GRAIN VALLEY, Mo. — Ashley Shrout believed everybody deserved a surprise birthday party — and her papa wants to help fulfill that wish in a way.
“The year before she passed, she said everybody deserves a birthday party, a surprise party, sometime in their lives, so we gave her one that fall,” her papa Dennis Shrout said. “It was her last one — so then I decided, well, we'll do something for the racetrack.”
It won’t be a surprise, but the Ashley’s Birthday Gift promotion begins Saturday at Valley Speedway. Fans born in April — or January, in an effort to include people with offseason birthdays — can get into Valley Speedway for free.
Dennis previously owned a dairy operation and motorcycle dealership. He has owned Valley Speedway for 15 years.
He said Ashley loved to bring her dog, Roxy, to the track almost as much as she loved dragging friends to watch racing at the 1/3-mile dirt track in Grain Valley.
“She’d say, ‘You wanna go to the races?’ and if her friends said, ‘I haven't got any money,’ she’d say, ‘Well, you don't have to pay; my grandpa owns it,’” Dennis recalled with a laugh. “So, she’d always bring her friends. That was part of her coming.”
Ashley became something of a celebrity at Valley Speedway — the special little girl who’d fought from the day she was born, according to parents.
She was born Dec. 3, 1996, without kidneys.
“Pretty early on in the pregnancy, we knew there was an issue because the ultrasounds weren't finding kidneys,” her dad, Brandon Shrout, said.
But Ashely’s parents, who didn’t have any children at the time, decided to continue the pregnancy.
“We were going to give her every opportunity that we could to survive — and we did, and she did,” her mom, Michelle Mast, said.
There were tough times in those early days.
Ashley needed multiple procedures in her first few days, including the surgical creation of a rectum, and spent the first two years of her life on dialysis before receiving a kidney transplant from her father.
“The outlook was fairly bleak and there was a very strong possibility, very likely, that she wouldn’t survive much past birth,” Brandon said.
Ashley defied the odds, graduating from Blue Springs High School in 2016 among other milestones, before she died last July from lung cancer, which was caused by the anti-rejection drugs she took. She was 27.
“Definitely not long enough, but it was amazing,” Mast said.
There will be one Saturday each month of the Valley Speedway season when people with birthdays in certain months receive free admission to Valley Speedway.
“I haven't sprung it on my announcer yet, but I'm going try to get people who come in to write their name on a piece of paper — just Bill, Bob, whoever — then read the names off and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to them.”
It’s a perfect tribute to the bubbly, joking girl who loved everyone and never cowered in the face of adversity.
“Dennis was special to her and she was very special to him,” Mast said. “It doesn’t surprise me at all about doing something like this in Ashley’s name.”
“To me, it’s fitting,” Brandon added. “With Ashley, her birthday — her first birthday — was somewhat of a miracle. She wasn’t expected to have a lot of birthdays after that. Over the years, she had 27 birthdays altogether, so we got to experience 27 miracles in our lifetime.”
And her spirit is still bringing people together.
“That's what she wanted there at the end — everybody deserves a party — so we're gonna make it happen,” Dennis said.
Eight months to the day after Ashley’s death, Dennis’ wife of 56 years, Connie, died last month.
“It's been tough,” Dennis said. “My two favorite women, you know.”
That makes honoring Ashley even more important.
“She would love it, absolutely love it,” Mast said. “I’m sure she’s going to be smiling from heaven.”
The dates, and months for offseason birthdays, for Ashley’s Birthday Gift race nights are on the Valley Speedway schedule page. The first one is April 26 (April and January), but it changes from month to month — May 10 (May and February), June 14 (June and March), July 26 (July and October), Aug. 9 (August and November) and Sept. 13 (September and December).
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