Pat Garlits Memorial Award: Linda Jones. At the age of 19, Linda married Ted Jones, who was a drag racer and had a dream of owning his local dragstrip in Kettlersville, Ohio. The young couple had no money or assets, only the desire to be more involved in the sport they loved. Ted was able to talk the track owner into selling Kettlersville Drag Strip, agreeing to make monthly payments. But the owner wanted a big down payment, which Ted did not have.
After trying everything possible to borrow the down payment without success, Ted was depressed and ready to give up his dream of owning and operating a drag strip. Then one day when Ted returned home from his job at WERT radio station and Linda told him that she had secured the money for the down payment to buy the track by borrowing the money from her mother, and the rest is history.
Ted and Linda in all would own four drag strips, including one they built from the ground up in Van Wert Ohio. Linda did everything from running the pit gate to managing the concession stands, and handling racer complaints in the bottom of the tower where she managed prize money payout. Ted and Linda sold their four drag strips and move to Bristol, Tenn., to work with Larry Carrier and the newly formed IHRA.
During her years at IHRA, before the invention of the Compulink computer system, Linda supervised a crew of five women and invented a system to accurately keep track of qualifying, and eliminations in the timing tower at all IHRA national events. Then after the race, Linda would work with the track operator to financially settle up the event representing IHRA. This led to Linda becoming the CFO of not only the IHRA, but the Bristol Dragway and Bristol NASCAR track as well. Then when IHRA lost the editor of Drag Review Magazine, Larry Carrier asked Linda to work overtime as editor of Drag Review until someone could be hired to do that job while still keeping up with her duties as the CFO of IHRA.
When Billy Meyer bought the IHRA from Larry Carrier, Ted and Linda left the IHRA for one year. Then Ted and Jim Ruth purchased the IHRA and of course Linda took over again as CFO and returned to her duties managing the tower crew at every event. Linda wrote all of the radio and TV commercials for IHRA for many years and won a prestigious National ADDY award for her originality creating the IHRA commercials. Ted then started Masters Entertainment Group. Through the years at Masters,
Linda took on numerous duties including Assistant Director, Field Producer, and Production Assistant on televised events on ESPN and many other TV networks. Linda now is the CFO at Masters Entertainment Group.
Linda Jones has truly made a behind the scenes contribution to the sport of drag racing, but more importantly has been at Ted’s side through it all.
The inductees will be honored at the 33rd annual International Drag Racing Hall of Fame Banquet, to be held on Thursday, March 9, at the Hilton University of Florida Conference Center in Gainesville, Fla. NHRA announcer Joe Castello will serve as the emcee. The event will begin with a reception at 5:30 p.m., followed by dinner at 6:45 p.m. and the induction ceremony at 8 p.m. Masters Entertainment will live stream the event. Tickets ($110) and Tables ($1,100) are available for purchase by calling the museum.