Quote:From 1982 until 1993 my dad owned a trucking company with about 15 active running truck/trailers. In 1991 he partnered up with a guy from the local community collage to open a truck driver training center. By 1993 the training center had failed and went bankrupt. A few weeks later it pulled the trucking company down with it. My dad went from $200,000/year owning a trucking company to working part time as a salesman for a local GM dealership. By July 1994 the family was completely bankrupt and in debt to the IRS big time. July 1994 was also my 10th birthday.

I remember a few weeks before my birthday my parents fighting about what they where going to do about money and my dad started working nights at the dealership. When my birthday came around I knew they had no money to buy me anything and I was fine with that. I just wanted to see my dad. Since he started working nights I only saw him maybe 20 mins per day.

Around 6pm on my birthday me and my mom went to pick my dad up from work. When we got there my dad was standing by a 1995 admiral blue 6spd with the keys in one hand and one of the free GM promo models that matched the real car in his other hand. I will never forget it. I can even remember how that day smelled. The car was the only C4 they had so they had to open the huge glass doors of the show room to let it out. Me and my dad went on a two hour joy ride in a brand new show room corvette. It was the first C4 I remember being brand new. despite the dealership owners warning we did a few burnouts in the car before we brought it back.

Turns out the owner of the dealership only came in at night after the place had closed. My dad worked 3 weeks as a night janitor for next to nothing so he could get a chance to meet the owner and talk him into letting him borrow the car and get the matching promo model for my birthday because he had no money to buy me anything. That night my dad came in to my room to talk to me before bed. I will never forget how he looked. He was disappointed in him self and upset that he could not buy me a big birthday like he had always done. He kept telling me that he would make it up to me. What he never knew was all I wanted was to be with my him on my birthday and the two hours we spent together in a new corvette was the best gift I ever got.

Since that day I have dreamed about owning a C4. I had posters, notebooks and model cars over every model.
And in 2007 I got my first C4. A high mileage 1991 L98 automatic. I spent 4 months hiding the car from him and fixing it up on the side. 6 months before he died I called him up and told him to get his shoes on I was coming to get him. When I got to his house I parked around the side so he could not see the 91 C4. That day I made a copy of the 91's keys and put them in the original box with the 95 promo model still mint and gave him it. He opened it up and saw the promo model and for the first time in my life I saw my dad tear up. On the key chain for the keys for the 91 it said " I was able to build this for you from the knowledge you gave me. Not only did you teach me to work with my hands but you showed me that even when you have nothing, there is always something you can do."