Bob remembers, There were 35 clubs between Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, Waukegan and Chicago. The name of the group (overseeing all of the Milwaukee are groups) was the Great Lakes Timing Association. Before Great Lakes Dragaway was built, in the late 1940's we had drag racing at Timmermann Field (then known as Curtiss-Wright Airfield). There was a conglomeration of hot rod clubs... they use to have the club names hanging down from the back of their license plates. The club names were like MMA, the Schilitzers, whatever the  name of the club would be." There were limited options in the Milwaukee area for legal drag racing. Bob adds, "We used a defunct airfield at Half Day, IL (just north of Chicago) for racing. The clubs decided there should be a drag strip, all fingers pointed to Bob why? He was the man with the money.

In April 1995 issue of Super Stock Bob tells us about his days in the Marines. "well, I was a gambler plated poker, mostly blackjack. Unlike Vegas or other places, gambling in the service allowed the dealer to keep the money on all "pushes" or "ties". I thought, can you imagine the advantage the dealer has when players lose or tie? And you can "buy" the dealers position, so I got some backing to make sure I always had the deal. I actually dealt games which started on a Friday night and ended on Monday Morning, just taking the occasional breaks here and there. But it paid off. I left the service with $17,000- the equivalent of about $150,000 today-and that's the money I used to make the down payment on the land and pay the paving contractors to create Great Lakes Dragaway."

So how did Great Lakes Dragaway end up in Union Grove, WI? Bob reveals, "I didn't pick it (Union Grove). The guys in Kenosha and Racine did. We wanted a place between Milwaukee and Chicago. They said right off the freeway, actually it was HWY 41 then, there was farmland for sale. I can see why Paul James (who eventually sold the land to Metzler) sold that land, because in the front you can see how it is. It took days hauling gravel in there so we could put on a road in there. It was wetlands." This was years before the Environmental Protection Agency and the layers of bureaucracy that we have today. "No one ever stopped me from building the track. Technically, the first full year of '56, but it did run a few races after the track got completed in '55". In the end, Bob had placed down payment for 100 acres at $300 an acre. The investment group consisted of Metzler, Dick Paul, Harold Hoelzer, Lynn and Marge Bennett.

Also included were approximately thirty Hot Rod Clubs in the area all of which shared stock in the company. Bob continues, "All the clubs that helped me build it, I gave season passes-four per club, which they could use or alternate them. Plus, I gave them shares of stock in Great Lakes (Dragaway) which they maintained until I sold the track in 1995. The Clubs I knew about... most of them were defunct, some of them didn't know where the stock was after fifty years, whatever (got paid)." Bob adds, "we charged 90 cents for spectators, because if we charged a dollar, we would've had to pay 10 cents tax, so we charged enough to get buy."

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