This being a re-classification talk, Lee did give us a brief summary of his life and career:

 

 

As we all know, Lee is a major supporter of Rotary's effort to eradicate polio in the world.  He has been on vaccination trips and he raised funds for Polio Plus with his Peking to Paris road trip.  Click HERE  to see a story on his earlier venture.  Lee shared with us the current status of our efforts to eradicate polio:

 

 

The main focus of Lee's presentation was to describe his most recent adventure--purchasing a Brewster and driving it with his friend Bill from Lafayette, Indiana to Camano Island.  Their two objectives was to get the vehicle to Camano Island all on its own power and remaining as great friends when it was all done.

 

Brewster & Company was an American custom carriage-maker that moved into automobiles and built bodies on chassis from a variety of makers with a particular link to the Rolls-Royce.  In 1934 and 1935 the company built and sold luxury bodies on 135 Ford V8 chassis until they went bankrupt.  The car that Lee spotted for sale in Indiana was a Rolls Royce married to a 1935 Ford, like the one the he and Bill drove in the Peking to Paris Road Rally.

 

 

The why was the Great Depression.  There was a strong sentiment against the wealthy and their Brewster bodied Rolls-Royces so the Brewster Company purchased Ford chassis and designed a body for them identified by their heart shaped grill.  There were only 135 built so there are very few remaining.  One of them is now owned by Lee.!

 

Getting the Brewster to Camano Island under its own power was the challenge.  Lee flew to Phoenix where he met Bill and the two of them drove to Indianapolis starting on May 12 and arriving on May 14.  They picked up the car and then took turns driving it westward with their regular car following.  The Brewster made it the first 65 miles trouble free before, Lee using a pilot's phrase, "there was smoke in the cockpit".   Despite dealing with a hacked credit card, they found the problem and got it fixed.  Their destination from there was Auburn, Indiana, about 104 miles more.  They made it 102 miles before their 2nd "smoke in the cockpit".

 

The Auburn Early Ford V8 Club came to their rescue.  While in Auburn, Lee and Bill visited the Duesenberg Museum and the ACD Museum,  A photo of the Brewster on the ACD Museum's Facebook Site had 1,235,000 views and thousands of comments.

 

The 3rd "smoke in the cockpit" occurred on May 18, 302 miles after they left Auburn for Davenport, Iowa.  It took building a new radiator to get back on the road again with the next destination being Sioux City, South Dakota.  But during that 400 mile leg the generator cutout box failed. The Craig Floyd Early Ford V8 Foundation came to their rescue. 

 

On May 23 during a 300 mile leg to Pierre, South Dakota, the Brewster began overheating and there was a problem of having left the fuel cap at an earlier stop which Bill drove back to retrieve.  On May 24 it was off to Hardin, South Dakota.  They learned that the over heating problem could be overcome by removing the side panels from the hood.  A flat tire or two were also obstacles to overcome.  One flat occurred when they were having a broken ignition wire fixed on May 25.  On May 26 they were on the road again to Helena, Montana.  During that leg an endurance test showed that they could travel 142 miles on 14 gallons of gas.

 

In Harlowton, Montana, the electric fuel pump started to fail.  They limped into Helena, where they fixed the fuel system problem so that they could go on to Missoula, Montana the next day.  The last leg of the journey was 525 miles from Missoula to Camano Island.  It took 12 hours during a rain storm with no wipers and poor lighting. 

 

Lee finished his presentation the following Epilogue and Epilogue II: