How NHRA got started

[A100]

Originally Posted by Jason Oldfield

I blame Wally. I don't know if he just didn't know who he was hiring, or if he got greedy as life went on. But, in the end, he was the guy that assembled this pack of corporate clowns.

My guess is that he wanted help from the business side of things because he realized he didn't have the knowledge to be able to take NHRA where he thought it could go. Kudos to him for recognizing that, but shame on him for idly standing by and allowing the clowns to run away with the organization, when he should have owned up to the mistake, stepped in, and fired them.

But, maybe I'm giving Wally too much credit, and maybe he wasn't as intelligent as I thought he was...

Seems like it was working fine until the Modified Producted protest at Indy. The powers of NHRA discovered that the members could decided what happened to NHRA. They set up a vote through a mail in ballot to modify how the voting process could happen.

The results were that they actually took the vote away from the members and put all decisions in the hands of the board of directors, who were at the time. Wally Parks, Dallas Gardner, Dick Wells, and Harvey Palash.

Harvey Palash (Diamond P fame) resigned. Dick Wells and Wally Parks died. Graham LIght and Peter Clifford were added. Gardner handed over NHRA to Tom Compton to run and he was also added to the board. They all work for NHRA except Gardner. From what I understand he retired from running NHRA to just being on the board which does include a small pay check so he can get by.

They have just added two more members to make six current board members.