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PARKS DEAD AT 94
Wally Parks (Gary Nastase Photo)
NHRA Founder Succumbs To Pneumonia
NSSN Correspondent
Wally Parks was sitting up in the tower during the National Hot Rod Ass’n’s 1970 U.S. Nationals, peering through binoculars at Shirley Muldowney’s every move on the race track in her dual-engine gas car.
“He was observing me, to see whether I could drive a car,” she said, recalling the battles she had in trying to enter national events and being told she didn’t have the credentials to enter drag-racing’s top-tier races.
“And lo and behold, he was convinced. From that day on, I didn’t have any trouble with the NHRA.”
Just five years later, she had moved up to a fuel Funny Car and on to a Top Fuel dragster, and this woman about whom Wally Parks had a hunch was runner-up at Indianapolis to “Big Daddy” Don Garlits.
Then in 1982, the day after she defeated Garlits at Florida’s famous Gatornationals, she found something curious in her hotel parking lot. “It was a Wally Parks calling card, under the windshield wipers of my dually truck that Monday morning at Gainesville,” Muldowney said. On the back of it he had written, “You did a great job, Shirley. Wally.”
| FOUNDING FATHER: NHRA founder Wally Parks poses for a photo at O'Reilly Raceway Park in Clermont, Ind. (NHRA Photo) |
Parks, the patriarch of drag racing and the patron saint of reckless street toughs, founded the NHRA in 1951. Or as Don Garlits, who in 2001 was voted the No. 1 drag racer in the sanctioning body’s history, put it, “Wally took a bunch of leather-jacketed hoodlums off the street and made them legitimate.”
"I sit around thinking up dumb ideas and seeing what becomes of them. We made this up as we went along."
— Wally Parks
Post-war car racing was at a fever pitch when Wally Parks came home from his World War II military service. But the dry lake beds of the Mojave Desert and abandoned air strips weren’t going to hold this new breed of restless tinkerers and aggressive personalities who had just shown in the European and Pacific theatres that they could conquer the world. America’s car culture was in its heyday.
Parks had some experience fiddling around with Chevy fours and stripped-down Model Ts as a teenager, but he was becoming corporate-savvy by then. He heard the car-crowd’s crescendo and knew he had to act. He had the skills to lead, had proven that by helping form the SCTA — the Southern California Timing Ass’n, which was preoccupied with land-speed-record events — in 1937. He also had helped publishing partners Bob Petersen and Bob Lindsay get Hot Rod Magazine off the ground. He put his stamp on the classic magazine as editor. His resume also included being a road-test driver and process engineer for General Motors. So he knew how to gather likeminded people to focus on a common cause.
With safety and organization as the twin pillars that bolstered his vision, Parks established the NHRA, and it continues 56 years later to widen its appeal. Garlits, the self-proclaimed Florida “Swamp Rat” who helped popularize drag racing across the country by rocking it from its Southern California cradle, said, “I just loved it. I liked the idea of two cars lined up side by side, not bumping into one another. It was one person against one person, one machine against one machine. There was a winner and a loser. It was real simple.”
The lure of Wally Parks’ sport was simple, too, for Funny Car’s John Force, who became a 14-time champion and won 125 races, more than any other driver. Force, easily the sport’s most popular and recognizable ambassador, said, “Wally Parks started the concept, and we all went with him. Drag racing was something a kid could do with his mom’s car and a helmet.”
For Force, it turned out to be salvation. He fell in love with fast cars, he said, because it eased what he called “the pain of growing up in poverty.”
Force’s struggle to break into drag racing and to survive in the process is legendary itself: eating boiled eggs and drinking diet cola, living in his car in brother Walker’s driveway, irritating the neighbors with the constant d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d of his engine, holding the car together with what a horrified Walker swore was just baling wire and duct tape, and traveling almost like a hobo to nearly 70 NHRA races before he wound up in the winners circle. And it was all because of what Wally Parks had established and promoted.
When Force won the Pep Boys 50th Anniversary Nationals — the special night race July 7, 2001, at Pomona — he dedicated his victory to Parks.
“I’d like to thank him personally,” an emotional Force said that night. “He sent my kids to school, and he took me places I never thought I would be. I’m really proud to be a part of all this.”
That’s exactly what Parks said of himself.
He said he was proud to be associated with the John Forces and Kenny Bernsteins and Don Prudhommes, with the Safety Safari personnel, current president Tom Compton and predecessor Dallas Gardner, the fans, and everyone who in ways great or small has been part of the experience, part of his vision.
“My role is the dreamer,” Parks said in 2004 in a conversation about the explosive growth of the U.S. Nationals and his sanctioning body in general. “I’m not a businessman. Most of my life I’ve been in journalism and public relations. I sit around thinking up dumb ideas and seeing what becomes of them. We made this up as we went along. Of course, there’s always room to improve what we’re doing — if we ever figure out what it is.”
He knew he could get his answer from the organization’s more than 80,000 members and 140 member facilities. Still, Parks, talking hip even at 91 years old, said, “It just blows my mind. It overwhelms me to see it all.”
Parks’ beloved wife, Barbara, died of cancer January 25, 2006, and though she had been a quiet presence, she nevertheless was a creative and dynamic force who helped Parks execute his business plan. Kenny Bernstein, for one, never forgot that they were a team, Wally and Barbara, even when he was editor of Hot Rod Magazine and she was his secretary there.
Bernstein, who called Parks “a visionary and a personal friend,” said, “He and Barbara put so much time and effort into birthing and growing this sport into the multimillion-dollar spectacle it is today. Not only was he an astute businessman, he was revered by many of us on a personal level. He understood public relations, marketing and sales, and he understood the racers. He was as comfortable visiting with us in the pits as he was in the boardroom.
“Wally and Barbara worked tirelessly so that a good many of us could live our dream, and he devoted years to the preservation of our sport in the form of the NHRA Motorsports Museum,” the six-time champion and current Funny Car driver said. “We will envision him at Pomona, where he was ever present in the later years. And we’ll never forget the 50-plus years he guided and watched over our sport. He will be greatly missed.”
Compton said, “Words simply can’t describe the immeasurable impact Wally has had on the sport he created and the millions of lives he touched along the way. The name Wally Parks is synonymous with drag racing, and his vision and direction will guide NHRA for years to come. Everyone in drag racing, and the industries formed to service the sport, will forever be indebted to Wally, his vision, his focus, and his desire to create, build, and grow NHRA.”
According to an NHRA statement, details about arrangements and tributes will be released later.