NASCAR’s Erik Jones Brings His Love of Reading, and a Book-Vending Machine, to Rymfire Elementary

A day before he finished fifth at NASCAR’s regular-season finale at the Daytona International Speedway Saturday, 29-year-old Erik “EJ” Jones had just read Goodnight Racetrack to a few hundred early graders at Rymfire Elementary in Palm Coast when a pin-drop of a voice asked from among them: “Why did you do all this for us?” 

“We’ve got something pretty cool to show you guys in a minute,” Jones replied. “But I love to read. I’ve loved to read since I was your guys’ age, and my parents loved to read, and I still love to read. So I’m here to hopefully show you guys that reading’s fun. You can learn a bunch as you get older with it as well. I’m just here to read, hang out with you guys and show you something pretty cool.”

“You are the best driver, and I want to be you,” another small voice said from the audience as Jones took a few questions, poke of his love for Dragons Love Tacos, then unwrapped for them the “pretty cool” thing that had sat under a dark sheet at the cafeteria entrance: a neon-bound book-vending machine. It’s a wonder the screams didn’t shatter the vending machine’s glass case. 

A little boy not much taller than the books was first to drop a token and get himself a copy of Spiderman as Jones posed for pictures and recalled how it all started: “Really early in my career in NASCAR, I was trying to find a way to connect reading to the sport and to the fan base and spread it,” Jones said. “It actually really started in Covid. We did some readings online, virtually, and they really caught on with kids and the kids’ books. And as we kind of got back into normal live appearances, we learned about these book vending machines through my foundation early on, and children’s literacy was was high on our list. We found pretty quick the kids were really excited about the vending machines, and we donated them.” 

The Erik Jones Foundation focuses on cancer (Jones lost his father to cancer in 2016), animal rights and literacy. Jones partnered with the Global Vending Group to provide Inchy the Book Worm Vending Machines to schools (not just in Florida). AdventHealth in turn partnered with Jones, who is driving the AdventHealth car at nine of the season’s 36 NASCAR races. The machine costs $9,000. AdventHealth funds and restocks it for about $5,000 a year, says Debbi McNabb, AdventHealth’s director of community benefit. The school works with Advent to recommend “very carefully selected” titles. 

“In all of those races where we’re the primary, he shows up in a market for us and does something in the community before the race,” Joni Hunt, executive director of strategic partnerships, said. who oversees AdventHealth’s relationship with NASCAR and its relationship with Flagler schools. “As much as having our name on a car is great, what I think is really amazing is the work we’re doing with him in the community.” 

It is the fifth book-vending machine AdventHealth has donated, the first in Flagler County (the others in Volusia). Bunnell and Belle Terre Elementary have book vending machines bought by their parent-teacher organizations. The superintendent said the district will “figure out a way to make sure” that Wadsworth and Old Kings Elementary get their machines soon, though.  

As for AdventHealth’s local connection: Years ago the late Joe Rizzo, when he headed the Flagler Education Foundation, partnered with Wally de Aquino, currently the president and CEO of AdventHealth Palm Coast Parkway, to support numerous initiatives in schools, among them the health-themed Classroom-to-Careers program at Rymfire Elementary. That connection brought the book vending machine to the school. 

“As a literacy director, as a literacy coach previously, this just absolutely warms my heart,” said Theresa Rizzo, who heads the Flagler Education Foundation. “I know how much these elementary school kids are going to love this. They’re going to be excited about it. It’s going to create excitement for them to do the right thing in school, but then also encourages reading as well. So I am thrilled. I am so excited. And I’m so excited that it’s another partnership with us and Advent.”

McNabb notes that the vending machines aren’t just for the fun of it, but to help push Volusia and Flagler counties’ reading scores above the state average. “Why would a hospital do this? Because you want our children to be healthy, and children need to know how to read, and read at grade level,” McNabb said. “It’s really extending that feel-whole promise to everyone, beyond the walls of the hospital.” 

Jones’s appearance had gathered numerous officials from AdventHealth and the school districts, among them Superintendent LaShakia Moore. She is in her element in the schools. It’s still always more special at Rymfire. “I was a principal here for three years, before then I served as a coach and a teacher,” Moore said–an academic coach, that is, for reading and all other subjects. “It’s always great to come back here and look around and see things that were your little touch on projects here. It’s a great place. Mr. Lee and his team, they’re doing a great job.” Travis Lee is the principal at Rymfire. 

Obviously students can borrow books from their school library as much as they wish. But they can’t keep the books the way they can with books out of the vending machine. “I think about my own personal child, who’s now in high school,” Moore said. “She would love something like this, because she’s always wanting to purchase books and buy books, and so this is an opportunity for them to do it and not have a financial cost or impact to them.”

Students may earn a token by following what the schools call PBIS expectations–positive behavioral interventions and supports, the jargon that translates to “being respectful, responsible, safe and engaged,” Moore said. “When you’re identified as a student that’s doing that, you’re given a token.”

Jones spent time enough at the school to do two sets–two readings, two unveilings, the second for the older students, and in between spoke to reporters about his own eclectic readings. He cited among his most memorable books Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Emperor of All Maladies, the 2011 Pulitzer Prize winning history of cancer, and an autobiography by Bob Probert, the Detroit hokey player. Sitting on his night-table is The Farmer’s Lawyer, the Sarah Vogel memoir (with a Willie Nelson foreword) about the class-action suit the author led on behalf of 240,000 farming families facing foreclosure. The very first book he recalls reading when he was 10 or 11 was about the Wright Brothers. 

He is interested in writing a book himself–for children.