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Slide show is there somewhere as well!!!!!

Dream car believers
Community unites to build hot rod for teen fighting cancer

ROB ANTLE
The Telegram

The dream is being created in a garage in Newfoundland, aided by people with handles like Doc and Atch, Jambottle and Fab32, from across North America and beyond.

There was the bottle drive in Michigan to buy tires. The antique car body, found in Saskatchewan and donated by a Louisiana emergency-room physician. The cash and goodwill that flowed from further afield, New Zealand and Australia and England.

The parts and money trundled across electronic highways and twisted-ribbon blacktops to this garage on the outskirts of a small city at the edge of a continent.

This is where the dream is being put together.

Andy Dunn surveys the progress. "Wicked," he says, his voice quiet - a side-effect of his cancer.

Andy is 13. He has been fascinated with cars since he started playing with dinkies as a toddler, his father Chris says. That interest grew as Andy did, the youngster handing his father wrenches as Chris worked on his 1948 Ford.

Today, Andy is overseeing a new project, made possible through thousands of hours of volunteer labour and decades of expertise. On the floor of the garage sits a partially assembled hot rod - a 1930 Model A, to be precise.

The project began a year ago. But the clock is now ticking. There is a car show in Carbonear, and the plan is to have the Model A ready to roll, with Andy behind the wheel.

Days to go, and a list that fills up a full three pages is taped to the garage wall.

Time to get to work.

Saturday, Aug. 2. Seven days to show time. The Topsail Road garage is a cacophony of noise, an orchestra conducted by men in jeans and coveralls. There is the clank-clank-clank of metal on metal and the high-pitched grinding whine of the dentist's office. Don Henley croons in the background, a lament about the "Boys of Summer."

Tony "Fitz" Fitzpatrick and Bill Norris are deep in the bowels of the building, working on body mounts. Monty Murrin is moving around from job to job - wheel cylinders, shoes. Leon House is fussing with the shifter bracket.

Andy Dunn peers down over Leon, asking if he's done yet. Leon glances up, and grins. "Sure you're like a woman."

Fitz pipes up from the other side of the garage. "Andy keep an eye out. Make sure he puts it together right."

There is a problem with the shifter linkage, Leon concludes. They are going to have to modify it. "Word of the day," he says. "Modified."

Building a hot rod, it seems, is like assembling a puzzle - only you have to create some pieces from scratch, and use others thrown together from a dozen different boxes. And when the pieces don't come together correctly, you make them fit. "Modify" them.

Three years ago, Andy began complaining to his father about a pain in his neck. He visited the hospital, did physiotherapy. Nothing worked. Finally, the undiscovered tumour separated his skull from his spine on the right-hand side. Andy had emergency surgery to fuse his spine. Then it was off to Toronto for six months, where surgeons removed the tumour through his mouth.

The type of cancer, chordoma, is extremely rare. Five cases in Canadian children in the last 15 years. Less than a one-in-10-million longshot.

Months passed - good months - until the tumour came back in January 2007.

Then Leon House went online with a simple request. He asked members of the H.A.M.B. message board - an Internet home for serious hot-rodders - to send T-shirts and the like to cheer Andy up during his renewed battle against cancer.

The shirts and souvenirs came in, boxes upon boxes. Andy joined the website, under the moniker "Hambandy," to talk cars and say thanks.

Then a new idea hit the board, posted by a Wisconsin H.A.M.B.er. Why not solicit donations from members to send Andy and his father to that summer's annual hot-rod drags in Joplin, Mo.?

The board lit up with pledges of donations. Leon House was the point man on the Newfoundland end. Two years earlier, his brother Brian, a pro motocross rider, died in a practice session at the Canadian nationals. After the accident, people from all over the world reached out to his family. "It opened my eyes to a kinder mankind," he wrote on the message board at the time. "For this I have to pass it forward."

Months passed. Excitement grew.

Then, bad news. Another tumour. Instead of hot rods, it was more surgery, this time in Seattle. Afterwards, cutting-edge cyberknife radiation treatment not yet available in Canada.

But the car enthusiasts had a new idea. If they couldn't bring Andy to the hot-rod drags, why not bring a hot rod to Andy?

°°°

As the hot-rodders converged in Joplin last summer, they brought car parts and cash along with their good wishes. Everyone signed a vintage dash for Andy. The members relayed the parts to Newfoundland.

Meanwhile, a group of a half-dozen local car enthusiasts - Fitz, Bill, Leon, Geoff Bursey, Terry O'Neil and Glen Thomas - set into motion the plans to build Andy's hot rod. Rick Murphy organized the body work; Don Ryan provided engine expertise.

They jumped the first hurdle when Kevin "Doc" Huston, an ER doctor in Shreveport, La., bought the 1930 Model A body from a seller in Saskatchewan.

"I get to see more than my fair share of gloom and misery," he says. "So, I knew from the start that I wanted to be involved in building a project for Andy. I saw the situation as kind of a make-a-wish foundation for hot rodders. If we could give this kid, that lives half way around the world, a little bit more to fight for then that is what we wanted to do."

Others quickly pitched in.

Nineteen-year-old Jordan Graham of Solvang, Calif., was touched when he read about Andy on the board. He works as a custom fabricator, and donated a Model A drop axle to the cause. But it wasn't just any axle - it was the first one he ever worked on three years earlier, when he was just 16. "I figured I'd keep it forever, but it would (have) meant so much more to Andy, so it went to him."

Dan Bowles has two boys around Andy's age - 13 and 15. "My wife and I have been blessed with two very healthy young men and it just didn't seem right not to do something," he says. He helped organize a bottle drive from his hometown of Blissfield, Mich. End result? A set of four tires valued at more than $1,000 - "some nice wide whites for the hottest rod around."

Things were starting to come together.

Back home, a reconnaissance team liberated the roof of a 1963 Valiant that had been dumped in the woods near Makinsons. The candy-apple red seat was salvaged from an old school bus and modified.

The build began a year ago. Fitz and Bill began working on Thursday nights to create a chassis from scratch. Thursday nights soon became Thursdays and Saturday afternoons. Then more often, and more.

For the past month - as work progressed, and a host of others, too many to name, came onboard - it's been a seven-day-a-week endeavour. It's all volunteer, all during off hours, burning the midnight oil and beyond.

Andy is overseeing the specifications of the entire build. No fenders. Wide whitewalls. Satin black body, with red accents on the wheels and engine. No hood. A '32 Ford grill. A five-inch chop, to make the body sit low. Old-school big-drum brakes.

Andy's father Chris says construction of the Model A has kept his son's spirits up. Andy recently went through another round of cutting-edge treatment, this time in California. "This car has meant to Andy a reason to live," Chris says. "So the battle continues."

°°°

Wednesday, Aug. 6. Only a few days to go now.

Tony Fitzpatrick acknowledges he originally had his doubts. He thought the idea was "a bit outlandish" at first. Build a hot rod for Andy from scratch?

A year later, there is a nearly-complete Model A on the floor of his garage. How many hours did he put into this project? He shrugs. "I wouldn't be able to comprehend it."

Later in the evening, a crowd of eight or nine people have gathered to do last-minute work: mounting the headlights, getting the wiring in place, bolting on the fuel block.

Bill Norris is still amazed at how things came together. He says there is no way it could have been done without a lot of helping hands.

"The local car community is really tight. The H.A.M.B. itself is really tight. It's an odd kind of a message board. You go about it the wrong way, you're going to get kicked in the ass. But I think that's what drew me to it - in that these guys, they don't just talk the talk ... If you're going to play the game, you've got to play the game right."

Hot rodders can seem like a different breed, Leon House acknowledges. "We ain't bad guys. We look different. We drive different cars. We're very different people. Andy's a great kid."

°°°

Thursday night. A message hits the board: "It's alive!!" The engine is running.

°°°

Friday. The last frantic stretch. The garage bustles again. Bill Norris says the Model A is no longer just a collection of parts, since the engine has been running.

Now it's a car.

°°°

Is the car everything Andy Dunn expected when he first explained what he wanted, all those months ago?

No, he says, as the build enters its final stages. "It's better."

°°°

Today, Andy Dunn will sit behind the wheel of the 1930 Model A when it rolls into the car show in Carbonear.

There will be a line of cars following him. And a trail of goodwill stretching across the globe that got him there.

rantle@thetelegram.com




A HOT ROD FOR ANDY



A year ago, a group of car enthusiasts decided to build a 1930 Model A hot rod for 13-year-old Andy Dunn, who is battling cancer.
They were helped by an outpouring of donations and support from across North America and beyond.
Telegram journalist Rob Antle spent the last 10 days of the build — from late July through the first week of August — hanging out at the garage.
He watched as the volunteers pressed to compete their work on deadline, to roll out the Model A at a weekend car show in Carbonear — with Andy behind the wheel.
Here are some of the moments captured during those visits.
Photos by Rob Antle/The Telegram

 

Go ahead tough guys, I dare you to read this without getting a wet eye or two!! What a fantastic story!

 

Now that... is an awesome write up!

 

good writer

 

great story! kudos to all that helped on the project.

 

Made this Old Man cry.
Great job folks.

 

Wow. You weren't kidding. That's the most inspiring reading I've done in a while. Kudos to all involved and every hot rodder that ever grabbed a wrench.

 

I always enjoy a story of some good deed being done for someone so deserving. Well done.

 

Thats great

 

Great story...Got kind of hard to read there towards the end, my screen started to get blurry.

 

Andy Rules!

 

Great write up !!!!.........congrats to all....Littleman

 

Incredible.

 

excellent story you guys rock...jeffrey

 

No dry eyes here!Great write up,great cause!

 

F'n A!

~Jason

 

I don't post much these days. But I have said this before. 'The HAMB has some of humanities finest people on board'.
Geoff aka whodaky

 

Tears in my eyes, here. Well deserved Andy.

 

man thats great!

 

I wonder if Ryan would contemplate putting all the Hambandy threads into a folder and making it a sticky, or maybe a separate area altogether? I believe it's worth it.

 

"well done" just doesn't cut it...gotta go dry out the keyboard...

 

I'm still wondering if we could still get him to the drags this year. We made a helluva leap before, and this one would actually be more difficult - we've got to figure out how to get Andy and his car to the drags now.

If any one group of people could get it done, this place could.

 

That was awesome. Sounds like the HAMB really could become the Hot Rod Make a Wish Foundation. Truly insperational!

FONZI

 

Andy you are famous.....cool cool!!

 

Great story. Andy is a remarkable kid. How many kids at 13 could design a car that looks that good?

 

That is some damn fine writing. It clearly explains everything and I didn't notice any goof ups. I'm sure Andys story will spread.

 

If we (The HAMB) gets him to MOKAN, he will get to sit in and start up an AA/Fuel Coupe and cackle the hell out of it. I can promise that.

 

Every newbie that signs on to the HAMB SHOULD BE REQUIRED, to read that! Who put vaseline on my screen? It is blurrier than Greezys!

 

Great Story, Great Kid. You guys are fantastic. Way to go!

 

God Bless Us All. Every One.

Onions...

I noticed one thing, all of the people in there had like 'legal' names. What is he trying to do? I don't know anyone with a real name on here. Cept for maybe a few like Eric Hawkins at Coker Tire! He's a favorite of mine. Great doing business with you guys for this.