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Remembering
Raymond
by Dale Terry, Georgia
Stock Car Racing
Of the late Glenn "Fireball" Roberts passing, sports writer Max Muhleman once wrote that it was like waking up to find that a mountain that had always been there was suddenly gone. That's how members of the Georgia racing community felt Sunday after learning of the passing of Mr. Raymond Parks. Brandon Reed at http://georgiaracinghistory.com/
Raymond Parks - the "Rick Hendricks of his day" says Kyle Petty.
Thanks to NASCAR revisionist history, Parks has long been a footnote in the pages of the sport. In reality, surely NASCAR - and perhaps even the sport of stock car racing itself - may not even exist today without the efforts or Raymond Parks. Parks, born on June 5, 1914, left a desolate family of 16 children in Dawsonville at the age of 14. He quickly learned the moonshine business making and running the illegal whiskey. Later, Parks combined his moonshining activities with a numbers racket called 'the bug' to amass a small fortune by the age of 19. His nefarious activities also earned him a nine month stretch in the federal penitentiary in Chillicothe, Ohio, from 1936 to 1937. http://www.closefinishes.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000012/ 001297.htm
To see a story and photos of Mr. Parks birthday party two weeks ago: http://georgiaracinghistory.com/2010/06/11/friends-fans-celebrate- raymond-parks-birthday
Parks, the last living attendee of the famous meeting that formed NASCAR at the Streamline Hotel in December 1947, lived up to his "away from the limelight" persona from the start of the organization. He lurked in the back of the room, sometimes walking out, as France dominated the conversation and incorporated what became "NASCAR" into his own enterprise. In fact, Parks and others involved saw France's leadership of this stock car body as more of a hostile takeover of the budding sport than an organization. The acronym "NASCAR," by the way, was coined by Parks' genius mechanic Red Vogt, who operated one of Parks' many gas stations around the original "center of stock car racing:" Atlanta. http://www.frontstretch.com/dturnbull/30006/
Because Parks made a lot of his fortune on the other side of the law, NASCAR was less than generous in recognizing what he did, especially monetarily, to keep it alive and flourishing. France and his son are both in NASCAR's new Hall of Fame; Parks isn't. (This page includes probably the last picture ever of Parks, from two weeks ago.) http://blog.hemmings.com/
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