40
CN
III ARCHIVES
BY LARRY LAWRENCE
I
t was with great anticipation that I waited for
a box of photos being sent to me from 1980s
racing photographer Randy Marrs. I'd recon-
nected with Randy, thanks to Facebook, after
one of those online discussions of "whatever
happened to..."
When the post office worker turned the cor-
ner to hand me the package sent from Randy,
she must have wondered what was wrong with
me. I'm sure the color was going out of my face.
The excited anticipation at getting a first look at
Randy's long-lost collection, turned to concern.
This wasn't a big box as I had pictured in my
mind, but a flat padded ready-post envelope.
I've digitized several photo collections before
and I instinctively knew that there were not many
photos in this package. What was going on?
Randy Marrs came into racing photography
at first just to get pictures of a buddy who was
racing.
"I had a good friend named Dave Stanton (not
to be confused with the multi-time AFM and pro
racer Dave Stanton) who worked with me at a
foreign car shop and he raced in WERA," Marrs
said. "He was going down to Savannah to race
one weekend and I told him I'd go down to take
pictures of him."
When Randy got down to Roebling Road,
he found out the person who was supposed to
cover the race for Cycle News never showed up.
"So, I took pictures and wrote a little story," Randy
said. "At the time, the Cycle News East office was in
Tucker, Georgia, which was close to where I lived in
Atlanta, so I ran my story and film over and they pub-
lished it. They asked me if I wanted to keep doing this
and I said, 'Yeah, I really had a good time.'"
P126
And with that, Randy was a Cycle News contributor.
He covered more club events and then got the call to
cover his first pro race, an AMA Road Race National in
Talladega, Alabama.
"From there they had me cover motocross and Day-
tona and it just kind of moved up the ladder," Randy
remembers. "That's how I got started and this was
PHOTOGRAPHS:
A TALE OF SURVIVAL
Randy Marrs
shooting at Road
Atlanta in the
early 1980s.
