The day Bruce Allen heard that Lee Shepherd had been killed in a testing accident, he was preparing to make his Pro Stock driving debut in a car of his own at the NHRA Gatornationals at Gainesville, Fla. “You never think that things like that are going to happen to somebody that you know,” he recalled. “That just tore my heart out -- that my idol, the person I looked up to, was gone.” Although he knew David Reher and Buddy Morrison who, with Shepherd, dominated Pro Stock racing on both the NHRA and IHRA circuits in the early 1980s, Allen was by no means a member of their inner circle. So, in the aftermath of the Shepherd tragedy, when Reher and Morrison asked him if he would consider taking over the driving duties in their Chevrolet, he was as surprised as anyone else, particularly because of his relative lack of experience at the pro level. “I wouldn’t have applied for the job at all because I was not worthy of doing it,” he said. “I didn’t even think in my wildest dreams