The following information was part of a 4-page spread in The Car Cruise Guide Magazine for April and May 2024.
The Custom & Classic Car Educational Foundation: Our Mission
By Doug Wood
Hello everyone! Let me first thank you for reading through the pages of this magazine and finding this editorial. Secondly, I’d like to welcome you to Cruisin Ocean City, Maryland!
If you are new to this publication, it serves the general Mid-Atlantic region. It is chock full of photos from recent events, and if you look towards the back of the magazine, you’ll see complete listings of upcoming car cruises, and shows all around the area. It has been a useful tool to cruisers for coming up on 15 years now!
I represent a nonprofit, called the Custom and Classic Car Educational Foundation. Once again, many of you readers may know about us, but I presume there is an enormous number of new readers that have no idea who and what we are. Let me tell you all a story that actually started 10 years ago.
Back in February 2014 at a gathering of clubs for breakfast, Dave Bielecki, the editor of this magazine, and I held an informal survey of rodders in the room. We determined that the average age of the folks in the room was 57. It was at that point that Dave and I had confirmed what he and I had discussed many times before. There were simply too few young people getting involved in our hobby/sport.
To that end, he and I, along with a couple of other volunteers started doing the legwork to establish this Foundation as a 501 C3 charitable organization with the sole purpose of getting young people involved in the sport of hot rods and custom cars and to offer them assistance with their education where it involves automobiles.
Through car cruises, shows, and other forms of fundraisers we have raised over $50,000 and have awarded just over $30,000 of that to deserving young people.
Our Training Scholarships
Early in our existence, we partnered with McPherson College out in Kansas.
We would select an individual and send them to the mini session that McPherson holds in the spring. The individual would get to choose their discipline: engine building, bodywork, interiors, metal shaping, or choose from a couple of others. We would pay their airfare, tuition, and also pay for their room and board as well as meals. This allowed the student to find out in real time whether that was the appropriate choice for them. One of the individuals that won this grant actually went on to attend McPherson for four years and graduated with his degree! His name is Bill Bandy… Some of the folks selected for our educational assistance fund were not necessarily interested in college. They asked if they could go to a trade school or workshop / seminar.
Cole Slicher requested to attend a Gene Winfield metal shaping workshop. We decided that fit within our mission statement and sent him along.
Jake Maguire decided that he wanted to go to a welding school. That too worked within our guidelines, so we sent him to Earlbeck Gas and Technologies for their welding classes.
Most recently, we partnered with the folks at Motorama Productions and awarded an 8×20 enclosed trailer to York County School of Technology that will be used exclusively by their Hot Rodders of Tomorrow program. That is a group of students that participate in engine building competitions around the country. I should note that they have two teams, and both of them finished in the top five in the country.
Aside from car shows and cruises, we also depend on contributions from clubs, individuals and groups in the area. Aside from monetary donations, we recently received a 1963 Mercury Comet. This extraordinary gift was donated by a gentleman by the name of Dan Ellerman.
The car had been running and driving until they ran into some engine problems. The car came to us with a freshly rebuilt engine that had been set in the engine compartment, but the rest of the car needs to be reassembled and made complete. Our plan is to use it as a tool to involve young people in the area to reassemble the car and to make it safe and streetable. We will begin that process at Ron’s Rods in Kingsville Maryland on the last weekend of April. Once that is done, we will tag, title, insure then drive the car to showcase the work of the young folks involved.
I hope that any of you reading this will join us in our endeavor to get more young folks involved in our hobby/sport. Your personal donation, the support of your club through donations and sharing our message is all we ask!!!
Thanks again for reading,
Doug Wood, President
Download this article as a PDF here.