I know there are several threads open where everyone is sharing what's on their hearts and minds. I don't want to detract fom those but I felt compelled to share something my wife found online this morning. It details Andy's relationship with the HAMB surprisingly well. I suspect it was probably posted once upon a time, but I wanted to put it out for anyone that might not be up on the whole story. Forgive me if it's already been put out there. To those that stepped up, you have my complete admiration and respect. Thank you for doing what so many of us should have. I won't sit out next time, God forbid it may come. From the Telegram, Andy's hometown paper? 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 ***embled 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 ***embling 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 p***ed - 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 p*** it forward." Months p***ed. 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 ch***is 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 ***. 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. ...
Yes...That story was published in Evening Telegram...our main local newspaper. There was a small followup published a couple of days ago to tell of Andys p***ing...
Having not been here a year, I didn't know Andy's story. Thanks for posting this. Sorry I never knew this fine young man.
Brings me to tears every time I read it....this morning is no different. I'm so proud of the HAMB guys and at the same time my heart breaks for the Dunn family.
I couldn't have said it any better. I think about my 13 year old son and it brings it home what a gift my kids, all kids, are.
Thanks for putting that back up again...it's amazing how much you can miss somebody that you never met...RIP Andy
Damn thing gets me every time... It's not often people get together to do that much good, at least he got to enjoy it. God Speed Andy.
For me the chronicle of Andy's hot rod will always be a celebration of a life well lived. I have learned a lot from Andy's courage and at***ude.
A very yong man who most of us never got to meet has taught us all that a dream CAN be a reality. I'm very blessed to be a part of this HAMB thing and getting to see this deal unfold on my computer screen. Just being a very small part of the project itself will forever give me a warm feeling that just can't be duplicated. Whenever all of us are faced with what seems like an unsurmountable hill to climb would do well to remember a phrase that Andy repeated many times when a downturn was taking place. That phrase..........."lets get'er done". Well said our young friend and ................God speed Frank
Frank, Bill, Thanks for chiming in. It makes me happy to see so many positive things going on here on the HAMB. Beats the hell out of the TV news these days. This article really was well written. Hats off to the author.
Thanks for the post Scotty. That is a great story, shows just what kind of people make up the H.A.M.B.
Wow, thanks for posting that. I guess I missed it the first time around. I miss him too, though never knew him, and am super proud of the folks on this board for everything that was done. I am the happy braggart when it comes to the fine people on here.
That is an absolutly amazing story! sturrs up alot of emotion being a father. My heart goes out to his family. Good things will come to those who helped Andy see his dream car come to life. Rest in peace Andy
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