Afterwards

“Wild” Bill Miller in his “Parks Special” and mechanic Buckshot Morris at Daytona Beach in 1952 for a NASCAR “Speedway” division event. Miller finished the season in fourth place.

GARHOFA member Grady Rogers told us something Mr. Parks once said to him.

“Raymond asked me once if I knew how to create a small fortune,” Grady said.  “Then he told me, ‘you take a huge fortune and go racing.’”

It was expensive.  Especially for Raymond Parks’ Novelty Company.

“I’ve never like the expression…‘I don’t have anything else to prove’, because that wasn’t the case,” Raymond told us.  “Racing was fun because it was work.  Ten years of it, week in and week out, just took its toll.  We had great success on the track, but it was time to get back to business.”

“There were several of us (car owners) pumping money into the sport.  I know it benefited racing, but I didn’t want to go broke,” he added with a laugh.

Once during the 1947 season, his drivers were quoted as saying they knew he had over $20,000 invested just halfway through the season.

Rare photo of Curtis Turner piloting one of the last cars Raymond Parks was involved with at Daytona Beach in 1955.

Raymond officially pulled the plug in 1952.  He had cars running at the local Peach Bowl Speedway in Atlanta for the advertisement, and he also ran NASCAR’s new open wheel “Speedway” division, with “Wild Bill” Miller as the driver.

“Other than that, just local stuff,” he said.

Records also show Parks listed as the car owner in 1955 of Curtis Turner’s entry in several races.

“He borrowed my flatbed truck,” Raymond told us.  “That was all.”

“You can look at this through rose-colored glasses, but Bill France Sr. was about as unfinancially secure as most of the other stock car drivers of that early era,” said GARHOFA member Charlie Cross.  “His personality and ambition carried him.  I remember after one race he borrowed a couple of tires from my dad just so he could drive back home.  But he brought an identity and management to the sport.  Raymond Parks brought him first class race cars and a wallet.  When Parks walked away from the game, Bill France and NASCAR were okay.”