One of the many cool things about my job is I am the caretaker of all of the old Great Race archives. The funny thing about that is before I became director of the Great Race, I collected a lot of past Great Race memorabilia myself. I searched ebay often and spent hundreds of dollars over the years buying items from the 1980s such as posters, calendars and pins.
There is not a lot of material, but some of it is pretty neat. Curtis Graf became the caretaker of most of these materials between the Tom McRae days and the current stewardship, and we have been going through it over the past year since it was delivered. Our own Kindall Jolly, who handles the overnight set up on the Great Race, has found several late 80s and early 90s shirts, and he wears them proudly to work.
Over the next few days I will be sharing some of the things I have pulled from the archives to hang in my office or to photograph for the website.
One of the best things I found were several original watercolors by F.L. Henley of Dallas. I had them framed and they are hanging in my office. They are very large about four feet wide by three feet tall. The first one is from the 1991 Great American Race from Norfolk to Seattle. In the top right corner is Dennis Hollands 1909 Buick race car that has to be one of the all time Great Race vehicles. Keep watching for more cool stuff in the coming days.
–Jeff Stumb
