Bill, I'd like to thank you for putting this editorial on draglist.com. Seems the rumors are already flying and basically, that's because people LOVE rumors. Instead of people calling me to find out what was going on, they just started rumors -- the ONE thing drag racing doesn't need any more of. These rumormongers are people who knew they could call me any time and never minded calling before...WHEN it was something THEY wanted. Maybe this will clear things up for people who don't have enough brains to find out on their own what's REALLY going on. I can't believe how many people don't even take the time to look at something before they jump the gun. And you wouldn't believe how many called or wrote and asked me the send them the 'rest' of their paper. One guy even mailed his back to me and wanted me to send him the 'whole' thing. People really LOVE to jump to conclusions, don't they? You can also put this note with my editorial! Thanks! Becky

Quick Times Racing News November/December, 2004

On the Racing QT -- with Becky White

BEFORE you call the post office OR ME to complain not receiving your whole paper, look carefully at the page numbers. THIS IS your whole paper. And it contains information you DON’T want to miss. The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement! And that’s what I’m going to do -- improve myself (I hope). I’ve had it. I cannot do this any more; I don’t want to do this any more. I’ve had all I can take. I’ve been doing this paper for 24 years, 9 months. I’ve accomplished a lot of things in drag racing no one else was ever able to accomplish. I’ve worked hard for the little racers and little track operators for a lot of little wimps to come along and try to take this business away from me. And without the support of all racers and all track operators, I cannot continue. If I’m going to live on pennies, then I’m going to get those pennies doing some of the things I’ve wanted to do for the past 26 years that I haven’t gotten to do.

This has been a VERY HARD year, 2 months, 3 weeks, for me. I GREATLY appreciate everything everyone has done for me and I ‘almost’ wish I could keep doing this, but I’ve devoted nearly half my life (well over a quarter of a century) to drag racing and I just don’t feel I’m doing anyone any good any more, least of all myself. I will NEVER be able to travel and work the way I have in the past. I’ve worked really hard at re-building the strength I lost while I was on my backside due to my injuries. I’ve had to face the fact I will NEVER regain that strength. I struggled so hard during the spring and summer to get back the strength I had lost from being on my ass with my leg higher than my heart, then lost all the strength I had gained and more, too, after the last surgery. I’ve been in a cast for 3 months, 1 week and just got the cast off on December 22. I’m STILL having to wear an air cast any time I’m walking and I will be on crutches for a long time to come.

I’m not much better than I was in January and May and September and even with the last surgery, I will never be able to stand on the starting line for hours and hours and take photos again. I will never be able to cruise the staging lanes or the pits for hours talking to everyone and telling them how much I appreciate their support or that I have a great photo of them, etc. I don’t know when my leg will be healed enough to even begin to lead a normal life again!

Maybe I am finally feeling my age. I guess drag racing kept me young for a lot of years, but the last year has taken care of that. When I say I’m feeling my age, I mean emotionally as well as physically. I feel so helpless and it’s a feeling I don’t like. I need to concentrate on getting well and finding something I can do to make a living which won’t be so stressful, physically and emotionally. I can no longer work like a slave to get the paperwork done, then get everything prepared for a trip and haul ass up (or down) the road to a race to work like a slave in the heat and the cold and the wind and the rain, then come home and do it all over again, week in, week out, year after year.

No one, especially not me, had any idea how bad this injury was. I just kept listening to the doctors tell me how lucky I was I hadn’t lost my leg and I would get better, never well, but almost. Well it’s been a year and almost three months and I’m STILL crippled and actually will be for the rest of my life… I have FINALLY faced that. It’s just up to me to make the best of this situation and that’s what I’ve been trying to do all along.

One of my biggest struggles since the accident happened has been against depression. I’ve been there before so I know the symptoms and have been able to recognize them as they’ve occurred. I’ve been independent all my life, just struggling to survive, since I was a child. Now, just when I thought things were kind of smoothing out, here I am, disabled, no job, no retirement savings, and wondering how I’m going to survive the rest of my life…wondering if I’ll even be able to keep my home for which I’ve worked so hard for so many years.

I’ve been asking you all year to send photos. Most of you buy photos of your cars at nearly every race you attend, which means you have plenty, but if you don’t want to get them printed badly enough to put one in an envelope and put it in the mailbox, why should I worry about trying to come to the races in my condition to take them?

I HATE change. I hate a lot of the changes in drag racing. I hate the attitudes of new people coming into the sport; they all seem like spoiled brats to me. They don’t associate like us ‘old folks’ always have; they just kind of go off into their separate little areas and act like they’re the only ones there. I don’t like the attitudes of many of the older racers, especially those who are always talking about cheating. Always remember what I’ve always said, "You can’t cheat where there are NO rules!" I always wanted to ask, "What difference does it make what kind of equipment you have on your race car when you’re splitting the first round buy back and everything after that? Why do you even race if all you’re going to do is bitch and gripe?"

I don’t like the fact that tracks are not having bracket racing. I don’t like the fact that many of those tracks, whether they have grudge racing insurance or not, don’t have rules for their grudge racing nights and many of them are allowing people to run cars that, in reality, are death traps. I personally could go to one of those race nights and probably disqualify EVERY SINGLE CAR there if I were using written rules for Street and/or DOT bracket cars and I have never had any kind of training for teching cars. It’s just common sense, which most people don’t seem to have nowadays.

Many of these track operators don’t make these racers wear helmets, harnesses, seat belts, or have other safety equipment in and on their cars. There WILL come a time…soon…when the insurance companies who cover drag racing will either stop the grudge racing, 10.5 tire racing, and all other so-called street car racing or they will go up so high on the insurance that no one will be able to afford it. Just let there be a couple more deaths or serious injuries they have to pay for and see what happens.

I don’t have a thing against track operators making a LOT of money on grudge night. I DO, however, have a problem with them letting people who DON’T know what they’re doing race unsafe cars without safety equipment. I also know that if they had rules and made these racers follow those rules, most would NOT be there, and that’s why they don’t have rules.

I have given track operators a last chance this year to get involved, but most have chosen not to. I have mailed a letter to almost 200 track operators almost every month this year and many have not even acknowledged the letter. What’s even worse are the ones I’ve called who don’t even have the courtesy to call me back when I’m just wanting to get some information from them about their track to put in Odds & Ends (FREE advertising)! (Examples: Brian Pierce; Hayne Dominick, Al Childers, Gary Gore, Tim Inman, Tim Bell, Ray Lewis, Joe Sway, Ralph Abernathy, Roger Plate, Jim Halsey, Cathy Crouse, Ronnie Buff, Zane DeWitt and Johnny Dowey, just to name a few!)

I have told you I’ve been sending track operators letters each month this year. I want to tell you about the first one I sent. It went out in December and I asked each track operator to put a one/sixth page ad (4 ½ x 5") in one paper some time this spring even if they had never run an ad in Quick Times before, an ad which would help them get their phone number, directions, websites, opening dates, regular weekly schedules, etc., out to all the racers and that if each one would do just that one one/sixth page ad, I could almost pay my hospital bill with that income. I want you to know how many calls I got from that letter: FOUR!!

I NEVER asked a single track operator to donate money for my medical bills. I never asked one single track operator to raise money for my medical bills. I never asked one single track operator to have a benefit race for me (and not a single one offered to do so). I asked them to run one little $150 ad to help themselves and help me in the process. It was then I realized just how much my efforts over the years have been appreciated. It’s been down hill ever since. I also want you to know the ONLY track operators in my immediate area who offered to do anything were Mike Greer and Danny Dunn. The others didn’t even so much as send a get well card. That will tell you what kind of people you’re dealing with.

It seems everyone else who’s ever been hurt in this sport got some kind of benefit race or auction or some kind of racing fund raiser held for them. But not me. In all the years I’ve done this paper, there have been many, MANY requests for me to run FREE ads for benefit races for other people or others have asked me to do those types of ads for half price, if they were a full page. I NEVER turned a single one of these requests down!

The people who did the most for me were people who didn’t even know me when they had the blues concert in Houston for which I will be eternally grateful. There WERE some drag racing people involved in that, beginning with Phil Elliott, then Bill Pratt and the racers who donated items for sale (some of them also did not know me!!!). Drag Racing Underground’s John Gill and Diana ‘The Doc’ Thomas were next with all the CDs they’ve made and sold. A VERY special "THANK YOU" to Larry and Nancy Hensley, who, by the way, are at Orlando Speedworld Dragway now. Thanks to everyone who has supported me over the years and to those people who have helped out in other ways since my accident.

I admit I’ve made several mistakes during the past 24 years and a half years. The first one was thinking I would be accepted in this sport as an equal. It never happened. I made the mistake of being honest and of doing my best, working hard, and keeping my reputation as clean as other people would allow. I made the mistake of not screwing my way up the ladder, not kissing butts to get business.

But the worst mistake I made was working so hard to gather more knowledge and intelligence about drag racing than any other person in the sport, ESPECIALLY the ones I dealt with. Track operators, along with the powers that be in IHRA and NHRA, were always so intimidated by my knowledge of drag racing. They just wanted me to go away because I could match them word for word in any conversation and, in every case, make them look like fools. I should not have done that; I know that now. But I could not have done this business any other way; it has been a labor of love. I loved it and all of you; you’ve been my family for the past quarter of a century.

The biggest mistake was being born a woman. Don’t get me wrong, I’m GLAD I am a woman; I thank God at least I can think with my brain. I always thought if I worked hard and kept my nose clean and was honest and did the things I was supposed to do the way they were supposed to be done, I would be accepted as ‘one of the guys’ and respected for being that kind of person. I was wrong again. Now, I hope to find something I can do where it won’t matter what gender I am and where a pat on the back doesn’t include a knife!

Anything I have belonging to anyone else will be mailed back to them soon. The CLUBS will continue to go on and someone else will be letting you know all about that as soon as we get the details worked out. In the meantime, continue to send your ET slips to me at the same address. It’s gonna take some time to get all this stuff together You WILL be receiving something else in the mail from me; do with it what you wish.

I wish I could explain to you some of the things I’ve been through to get this paper to you every month, but no one cares! I never missed sending out an issue even when my daughter was killed in an auto accident, much less when I got crippled in one. You would not believe how many days and weeks I’ve sat here and wondered when my advertisers were going to send me my money and how many times I had to pay my house payment late or NOT buy groceries because some advertisers (mostly track operators) would not send me what they owed. There have been many races I went to and, if some of the racers had not invited me to eat with them, I would not have eaten that day!

I will NEVER forget the first time I went to River Cities Raceway Park in Ashland, KY in 1987, a track that was 350 miles away!! When I left home, I had a full tank of gas and $22.00 in my pocket! How many of you would have ever done anything like that? Some of you have asked me to write more about myself, well I just did. This is the way I lived for many, many years!

Wondering if I would EVER get to buy groceries for my family, wondering if the electricity would be cut off (and actually getting it cut off at least once), nearly freezing to death sometimes in the winter because I had to wait for someone to decide to pay me before I could buy some oil for heat, wondering if the landlord was going to run me out because I didn’t have the rent money on time.

My girls sacrificed quite a bit, too, although they learned a lot. They never had the things other kids did because we could never afford them; I guess that’s why they appreciate what they have now and work so hard to get it and keep it. But they LOVED going to the races, maybe not as much as I did, but they had lots of friends and always had a great time. And we always had a lot of fun together. In some ways, it was a good way for them to grow up; in other ways, they sure had to do without most of the things teenagers take for granted nowadays. They know how I struggled and they know how I worried over everything and, most of the time, they worked with me.

I just wanted you to know, this has not been easy. I’ve had to work HARD all the years I’ve been in drag racing. It has definitely been a labor of love ‘cause I sure as hell never made any money at it. I would really like for y’all to call me or write me and let me know how you feel about this. I wish the best for each and every one of you. I will still be having my sale sometime next year and maybe I will see you then. Otherwise, I won’t be coming to any races; I have to figure out what I’m going to do to make a living since it isn’t going to be in racing any more! I think it is ironic that Warren Johnson has just announced his retirement, Bill Bader just retired, and I’m leaving drag racing as well. I see very few good things in store for drag racing in the future, but I hope that’s just my depression talking. I hope the people who control this sport, as well as the racers, soon get an attitude adjustment and make things better.

Before I close for the last time, I want to say how much I appreciate the support from each of you. And for those who have sent help with these horrendous hospital bills, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I don’t know how I could have made it through the last 15 months without all of you. I would love to have been able to call each one of you and tell you this, but there wasn’t the time OR the money. There isn’t a single one of you I haven’t thought of recently; there isn’t one I am not grateful to for your support.

In a nice, perfect world, we would all keep in touch, send cards, and call each other, but this isn’t a perfect world and I have no doubts I will be forgotten shortly! In the meantime, I have tried to serve you well and I hope you are all getting ready to have the BEST NEW YEAR you and your families have ever had. My home number is (704) 732-1160 and you’re welcome to call any time! I wish you all the best, Becky

Fans speak out on the passing of QTRN. Read the letters HERE.