Overview
- The Horatio Alger Association announced Childress as one of 11 leaders selected for its 2026 class, granting lifetime membership.
- Honorees include Maria S. Bartiromo, Eileen Collins, Imran Khan, Byron Roth and others recognized for success after adversity.
- Childress rose from early hardship in Winston-Salem to build Richard Childress Racing from a one-man effort into a 400-plus-employee organization with 200-plus wins and a 2017 NASCAR Hall of Fame induction.
- He and his wife, Judy, established the Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma in 2008 with Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, now a nationwide initiative focused on preventing childhood injury.
- The Association pairs the induction with its National Scholars Conference and reports awarding more than $275 million in need-based scholarships to 38,000 students since 1984.