Chad Starbuck of Fulton will present a program at Morrison’s Heritage Museum, 202 E. Lincolnway, on Sunday, October 20th beginning promptly at 1:30 p.m. Doors open at 1:00 via a ramp at the back of the building. There is no fee to attend, and refreshments will be served.
There will be a short video and Starbuck’s PowerPoint presentation of the famed drag racing driver. He will have items on display and copies of the book “Arnie ‘The Farmer’ Beswick” by author Dean Fait for sale.
Starbuck has been Beswick’s friend and fan for decades, but he has never raced. Like Beswick, Starbuck has always been a Pontiac fan; he has “a couple 1966 GTOs, a 1998 Trans-Am GTA, a 2006 Pontiac GTO, and a Pontiac Collection,” which he drives on weekends and to car shows and cruises. His vehicle of choice today is a Ford Edge.
In 1999, he moved back to Illinois and joined the Pontiac Club in the Quad Cities, where he was introduced to Arnie by Dean Fait. That year, Beswick asked Starbuck to travel with him and sell merchandise, unload and reload a car into the trailer, and answer crowd questions. “I absorbed Arnie’s stories as an historian to keep his tradition alive,” recalled Starbuck.
Starbuck supplied this 2015 photo, taken in Indianapolis at a Mecum car Auction. “We are wearing our uniform shirts, standing by a car Arnie did engine work for.”
Beswick has an appearance scheduled for Saturday, November 9th at 1:30 p.m. at Ebenezer Reformed Church in Morrison. The event is also sponsored by the Morrison Historical Society.
On Sunday, October 13, Morrison Historical Society trustee and docent for the day, Bob Vegter, noticed from the museum that their banner about Beswick’s event had come partially untied. “It was flapping all over,” said Vegter, who re-tied the cords temporarily. The winds were fierce that day and the next, and the banner suffered.
Vegter met trustee Dan Vandermyde over coffee Monday and they agreed the banner needed to be relocated. Permission was granted by manager Amy Meyermann at Shell Express Lane/Johnson Oil Co., to reinstall the advertisement along their Morrison frontage, at 651 W. Lincolnway.
Vegter and Vandermyde fixed the banner and relocated it later that day. Hopefully, it will survive any windy days, until the recognition day for Morrison’s legend of drag racing, Arnie “The Farmer” Beswick.
The public is also encouraged to attend this free event to meet a hometown legend and see two of his FAST cars!
Submitted by Stephanie Vavra
