[FWDLK] Bye, Miss Belvedere

Bye, Miss Belvedere

Levada Carney, 88, and family member Mary Kesner look over the 1957 Plymouth Belvedere that Carney and her sister, Catherine Johnson, claimed Thursday at the QuikTrip Center at Expo Square.

By RANDY KREHBIEL World Staff Writer
11/30/2007

Two sisters take possession of the 1957 car and seek to stop its deterioration.

Catherine Johnson, 93, and Levada Carney, 88, claimed their 1957 Plymouth Belvedere on Thursday.

The two sisters were in a lot better shape than the car.

The Plymouth, exhumed in June after 50 years in a time capsule, has deteriorated to the point it couldn’t be transferred from a flatbed wrecker into a covered trailer without risking serious damage. Instead, it was shrink-wrapped on board the wrecker and trucked to New Jersey, where preservation efforts will begin.

The sisters from Bowling Green, Md., on the other hand, were in fine form. They talked to reporters, posed for pictures and seemed to enjoy themselves.

“I just want to thank everybody for having this day,” Carney said.

Carney is the more experienced long-distance traveler of the two, having flown once in the 1970s. Johnson had never been in a plane before Thursday morning, when she boarded one in Washington, D.C., for the trip to Tulsa with her sister, two nephews and a niece.

“I was a little concerned we’d have our hands full,” said Bob Carney, Levada Carney’s son and Johnson’s nephew, “but everything went fine.

Catherine worked crossword puzzles the whole time.”

The two women “inherited” the car as the result of a contest entered by their late brother Raymond Humbertson in 1957. Humbertson never lived in Tulsa, and how he came to enter the contest is something of a mystery. But his guess at the city’s 2007 population came the closest of those retrieved from a time capsule buried with the car.

Humbertson died in 1979.

The transfer of ownership occurred during brief ceremonies at the QuikTrip Center at Expo Square. The group later visited the Tulsa Historical Society to see an exhibit of Belvedere artifacts.

Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor signed documents assigning ownership of the car. Taylor and her husband, Bill Lobeck, are vintage-car enthusiasts and housed the Belvedere during the past five months.

Don Walker, co-chairman of Tulsa’s state centennial committee, apologized for taking so long to complete the transaction.

“There were a lot of issues,” he said.

Among them was that no one could locate a title or even a vehicle identification number for the Belvedere.

The car was buried in a concrete vault under the Tulsa County Courthouse lawn in June 1957 as part of Oklahoma’s semi centennial celebration.

It became something of a celebrity in the months before its unearthing in June.

In addition to the car, the sisters received a check for $666.85 — the proceeds from a $100 savings account started in 1957 — a replica of a centennial spirit pole and copies of 1957 State of Oklahoma and City of Tulsa maps.

Karen Keith, representing the Tulsa Metro Chamber, said the savings account had passed through five different financial institutions over the years and that no one on its signature card was still alive.

“So that took a bit of doing,” she said.

Ultra One of Hackettstown, N.J., plans to clean the badly rusted Plymouth and preserve it with as little restoration as possible. Progress can be monitored on the company’s Web site, which can be accessed at www.tulsaworld.com/ missbelvedere.

Sharon King Davis, who shepherded the car she called “Miss Belvedere” to international stardom, teared up as the time for it to leave approached.

“I swear to God I’m going to need mental help,” she said. “I’m so attached to this car. I don’t understand it.”

Randy Krehbiel 581-8365
randy.krehbiel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx