- My dad was born and raised in Steubenville, Ohio.
His father was a Greek immigrant,
he came through Ellis Island in 1910.
In 1933, his father passed away and he had just turned 14.
His uncle Bill, he helped my dad buy the car for 35 dollars,
- 35 bucks
- From a junkyard.
My dad was the oldest of three kids,
and so he was the man of the family.
In the photo album, you see him hauling lumber,
a big tree, not even lumber, trees.
So he did odd jobs and he was always
very mechanically inclined.
He had the car from there, and then the war broke out.
And he went and enlisted into the Navy
to flight engineering school.
Had the car at that time, started at his mom's house,
and he was shipped out to the Pacific.
When he got out of the Navy, he and his best friend,
Truman Wright, were in Maryland
and they picked up the car in Steubenville.
Truman had a contract job in Culver City, California,
so they made a cross-country trip in this car.
In the photo album, there's pictures of them going across
The Great Divide, and Yosemite, and all that.
That was that whole road trip that he and his buddy did.
And they were both like 6'5", 230 in this car.
It followed him there, and my dad worked at Howard Hughes,
Hughes Aircraft, on The Spruce Goose.
And then he met my mom in California,
and they bought a place up in Idyllwild
on their honeymoon night, and the car then was stored
after they got married up in Idyllwild,
that was where they were gonna have their summer house.
And then he moved to Portland
in like '52 to work for Tektronix.
The car continued to be stored down in Idyllwild,
he'd make kind of annual trips down to Idyllwild,
start it up, drive it around a little bit,
but it stayed down there.
And then in 1970, he flew down to Idyllwild
and drove it back up, and he was so proud the fact
that he only had to change the spark plugs,
and put some fresh gas into it, and it started right up.
- [Man] He got pulled over three times,
so they could check to see that he was okay.
There was no violation, they just wanted to see the car.
- My dad had a big warehouse in downtown Portland,
he stored the car there out of the weather and elements,
and it was basically tarped for years.
- For 20 years, I would say.
- And then in 1999, he was selling his warehouse,
and he had a big auction to get rid of all
the tooling equipment and everything there.
The new owner calls him up on a Saturday morning,
he goes, hey Frank, I thought you were gonna have
your Model-A moved today, and Frank goes, yeah I am,
he said, well it's gone.
Even when my mom passed away, I never saw my dad cry.
He was so sad.
- He was in tears.
And I was tired, it was 10:30 at night when he called,
and I was thinking, why is he crying over this car?
I couldn't understand it, you know.
So Tina being the Greek in her,
she wasn't about to let anybody take advantage of her,
she had gotten on the internet and contacted
all the news stations, all the Model-A clubs,
everyone she could up in Oregon,
and out of this, they did a news story on her father,
and what came out of this is is all his friends
saw the news story and started calling him,
from Tektronix, who he hadn't seen in years.
She made the car so hot that they had to get rid of it,
the people that had it abandoned it in a lot
about a week later.
- The sheriff said that he's never seen anything like it,
that he was guaranteed that we'd never see the car again.
So we promised my dad once we got it back,
okay, put it in the garage, put as many locks as you
possibly can on it and when we add
a third bay to our garage, we'll move it down here.
- But the sheriffs after they found it,
towed it back to his house and he said that was
the first time that the car had ever been towed
since he had had it in 1937, he'd never had it towed.
So we finally got a garage, and he pulled it down here,
and we drove it around the neighborhood,
and we ran it in the neighborhood parades and stuff
for eight years.
- [Tina] But it would always overheat, in every parade.
- Every time we took it out, we would end up
pushing it back or towing it back,
something broke on it, just kept breaking.
We like to joke that the car was born
in the first depression,
and rebuilt in the second depression.
We wanted a ground-up restoration on it,
and that was done, we had a friend, Chris Lehude,
and he took, he had a body guy
from Mexico that was fantastic.
And he patched and repaired probably over 80 holes
on this car, and kept as much original metal
as we could on it.
And then we had the frame and the transmission
and the drive chain done here with Charlie's Garage in Mesa.
He took all the painted panels and the body
and assembled everything, and it just turned out beautiful.
It's become a part of our family, really,
it's like a member of the family.
- Before we owned cars, my brother and I,
we had to learn how to do everything on a car
before we were able to even think about buying a car.
This is the car that we learned a lot of that on.
But yeah, I feel very connected with him.
He was a very blessed man, and he worked really hard
for what he had, and knowing that he,
this was his first girlfriend, he did everything with her.
And you can't be mad driving it.
(engine starting)