I don’t like covering your races.
That’s what the reporter in Detroit told National Hot Rod Ass’n founder Wally Parks once at The Nationals, back in 1959 or 1960.
“Why not?” Parks asked.
“It’s too complicated,” the scribe said.
Parks listened closely and tried to explain that drag racing’s various classes allow more people to participate and give the fans a variety of competition to watch.
And that was Wally Parks — the ultimate journalist, listening, learning, playing devil’s advocate, sharing in a free exchange of ideas.
Journalist?? The motorsports legend who died Friday night in Burbank, Calif., at age 94 from complications of pneumonia was the founder and longtime president of the NHRA.
Yes, but he was a journalist first. And those qualities that took him to the top of the Petersen Publishing empire a half-century ago stayed with him.
That reporter in Detroit never fazed him. “I’ve felt for so long that I live in a world of challenges and opportunities. And you have to take advantage of the opportunities,” Parks said in a conversation back in the summer of 2004.
Some might think Don Garlits made Parks crazy. Maybe he did, with his gritty, opinionated, Florida swamp-rat caginess, his “So what if I grew up on the wrong side of the drag-racing tracks?” attitude, and his audacity to answer to the nickname “Big Daddy.”
After all, Garlits was a clear contrast to the more buttoned-down, corporate-polished, Southern California-suave Parks. But again, Parks seized that opportunity to embrace Garlits, even though they had their confrontations.
“He’s fish bait,” Parks said with a grin. “He attracts a crowd!” Then, with a serious tone that proved the respect he had for his outspoken nemesis beyond his value at the gate, Parks said, “The man has been an innovator from day one. He has earned all the recognition he has gotten. I’ve never underestimated him.”
And how could he have? Journalists are all about seeking the truth.
Garlits honored Parks and wife Barbara in 1994, as inductees into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame at Ocala, Fla. And several years ago, Garlits said of Wally Parks, “The man is amazing.” And with Parks’ passing, Big Daddy told the NHRA, “Though we had some different opinions at times about how the sport should evolve, we always respected each other’s opinion. To this day, I marvel at his vision and ability to transform…me and my buddies…into the corporate giant [NHRA] is today. We all owe him a great debt of gratitude.”
Through his own integrity, Parks learned the best way to neutralize an enemy is to make a friend of him.
And Parks ascribed to the tenet of respectful journalism that the pursuit of news is not a license for arrogance. Everyone who came in contact with Parks found him to be delightful, or as Pro Stock Motorcycle rider Steve Johnson put it, “enlightening and inspirational.”
Last May at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the American Auto Racing Writers & Broadcasters Ass’n honored Parks with its Bob Russo Founder’s Award for his profound interest, tireless efforts, and unflagging dedication to auto racing that Russo exemplified throughout his career. Parks was a longtime member of AARWBA. Parks, John Force, and Kenny Bernstein all were nominated for AARWBA’s Newsmaker of the Half-Century at the January 2005 All-America Team dinner at Pomona.
Parks’ innate sense of recording history — not to mention making it himself — led Parks to establish the motorsports museum in Pomona that bears his name: the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum.
Shirley Muldowney said she remembers the journalist in Parks. She has a number of special keepsakes, and one is a photo by former National Dragster photo editor Leslie Lovett. “I was sitting on the guardrail at Indy, and Wally Parks was taking a picture of me,” the Top Fuel legend said. “In the picture Wally was kneeling on one knee, taking a picture of me with his camera. I’ve had it since 1977,” she said.
It was that training that allowed Parks to see situations with a different eye than others. And he didn’t miss much — especially the notion that if he offered a safe and organized way for car racers to show off their mechanical, design, and driving expertise, they would buy into it.
 The NHRA has national events in 21, soon 22, markets. And only four tracks — Bristol Dragway, Gateway Int’l Raceway, Maple Grove Raceway and Texas Motorplex — posted the news of Parks’ passing on their Web sites. Of the major newspapers in those 21 markets, only 10 had brief mentions, most of them the Associated Press blurb. Only David Poole initiated his own article for the Charlotte Observer. That’s pathetic. Wally Parks deserved better.
(Parks’ passing came late Friday, Pacific Time, preventing the story from making deadlines, so Sunday editions were checked, as well. But for the sake of journalism, the asterisk beside this statement should read that the evidence came from the online versions of most of these newspapers.)
Parks didn’t really need us journalists, anyway, for as Funny Car driver Del Worsham said, “I guess you could say Wally built his own memorial, because it’s the NHRA. He’ll be missed, but he built the organization to last forever. And although my first instinct was to say that we owe Wally Parks a lot, the truth is we owe him everything.”
John Force said, “Wally…saw something special in drag racing. I love this sport just like he did, and we’ll always have that bond.”
Journalism is that other link.
And another wonderful journalist who covered drag racing so marvelously was the late George Moore of The Indianapolis Star. He used a motorsports saying when he wrote in April 1978 about USAC Tech Director Frankie Del Roy, who died with several colleagues in an airplane crash: “They built only one.” Added Moore, “And yesterday they closed the shop.”
 Ditto for Wally Parks.