest driver, was among the guests.
From Adam’s Death to Victory Junction
The couple had three children: Adam, Austin, and Montgomery Lee. Adam, born in 1980, became a fourth generation Petty racer, following his great grandfather, grandfather, and father onto the track. He qualified for his first Winston Cup start in April 2000, watched by his great grandfather Lee Petty, who died three days later.
Five weeks after that, on May 12, 2000, Adam was killed during a practice session at New Hampshire Motor Speedway when his throttle stuck and sent his car into the wall. He was 19.
Five months later, Kyle and Pattie partnered with actor Paul Newman to build a camp for children with chronic and serious illnesses, an idea Adam had wanted to pursue himself after visiting a similar camp in 1999. Victory Junction opened in Randleman, North Carolina, in 2004, on land Richard and Lynda Petty donated, and Pattie ran it as chairman and chief executive from that opening until 2012.
In 2002, she and Kyle published a photo book, “The Petty Family Album,” with proceeds going to the camp, and reporting on the camp through the years consistently named her as its founder alongside Kyle. Richard Petty donated another 403 acres to the camp in 2025, nearly five times its original footprint, and Victory Junction says it has now served more than 115,000 children.
A Diagnosis Amid a Troubled Expansion
By 2011, Pattie was leading fundraising for a second camp, Victory Junction Midwest, planned near Kansas City. That September, she announced she had Parkinson’s disease, confirmed through a DaTscan at the University of Kansas Hospital. Her own father had lived with the disease for about fifteen years. “After watching my father live with Parkinson’s, it was not a surprise,” she said. Kyle told reporters the diagnosis would not slow her down.
The Kansas City project had been troubled well before that diagnosis, though. An earlier donated site was abandoned after Pattie said it turned out to be a former dump; Kyle and the camp’s president disputed that account, pointing instead to difficult terrain. By 2010, the project had already paid its Kansas City based president more than $740,000.
The Board Meeting That Ended Her Role
On Valentine’s Day 2012, a benefit concert in Kansas City featuring singer Wynonna Judd lost money after a major donor pulled out. Pattie has said she personally covered $50,000 of Judd’s fee to close the gap, and that Judd had agreed to donate half of it back to the camp as a gift, an arrangement she says she never got the chance to explain to the board.
Two months later, the board removed her as chairman and chief executive, offering her the honorary title of Chairwoman Emeritus instead. Austin gave the camp’s only public statement on the decision.
“I can confirm my mom accepted a goodwill ambassador position as Chairwoman Emeritus,” he said, declining to elaborate further and citing personnel confidentiality.
Kyle, then the board’s vice chairman, said the decision was not his to make. “It doesn’t impact anything, it really doesn’t,” he said. “We’re always going to be involved in the camp.” Pattie’s own account of what happened has not changed since the week it occurred.
Her divorce from Kyle became final later that year. In 2013, the board formally suspended the Kansas City project altogether, after it had spent well over a million dollars without breaking ground on a permanent camp.
How the Camp Describes Its Own Founding Now
News coverage from 2004 through 2012, including the same Kansas City Star story that reported her removal, consistently named Pattie and Kyle as Victory Junction’s founders. That is not how the camp’s own record reads anymore.
Victory Junction’s current leadership page does not include Pattie’s name, and Wikipedia’s entry on Richard Petty instead credits her son Austin as “Emeritus Chairman and Founder,” the same emeritus title her own board once offered her. The camp is now run day to day by Chad Coltrane, its president and chief executive, a position no Petty has held since Pattie left it.
Questions About Pattie Petty and Victory Junction
How did Pattie Petty and Kyle Petty meet?
Kyle has said the two met through horse shows, introduced by his sister, who competed in equestrian events, not at a racetrack as sometimes reported. They married on February 4, 1979, in Daytona Beach, when Kyle was eighteen and Pattie was about a decade older.
Is she related to the other Patricia Petty in NASCAR?
No. Pattie Petty, nรฉe Huffman, was married to driver Kyle Petty. A different woman named Patricia Petty, who died in 2014, was married to Maurice Petty, Kyle’s uncle and the family’s longtime engine builder. Beyond sharing a name and a connection to the Petty family, the two are unrelated.
Why was she removed from Victory Junction?
In April 2012, the camp’s board replaced her as chairman and chief executive with an honorary Chairwoman Emeritus title. She has said the board never gave her a formal reason beyond telling her she was making irrational decisions. The board itself has never publicly detailed its reasoning beyond calling it a governance decision.
Who is credited with founding Victory Junction?
Kyle and Pattie Petty founded the camp together in 2004, and reporting at the time named her as its driving force. Today, Wikipedia’s entry on Richard Petty instead credits Pattie’s son Austin as “Emeritus Chairman and Founder.”
