Images: Wade Waterbury & Dean Sparks via Good Morning America
Love stories and vintage cars go together like brownies and ice cream- good on their own but even better when put together. But as classic automobiles are passed on to different families in sales, estates, or even just left to rot away in backyards, the magic of that previous connection can easily be lost; that is unless you’re as inquisitive as Dean Sparks, the new owner of a very special old Chevy, according to Good Morning America.
Corydon, Indiana resident Dean Sparks may be a self-proclaimed car guy, but its not every day that he finds himself buying plain-Jane vintage automobiles left in a field to rust for decades. However, there was something about a ’59 Bel Air at a Nebraska auction that Sparks just couldn’t deny. What it was, he wasn’t sure, but he purchased the vintage Chevy and towed it home some 801 miles in the hopes of finding out.
Filled with old junk, the Chevy was quite an undertaking from the start, but as Sparks sifted through the reminiscence of someone else’s possessions, he found a letter stuffed under the drivers seat. Upon extracting the relic from what should have been the letter’s last known existence, as it had sat on the rusted out floor boards all the way across the country, Sparks found himself faced with a love story captured in time.
After opening the water damaged envelope that was half eaten by mice, Sparks was able to extract a tissue-like paper containing professions of love and loneliness from one lover to another. At the end of the letter, it said, “Let’s get married.”
Knowing that what he had found was a piece to someone’s real love story, Sparks tracked down the previous car owner’s son to a YouTube video through names given in the letter, as Sparks didn’t receive a title when he purchased the car. Upon contacting the son, Wade Waterbury, Sparks found out just how significant the letter really was.
As it turns out, the letter was written by Wade’s mother Beverly Barber to his father Ronnie Waterbury before the two were married. Just a couple weeks after the letter was sent, the two were wed and actually eloped in the ’59 Bel Air. According to Wade, the car was his father’s pride and joy.
Upon hearing the story, Sparks shipped the letter to Wade.
With both his mother and father gone now, Wade Waterbury now cherishes the letter more than ever, telling GMA that receiving the letter was like getting back time with his parents.
The letter now hangs on a wall in Waterbury’s house, where Sparks plans to take the car once its restored and give Wade a chance to take his parent’s prized Bel Air out for a spin after all this time. And to think, all it took for this connection to develop was a man pulled to a vintage classic for no apparent reason and his urge to start cleaning out what could now become one of his most prized possessions.
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