Whale writer

TV's Ham Tyler from V: The Series finally gets his props in this recent story:

MOBY DICK LEFEVER, PRINCE OF WHALES

By David O’Connell

(published May 22, 2005 in the York Daily Record/Sunday News without puns in the title)

Of the many motion pictures Hollywood has bestowed upon us, none illustrates the common bond between whales and juvenile delinquents better than Free Willy. The story of Jesse, a 12-year-old vandal with a sensitive side, and Willy, the orca whale he saves from certain death, was the surprise hit of the 1993 summer moviegoing season. Its success spawned Free Willy 2 and Free Willy 3, presumably dealing with the unfreeing, refreeing, reunfreeing, and unreunfreeing of the title character, and put to rest any lofty connotations one might have associated with the term “motion picture trilogy.”

Long before that, Dick Lefever was freeing a Willy of a different sort. The stakes weren’t near as high, as the Willy he freed wasn’t being pursued by a villainous park owner played by veteran character actor Michael Ironside. And instead of feeding on squid and salmon, this Willy preferred to guzzle down gallons of gasoline.

The Willy that Lefever was freeing was, of course, a 1941 Willys Coupe. Over the years, Lefever freed it from a life of never knowing what it would be like to have a 460 with a blower and two four-barrel carburetors inside it, among other modifications. Like Jesse’s pal of the high seas, the Willys Coupe endures today, and occupies a special place in Lefever’s heart.

“I’ve worked on fourteen cars, but the Willys Coupe is my pride and joy,” said Lefever.

Dick Lefever is no ordinary car enthusiast. He is an elder statesman of Yorktowne Rod and Custom, a car club dating back to 1959. And while its 35 or so members have toiled on cars ranging from a ’30 Chevy to a ’47 DeSoto, the focus isn’t just on retooling.

“It’s very informal,” Lefever says of the club he joined back in 1961, at the age of sixteen. “There are no work details, like some other clubs. We just try to kick tires a little bit, and decide what shows we’re going to attend.”

Like, for instance, this year’s Street Rod Nationals East. The club has set up shop every year the show has been in existence, and this year will be no different.

“We’ve got fourteen or fifteen cars lined for up this year,” he says. The Class of 1941 will be well represented, with Lefever’s ‘41 Willys Coupe joining a ’41 Willys Roadster, a ’41 Dodge and a ’41 Plymouth for a grand reunion.

Another of Lefever’s cars will be making the trip, namely his ’36 Chevy Sedan. “I’ve had it for about seventeen years,” he says. “I bought it as a partially built car and finished it. It has a 350 Chevy motor, power glide transmission, Ford independent front suspension, and a Ford rear in it.”

That’s not the only sedan to which the club can lay claim. Vice-president Gary Beyer, a hot rod aficionado since 1968, owns a ’32 Pro-Streeted two-door Chevy Sedan with ’88 Mustang GT running gear underneath. “I chopped the top, filled the roof in with steel, took three inches out of the top and lowered it,” says Beyer of the extremely made-over car. Not even the windows were spared: Beyer made them three inches smaller.

“That car’s been on the road since I started,” he notes proudly. “I’ve rebuilt it three times, but it’s still on the road.”

Three times? Well then, by current president Mike Mentzer’s standards, Beyer should be a certified genius. “You can learn a lot about automobiles just by working on them,” he says. “If you don’t work on a car, you’re never going to learn anything about it.”

Mentzer has three lifetimes’ worth of knowledge as his disposal. His father was a mechanic and his grandfather worked on cars, so the early years of his life were spent poking around a place built for things nearing the end of their life: the junkyard.

“I remember Saturday mornings, we’d all go down the junkyard,” he says. “We’d look for cars, take them home, and then bring them back to life.”

And so began a lifetime of playing Dr. Frankenstein to various automobiles, many of them not street rods. It’s only appropriate, too, that his taste in cars isn’t limited to street rods, as the Yorktowne Rod & Custom is open to car-lovers of all stripes.

“We allow anything,” says Lefever. “It can be street rods, muscle cars, or antiques. Any type of car.”

That’s the key word with these guys: casual, like the easy camaraderie between a young boy and his screentested, 6,000-pound whale friend. Lefever sums it up nicely: “What makes our club different is that we’re not tied down to work. We’re a lean-back friendly club.”