Parks' mantra was simple: Be the fastest and the best (cont'd)

Q: By the early '50s, Raymond had pretty much accomplished everything he had wanted to do in NASCAR. Why did he get out of the sport then?

Rogers: He won the 1948 NASCAR championship with the modifieds, which were the old '39s which were still running. In 1949, he won the championship with the Oldsmobiles with the overhead cam engines, in what's now called Sprint Cup but back then was Strictly Stock. He started to look into how much money he was spending and how much fun it was producing, because the trophy he won all the way back in 1938 that gave him this racing fever was starting to wane a little bit.

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He did go down to Mexico in 1950 with a brand-new Lincoln and participated in the Pan-American Road Race with Red Byron. Hershel McGriff won that race. I met Hershel a couple of years ago and he still remembered Raymond.

By then, Raymond was not only accumulating a good cash flow but he was gaining a large fortune, based on different businesses around Atlanta and particularly real estate. That demanded more of his time, and he found out there was as much competition and fun winning in business as there was in racing. So he left racing, as he always put it, "to make a living." And in his case, a very good living.

Q: While he was busy doing other things, did he continue to have interesting in racing?

Rogers: He claimed to be interested in racing his entire life, which is true. He was good friends with Bill France for over 50 years. Raymond has always kept a condo on the beach at Daytona. He'd always go down for the races in February every year and usually sit in the same seats he had for 50 years.

Q: What's your favorite story about Raymond Parks?

Rogers: One of the things you need to know about Raymond, if you look at when he was born, and go back to 1938, he was a very young man, spending a lot of money in order to be a part of racing. When asked, Raymond's life was exciting, with fast cars and moonshine. (By the way, he never drank any of it. He always said it was made to sell, not drink.)

My favorite story about Raymond is the fact that after they won that first race in 1938 and he was bitten by the bug, he pursued it with all of his heart for a long, long time. And he actually helped in a lot of business ways, helped Bill France start NASCAR. They were business acquaintances, close personal friends, and when your heart is into it that much and you put your money into it that much, you're committed. And I like people who are committed.

Q: What do you think Raymond's legacy will be?

Rogers: It will be something simple. He was the first team owner, when it comes to having a multi-car team, long before Petty Enterprises and Hendrick Motorsports. What it really should be, with the exception of Bill France, Raymond Parks helped to start a sport. I don't know that Raymond would feel comfortable saying he helped start NASCAR. But his involvement, at the level it was at that time, bringing two or three cars, using those cars to build championships, was something nobody else had done that way, at that point.

You should know, at one point in the 1948 season, Raymond drove one of his own cars in a race so that if Red Byron's car expired -- which it did -- Raymond could pull into the pits, allowing Byron to replace him. And he won the race and got the driver's points which eventually led to winning the championship.

Raymond drove under a fictious name: Mr. J.R. Frick. He did it once at Daytona and once at the old racetrack at Langhorne, Pa. Back in the days when he was hauling liquor. And you have to understand, he didn't just haul liquor. He owned 60 cars that hauled liquor every night. And the name "J.R. Frick" was the name he used to buy a lot of those cars. When he'd get up there and they'd ask him for a name, instead of giving them his real name, he'd tell them, "Mr. Frick." That's cool as hell.

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