Hi, everyone. My name is Paul Perry and I was born 53 yrs ago in St.Louis, MO and have lived in “small towns” south of there pretty much my entire life. I graduated from the UMKC School of Pharmacy in 1974, and married my wife Sheila in October of that year after meeting her while working at her uncle’s pharmacy in Hillsboro, MO. In 1978 we moved “south” to an 80 acre farm near the bootheel of Missouri where my father-in law farms about 500 acres and is also the pastor of the Church of Christ in Advance, MO. We of course have been members of the church since then, and I have been the treasurer for about the past 20 yrs. My passion at that time was quail and dove hunting along with some deer hunting with bow and black powder. While I never got a deer with bow, I was successful with a 45 cal Hawken rifle I had built from a kit (see pic about 20 yrs ago).
We lived on the farm 18 yrs raising our three children, Beth (27), Andy(25), and Tim(19), until 1996 when we moved to “town” , Bloomfield, MO which is about 30 miles east of Poplar Bluff and has a population of about 2000. See pic of the family taken about a year ago at Andy’s(next to me) wedding.
I had worked mostly in small retail pharmacies, until 1984 when I started with Wal-Mart as pharmacy manager in Poplar Bluff, MO. In 1989 I was promoted to District Supervisor over about 20 of their pharmacies in Southeast MO and Northeast AR. During this time my wife continued her education and completed her teaching degree in elementary education and then her Masters and Doctorate in School Administration. She advanced from her teaching position, to principal and now Superintendent of the Bloomfield School system. In 1999 I “semi-retired” to work about 30 hrs per week as a pharmacist again, since the two older children were now away from home, but Tim was still in the 8th grade and my travel schedule as a supervisor often conflicted with my wife’s schedule, leaving Tim with too much time on his own. At least that sounded like a good reason to slow down and have more time for my hobbies which now included a lot of on-line racing, flying airplanes (both real and remote control), boating, fishing, hunting, etc etc …as my wife says…too many hobbies and not enough time or money!
Tim now attends Mineral Area Jr College in Park Hills, MO which is about 2 hours away, and since he is on the basketball team, we are doing a lot of traveling to catch as many of the games as we can. We try to take a vacation each year and I have managed to include a stop at the EAA air show in Oshkosh, WI the last 10 years or so, either as part of the family vacation, or a quick 4 day trip with my sons. We have been to Florida where I did the ride along thing at Daytona (cool view of the track at 150mph), and out west to Colorado, Wyoming, and South Dakota. We had a very exciting raft trip down the Arkansas river several years ago (see pic, I’m in the white hat with Tim behind me and Sheila is all the way to the back in front of the guide), and a couple of years ago.
Tim and I raced indoor go-carts in Rapid City, SD that hit speeds of 50mph(after a couple laps my arms were so tired from the force of turning at high speed, I had to back off). All of this makes it difficult to commit to a racing league, so for the past couple of years, I have mainly just raced on the “open nites” with the Christian Racing group. I’d like to take this time to personally thank all of you that have worked so hard provide this venue of good, clean racing. I started on-line racing in 1997 with TEN (picked the name “zbest” in a hurry while registering and have just stuck with it),raced in several different leagues and even won a fixed setup championship. One of the coolest things that happened was racing a person named “Dale3jr” side by side, swapping positions for 3 to 4 laps during a race at Michigan probably sometime in 1998. After the race he said something like “that was really cool” and we both congratulated each other for not wrecking the other (really hard to do back then). It was only later that I found out, that he was indeed the real Dale Jr. Again, thanks to all the administrators and members of “Christian Racing” for letting an “old man” race with you guys…I’m not very fast, but it’s still a thrill to compete, especially when I get a top 5. As you can see, I feel the Lord has blessed me immensely, allowing me to see and experience so many things both in work and play, but most of all with a wonderful family (in the flesh and the spirit).
Paul Perry (zbest74)
