Cycle News

VOL. 52 ISSUE 1 JANUARY 6, 2015 P93 "She was a real pro at representing RJ Reynolds and the series," recalls former racer Steve More- head. "She did a lot of work coming in early and doing what she could to help promote the races. She was definitely more than just a trophy girl." Griffis' career with RJR began when she worked as a Camel girl at a race close to home at Talla- dega Super Speedway in Alabama. She was then hired full time to become Miss Camel GT on the auto road racing circuit. Three years later, shortly after RJR became sponsor of the AMA Grand Na- tional Championship (which at that time included the road race nationals as well as flat track), Griffis moved over to motorcycles. Griffis found the motorcycling crowd more close- ly aligned with her southern upbringing. "Car racing had a certain vibe," she said. "I think a lot of it was about the money. Motorcy- cle racing was down to earth; it seemed like a friendlier and more laid back atmo- sphere. I gravitated to it immediately." To say Griffis was a girl on the go was an understatement. During her time in the series there were as many as 28 races in a season. "I did over 100,000 miles of fly- ing every year," she says. "It set me up for a massive love of travel, which continues to this day. Sometimes it seemed I was travel- ling so often that I didn't even know where I was going half the time. I would try to figure it out when I landed." Grif said her typical work week was from Thursday through Sunday or Monday, de- pending on what part of the country she was in. As part of the media tour leading up to the races, she was interviewed so often that she began taking acting classes, "just so I could be comfort- able in front of the camera," she said. Those acting classes would eventually lead to the next stage of life after working for RJR. She would go on to be- come an actress, some on screen and television, but primarily in the theater. Griffis recalled that in her TV interviews before the races there was never a shortage of things to talk about. "We had so many great personalities in the sport," she said. "I never tried to pull any favorites, because they were all my favorites genuinely. And you had the wild (David) Aldana and (Gene) Rome- ro and all the great characters that were there. They were so much fun and such great people; they were very easy to talk about to the media." When asked what it was like being an attrac- tive, young and single woman, in amongst would be Casanova motorcycle racers, Griffis laughed and replied, "The way I put it is - I was there for ev- eryone, but for no one. I think that's why I lasted so long. It was the only way it could be because otherwise I'm sure it would have created way too much drama." Today Griffis spends most of her time in Southern California. Since leaving racing she's stretched out to live in different countries and work in widely diverse areas such as acting and producing, architectural design and more recent- ly launching a jewelry company—QG Cuffs—with the help of jazz legend Quincy Jones. In fact, it was when co-producing a play with the late actor Patrick Swayze, that she was billed by her nick- name of Grif Griffis, that she decided to go ahead and legally change her name. So influential was her time in motorcycling, that there is currently a move afoot among former rac- ers to have Griffis inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame. Grand National standout Corky Keener might have said it best when he described Griffis con- tributions to the AMA series. "She was outgoing and genuinely wanted to be involved," Keener remembers. "It was a big deal to have such a ma- jor corporation like RJR so heavily involved in the sport and with people like Lynn, they helped take it to maybe its highest level of popularity ever." CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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