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Sprint Cup
HEMBREE: Raymond Parks – An Appreciation
NASCAR pioneer Raymond Parks died last Sunday at age 96...
The late NASCAR pioneer Raymond Parks (Pictured) is among the prominent individuals Ken Clapp has interviewed. (Photo: Getty Images)
I met Raymond Parks in July 1991. Having seen his name while researching stock car racing records from the 1940s and curious about a motorsports career that he gave up in the 1950s despite some obvious success, I called him at his office near downtown Atlanta and asked about visiting.
He was reluctant. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested or that he was unusually secretive or belligerent. He didn’t see himself as a public person, and he said there wasn’t anything particularly special about his time in racing that would provide fodder for us to discuss.
Decidedly, that wasn’t the case.
I convinced Parks that I wouldn’t waste his time and that he could help me better understand racing in those days, a rough-and-tumble time in motorsports that few modern-day observers fully appreciate.
I found his small office – next door to his apparently thriving liquor store – in a nondescript area of urban Atlanta and walked in to find him sitting behind an orderly desk. He was dressed to the nines – sharp suit and tie, and a fancy fedora rested on the hat rack. It would be much later when I would find out that he dressed this way virtually every day – even back in the Fifties when he occasionally helped change tires on his race cars.
On shelves in the office were some trophies that were obviously very old. Turns out they were from 1949, NASCAR’s first season. One recognized NASCAR’s first championship, won by driver Red Byron and Parks, his car owner.
Those trophies now reside in the NASCAR Hall of Fame, where many think Parks also should be, and as soon as possible.
We talked for about an hour, and Parks was gracious. He guided me through his remarkable collection of old photos, many showing him with drivers from NASCAR’s first – and most adventuresome – generation.
As our phone conversation hinted, Parks was painfully shy. He didn’t like to talk about himself, and it took a lot of prodding to get him to expand on short answers about the days when his showroom-spiffy race cars dominated tracks and gave race fields a professional shine.
Research would reveal some of the particulars about Parks, whose racing career stretched from the 1930s to NASCAR’s birth in 1949 and on into the 1950s, when he decided that, yes, it was fun, but it was too expensive. In the early days, Parks was involved in providing race cars for two of his cousins, Lloyd Seay and Roy Hall, two of the best drivers in the raw early days of stock car racing.
Unfortunately, the three also were involved in the illegal liquor business. That involvement cost Seay his life – he was shot in a whiskey-related dispute – and cost Parks some time in federal prison in Ohio after he was found guilty of conspiracy. Much later, Parks would joke that, while in prison there, he planted some of the trees that 20 years later would provide shade for Junior Johnson, also imprisoned because of moonshine activity, after Johnson was sent to the same facility.
I think Parks was afraid of being asked about some of the shadier activities on his resume, and, when I detoured over into that area, he said there were certain things he didn’t want to talk about. Much later, he would go into some detail about those days.
Parks was a friend of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., and much of Parks’ important participation at the heart of the sport’s early days has been downplayed over the years. His financial backing was a key in keeping NASCAR going in those first years, and the fact that France could depend on Parks to show up at race tracks with quality race cars and star drivers was big. France even drove Parks’ cars on a few occasions.
After Parks left racing, there is no evidence that he made any attempts to self-promote himself or to remind people that he once was a big gun in stock car circles. He fit the mold of the quiet Southern gentleman who went about his business, traveled to Daytona Beach every year to watch the Daytona 500 and was at peace with his memories.
But journalists and others exploring NASCAR’s often murky past naturally happened upon references to Parks and the remarkable stories attached to his racing years, and it was inevitable that people would be knocking on his door.
Eventually, he was elected to several motorsports halls of fame, and NASCAR and several speedways made it a point over the past decade or so to honor his accomplishments. J.B. Day, an Easley, S.C. businessman with a racing background, held a birthday party every year for Parks and invited retired racers from all over to help him celebrate one of racing’s true pioneers.
NASCAR claims Parks was the last survivor of the December 1947 meetings in Daytona Beach, Fla. that resulted in the formation of the sanctioning body. It is somewhat uncertain what role Parks played in those landmark meetings. He told me on two occasions that he was in Daytona Beach during that period and that he was at the meeting location – the Streamline Hotel – but that he didn’t play a significant part in the conversations.
He lived 96 years, some of them enjoying the wildest sort of frontier adventures imaginable in a time that most of us know little about. He died the year NASCAR opened its Hall of Fame. Soon – perhaps very soon – he will be among its members.
He was reluctant. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested or that he was unusually secretive or belligerent. He didn’t see himself as a public person, and he said there wasn’t anything particularly special about his time in racing that would provide fodder for us to discuss.
Decidedly, that wasn’t the case.
I convinced Parks that I wouldn’t waste his time and that he could help me better understand racing in those days, a rough-and-tumble time in motorsports that few modern-day observers fully appreciate.
I found his small office – next door to his apparently thriving liquor store – in a nondescript area of urban Atlanta and walked in to find him sitting behind an orderly desk. He was dressed to the nines – sharp suit and tie, and a fancy fedora rested on the hat rack. It would be much later when I would find out that he dressed this way virtually every day – even back in the Fifties when he occasionally helped change tires on his race cars.
On shelves in the office were some trophies that were obviously very old. Turns out they were from 1949, NASCAR’s first season. One recognized NASCAR’s first championship, won by driver Red Byron and Parks, his car owner.
Those trophies now reside in the NASCAR Hall of Fame, where many think Parks also should be, and as soon as possible.
We talked for about an hour, and Parks was gracious. He guided me through his remarkable collection of old photos, many showing him with drivers from NASCAR’s first – and most adventuresome – generation.
As our phone conversation hinted, Parks was painfully shy. He didn’t like to talk about himself, and it took a lot of prodding to get him to expand on short answers about the days when his showroom-spiffy race cars dominated tracks and gave race fields a professional shine.
My SPEED is devoted to the passionate fans who celebrate motorcycles, motorsports and the automotive lifestyle.
Research would reveal some of the particulars about Parks, whose racing career stretched from the 1930s to NASCAR’s birth in 1949 and on into the 1950s, when he decided that, yes, it was fun, but it was too expensive. In the early days, Parks was involved in providing race cars for two of his cousins, Lloyd Seay and Roy Hall, two of the best drivers in the raw early days of stock car racing.
Unfortunately, the three also were involved in the illegal liquor business. That involvement cost Seay his life – he was shot in a whiskey-related dispute – and cost Parks some time in federal prison in Ohio after he was found guilty of conspiracy. Much later, Parks would joke that, while in prison there, he planted some of the trees that 20 years later would provide shade for Junior Johnson, also imprisoned because of moonshine activity, after Johnson was sent to the same facility.
I think Parks was afraid of being asked about some of the shadier activities on his resume, and, when I detoured over into that area, he said there were certain things he didn’t want to talk about. Much later, he would go into some detail about those days.
Parks was a friend of NASCAR founder Bill France Sr., and much of Parks’ important participation at the heart of the sport’s early days has been downplayed over the years. His financial backing was a key in keeping NASCAR going in those first years, and the fact that France could depend on Parks to show up at race tracks with quality race cars and star drivers was big. France even drove Parks’ cars on a few occasions.
After Parks left racing, there is no evidence that he made any attempts to self-promote himself or to remind people that he once was a big gun in stock car circles. He fit the mold of the quiet Southern gentleman who went about his business, traveled to Daytona Beach every year to watch the Daytona 500 and was at peace with his memories.
But journalists and others exploring NASCAR’s often murky past naturally happened upon references to Parks and the remarkable stories attached to his racing years, and it was inevitable that people would be knocking on his door.
Eventually, he was elected to several motorsports halls of fame, and NASCAR and several speedways made it a point over the past decade or so to honor his accomplishments. J.B. Day, an Easley, S.C. businessman with a racing background, held a birthday party every year for Parks and invited retired racers from all over to help him celebrate one of racing’s true pioneers.
NASCAR claims Parks was the last survivor of the December 1947 meetings in Daytona Beach, Fla. that resulted in the formation of the sanctioning body. It is somewhat uncertain what role Parks played in those landmark meetings. He told me on two occasions that he was in Daytona Beach during that period and that he was at the meeting location – the Streamline Hotel – but that he didn’t play a significant part in the conversations.
He lived 96 years, some of them enjoying the wildest sort of frontier adventures imaginable in a time that most of us know little about. He died the year NASCAR opened its Hall of Fame. Soon – perhaps very soon – he will be among its members.
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