Parks' mantra was simple: Be the fastest and the best

At 95, Raymond Parks is the living embodiment of NASCAR's history. The eldest of 16 children, Park left his Dawsonville, Ga., home at 14 and began hauling moonshine. A savvy businessman from an early age, Parks moved to Atlanta, opened a service station which served as a front for his liquor distribution system, and became extremely wealthy, allowing him to fund a racing operation well ahead of its time.

He also ran afoul of the law on occasion, getting a three-month jail term for hauling corn liquor in the family's 1926 Model T Ford and then later serving nine months in a federal penitentiary in 1937. He also fought in the Battle of the Bulge as a member of the U.S. Army during World War II. But his biggest contribution to NASCAR, in addition to his long-standing friendship with Bill France, was his insistence on bringing class to a sport still rough around the edges.

Hall of Fame bio

Raymond Parks is one of stock-car racing's earliest -- and most successful -- team owners. His pairing with mechanic Red Vogt produced equipment good enough to dominate the sport in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Red Byron won the first Cup Series title in 1949 in a Parks-owned car.

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Grady Rogers, who has known Parks most of his life, was kind enough to answer these questions.

Q: How did you get to know Raymond Parks?

Rogers: I grew in a neighborhood where Raymond was basically the honorary mayor of Northwest Atlanta. He was the guy that people went to and looked for, and he took care of them because of the goodness in his heart. My mother and father, as well as my grandmother, knew Raymond. So as I was growing up, he was a regular in the neighborhood.

Q: How did he get started in racing?

Rogers: The way Raymond Parks got into racing is a story that goes way back to 1938. His two cousins came from Dawsonville and were in his employ as whiskey shippers. They wanted to enter a car at the first race at the Lakewood Speedway in Atlanta, out at the fairgrounds. Raymond, thinking it would be a fun thing to do, went ahead and upfronted the money for the whiskey car they had, to be outfitted for racing. That was done by Red Vogt in Atlanta. Lloyd Seay, Roy Hall and Raymond took it out to the racetrack that day.

And as the story goes, for the very first time, he met a guy by the name of Bill France from Florida, who was racing that day. At the end of the day, Lloyd Seay won the race and Raymond said he caught the racing bug. And he still has in his possession today, the trophy from that race. That racing bug transferred all the way through the '30s and into the '40s, to the formation of NASCAR.

Q: Bill France once said Lloyd Seay was the best driver he ever saw. Is that Raymond's opinion, too?

Rogers: Over the years, when asked who was the best driver he ever employed, Raymond said his cousin, Lloyd Seay, had the general knack for handling the flathead '39 Fords, which was the predominant racecar back then because of his learning to drive on the backroads of Georgia, hauling moonshine.

Q: Lloyd Seay was killed in an incident involving moonshine, correct?

Rogers: That's exactly right. He was shot to death by his uncle in Dawsonville over a $5 sack of sugar. The uncle was convicted and eventually served 20 years, I believe.

Q: After the war, things picked up for Raymond. How did he get involved with NASCAR?

Rogers: At the Streamline Hotel during the organizational meeting, Raymond was present, along with Red Byron and Red Vogt. The photo on the roof of the Streamline doesn't show Raymond as an attendee, but he was in the hotel. And the pictures generally prove that out, as he was with a cute blonde.

Q: In an era when that wasn't necessarily the case, Raymond always had cars that were meticulously prepared. Why was that?

Rogers: That followed suit for Raymond's life. Raymond was one of those guys, by the time he was in his early 20s, had accumulated what back then would have been considered a small fortune in Atlanta. Because he had a strong cash flow, he was always well-dressed and had the finest automobiles -- one or two new Cadillacs a year, with every convenience on them available at the time. And when he went racing, his instructions to Red Vogt were simply, "I want to be the fastest and the best out there. I don't want my cars beat up and looking bad."

That was the way cars were back then. Some people say the way Raymond Parks' cars looked at the racetrack helped to convince Bill France that every car that competed in a NASCAR event should have straight fenders, be painted and have nice numbers. So today's NASCAR is where it is because Raymond brought a nice-looking red and white No. 14 or black No. 22 to the track.

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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