Sorry Danica, Move Over Janet... Ladies Were Making Stock Car Racing Headlines This Week in 1950
Stock Car Racing History
Hi David - As I have tried to express in a couple of messages that I hope have reached you, I very much enjoyed and quite appreciated your awareness and accuracy about featuring female drivers back in the Fifties as one of the long list of promotional gimmicks my dad, legendary promoter Sam Nunis, employed in promoting racing starting back in the early 1940's and continung through the 1950's, 60's and early 70's. It was quite a treat to find someone who really does knows something about the old days. As Chris Economaki described him in his own 2006 autobiography,"Sam Nunis was one of the most interesting, powerful and influential characters in racing history." Starting as a driver in 1926, then a track announcer in the 1930's before becoming one of the most pre-eminent promoters of all time starting in the early 1940's, Dad as far as I know was the only "barnstorming"promoter who traveled from state to state for years under his "Sam Nunis Speedways" bannerbringing race shows totracks up and down the East Coast, the middle states and the Midwest including the Dakotas etc. He was hugely instrumental in re-popularizing racing in 1946 after the four yearhiatus during World War II and later responsible for a number of innovations that remained for decades.Big cars (the old term for Indy style cars), midgets, modifed and late model stocks, you name it. Name any well known driver from the Forties through the end of the Sixties, from Indy greats to modified driversand they had all run in a Nunis event at one time or another. It is a long, rich and colorful legacy. I am grateful to see someone reference that. My Dad would have been pleased he is not forgotten...he cared about racing and he also cared about getting his"ink" (old term for getting press).I am happy to be a new member here. Thanks again for a fine story.