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Parks, Wally

Founder and Board Chairman of the Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum

One could argue that drag racing was born in Goltry, Okla., in 1913, with the birth of Wally Parks, who nearly four decades later would found one of the most successful and influential sanctioning bodies in all of motorsports. 

Parksþ family moved to Southern California in the early 1920s, and soon after the young Wally Parks developed an interest in cars.  By 1947, Parks, who served in the Army in the South Pacific during World War II and worked as a military tank test-driver for General Motors, helped organize the Southern California Timing Association and later became its general manager. 

The first SCTA Speed Week, held at Utahþs famed Bonneville Salt Flats in 1949, was the result of the diligent efforts of Parks, then its executive secretary.  Running against the clock - actually a stopwatch - racers coaxed their vehicles to accelerate quicker rather than simply to attain high top speeds.  While this new sport of drag racing was gaining popularity, a certain negative notoriety had developed over the sportþs street racing image.

Parks soon became editor of a new monthly enthusiast magazine Hot Rod, and had the forum to form the National Hot Rod Association in 1951, further removing the outlaw appearance of hot rodding.  By creating order from chaos with new safety rules and performance standards, Parks helped legitimize the sport from its humble beginnings.  He became the NHRAþs first president, holding his position until 1983, then acting as chairman of the board until 1999.

We wanted to build the organization on its own merit, said Parks.  We saw a need—that being an avenue for safe drag racing—and with the help of a lot of good people and a little luck we seem to have had some success.” Wally reminds us that his wife of many years, Barbara, was there at the beginning of NHRA and has been at his side ever since. She herself is responsible for many of NHRA’s impressive and innovative programs, among them the International Car Club Association (ICCA) that was a thriving adjunct to NHRA in the 1960s.

The organizationþs first official race was held in April 1953 on a strip of the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds parking lot in Pomona, Calif. (later home to the Winternationals, season-ending World Finals and the NHRA Museum).  By 1955, the NHRA staged its first national event, called simply, the Nationals, in Great Bend, Kansas, settling in its permanent home six years later in the fertile race country of Indianapolis, Ind.

As Parksþ new organization matured, and its membership ranks grew, the sport began drawing more attention from the casual motorsports fan.  The 1960s witnessed the growth of the NHRA through television coverage by ABCþs Wide World of Sports, popularizing drag racing with millions of Americans and transporting the sport from the old airfields and lake beds of California into stadium-style arenas around the country. 

Now in its sixth decade, Wally Parksþ creation, the NHRA, is the worldþs largest motorsports sanctioning body with more than 85,000 members, 144 member tracks, 32,000 licensed competitors and nearly 4,000 member-track events.

Parks has been the recipient of numerous awards, including being named the first recipient of Car Craft magazineþs Ollie Award in 1969, Popular Hot Rodding magazineþs Man of the Decade in 1972 and the Specialty Equipment Market Associationþs (SEMA) Man of the Year in 1973, as well as his induction into the SEMA Hall of Fame in 1979, the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1992, the Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1993 and the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame in 1994. 

No one could have conceived what has happened, Parks said of the NHRAþs tremendous growth and success.  But we did have ambitions of its becoming a national sports entity.