Garlits says Wally Parks ‘was a tough guy to deal with. He was very stubborn.’
- Don Garlits, now 91, has earned lofty place among legends after contentious start decades ago.
- NHRA founder Wally Parks ultimately conceded that Garlits was “bait” and improved the sport’s bottom line.
- Parks’ son Richard shares inside insights into both and the dynamics of their interactions.
The NHRA’s Camping World Drag Racing Series has shifted to the East Coast for the Gatornationals at Florida’s Gainesville Raceway, rekindling reminiscences of legends and records and spectacular disasters.
And to this day, every trip here is like a re-coronation of “Big Daddy” Don Garlits.
Garlits, like this race, has symbolized the sport’s emergence from its Southern California cocoon. But Garlits wasn’t hailed as a grand ambassador for the sport. Instead, in his early days, fans hurled insults at this interloper. “Don Garbage” they called him. He took it as a badge of honor, proudly calling himself and his cars “Swamp Rat.” So this gritty Tampa innovator who couldn’t hobnob with the hot-rod in-crowd would adopt an attitude that if you can’t join ’em, beat ’em.
Wally Parks
Bob Riha JrGetty Images
Richard Parks, the oldest of NHRA founder Wally Parks’ two sons, said Garlits “openly scoffed at titles such as Snake (Don Prudhomme), Mongoose (Tom McEwen), King (Jerry Ruth), etc.’ He was ‘Big Daddy’ and the ‘Swamp Rat,’ and that was enough. He did not have to be crowned.
Like Napoleon, who grabbed the crown of France and placed it on his head, Don was going to take drag racing and make it his regal domain. A tough kid from the swamps of Florida was going to rule drag racing, and he didn’t need anyone to put the crown on his head. He would do that himself by taking it by force.”
He had an almost magical mechanical aptitude mixed with ingenuity, and he was determined to become one of the developing sport’s superstars. He did become a superstar—in the sport’s 50th anniversary, a panel of experts named him the No. 1 racer of all-time. But what he also became was an intractable impediment to Wally Parks, a blemish on Parks’ version of Utopia.
“I didn’t like Wally Parks. I respected him. That’s about it.”
Ironically, Parks never appreciated the fact that Garlits was the epitome of the very person for whom Parks designed the sanctioning body: the rebellious, the defiant, the audacious. And nearly 15 years after Parks’ passing in September 2007, their quarrels live on. Garlits turned 90 years old this past January 14, and he holds onto his opinion of Parks: “I didn’t like Wally Parks. I respected him. That’s about it.”
Garlits said, “Wally took a bunch of leather-jacketed hoodlums off the street and made them legitimate. He did a great job of founding the NHRA, to get the guys of the street. But he was a tough guy to deal with. He was very stubborn. It was his way or the highway. We rubbed each other raw that way. There were always things I wanted to improve the sport, and he didn’t think they would improve it. I wanted the purses to be higher, because he was asking us to go to a lot of races and we weren’t making any money doing it.”
Dan Garlits
Future PublishingGetty Images
What Garlits did about that in 1972 stuck in Parks’ craw, and he never really forgot it.
“Finally, in 1972, I had a meeting with him,” Garlits said. “I said, ‘Wally, that U.S. Nationals needs to pay $25,000.’ He said it’ll be light years before it paid $25,000. The racers and I got together, and we formed PRO, and we had our race at Tulsa on Labor Day (to conflict with the Indianapolis classic). And we did pay $25,000. And it changed the whole sport. He never forgave me for that.”
Parks did concede many years later that Garlits was an innovator—and, more importantly, that he was “bait,” a crowd magnet. Through the years, the two learned to speak graciously to one another and on rather rare occasions complimented each other.
Richard Parks said, “Don Garlits and Wally Parks are two of the biggest names in drag racing, and over the years they have toasted to each other’s health and cursed the other’s existence, but you’ve got to love them both. In many cases, they were so similar: driven men with focused goals. In other ways they were the exact opposite. It is due to their natures that these two men made my life more exciting and at times painful.
“I admire Don for the way he put family first. And in a way, so did my father, except his family was the NHRA and that sort of hurt,” he said. “On the other hand, I respected the way my father kept his temper under pressure. That was very hard for Garlits to do. Then again, you always knew what Don felt. I hardly ever knew what my father was up to. My father smiled when Garlits declared, ‘I will NEVER, EVER, race for the NHRA again’—and of course he would. The difference was that my father would NEVER tell you what his intentions were, but Don would. I do like these two men, but for vastly different reasons.”
“Don Garlits wore his emotions on his sleeve for the world to see. He’d explode in anger whenever he felt degraded or taken advantage of, then afterwards he’d get over his anger and let the problem go. He was the champion of the dispossessed, the people who felt they never got a good shake in life. Garlits may not have been aware of how people reacted to his acerbic personality and dominating character. He might not have been aware of these emotions, either. He simply reacted, like certain elements do when exposed to other elements,” Richard Parks said. “He was totally honest, and if he did something wrong, he may not have been aware of it at the time. He tried to be a good man, and he knew that he wasn’t perfect.
“The same could be said of Parks. He, too, was a good man who always tried to be fair and do what was right. Sometimes you can put two good men together with personalities that simply don’t jibe and the reaction is explosive.”
Keyword: ‘Big Daddy’ Don Garlits Outlives NHRA Founder Wally Parks, but Not Their Feud