Okay, friends. Raise your hand if you know and love NHRA Announcer Bob Frey’s take on drag racing. His “From the Tower” column on the DragRace Central website is bound to be a match when you Google-search anything of value pertaining to drag racing history. For those who had the pleasure of listening to Frey call the action at a national event before his 2012 retirement, you can absolutely hear his voice as you read his words. It’s a trip, man, and we love it.
DragRace Central is a deep well of results, photos, and stories, and you could easily lose a whole day devouring pages from the archives over there. Today, though, we’ve done your schedule a favor and excavated a gem. Scroll down for a bit from Frey’s 2002 feature on Ohio’s Bill and Mary Ann Jackson – they were both racing in NHRA’s “Super” classes at the time, but their rich history goes way back and isn’t held within the constraints of one sanctioning body.
Bill and Maryann Jackson are just your ordinary couple that has been married for over 32 years. Like most married couples, they have children, in fact, they have six of them. And, when you have that many offspring, you’re bound to have a few grandkids, and Bill and Maryann do. In fact, they have eighteen of them. And, like most other happily married couples, Bill and Maryann also have a couple of cars that they race in the NHRA “Super” classes. After all, what marriage would be complete without a couple of “90” cars around the house? But for the Jackson’s, life isn’t quite complete. Oh sure, they’re happy, they enjoy the kids and the grandchildren, and the racing is going well for them, but if you talk to Bill and Maryann, you get the feeling that there is still something missing. “We’d both love to go class racing, again,” Bill said. And Maryann, who was one of the very first females to race a factory car, quickly agreed. “The ‘super’ classes are fun, but I’d love to drive a Super Stocker again,” she said. “Or even a stocker.”
Read the rest of the story on DragRace Central here.
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