Over the last 50 years, drag racing has gone through monumental changes.

Bill and Mary Ann Jackson have seen the evolution of the sport and after five decades-plus they are still racing.

Over the last 50 years, drag racing has gone through monumental changes.

Bill and Mary Ann Jackson have seen the evolution of the sport and after five decades-plus they are still racing.

“We have seen a lot of people come and go,” Bill said. “We’ve done a lot of traveling in our lifetimes and there are times when we have been disgusted or think we’re going to quit and we are always bringing each other back up. I really don’t count us old, that’s just a number. We are sharp and I love being out there with this stuff learning.”

These days, Bill and Mary Ann compete in the Super Gas and Super Comp classes. They have two identical Super Gas Monzas and two Super Comp dragsters.

“We are going to all the NHRA Division 3 races this year, and we will see how the points come out,” said Bill, who along with his wife have had racing memberships with the NHRA for 50 years. “If we start doing well in the points we might go out of the division. If we only take one dragster and one Monza, she drives the dragster and I take the Monza.”

The Jacksons have come a long way to get to this point. Bill raced down the track the first time in 1959 behind the wheel of a ‘59 Chevrolet. Mary Ann made her first run down the dragstrip in 1963 at Hyde Park in Newark, Ohio, in a 1958 Pontiac.

“That was back in the day of the flagman,” Bill said. “In 1964, she won the B Stock Automatic class at the U.S. Nationals.”

Bill and Mary Ann have been married since 1970 – and they have no plans to stop racing.

“We have to keep going,” Bill said. “A lot of our friends are either in rest homes or dead or something else. We have to keep going to have new friends to talk to. We really enjoy the sport. Even as long as we have been involved with racing, we have a nice home to come to. We are really serious about racing, but it is not our main priority.”

Mary added to Bill’s thoughts.

“We have made a lot of friends along the way and we still have a lot of friends from years of racing,” Mary said. “The bills are paid before we leave home (to go racing). They always have been. We like to have fun racing, but we also go to compete. We are going to race our hearts out. If you are not going to try and win, you might as well stay at home.”

Beyond racing, Bill worked for over 30 years as a machinist and tool and die maker at General Motors and at the same time he was at GM, he ran a repair shop, machine shop and engine building shop.

“I still build lots of engines,” Bill said. “I slowed down a little bit, but only because I wanted to. I have plenty of business and I build a lot of engines for our competitors. We get beat by our engines all the time. If I didn’t think I could build an engine as good or better, I better quit.”

The Jacksons have lived at the same house in Mansfield, Ohio, since 1975.

The Jacksons also have plenty of family now.

“We have six kids, 18 grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren,” Mary Ann said.

Nitro Joe Jackson, the youngest of the six children, has become well known for doing drag racing statistics in publications and online.

Pete Frech, Mary Ann’s father, was the person who was instrumental in getting Bill and Mary Ann into racing.

“Her dad really got both of us started in racing,” Bill said. “Back when I was in high school, I started working on cars. He was racing. I would slip out and go with him.”

Mary Ann relishes the time she was able to spend with her father.

“Racing with my dad are some of my fondest memories,” Mary Ann said. “He passed away when he was 90 (in 2001). Another real big deal was when they had the 40th anniversary of the Hemi cars in Las Vegas at the dragstrip in 2008. I got to see a lot of racers I had not seen in 30 or 40 years and it was very rewarding to meet up with all those people again.”

Changes in drag racing have been dramatic since Bill and Mary Ann first got behind the wheel, and Mary Ann took a moment to point out some of the biggest differences from then and now.

“I would say the size of the rigs,” Mary Ann said. “You went from flat towing or driving the car there yourself, and then you went to open trailers and enclosed trailers, and now they have the big rigs. There’s also the electronics. A long time ago you had to drive and get the most out of your car and now I think a lot has been taken away from the driver.”

Both Bill and Mary Ann have left their names in the drag racing record books.

“We’ve seen it all,” Bill said. “I won the first national race they had in Super Gas. It was at the Spring Nationals in 1981 at Columbus (Ohio). I won it with a ’66 Corvette.”

Mary Ann, meanwhile, in 1971 in York, Penn., became the first woman to win an American Hot Rod Association national race. She was driving a 1970 Nova Super Stock car.

“Back in the 1970s, we raced a lot of IHRA and AHRA races,” Bill said. “In 1991, I won the Keystone Nationals (in Redding, Pa.) in Super Comp. That was quite the accomplishment. In 2005, I won a Super Gas title at the U.S. Nationals in the Monza I have still got. One of the reasons we are still able to do this is we do our own engines and we keep cars a long time. We have no plans of retiring.”

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