1951 Studebaker Champion

Dan

• We had this car in Highland Park. This is the first car I remember being in. I was small enough to lie down on the shelf between the back seat and rear window. One time when I was in nursery school, Dad let me 'help' him put the car in the garage. I sat on his lap in the driver’s seat and he let me hold the wheel. Somehow I was able to push on his right foot and make the car jump forward and hit the back of the garage. I did not get to help him with that again.

• I think that this car was a wedding gift from Jim and Budie Cleary. Even though the 1950s was long after Jim (Grandpa) stopped working for Studebaker, they continued to buy Studebakers well into the 1960s. I think Grandpa’s advertising agency had the Studebaker account.

Dave

This is also the first car I remember being in, though there was also a giant chocolate brown Hudson Hornet (so Mom told me years later...) that we were picked up in and taken to a pre-school called "Marvery" (sp?) when we lived in Highland Park.

A very early memory of mine is a trip to the Old Orchard shopping center (pre-mall...) which Google tells me opened in 1956. It was a new concept then - a a bunch of stores clustered together in the center of a big parking lot.

I'm sure Mom was going to the Marshall Field store there. www.chicagotribune.com/visuals/vintage/ct-viz-old-orchard-shopping-center-photos-20191126-s55jixdwrrbrrlkxtept2jbosu-photogallery.html See photo #8.

My recollection is of coming back to this car towards the end of an afternoon after being in the shops. The car had a flat tire in the right rear, and was sort of all on its own in the middle of the empty parking lot. Dan and I were placed in the back seat and looked out the window at Dad as he struggled to change the tire. No cell phones, no AAA. Not sure what Mom was doing all this time. I vaguely recall getting back home after dark...