President’s Message

The Jersey Late Greats Luncheon Banquet was held February 21 at Ventura’s Restaurant in Voorhees, NJ. Since our resident photographer extraordinaire, Mike Berry was out of town on business, John and Dawn Dennery handled the slideshow projection of past Late Great and car related events. If you weren’t able to attend, you missed a great event. Keeping up with her high standard of perfection and leaving not one detail un-attended to Dawn did an outstanding job of coordinating the event. Speaking of perfection, Jan Lucas outdid herself again by providing the ’60 Crocus Cream Impala cake, complete with fins. Some very nice cake sculpturing was displayed. Thanks again Jan. Too bad Mike wasn’t there to see it. Perhaps in a past life Jan worked in the GM design studio working on clay molds of future cars. There were also plenty of raffle give-aways so everyone walked away with a gift. Once again, Steve Calandra provided the entertainment with great tunes. He even belted out a few songs himself. Pretty good voice Steve!

And last but not least was the very well designed and executed Dennery Gag Awards. This year’s recipients were Jim Krous, Tom Merring, Al Bernotas and Verne Frantz. In short, Jim and Tom while at Woodward Ave in Detroit last August and someone forgot to latch the hood on Jim’s Healy and subsequently, it flew open coming over the windshield and hitting them in the head. In order to prevent a re-occurrence, John had devised head protection in the form of a hard-hat with ’64 Chevrolet front springs clamped to the hat.

Al Bernotas was presented an Award for “Best Paint Woodward Avenue 2009”. Of course in order to fully appreciate this prestigious award … it was necessary for John to present Tom Merring with the Woodward 2009 Rusty Paint Award and Jim Krous with Woodward 2009 No Paint Award. Verne received a wooden proto-type of a 4sp floor hump taken from a tree with a large knot that served as the hole for the shifter. But just as good as the gift, is the commentary, which to be really appreciated, has to be heard in person, so plan on attending the luncheon next year. Once again, our sincere thanks go to John and Dawn for coordinating this great event!

The junkyard trip is scheduled for March 18-19 and possibly the 20th, depending if you want to go back to the yard on Saturday morning. Remember, they close promptly at 12:00 on Saturdays. As it’s a 5 hour ride from central Jersey, most are leaving Thursday afternoon to meet up for dinner. If you need a room, call Mike Berry to reserve yours.

It’s finalized… the Multi-Club picnic is scheduled for Saturday, May 8th at Mercer County Park East. More details to follow in the next newsletter.

If you wish to receive the bi-weekly E-News from the National Impala Assoc, you have to contact them by logging onto their web site, www.nationalimpala.com, click on publications, once you fill in the pertinent information, click subscribe.

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