Davie Drags

The Broward Auto Club ran NHRA-sanctioned races on the second and fourth Sundays of each month at the Fort Lauderdale-Davie Airport. The field opened as a Navy training field in World War II, when it was called Forman NOLF, and had a wagon-wheel layout of four 3,000-foot paved runways with a circular taxiway around the edge. Drag racing started on June 28, 1959. Charlie Henault, whose father managed a Jr. U-Tote-Um store across Davie Boulevard from Forman Field from 1957 to 1960, worked there on race weekends at age 12. He spent both days sorting thousands of soda bottles returned for the 2-cent deposit, and all summer the store was packed with people from the races, which were a big event for Broward County. When he was older he rode his bike on the runways at dusk, catching snakes that came out to soak up the stored heat and selling them to Bill Hass, who wanted three burlap bags at a time. Once he had a car he found a tire dump at the end of the northwest runway, where he picked up retreads with cut sidewalls but good beads, patched them and had free tires. The old field is now the South Florida Education Center, with campuses of Nova University, Broward Community College, the University of Florida, Florida International University and Florida Atlantic University.