In 1959, I was 16 years old and a sophomore at Tucker High School which, in that time, was a small, sleepy town near Atlanta. The school had some kind of parade event and one of my classmates prevailed on an older relative to participate with his sporty car. It was the first Corvette I’d ever seen, a white 1958 with silver coves and I vividly recall thinking “Wow, what a car!” So the love affair began.
After high school when I had a secure job, I judiciously saved my money and began looking for one of my own in the spring of 1963. Having proper upbringing, I determined to pay cash and, because of not quite having the $4,300 price, had to pass on a triple black 1962 I admired at a local Chevrolet dealer. However, I soon brought home a local low mileage black/red 1961 and I said “Wow, what a car!”
In 1990, after two children and other life events, I bought a black/red 1982 which I kept until 2014. And I said “Wow, what a car!” Along the way, I became a Charter Member and Lifetime Member of the National Corvette Museum. Since the 1960s I have saved my Corvette magazines, thinking that they have a lot of good Corvette information in them and should be useful to the Corvette family some day. Some day came in 2014 when I donated them all to the NCM - over 2,100 in all - it's a good home for them.
In 2008 I found an excellent low-mileage 2004 C5 red/black convertible on Ebay Motors (of all places), which I still have and I said “Wow, what a car!” Finally, in 2014, after a lot of searching, I found the Corvette I’d secretly admired for over 50 years – a red/black 1962, recently refurbished, which I plan to enjoy until they put me in the rocking chair which will, I think, be quite a while. Corvette is an American icon, unlike any other, and well earned. Wow! What a car!