A Rags to Riches Pony

Last month our pastor, Jim Letizia, wrote an article for the Ft. Lauderdale Mustang Club. A member for many years, he was asked to tell the story of his last, and greatest project.
Read it below.


A Rags to Riches Pony

It is truly amazing how a car can bring so much attention. 22 years ago a friend of mine called me to tell me of an abandoned Mustang on a horse farm off of Lyons Road in Coconut Creek. Upon inquiring I found out that this was a 1964½ Mustang convertible that looked more like a planter than it did an automobile. I proceeded to inquire about the vehicle, and the gentleman wanted $300 for the car. After considering this endeavor, the fact that it was an original red and red V8 car sparked my interest to bring this car back to life.

I flat bed the car home, and upon my wife observing the car, made the comment, “You paid money for that? I think he should have paid you to haul it away.” With that confidence I knew I had my work cut out for me. The first picture taken of this car in the field tells the story. I stored the car for eight years in a warehouse and did some minor repairs to the car. Replacing the floors, torque boxes, and complete suspension put the car back on the road, but the engine was tired and worn out. I knew that a complete restoration would have to be done.

Because of other Mustang projects that I was involved with, I saved this car to be the last one finished. Another eight years of storage occurred, but this time the storage was at my home garage. This way I could work on the car a little at a time, and over the past 8 years I slowly brought the car back. In the last two years I have concentrated all my efforts on finishing this car, and finally, after 22 years the car was presented in its first outing at the Festival Market show Sunday, December 2, 2007. The attention to the car was overwhelming, and I think everyone has a love for the original Mustang. Some great stories and memories were rekindled for those that walked by.

Truly the fun in the hobby is not the awards won or the attention to perfection, but the great memories that everyone seems to have about these cars. Mine is still being completed as there are many small details and minor improvements that continue to be made. I hope to show the car for many years and keep it as a reminder of truly a time and era that has gone by.

My first ride in a Mustang was in 1969 in the back seat of a ’69 GT 4-speed car. I remember asking my friend what kind of a car is this and where do I get one. My love for Mustangs began in 1969 after riding in that ’69 GT and I proceeded then to buy the last Shelby GT350 on Luke Bolton (now Plantation Ford) lot. The car was titled a 1970, but it was a leftover ’69. They told me it was the last one in the state of Florida, black jade, black interior, 4-speed 350. I loved the car and have always wanted to track it down today.

I joined the Ft. Lauderdale Mustang Club in 1970 which was at that time meeting at Luke Bolton Ford in Plantation. I remember winning a trophy for a rally that we entered the Shelby in and took a 3rd-place trophy. I still have that trophy today, and it’s hard to believe that that has represented 37 years of Mustang involvement. I bought my first Mustang in 1969 and was happy to be able to find a 1969 Mustang GT390 a few years ago. This is like the first Mustang that I ever rode in and to own one after nearly 40 years is a real thrill. I also own a 1969 Grande, a 1965 fastback, and a 1969 Corvette.

All of these are vehicles that I have acquired over the past 26 years as I re-entered the hobby in 1981. Our first Ft. Lauderdale Mustang Club meetings were at Koons Ford in Hollywood where I met some of our old time members: Larry Hurst, Joe Costantino, Sam Papanella, and a host of other names that most of you would remember.

I love to work on Mustangs and do most all of the work myself except the final paint. When I was a boy growing up my father restored cars in our garage at home until he opened a shop for a few years before his early death at the age of 56. I remember our first car that we built together back in the late 50s was a 1948 Kaiser and then a Henry J. A 1953 Studebaker Commander followed until my first car that I purchased from my Uncle Harry for $75, a 1955 Chevy 210 wagon. I was 15 years old, brought the car home and tore it all apart with my dad, and we called it the “bondo buggy”. We must have smacked two gallons of bondo on that car. I painted it royal blue with a gold interior, and since I played organ in a rock ‘n roll band, we used it to haul equipment.

My love for cars and working on them has always brought excitement and challenge, but most of all brings back great memories, my boys growing up, and a wife who has always supported me in this hobby. I suppose I have rescued seven or eight Mustangs from the graveyards and consider it a privilege to continually be able to physically do the work. It is getting harder, though, for without a car lift, getting up and down from under the car is getting more difficult as time goes on. I have great car memories of my childhood in the late 50s and early 60s, cruising down Rt. 6 and 2 at the edge of Lake Erie just west of Cleveland in the city that I grew up in called Lorain, Ohio, to memories of cruising Sunny Isles past the Castaways, to Haulover Beach in the late 60s and 70s, to our cruise nights now around the Ft. Lauderdale area, continue to bring great joy and excitement for these cars.

It has always amazed me, as an ordained minister and pastor of a church for the past 25 years, that a car is still one of the greatest talking points when getting to know people. Just having the car there gives you the access to ask people about their lives, especially their families, their loves, their hurts, and their concerns for life. I find no greater tool to get to know people and understand who they are and what they are all about than a classic or late model car. All car guys have one thing in common, and that is their love for a particular year and model. No matter what it is, it brings us to a common denominator of life which I have always believed to be community and relation-ships. Whether it is a church, a club or organization, or a business, our motivation to continue is not centered on a particular body style, or make and model, but is truly centered around the great people, friendships, and help that this hobby provides. I have met some of the most genuine and real people in this hobby, and we love to talk about the cars.

I hope to see you at the coming shows and look forward to showing this 64½ convertible that has a “rags to riches” story from planter box to a car that looks like Mom’s tomato sauce (Rangoon Red with a bright red interior). I also hope this will encourage you to keep working on your car and hopefully it won’t take 22 years for you to complete your project!


Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

Jim Letizia
Senior Minister
New Covenant Church on the Lake
Pompano Beach

Christmas Poem

The Holy Night by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem;
The dumb kine from their fodder turning them,
Softened their horn'd faces,
To almost human gazes
Toward the newly Born:
The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks
Brought visionary looks,
As yet in their astonished hearing rung
The strange sweet angel-tongue:
The magi of the East, in sandals worn,
Knelt reverent, sweeping round,
With long pale beards, their gifts upon the ground,
The incense, myrrh, and gold
These baby hands were impotent to hold:
So let all earthlies and celestials wait
Upon thy royal state.
Sleep, sleep, my kingly One!

Veterans Day

Veterans Day 2007, has come and gone but Off the Lake wants to look back and pause at the great sacrifices some of our friends and countrymen and women have made over the years.

Recently on the NPR program "All Things Considered", the story of Naomi Lewin is told. The great niece of a WWI Vet killed in action. We're reminded of the horrors of war and the heroism of the brave.

Click the link to read the article, and at the top of the article, the NPR page will allow you to listen to the fascinating segment from All Things Considered.

Happy Veterans Day to all those who served,
and to all those who serve now.

Veterans Day - NPR story

Audio::Audio

We're proud to add the audio link to Pastor Jim Letizia's sermons to Off the Lake. Head over to the right side of the page and click on "Jim Letizia Audio" and find new sermons as well as archived ones.

Make sure you check out the new NCC website! @ www.newcovenantfl.org

Into the Wild

Film Review, by Phil Letizia

The beautiful thing about film and art is the way it moves you. It can carry you along from one place to another. Sometimes not even aware of it, we’re swept up into something, and then gently let back down when the experience closes.

I recently saw the film version of John Krakauer’s bestselling book Into the Wild. The film, just released by Paramount Vantage in late September, boasts Sean Penn as writer/director. Set in the early 90s, the film follows the story of Christopher McCandless (played by Emile Hirsch), a fresh graduate from Emory University with high scores, and big aspirations. Well, one would think. After graduation, Chris gave the $24,000 in his savings account to charity, abandoned his family, and set out on a journey that would take him to South Dakota, Mexico, and ultimately the great white north of Alaska.

All of us have dreamed at some point in our lives of making the same decisions. Life can get so muddled and fake that we long for this idyllic place. A place where life is more “true”, and different than whatever has scarred or hurt us in our past. You will find early on in this film that it is not a “survival” film. It is not a film of great adventure, or of a heroic character beating the odds as he wages war against the wild.

This is a film of escape.

McCandless lives in the world where status and degrees are currency. Harvard Law is the next logical step, and you certainly can’t drive a beat up Datsun if you’re going to attend Harvard Law. That’s what Walt McCandless thinks, Chris’ father. The tension that develops between this seemingly happy family is overwhelming. So overwhelming for Chris, that he escapes.

With Thoreau and Tolstoy in hand, and a backpack of essentials he sets out for his own personal quest into the wild, where the constraints of a bastardized society do not reach. You can find ideals in the wild. The way things “should be”.

In the wild, you wouldn’t have to deal with your father’s abuse. You wouldn’t have to live with knowing your father had a previous family, with previous children you knew nothing about. Everything wouldn’t be a fraud. Things have been said. Things done inside the walls of a family that cannot be healed in Chris’ mind. The only tonic, the only cure, is leaving it all behind. Not just leaving, but becoming someone else…Alexander Supertramp.

His consoling words along the way to another, speak for himself as well. “Some people feel like they don't deserve love. They walk away quietly into empty spaces, trying to close the gaps of the past.” So it was for Alex Supertramp, and Chris McCandless.

The wild calls us at different times in our lives. It taunts us with its beauty, promising that it can fill the void, and make us happy. For Supertramp it does. For the better part of 2 years he’s dead to the world. Dead to his family, his sister, and the society that hurt him so deeply.

When McCandless’ parents first realize his disappearance is voluntary, they can’t understand him. They want to scold, yell, “Why is he doing this to us? Why is he embarrassing us?” These are the reactions Chris expects. What he doesn’t see however, is what his sister Carine narrates at one point in the film.

“I wish you could see them now. They’re not the same people they were when you left…they’re softer.”

Perhaps if Chris could have seen how his parents had changed. How they had gone from selfish frauds in his mind, to…parents. Hurting parents.

This journey is an escape into the wild. An escape from people. The journey is to find all one could ever need in the bosom of nature herself. Though many set out on such a journey, they’re often left with the same void upon arrival. The void that only relationship can fill. Only the happiness that another human can provide.

Each character McCandless comes into contact with on his journey has the same story. The same void of forgotten relationships, unforgiven people, and they plead with him to turn back. To stay with them. But his void is not yet overwhelmed.

On a desert hillside, his grandfather like friend, Franz, played by Hal Holbrook, pleads with him, “When you forgive, you love. And when you love, God's light shines upon you.”

This is what we wish and long for Chris to see as we watch. We pray he feels the love of a Father waiting at home to see his face. He wants to know, “What if I were smiling and running into your arms? Would you see then what I see now?” We hope the prodigal will return, and instead of finding the judgmental glare of the father he knew, he would find the loving arms of his father wrapped around him, holding, crying.

The wild is real. It does not care for others. It does not take into account your quest or personal journey. It does not care for your scars or wounds which you bring into her cave. And so when we find ourselves there, armed with Chris’ words, “Rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth.” The wild mocks us and tells us to go home. Only the happiness and relationship that community with other human beings bring, can heal the wounds and scars we all carry. Only our lives together can overcome the abuse of a father. For McCandless, it was what the wild so brutally taught him.

“If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.”

His last words were, “happiness is real, only if it is shared”.

Are we sharing our lives? Do we know the wounds and cracks of our lives can only be healed in relationship, in community?

This is a film that does not leave you in the same place you began, and for that reason alone; it is a beautiful work of art worth our attention. Make the drive. Find the theater.

Into the Wild.

Interview: A few minutes with Sherrie Vera

We're kicking off our interview series today at Off the Lake.
For our first interview we're talking with Sherrie Vera, asking her all kinds of questions about growing up in Miami, kids, and movies...

OTL: So Sherrie, tell us a little about yourself. Did you grow up in South Florida?

SV: Yes. I grew up in Miami, the northern part of the city in the Ives Dairy area. I went to N. Miami Beach High School. Born and raised in south Florida, I’ve spent my whole life here. Now we live in Tamarac.

OTL: What kind of things were you into growing up in Miami?

SV: I was always the kind of sporty girl. I was the only girl on my city baseball team. (Laughing) I’d rather be playing sports than cheer leading. I don’t know, when I was a kid we were always playing outside in the streets, we didn’t have all the toys and ipods and computers kids have now.

OTL: Did you have any idea of what you wanted to do?

SV: I think I always wanted to teach. Even as a younger girl, I loved the idea of teaching kids.

OTL: Any jobs growing up, or in your young adult years?

SV: I waitressed for a while, but I was always a student. I tried to be involved in school as much as I could. Then I went into hair dressing for quite a few years, but I got bored. It was largely the same people every day and I tend to get bored easily. I like being around people, interacting, and working on projects. Hairdressing gives you some of that, but it was time for me to move onto something else.

OTL: Now what was that something else? I imagine it was something to do with your two boys?

SV: Yeah. Jose (21) and Michael (18). At that time we decided to home school the boys, so I was able to put into practice some of the things I always wanted to do. I did a lot of studying and went through the certification process to do it properly. It was a pretty big challenge, but we made it.

OTL: Tell us about the decision to home school. What led to that?

SV: We just felt it was the right decision for the boys. I was able to give all my attention to them, where they wouldn’t have received that in school. They really responded well, and I enjoyed it. We didn’t home school because we wanted to take our kids out of school, or because public schools were awful, or we weren’t comfortable with them there. It was because it was the best move for the two boys.

OTL: How did you meet your husband Mike?

SV: (smiling and laughing) We met out socially with a group of friends. I remember Mike just walking up, and he started to talk to me. We hit it off and started dating. We were married 4 months later.

OTL: And how long have you been married now?

SV: 12 years.

OTL: So what type of things do you and Mike like to do?

SV: Well, actually, we really like going out to dinner. Enjoying each other. Life has changed big time since the boys are older and out on their own. We have a lot more time to ourselves, which is nice, and we get to go out, which is always a good thing.

OTL: How’d you guys end up at NCC?

SV: Through my sons really. Our oldest son was a good friend of Melissa Horn's, who of course grew up here, and she invited Mike my youngest son to the youth group here. He loved it and got really involved, so we started coming with him on Wednesday nights. Before we knew it we were working in the kitchen, and then decided to make NCC home.

OTL: And now you’re the children’s director here. How did that come about?

SV: (laughing) Yeah. That wasn’t really the plan. I remember when we filled out the interest card, and my husband Mike checked “children” as my interest and I said, “No! What are you doing? Not yet!” (Laughing) So I started working with the kids, which I just love, and at the same time I was a teacher’s assistant here at the school (Paragon Elementary) then the children’s position at the church opened up and I remember talking to Scott Lawry about it. He told me to think about taking the position, and I did. Originally I thought no way, but then I decided to take it. I love it! It’s been incredible.

OTL: Alright, here come a few quick fire questions… What’s your favorite food?

SV: Italian. I love pasta

OTL: Favorite music?

SV: I like the Newsboys, but I’m not going to lie… I used to be a huge JOURNEY fan! (Laughing)

OTL: Coolest place you’ve ever been?

SV: VEGAS. My dad lives there.

OTL: Favorite movie?

SV: (laughing) My favorite movie of all time is Grease 2!

OTL: GREASE 2? There’s a Grease 2?

SV: Of course. I liked the first one just because of John Travolta, but I think I loved the second because I identified with Michelle Pfeiffer. I think I wanted to secretly be her. I’ve seen it like 50 times (laughing).

OTL: Thanks for hanging out with us today Sherrie.

SV: Thanks for having me!

LST 557

LST 557
South Pacific
World War II

Our ship was part of the invasion of Okinawa on Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945. On April, 2, we carried the 6th Marines into the beach. When they unloaded and stormed the beach it was a successful landing, and after a two-day pounding by battle ships, heavy and light cruisers, destroyers, and aircraft bombers.

We were ordered the next day, April 2nd, to pull back off the beach and proceed to Bunker Bay on the other side of the main island, to a place called Tsuken Shima. This is where the well- known war correspondent, Ernie Pyle, was killed and where we had our first casualties. We were being targeted by shore batteries and after several close calls we were finally struck with a direct hit from a five inch shell hitting one our ship mates in the head, killing him instantly. The same shell struck a steel metal mount in the ship's fan tail area (The Stern). The shell burst, killing another ship mate and wounding several others. While this was happening, our ship's captain was being escorted down from his position and I saw his face and entire body covered with blood and was told later, part's of the ship mate's head was mixed with that blood. As the shore battery ceased, I saw three of our 6 F Hell Cat Planes diving in and around the cave where the gun that hit us was firing from. We were on our ship cheering, knowing the gun was taken out. Not long after however, there were two kamikazi suicide planes headed directly for our ship. One of our 40 mm guns shot the first one out of the sky. The other plane crashed only ten feet from our ship's stern and we could see the dead pilot go down and sink in the water.

There were other sporadic attacks through that day. We saw many other ships around us burning from bomb strikes, and some were burying their ship mates, letting their bodies sewed up in canvas slide into the sea. The next morning, we did the same for our two ship mates. That same day, our twenty-six year old Captain had us line up for inspection. I, along with the remaining crew noticed our Captain Joseph Devine had turned completely white from the shock of the shell hit the day before.

This story happened to my ship mates and me.

When I was 19.

Today I am 81.

And thankful to be alive to tell it.

John Hearn GM 3/c L.S.T. 557
Deerfield Beach, FL