Dan Burton: “We are very sorry to hear about Benny Parsons losing his life and his battle with lung cancer. He was a great race car…”

“We are very sorry to hear about Benny Parsons losing his life and his battle with lung cancer. He was a great race car driver, known to his friends as BP. He spent his early years in North Carolina, where he began his career in sports playing high school football. Shortly after high school, his family moved to Detroit where his father ran a taxicab company. He helped his father and drove cabs and also worked at a local gas station. In a town known as Motor City, Benny's interest and experience in automobiles and racing thrived. He quickly became a real huge race fan. As the story goes, he lucked out when a truck towing a race car pulled into the station for a fill-up, and after talking with the truck driver, he was invited to join him on his way to nearby Mount Clemens Speedway. Once they arrived at the track, the race car driver who was supposed to drive the car did not show up, and so BP offered to drive the car, and that was his first race. It is hard to believe that somebody would go from a gas station to a race car and get in it right away. I am from Indianapolis, Indiana. The Indianapolis 500 is driven there, and I cannot imagine anybody without any past experience getting into a race car and driving it and doing well, but BP did.”