Lee Shepherd

Who was Lee Shepherd?

Lee Alan Shepherd was an American drag racing driver from Arlington, Texas. In 1972 Lee Shepherd drove a lime-green Chevy 2 Nova wagon to the finals in Modified-Eliminator at the Springnationals. Later in 1972 he began racing with Reher & Morrison. The three Texans pooled their limited resources and forged a longstanding partnership after Bobby Cross left the team to pursue his own business ventures. The Reher, Morrison, and Shepherd team won the 1974 Winternationals in a pumpkin-orange F/Gas Maverick. In 1975, the Texans borrowed a Corvette body, transplanted the Maverick's powertrain, and recorded another victory at the 1975 Springnationals in the Modified-eliminator class.

The team campaigned a Chevy Camaro to win four consecutive NHRA world championships from 1981 to 1984. In 1983 Shepherd became the first driver to win both the NHRA and IHRA Pro Stock championships in the same year, a feat that has never before, or since, been equalled. He won twenty-six NHRA national events in Pro Stock.

In 1985, Shepherd was killed while testing his car in Ardmore, Oklahoma. At the Gatornationals, the next event on the NHRA tour, the qualifiers in Pro Stock lined up on the track before the start of eliminations in a missing man formation with the pole position being left open for Lee Shepherd. Reher & Morrison returned to racing later that year with a new driver named Bruce Allen. In 2001, a panel ranked Shepherd twelfth in the National Hot Rod Association Top 50 Drivers, 1951–2000. He is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Fort Worth, Texas.