Jim Kennedy’s Car Collection

When I was a kid, one of our neighbors owned Corvettes. At least, I think he owned them. He certainly worked on them. He would slowly cruise one of his ’Vettes up our street—always, it seemed, at times certain to maximize visibility and envy—and nose it into his garage, where on nights and weekends we could see an open hood and legs splayed from under the engine compartment, and hear sounds of pneumatic tools and the exclamations that follow the sudden skinning of knuckles. In a community of workhorse Ford and Chevrolet sedans—and yes, one Plymouth—these creatures were exotic: aggressive, intimidating, and wicked cool.

 

Over those years, several different styles of ’Vettes growled past our house. The oldest ones, from the late 1950s and early 1960s, looked dated even when just a few years old—like they should have been bronzed and placed on a pedestal in the downtown square. The newest ones, from the late 1960s and early 1970s, looked as if they were trying too hard to impress—like a design fail by the kids in school who aspired to be cool, but really were not. What I loved was the Sting Ray, and what I quickly learned was called the “C2” body style, the second generation Corvettes built from 1963–1967.

 

In late April 1967, while I was mesmerized by my neighbor’s muscle cars and worrying my way through the end of second grade, my future Sting Ray arrived at Sir Walter Chevrolet in Raleigh, North Carolina, shipped from the General Motors plant in St. Louis, Missouri. In a bare heartbeat of America thereafter, it became the prize of a 31-year-old North Carolina state employee about to celebrate his 10th wedding anniversary. Monroe Franklin Starnes, known as “Frank” to his friends, chose a sports car replete with optional equipment, including a removable black vinyl hard top roof, push-button AM/FM radio, speed warning indicator, and red stripe nylon tires. Presumably, this was a second car—a two-seat convertible with no trunk left little room for the wife and two small children who awaited him at home.

 

Raleigh’s first Chevrolet dealership, Sir Walter (“The Chevro-Leader!”) opened in 1929 in the city's downtown Sir Walter Fire District. By 1967, it had relocated to the corner of McDowell and Lenoir Streets, now the site of the Red Hat Amphitheater and then just a five-minute drive from the State Highway Commission Building, where Frank Starnes worked as a draftsman. Operated from its early days by Frank R. Anderson, by 1967 the dealership was managed by his son, Frank, Jr., who presented Frank Starnes with the paperwork for his new Corvette. The salesman who handled Mr. Starnes’s transaction, Johnny Barefoot, was then eight years into a 40-year career with the dealership. 

 

Frank Starnes maintained his Corvette Sting Ray convertible for 14 years, until life events and changing priorities prompted him to let it go in the summer of 1981. The car then passed briefly through the garages of three North Carolina owners over the next six years, eventually arriving, in early 1987, at the showroom of John Danos Enterprises in Hooksett, New Hampshire, along the banks of the Merrimack River between Concord and Manchester. Two months later, a woman from Cohasset, Massachusetts, on the Bay State's South Shore, purchased the ’Vette as a 40th birthday gift for her husband. He cherished the classic for 27½ years.

 

After approximately three years with another owner on Long Island, New York, the Corvette was offered for sale at a classic car dealership in Indiana, Pennsylvania. By happy coincidence, at almost the same time, my friend Thom coaxed me to visit him in Indianapolis, Indiana, where we had an opportunity to take his ’67 Corvette for a spin around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway track. That ride, along with a tour of Corvettes then on display in The Brickyard infield, drove me to the Internet, where this Marina Blue beauty caught my eye. Days later, the Corvette found itself on an enclosed transport, headed west from the Keystone State to my garage.

 

In 1997, two years before Mr. Barefoot’s retirement, Sir Walter Chevrolet relocated to a new facility northwest of downtown, where it operates to this day under Anderson Family ownership. Frank R. Anderson, Jr., civic leader and active auto industry executive, died in 2007, at the age of 81. Johnny Barefoot passed in 2001, at the age of 69. 

 

A religious missionary, handyman, avid snow skier, and world traveler, Frank Starnes died in 2016, at the age of 80. His late-era C-2 Corvette motors on.