Hi from NC!

He was a one man shop with the occasional little girl feet hanging out from under cars with him. He did all kinds of work like basic repair stuff, but was known for his restorations (C3 and earlier) and his flawless paint. He never hesitated to help anyone who asked. People called from all over to ask questions and get his advice on how to do things. He never made a ton of money, but took pleasure in doing his part to preserve American automotive history.

He promised me and my sister a Corvette when we turned 16. Remember...his shop was right beside the house. I knew he wasn't working on anything for us because I was always in the shop! On our 16th birthday, he handed us little boxes. Inside were GM keys on Corvette keychains. He had a mischievous gleam in his eye. He led us to the shop. Sitting against the outside of the shop was an ugly brown door....just a door. He started laughing. He said...try the key! I did. It fit the cylinder and turned. He was guffawing at this point. He said, girls...THAT is the door to the '81 Corvette you're going to help me build!

His shop didn't have AC and my sister wasn't a fan of manual labor, heat, or dirt, so she tapped out after like 3 days. I spent the better part of 8 months in that shop sanding, sandblasting, and turning wrenches alongside my dad. When it came time to choose a paint color, my sister and I really wanted pink...like a Barbie Corvette. He said absolutely not--any color, but pink. We chose a shimmery green out of his fleet truck color chip book. The car had saddle interior. He built it to be "safe" for teenagers, so it wasn't fast, but it sounded good, and it was pretty!

When I was in college, I needed a car, and he got his hands on a '77 Corvette he thought I might like. I had a friend drive me to see him. In the driveway I saw a silver blue '77 with a peeling front bumper and a primer spot on the front fender where the previous owner hit the side of his garage. My first impression was...this is an ugly Corvette. My dad...familiar twinkle in his eye told me I'd like the way it ran. He encouraged me to get in it and fire it up. I did, and it ran STRONG...but the floor felt weird. I asked him why the floor felt spongy. He laughed and said: lift the floor mat. I did...and I could see the driveway through a massive hole. The car had been sold in Canada and road salt ate EVERYTHING! It was a mess! He got the car from a friend of his who bought the car in the rain without looking under it. Big mistake! I ended up driving it until the frame broke in half, then we spent another 6 months pulling the body off, putting a new chassis under it, and making it road worthy. The engine that was in it when I got it was out of an Impala police car. He put a factory correct 350 in it. He decided not to paint it. I drove it as an every day driver from around 1996 until 2001 when a guy ran a light, hit the front passenger side at around 45mph, spun me around, then smacked the rear driver side. The guy hit me so hard, it broke the frame. I fell out of the car screaming MY BABY! A police officer who happened to witness the tragedy came running over and said: where's the baby??? I screamed, there is no baby! He looked at me and said: oh my gosh! Are you pregnant? I screamed NOOOO....LOOK AT MY CAR! The car was still running. The officer asked me if I could turn it off. I turned the key off and it kept running, so I cried even harder. I was happy because at least the windshield was intact. I knew that would save us $600 in putting the car back together.

The wrecker driver arrived, and tossed a piece of debris and hit the windshield and shattered it. Then he asked me which salvage yard I wanted it taken to. I told him it needed to go to my house so my dad could fix it. He looked at me and said: honey, there's no fixing this car. I was feeling emotional so I hit him in the face. He pulled back like he was going to hit me back, and the police officer stepped between us. The wrecker driver then said he wouldn't drive me home with my car, so I got to ride with the officer and give my car a police escort the whole 1.5 miles back to my house. The wrecker driver pretty much scraped the car off onto my driveway. My dad picked the car up the next day and spent the next year or so putting a third frame under it. The second frame-off restoration came with a gorgeous paint job. I think my dad hated that car. It's probably one of the most expensive 1977 Corvettes out there, but to me it's priceless.

While he was putting my '77 back together, he got his hands on an '84 that was #136 off the assembly line. A friend of his had been driving it from NC to FL weekly for work. He blew the rear end out of it and it wasn't worth it to him to fix it, so he gave it to my dad. My dad made it roadworthy and sold it to me for the cost of the parts he put into it. That became my driver while I waited on my beloved '77. The '84 is ugly. It was originally white, but had a terrible red Earl Shieb paint job. They painted EVERYTHING red, so my dad and I used paintbrushes and did a crappy job of painting the black trim back to black. There are huge spots where the bad red paint has peeled off, and most of the red that's still on it is faded and almost pink.

I have decades of stories about Corvettes. My beloved dad passed away in 2020, and I miss him every day. I have a keepsake urn of his ashes in the rear compartment of my '77. After he died, my evil shrew of a mother sold his '67 427 coupe for about a third of what it was worth. I thought I'd never see that car again, but the guy got frustrated with it (it hadn't run in 30 years), and decided to sell it to me for what he had in it. I brought it home on my first Father's Day without my dad. I had my husband take a pic of me in front of it flipping the camera off and sent it to my mom. I think that's when she wrote me completely out of her will. Hahahaha!