So when Wyatt won the Sportsman Award and the list of nominees included Creasy, Gary Bingham, Danny Watters Jr., and Bruce Litton, it was clear that he has the respect of fellow racers.
An emotional Wyatt said in acceptance, "Sometimes you have it in your heart - you want to do it so bad. Fortunately, IHRA and Evan Knoll gave us a place to race, and I got a rebirth. I can't say how much this means to me. This is unbelievable."
Looking back on the moment, he said, "It was quite touching. I may not have a dime, but I'm rich in friends."
And he's rich in family, as well, finding himself in the unexpected role of new father. Wyatt, 51, said he "was looking forward to grandkids!" He has a 30-year-old daughter, Trisha, and 27-year-old son Tyler, and he figured he would have their children to spoil one day soon. Now he has Dakota.
"She's a blast!" he said, settling into the notion that life brings some surprising opportunities.
Life has been a harvest of trial and triumph for Wyatt, who grew up on a south-central Iowa farm and "moved into town" nine miles away at age 12.
He developed his hard-work ethic as a boy, hand-milking cows every morning before hopping on the school bus at 6:30 or 7. After classes, he helped his father with the farm, which included cows and hogs, along with crops of corn, beans, and hay. He ran the tractor and the hay baler.
Wyatt's oldest brother, Darvin, took him to his first drag race, watching the guys from the Corydon car club on a closed-down two-lane stretch of highway. That did it for him. When they family moved into Corydon, Wyatt met a local construction-business owner, Benny Davis, who had a dragster he took to the local strip.
Wyatt said he followed Davis around and learned from him. With the money Wyatt earned by sweeping the floor and helping mechanics at Davis's shop, he bought a '48 Anglia altered at age 14. (Wyatt still hangs out with Davis, who builds aerobatic planes and does metal fabrication.)
Because he couldn't earn a driver's license for two more years, Wyatt couldn't race the car. So a local body-shop owner drove it four or five times. (Things were a bit out of synch for Wyatt then, for he also couldn't understand exactly why Corydon celebrated "Jesse James Days" each summer, for James and his gang robbed the town bank in 1871.)
Finally, at age 19, Wyatt earned his Alcohol Funny Car license and opened his own auto repair shop, which he kept open until 2001.
He still lives in Corydon, Iowa, a burg south of Des Moines. It still has no stop lights and no fast-food restaurants, unless you count the Conoco station where Wyatt slips in to fill up his '91 Chevy pick-up with gasoline and fill himself with a bowl of soup.
It's a respite from the demands of racing, finding more and more sponsorship (although he picked some help recently from Mahle Clevite), having a little girl to help raise, and being self-employed since age 19.
But Wyatt said he's ready to go again. The IHRA season opens April 4-6 at San Antonio with the Amalie Oil Texas Nationals.