UNASSUMING DENSHAM ENTERS DRAG RACING HALL OF FAME
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Even before eight-time Top Fuel champion Tony Schumacher earned his first title, he was visiting with members of the media and said, “You know who would be a great interview? Gary Densham. He’s a school teacher, and he takes his Funny Car to high schools and tells kids about all the careers they could have in drag racing. He’s really cool.”
At the time, the Auto Club of Southern California had seen the value of Densham’s effort and just had partnered with him for this unique vocational venture. Little did Schumacher know that he himself would one day recruit the U.S. Army as sponsor of his dragster and that the Army would roll to the forefront with the similar YES (Youth and Education Services) Program. Schumacher simply believed in Densham’s dedication.
Although the Auto Club dropped its participation with Densham in 2005, the shop teacher from Gahr High School at Cerritos, Calif., never has abandoned his commitment to students. Selflessly – or stupidly, whichever way he looks at it any given day – he even left his teaching post with less than two years remaining before he could retire with a pension . . . just to give himself more time with high-school students, preaching the gospel of drag racing and all motorsports.
Even after the Auto Club of Southern California dropped his project, Densham said he had no real regrets: “I'm so stupid sometimes that even knowing what I do now, I probably would have done it all over the same exact way. I quit with 28.8 years in the classroom, and it would have been better to be able to retire with 30 years instead of going with the Auto Club then. But it kept me at high schools for an additional 10 years, and I can't complain about that, because it had meant more time trying to teach young people.”
He said, “I visited several groups of classes four to five periods at each school 60 times a year. I brought my Funny Car, showed them the car, told them about all the options of careers in motorsports and explained things that kids may not know about. I talk about how important math is to crew chiefs, how important communication skills are to team public relations personnel and team managers and all of the jobs that make racing across the nation and around the world possible. I tried to do my best to keep kids interested in anything long enough to graduate high school and find a career direction.”
The “break-up” with the Auto Club, he said, was “a loss for me as far as funding for my race team, but it's not nearly as big of a loss as it [was] for the kids. I wish they had considered maintaining the program even if it didn't involve me. The school program did an awful lot of good, helping kids get through school that might not have done so. The program has helped put an emphasis on vocational programs and helped school administrators and counselors see how important vocational studies are. Kids who might not be college bound still need to see the value in education. They need to stay in school and learn skills.”
In a 2005 interview with the NHRA Communications Department, Densham said, “There is a benefit to all people when you give young people choices in their lives. I liked trying to at least show kids they had options, and I worked as hard as possible to make sure that any encouragement they received stayed with them for the rest of their lives. I think I was the most spoiled teacher in the world. There are a lot of great teachers out there but I think few have had the kind of perks that I have had because I have run into former students all across the nation every year since I started racing.
“Does a civics teacher run into a former student who has since become the President? Does an English teacher run into a former student that has written the New York Times bestseller? Maybe, but what are the odds? I run into my former students all the time. They bring their new wife or husband, their sons and daughters and other family members to the track and they tell me they went to Gahr High School, graduated, and now they have a house, a new truck, and a great job. They tell me they wouldn't have made it through school or wouldn't have gone the direction they did if it hadn't been for my class. That's an overwhelming feeling, hearing so many great stories like that. I get to see how the kids have grown up and see what great things they have done, and it makes me proud that I spent all those years in a classroom.”
Densham was inducted Thursday night into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame, but all along, he has been honored simply by the life he has led. – Susan Wade
How Funny Car veteran owner-driver Gary Densham ended up in Gainesville, Fla., this weekend is a bit of a mystery – at least to him.
His wife, Joanne, understands it. So do his army of fans and the racers who have lined up against him since he broke onto the NHRA scene in 1971. The same goes for the selection panel for the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame, which named Densham to its 2018 class.
But Densham, 71, said he had no clue he would find himself Thursday night at the Hilton University of Florida Conference Center Gainesville, listening while “a bunch of old farts tell stories” – and, what’s more, that he would be one of them.
The former high-school shop teacher from suburban Los Angeles was inducted into the Don Garlits Museum’s elite, along with fellow Californians Jeb Allen, Kelly Brown, Roy Fjastad, and Greg Sharp; Jim Oddy; and the late Ollie Riley.
Densham said he’s “impressed” but “can’t figure out why” he was chosen.
“It never crossed my mind. I never thought there would ever be a chance that I’d be lucky enough to be one of the people that get to be on that granite marble statue outside of Garlits’ museum [at nearby Ocala, Fla.]. It never crossed my mind,” he said.
“I went to the inductee ceremonies with Henry Velasco, super-close friend of mine, [who] was inducted in 2004,” he said, “and I kind of looked at the whole thing and the people that were there, and what they had contributed to our sport of drag racing. I thought, ‘Man, geez, I’m sitting here in the hall of all the people that have done so much for our sport.’ And to think that I was lucky enough to ever be part of that is just incredible.”
Densham offered a random-sounding resume as an explanation: “Like I always said, ‘What have I been famous for? Winning Indy and the Skoal Showdown and dragging John Force back to America from Australia so he doesn’t get killed down there’. All those NHRA national events, IHRA, you know, AHRA, Australian National Championship, you know, all the way back to Division 7 championship when we used to run Fuel cars in divisional races. I don’t know what, if any of those, is the reason that I got inducted to the Hall of Fame. But you want to think that all of them work that way somehow or another.”
Densham downplayed his extensive accomplishments, which include developing – with backing later from the Automobile Club of Southern California – the role model for the NHRA’s U.S. Army-sponsored YES (Youth and Education Services) program. He even mockingly called himself a “Hall of Flamer.”
But he was generous with praise for those who helped shape his still-rocking career that started with a 1970 Ford Pinto in 1971 – when, he jokes, his first opponent was Barney Rubble.
“I don’t know if Gary Densham did anything for it, but you know, they did it,” he said of his colleagues.
His greatest Hall-of-Fame achievement in drag racing, he acknowledged, is “obviously the weekend I won Indy and the Skoal Showdown and the double-up. I mean, that is an extremely hard thing to do. It’s a miracle weekend when it happens, and we did it – and it was great.”
It certainly was spectacular, with a skydiver parachuting from the heavens with a briefcase containing $100,000 for him for winning the bonus race. It was a prelude to the $225,000 total paycheck he brought John Force Racing at the 2004 U.S. Nationals, in the golden anniversary weekend of this fabled event.
Densham had come to Indianapolis for the race’s 25th edition. Looking back, he said he “was afraid drag racing would fold up and blow away and die. I figured people wouldn’t want noisy, stinky racetracks near their homes. So I decided I’d better drag my home-built trailer and hot rod to Indy. We didn’t have a clue what we were doing.”
He teased that racing in Australia with now-16-time-champion Force and persuading him to come home to the NHRA “might have been great for the fans in America. He’s the winningest drag racer ever, but I think the Aussies made me take him home, just so he wouldn’t end up owning the country.”
After years as a privateer back in the U.S., Densham joined John Force Racing and scored his most memorable performances. He broke a 243-race winless string, worked with some of the sharpest and most financially comfortable associates, and got a peek at how the other half lives. But his was, so to speak, a rags-to-riches-to-rags-again story when JFR brought on Robert Hight.
However, Densham said he’s OK with the trajectory of his career.
“Has it really mattered to me all that much that I haven’t been lucky enough to have all of the money and all of the resources and all of the people to be able to compete for championships and national-event wins and all that stuff? Well, maybe a little bit, but not really, because I was still lucky enough to participate. And we’ve done very well on our own,” he said. “But was it nice to have that four years where I had the best equipment, I had all the people, all the resources, got to work with Jimmy Prock, who is an absolutely wonderful person. You know, Jimmy’s not only, in my opinion, one of the absolutely premier crew chiefs of our sport that has ever been. He’s also just a great guy. And the fun that we had together.
“So I guess I’m always going to be indebted to John for those experiences – and yet, you look at the fact that out of the 10 years that we ran national events on our own, we made the top 10 five times with absolutely the least budget of anybody out there. I think that’s quite an accomplishment, and it says an awful lot for the people that have helped me.”
(Force said, “Gary Densham is being honored at the Garlits Hall of Fame. We raced together in Australia and I think they knocked me out a few times down there. Excited to see him get in.”)
The almost-always positive Densham said, “If there’s any regrets that I’ve got anywhere, period, in my career of NHRA drag racing is that I never was able to give Greg Amaral and Ed Boytim the money and the resources to show how good they really, really are. I believe Greg can compete with John Force and Austin Coil and [Rahn] Tobler and Dickie Venables and all those guys. When he can take a car like ours with virtually stuff that was taken out of people’s trash cans and be able to beat them and end up in the top 10 and stuff, you think what could he do if you gave him money.”
And that’s why he said, “I couldn’t do this – no way could I come to this – without bringing those people. That’s the way it is.”
Insisting that for this entire weekend, “We’re going to have a good time,” Densham, who’s competing at the Amalie Oil Gatornationals at Auto-Plus Raceway, said the call informing him that he was going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame was . . . well . . . an alcohol-infused moment in which one thought led to another.
“Well the bad problem is I was drinking. And you know, no good story starts with somebody eating a salad, right? So I thought to myself, ‘Gee whiz, I’m just unbelievably honored and don’t have a clue why I’m lucky enough to have this happen to me’. And then I thought, ‘Well if I’m getting inducted because of who had the most fun, I should have been the first inductee because I’ve had more fun than everybody else’. And then I thought, ‘Well geez, you know, if I’m going there, I’m only getting there because of all the guys that have helped me, all my crew and all the people.’ And so many of them have been with me for 30 years, like Greg and Ed. And I thought, ‘Well I ought to take them too. And then I thought, ‘Geez, if I’m going to make them get all dressed up and go to some dinner and listen to a bunch of old farts tell stories, then we ought to run our race car.’ And so that’s what I decided to do. And now that I’ve looked at what it costs, that was a stupid idea.”
Still distinguishing himself, Densham is racing in the same weekend in which he has entered the sport’s Hall of Fame.
“How many people have done that? Not very many,” he said with a rare hint of pride.
“But we’re going to have a great time, and that’s all that counts,” he said. “We’re going to have a great time.”
That’s what he has been having for more than 50 years, so why not?
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