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The AHRA / ADRA Split

Georgia Miller and Jim Tice Jr.
at Alamo Dragway, San Antonio during the mid- to late '70's.

Sometime in late 1980, Jim Tice Sr., was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. As he got sicker, Jim's wife Ruth and Georgia Miller booked the racers and Jim Jr. ran the events. Due to the severity of Tice Sr.'s illness, obviously some type of contingency plans had to be made for his departure. What developed in the beginning seemed to make sense.

"When Jim was sick, we talked a lot with him," said Moe. "We had a group of AHRA track operators, Tice Jr., Gerald Pritchard at Tulsa, George Eisenhardt at Dragway 42, Chuck Harmon Sr. at Kansas City, and myself, and basically it was agreed among us that we would collectively buy the business from his wife, Ruth, when he died.

"It looked like that was the way we were going to go, that we would run the association Grand American collectively. Ruth did want to run the track a little longer. So we figured okay, we'd help her out and keep AHRA afloat. Jim died in 1982 and we ran the organization for her until about mid-1984."

The AHRA track owners made up what were called the AHRA Regional Vice Presidents and their opinion on the future of the association counted for a lot. Still, there was the headquarters staff and the actual headquarters vice-president was Don Garlits. He had a different path for Mrs. Tice and recommended that Ruth sell the association to Mike Gray, who was the president of Terminal Van Lines in Florida and very interested in buying AHRA. Gray, while a successful businessman, had very limited drag racing experience, most of it centered around his backing of Bo O'Brochta's record-setting fuel motorcycle in the very early 1980's.

"We talked to her about it," said Moe, "but she decided to go with Garlits' deal. When we heard about the deal, we talked to Gray, but at that point I decided to step away. Jim, before his death, made personal agreements that any track operator could cancel any agreements with AHRA if they were unhappy for any reason after his death, and I decided to exercise my option."

Tice Jr., had an explanation as to why Moe might've been unhappy with the buy-out by Gray.

"Orville had been offered the contract by Ruth originally, but the wording stated that he would be responsible for any known and unknown debts," said Jim Jr. "Well, there were obvious weaknesses there.

"As for myself, my dad had verbally said that I would get 25-percent, but that was not handled when he died. I had no proof short of my word. Personally, my step-mother, Ruth, and I have never been close and we did have some problems. In the last year we had AHRA, I ran it and we made in the neighborhood of $750,000, but she also had run up some huge debts and had developed some tax problems and needed money. She first offered the deal to sell AHRA to Orville, but he declined. However, along came Mike Gray and there it was."

Gray, according to some of the AHRA track owner survivors, was gung-ho for all-Pro shows at upcoming AHRA events, but the association agreed that this was flawed thinking.

As Tice put it, "When the whole deal is done, you don't want to lose your Sportsman racers. They buy the majority of parts and count for a goodly part of the profit margin that comes out of the races."

Seeing the decision Mrs. Tice made, Moe, Pritchard, Harmon, Eisenhardt and the other track owners decided to go with a slightly different plan and run another association collectively. Gray had bought the "AHRA" name in mid-1984, so the old guard created the American Drag Racing Association (ADRA) and ran their own races. The first event was held at Dragway 42 on July 19-22 at West Salem, Ohio, Kansas City International on Aug. 2-5, and Spokane Raceway Park, Aug. 16-19.

Chris "the Greek" Karamasines at Tulsa in 1984.

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