Sometimes Teresa Earnhardt almost slows down long enough to talk to Dale. She wants to tell him that everyone is doing fine. She wants to explain how much people miss him, how senators, governors and even the President were rocked on Feb. 18, 2001, when he crashed his black Chevy into a wall at Daytona and died.

She wants to tell him about his daughter Taylor, 14 now and in the eighth grade, but she simply can't. "To do that, you really have to be still and quiet and dwell on your thoughts," she says in her first interview since Dale's death. "And I don't have a lot of time to dwell on any thoughts. I don't have time to dwell on anything."

It has been two years since the racing world lost its biggest star, Dale Earnhardt, and in that time his widow, Teresa, 44, has not stopped going full speed. While taking control of Dale's multimillion-dollar business ventures, including four racing teams, a new charitable foundation and a vast merchandising outfit, Teresa has made it her mission to keep spirits up around the Earnhardt camp, bolstering others with her strength and resolve.

"She grieves every day, but she also feels a real sense of responsibility to Dale," says her sister Sherry Houston Clifton, 49, a partner and promoter at North Carolina's Hickory Motor Speedway. "You want to crawl into a hole for a while, but that didn't happen because people were depending on her."

Even during the battle over Dale's autopsy photos -- she fought off newspapers trying to publish them days after his death -- Teresa was remarkably composed. "She's never shown any signs of crumbling or going into a shell," says her friend Kix Brooks, of the country singing duo Brooks & Dunn. "She's just taken care of business and gone on with her life."

"She's not the kind of person that needs to be consoled," says her stepson Dale Earnhardt Jr., 28, one of NASCAR's top drivers. "She really helped us understand how to deal with losing Daddy. She just has a lot of common sense."

It is the way she feels Dale -- the gruff, tough, good ol' boy known as the Intimidator --would have wanted her to handle things. Married for 18 years and partners in every way, "they would look at a situation and say, 'Well, that's the way it is, life goes on,'" says Darrell Waltrip, 55, a friend of Dale's and a retired racer who is now a NASCAR analyst.

In the numbing days after the crash, amid a massive outpouring of emotion from fans across the nation, Teresa was the calm center of the storm. Most important, she comforted Dale's children: daughter Taylor, who lives with her in the Earnhardts' log house in Mooresville, N.C., as well as Dale Jr., Kerry, 33, and Kelley, 30, his children from his first two marriages.

"She has helped us remember his passion for the things he loved and the importance of carrying them on," says Kelley, the business manager for JR Motor Sports, owned by her brother Dale Jr. "Teresa has been our rock."