When Liberty High School senior Sam Core recently roared up in her black 2004 Mazda Miata convertible with no mufflers and flower decals running down both sides – well, you can guess she caught the attention of our retired-guy coffee group meeting at The Depot Express in North Liberty.
Sam, we all soon discovered, is obsessed with cars.
Four mornings a week, she travels to Coralville for a Kirkwood Community College automotive technologies class offered to high school kids at one of its regional centers. After school and weekends, you’ll find her working at O’Reilly Auto Parts, earning car expense money.
So, it was pretty much a given she might approach the small group of retired men clustered around Dean Westergaard’s beautifully restored 1956 Ford Victoria which he drove to our coffee session that day.
“What is that?” she asked.
Westergaard was happy to show off his dream vehicle, a present-day link to his own high school “scoop-the-loop” glory days in Adair some 60 years ago.
And Sam was fascinated.
“He popped the hood and he had a big old V8 in there,” she told me. “I was amazed there was so much space around the engine. No wires or electronics. You could have fit two people in there.”
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Friendship leads to car show
It occurred to Westergaard later that if this young student found his old car interesting, maybe her peers at Liberty High would too. Sam agreed and soon the pair converged on the school administration office, asking if the Classy Chassy Cruisers car club to which Westergaard belongs might bring some vehicles to school this fall.
So, with Principal Justin Colbert on board, auto club members drove 25 cars to a spot behind Liberty High last week. The row of pristine vehicles included a wide range of unique cars, from antique Fords, Chevys and Plymouths to newer Mustangs and Corvettes.
Several hundred Liberty High kids soon mobbed the cars during a short weekly break from classes called “advisory time” which allows students to ponder future occupations. For some, it was their first exposure to such things as carburetors and roll-up window cranks.
“It’s a nice change from the grind for them,” said Colbert. “On this day, they got to go outside in beautiful weather and talk to some guys about how their old cars work. Sam took the lead on this and made it happen. We’ve never seen her this excited.”
Car club members reported interesting chats with the students.
Dan Hyduke of Iowa City, displaying his 1960 Dodge, was overheard encouraging senior Paris Johnson toward auto mechanics. He said it would be up to her generation to take over an interest in old cars, because “we’ll be gone.”
“I love 99 percent of these cars,” Johnson told me. “I’m thinking of taking that Kirkwood course in auto mechanics. It might be something I could do on the side.”
Finn O’Toole, a sophomore, said he’d also like to enroll in the Kirkwood class next year, and eventually get into mechanical or aerospace engineering. “I really liked talking to this guy about his Stingray,” he said.
The guy with the Corvette Stingray was Dick White of North Liberty, who called the show “a big hit, but it might be that many of the kids just wanted to be outside.”
Probably true, but Westergaard was pleased.
“We enlightened them to the golden age of automobiles,” he told me with a grin.
Donna Heacock of Iowa City, who with her husband Mark has been serving the auto club faithfully for more than two decades, was also happy.
“Lots of kids were just in awe,” she told me, citing students crowding in to take cell phone photos of the cars.
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Sam sees future in auto repair
Sam, who lives with her family in North Liberty, has been awed by cars for most of her young life. Her dad is a motorcycle enthusiast who gave her a dirt bike at age seven and “always bought me a Hot Wheels car at every gas station.”
She later taught herself to handle the manual transmission in the family’s Honda Civic, then got the Miata for her 16th birthday last year.
“It’s got 127,000 miles and it’s a little rusty, but reliable,” she told me. “The top has some holes.”
At Kirkwood, Sam’s class works only on gas-fueled vehicles, but her instructor Glen Peters points out that extensive training on electric vehicles and hybrids is offered at the main campus. He says opportunities are growing for students interested in an evolving industry which is in dire need of good technicians.
“There is a significant number of highly trained auto technicians in the Iowa City area earning between $100,000 and $150,000 a year,” he told me, “so there is outstanding potential without requiring a four-year college degree.”
Sam sees that potential.
She’s eying a career in automotive technology and is even considering joining the Air Force after graduation in hopes of expanding her training opportunities.
Peters reports that more women are getting into automotive fields, some of them with the goal to own their own businesses.
As one of three females in her Kirkwood class of 15 students, Sam has no qualms about entering what is currently a male-dominated field.
“It doesn’t bother me,” she said. “I’m there because this is what I want to do.”
Richard Hakes is a longtime columnist for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. He lives in North Liberty with his wife, Joan.