By Dorene and Butch TeBockhorst

Editor’s Note: As we monitor the ongoing MGB restoration by Ian and Brenda Fenech-Soler, this terrific tale from Dorene TeBockhorst about husband Orville’s new love interest, Shirley.

I was a newly graduated Registered Nurse in 1966 and one of my surgical patients had been my husband’s college Housemother.  She invited me to her place to meet “her boys”, and from then on, five of those boys (one being my future husband) and I became good friends.  This “group” would take me to their college football games, invite me for card games, and come to my Christmas tree trimming parties, with their housemother in tow.  A year later, when my husband and I began dating, he was the proud owner of a 1964 Triumph TR4.  In fact, the day he purchased it, he drove the car home and his parents immediately borrowed it!  My “Romeo” proposed and we planned our wedding.  Coworkers suggested that we go to Puerto Rico and St. Thomas for our honeymoon, which sounded so exotic, so my husband sold his beloved TR4 to pay for our romantic get-away!  And so this story begins, because I, our family, and our friends have heard this tale countless times ……”I used to have a sports car, but I sold it to take our honeymoon”…… over the last 50 years.

We retired to Florida and became good friends with a neighbor, who was a sports car enthusiast.  He and my husband liked to swap stories and go to classic car shows together.  Our friend bought/sold several sports cars for himself and my husband would “covet, drool and remember “his little British Racing Green first sweetheart”.  Our friend was always aware of this fact and would peruse Classic Car online sites and share his finds with my husband, who never seriously considered trying to replace his TR4.

Then came 2017 with two big events to celebrate … in our friend’s mind!  My husband would be turning 75 and we would also be celebrating 50 years of marriage.  Our friend, Andy, who had since sold his home in St. Augustine and now lives in Annapolis, Maryland, became secretly focused on finding an old TR4 for my husband.  He found a 55 year old car, on which the owner had started some basic, minimal restoration and had stored in a barn in Texas before he gave up and sold it to a Classic Car site in California.  Andy felt he had found the perfect car for my husband.  Andy then went so far as to call our next door neighbor to have him “quietly” come over to our lanai, where our teenage granddaughters on their Spring Break from Illinois were sunning themselves in their bikinis poolside, and ask them for their mother’s phone number!  Andy wanted to contact our daughter about this “epic surprise”.  We had no knowledge of this and I am surprised my granddaughters didn’t express some concerns about this older man strolling next to the screen and wanting a phone number!

Our four children already knew that we were adamantly opposed to any big Anniversary party or trip/cruise to celebrate our milestone, therefore I think it was easy for Andy to convince them that this would be the perfect gift for us!  They chipped in money for the purchase price, but they also told Andy that he needed to let me in on this “surprise” so that my world would not be turned more upside down (I had just been to three family funerals in 6 weeks, one of them being my younger sister) with this old car taking up room in our garage for months until it was restored.  I was overwhelmed with their generosity and could only imagine my husband’s surprise when that TR4 would be presented to him, so I said, “Sure, why the heck not …. This could be the happy ending to that infamous 50 year old story!” 

Andy made all the arrangements to have the TR4 transported from California to St. Augustine and even flew down to be present when it was delivered on our driveway.  The plan was that he would wait in his rental car a street over from us and follow the car dolly to our street, have the driver come to our front door and ask my husband to come outside where we would all (the other neighbors were now in on it and just as excited) be waiting to watch my husband’s reaction.  Well, the transport was late.  From my lanai, I could see Andy and his wife nervously pacing alongside their car waiting for the “epic surprise” to appear.  When the transport was finally parked in front of our house, we found out the driver didn’t speak English, so Andy had to then go to our front door to fetch my husband and ask him to step outside.  My husband, who had dozed off in his chair, was totally confused to open the door, not only to see Andy standing there, but why were the neighbors gathered at the end of our drive?  Not to mention that the poor transport driver had no clue what the heck was happening.  And when Andy finally got him out to the curb to view the “Epic Surprise”, my husband could not grasp that this car was for him … and how this had all transpired!  He said he kept telling himself, “Surely, this isn’t for me!”  Yes it is Sweetheart…. And that is almost the end of the story. 

I woke up at 1:30am that first night the TR4 was in our own garage …. our neighbors had helped us push it there … and I could not find my husband!  He had stayed up on the computer, printed out the entire original Owner’s Shop Manual from England and was under the hood of his “surprise” checking VIN numbers and reliving all the unique things on that car that were the same on his car.  We had some challenges to get the car title in his name because the car was not even remotely drivable to the DMV to verify the VIN number.  We had to have the County Sheriff come to our house to look at the seller’s title and then verify that the numbers matched.  When we opened the garage door and that poor officer saw how many pieces the car was in, the look on his face said it all.  “Seriously?”  Amazingly, he concurred that all was in order, went to his patrol car and used his printer to print out the new legal title on the spot.  Who knew?

The restoration continues with much hard work, love and great pride.  Oh yeah, and money!  Appropriately, we now call the “Epic Surprise” …. Shirley …. A play on words to his very first reaction when he saw that car!  And we tell our proud and generous children and grandchildren … “The most romantic love story isn’t Romeo and Juliet who died together … It’s Grandma and Grandpa who grew old together … and are riding once again in that cute little TR4!  And he is still my Romeo 50 years later!!  Plus 3 ½ years of restoration time!

Postscript

My husband is so proud of all the hard work that he has put into “Shirley”.  We had the UPS lady (before she retired), Harry, the mailman, and other delivery people stop by to check on her progress as they left their many packages of MORE ordered new parts!  Even the Powell heating technician and the regular walkers straying into our cul de sac would wander up the driveway if they saw the garage door up and him working out there. I was beginning to think that I should serve “refreshments” as it was like a regular club gathering in my garage!  Boys and their toys!!  We tease our kids that they can NEVER sell that car!! There is another gentleman in MCCC who has a TR6….white with baby blue interior.  He has stopped by and they both carry on like young teenagers in love….LOL!