This is a chapter of wider Schild surname history, not a confirmed branch of our direct family line. See the research question later in this story.
Racing runs through this family the way some families pass down a farm or a trade. It started at a Houston amusement park track sometime in the 1950s. It carried one driver all the way to NASCAR. It survived a kidney surgery. And today it keeps a Houston short track running, under the same family name that first showed up in victory lane decades ago.
This is not a story about statistics, though a few remarkable ones show up along the way. It is a story about what a family does with a Saturday night, generation after generation.
Where It Started: Charles Ray Schild
The earliest racer this archive has documented in this family is Charles Ray Schild, who competed at the stock car track inside Houston’s Playland Park. No single confirmed date survives for when he first raced there, so this story does not invent one. What is clear is that racing in this family did not begin with his son Jerry, whose NASCAR season is the best documented chapter here. It began at least one generation earlier, at a track that no longer exists.
The Skyrocket roller coaster at Playland Park, Houston, photographed in 1943. This shows the amusement park where Charles Ray Schild raced, not the stock car track itself, no photograph of which has been located.
Photograph by John Vachon, 1943, Library of Congress. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Playland Park
Playland Park was a Houston amusement park that operated from 1940 until it closed in 1966. Alongside its rides and midway, it hosted a stock car racing track, one of several short tracks that gave Houston drivers somewhere to race on a weekend night in the years before Meyer Speedway and, later, Houston Motorsports Park took over that role. No trace of the site remains today.
For this family, Playland Park is the starting point on the map, not the whole story. It is where the habit began.
Larry Schild
Charles Ray’s son Larry carried racing into the next generation, competing at Houston area tracks including Meyer Speedway. Larry is also the family patriarch of the generation that followed him: his branch of the family is where this story’s later drivers, including his daughter Gina and, based on family accounts, his sons, come from.
Some of the exact relationships among that next generation are not fully documented in independent published sources, so this story is careful about which family connections it states plainly and which it leaves open. What is well documented is that Larry’s brother Jerry became the family’s best known driver, and that is where this story turns next.
Jerry Schild Takes the Wheel
Jerry Schild, Charles Ray’s son and Larry’s brother, started racing at Meyer Speedway in Houston in 1972. Meyer Speedway sat in Houston’s South Main area and ran through the 1960s and into the 1970s. Sources describe its general location without agreeing on a single precise address, so this story does not pin one down.
Jerry moved quickly. Just two years after his 1972 debut, he was racing in NASCAR’s top series.
Photograph pending · Meyer Speedway, Houston
Meyer Speedway, Houston — Contextual placeholder. This archive has not yet secured a rights cleared photograph of the track itself.
1974: A NASCAR Season
In 1974, Jerry Schild made five starts in NASCAR’s top series. His best result came at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina, one of the sport’s oldest and toughest superspeedways, nicknamed “Too Tough to Tame.” He finished eighth there, the high point of a brief but genuine run at stock car racing’s highest level.
It was a short season by NASCAR standards, five races rather than a full schedule. But for a driver who had been racing at a Houston short track only two years earlier, it was a real season at the top of the sport, not a token appearance.
A NASCAR race at Darlington Raceway, photographed in 2003. This is a contextual photograph of the track, not Jerry Schild’s own 1974 race, which predates this image by nearly three decades.
U.S. Navy photo by Chief Photographer’s Mate Johnny Bivera, 2003. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Back Home to Texas Racing
After 1974, Jerry did not stay on the NASCAR circuit. He came home to Texas short track racing, where he kept competing for decades. In 2003 he won a state championship, followed by a runner up finish in 2004. In 2006 he won a track championship at Houston Motorsports Park, the same track his niece Gina would later take over running.
Six Weeks After Surgery
In 2009, Jerry Schild donated a kidney to his sister Linda. Organ donation from a living donor is major surgery, with a real recovery period that doctors measure in weeks and months, not days. Jerry returned to racing only weeks afterward.
People who have written about Jerry point to this moment more than any single race result when they talk about who he was. It was not a stunt. It was a man who had already given part of himself to his sister, choosing to get back to the thing he loved as soon as his body would let him. That says as much about this family’s relationship to racing as any trophy does.
Jerry Schild died in 2012 in Tioga, North Dakota. Press coverage at the time, including the Williston Herald, reported his death as a shooting, and people who knew him in Texas racing were quoted remembering him as a local legend of the sport.
The Next Generation
Racing did not stop with Jerry. Family accounts describe Larry’s children, among them Bryan Schild and Larry Schild III, and a driver known as J T Schild, continuing to race at Houston area tracks. This archive has confirmed some of these family connections through Jerry’s own obituary, but has not yet located independent published records for every individual driver’s specific results, car numbers, or years racing. Where a claim cannot be backed by a source beyond family memory, this story says so rather than inventing detail to fill the gap.
J T Schild
J T Schild is part of this next generation of family racers. Family accounts describe him competing at Houston area short tracks. This archive has not yet located an independent, published source confirming the specific details of his career, so none are asserted here. See the research question at the end of this story.
Houston Motorsports Park
Houston Motorsports Park is a three eighths mile, high banked asphalt oval in Houston. Jerry Schild won a track championship there in 2006. More than a decade later, the track became the setting for the next chapter of this family’s racing story, one that moved from driving into running the place itself.
Photograph pending · Houston Motorsports Park
Houston Motorsports Park, Houston — Contextual placeholder. This archive has not yet secured a rights cleared photograph of the track.
Four Generations
Racing in this family did not happen once. It happened again and again, passed from a father to a son, and from that son to nieces, nephews, and their own children. The connections below reflect what family accounts and published sources together describe. Where an exact parent to child link has not been independently confirmed, this story presents the generation as a group rather than drawing a line that has not been proven.
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First Generation · 1950s
Charles Ray Schild
Raced at Playland Park, Houston. The earliest documented racer in this family.
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Second Generation · 1970s–2000s
Larry Schild & Jerry Schild
Sons of Charles Ray. Larry raced at Meyer Speedway; Jerry raced at Meyer Speedway, in NASCAR’s top series in 1974, and for decades afterward at Houston area short tracks.
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Third Generation · 2000s–Present
Gina Schild Knowles, J T Schild, and other family drivers
Racing and, in Gina’s case, track ownership continue in this generation. Family accounts describe several of Larry’s children racing; not every individual’s specific record has been independently confirmed.
This visual groups drivers by generation rather than drawing direct parent to child lines, because not every specific relationship in the third generation has been independently confirmed. See the research question below.
Racing by the Numbers
These numbers are here because they are verified, not because they are the point. The point is four generations who kept showing up to race.
Newspaper Clippings
Jerry Schild Obituary
Records Jerry Schild’s racing career from his 1972 Meyer Speedway debut through his 1974 NASCAR season, his return to short track racing, his 2009 kidney donation, and his death in 2012.
Gina Schild Knowles and Houston Motorsports Park
NASCAR’s own coverage of Gina Schild Knowles taking over the lease of Houston Motorsports Park in 2019 and the track regaining NASCAR sanctioning around 2020.
Summaries only. No full newspaper article text is reproduced here; see each record’s sources for the original coverage.
The Sound of a Houston Short Track
This archive has not yet located video footage specific to the Schild family’s own races. Rather than use unrelated or generic racing footage, this independent track history video about Meyer Speedway is included as contextual background on the kind of track where this family’s racing story began.
Contextual video · an independent history of Meyer Speedway, not Schild family specific footage.
From Drivers to Stewards of the Sport
In 2019, Gina Schild Knowles took over the lease of Houston Motorsports Park, the track where her uncle Jerry had won a championship in 2006. Under her, the track worked its way back to NASCAR sanctioning around 2020. Gina represents a shift this family has made before, without ever really leaving racing: from driving the car to keeping the whole operation running.
She works alongside race director Mason Mitchell, who has his own separate and well documented racing family background: a great grandfather who rode factory Indian motorcycles, racing grandfathers, and a mother who founded the Gulf Coast Racing Series. Mason is not a blood relative of the Schild family, and this story does not present him as one. He appears here because he is part of the team keeping this Houston short track, and the tradition it represents, running today.
Still Racing
From a stock car track at a Houston amusement park to a NASCAR Cup Series start line to the front office of a short track their own family now runs, this is not a story about one great driver. It is a story about a family that kept choosing racing, generation after generation, on ordinary Saturday nights that nobody thought to write down until much later.
The tradition has not ended. It changed shape, from driving to promoting, from Playland Park to Houston Motorsports Park, but the family name has stayed at a Houston short track for more than seventy years, and counting.
A Research Question
Is this Houston racing Schild family connected to our direct Schild family line?
Jerry Schild’s racing career, his brother Larry, his sister Linda, and his niece Gina Schild Knowles are documented across Wikipedia, a Houston Chronicle obituary, and NASCAR’s own coverage of Houston Motorsports Park.
A direct genealogical connection between this Houston racing family and the Fredericksburg and Grapetown Schild family line documented elsewhere on this site has not yet been established. The two families share a surname and a home state; that is not, on its own, evidence of a shared ancestor.
If you have information that connects, or rules out, a link between these two branches of the Schild name, the archive would welcome it. Get in touch.
People in This Story
Places in This Story
Documents
Obituary
Obituary — Jerry Schild
Race Record
Jerry Schild’s 1974 NASCAR Season Record
Historical Photograph
The Skyrocket Roller Coaster, Playland Park, Houston
Historical Photograph
NASCAR Busch Series Race, Darlington Raceway
Racing Photograph
Jerry Schild in Victory Lane (Photographs Pending)
Portrait Photograph