Back in the early 1940s, Kirk Reid and Bob Lynn shared a passion for a battered Model A station wagon.
Together the two teenagers worked to fix up the jalopy, using junkyard parts to get it running. They toted friends in it. They courted their wives in it.
Then all of them — Reid, Lynn and Genevieve the car — went their separate ways.
This spring, the three are planning to reunite for the first time in seven decades, thanks to an article in the Beacon Journal and a remarkable coincidence.
You might remember a story I wrote back in November about Reid and Genevieve, the 1929 Model A woodie that was his first car and first love. With Lynn’s help, the Hudson resident rescued Genevieve from neglect when both were teenagers. Reid bought her as a young man, sold her when his kids were young and then repurchased her in 2003 so he could restore her properly.
Kent resident Guenveur Burnell remembered the story, which is why it struck her as odd when her friend Cynthia Lynn of Tallmadge started relating her mother’s stories of dating her father.
Cynthia Lynn mentioned that her dad used to pick up her mom for dates in a 1929 Model A station wagon.
“I said, ‘What?’ ” Burnell recalled.
“She said it was named Genevieve.
“I said, ‘What?’ ”
Other details matched, too. Yep, it was the very same car Burnell had read about in the paper.
What was really weird that was Cynthia Lynn hadn’t seen the story.
One of Cynthia’s sisters found the article online and shared it with their father, who confirmed the connection and filled in the blanks.
As teenagers, Bob Lynn and Kirk Reid worked summers at Just-A-Mere Farm in North Madison, where Genevieve was a neglected hunk of machinery in a shed. Lynn said he tinkered with the car for a year or two before Reid came to work at the farm, and together the two of them gave the car a name and made it road-worthy — well, as road-worthy as a Model A fortified with junkyard parts could be.
Reid entered the Navy during his senior year in high school, and sometime after that Lynn bought the car from the farm’s owner and took it back home to Warren. Then when Reid got out of the service, he contacted Lynn and bought Genevieve from him for $150.
Just as Reid recalls fondly the times he drove college friends in the car and took his future wife, Dot, on dates in it, Lynn has his own favorite memories of Genevieve.
There was the time he was driving from Madison to Geneva-on-the-Lake to have dinner at the home of his future wife, Coralyn. He got pulled over for exceeding the 25 mph speed limit and had to leave his watch with the police until he could come back with the money to pay the fine.
Reid figures that proves Lynn was the better mechanic. “I could never get Genevieve running fast enough to get a speeding ticket,” he said.
Then there was the time a fellow challenged Lynn to a race in Madison-on-the-Lake. Lynn knew the route would make a sharp turn, and he also knew there was an old farmhouse with a big lawn and trees on that corner.
“I went weaving through the farmer’s yard,” he said with a chuckle. “That’s the kind of stupid stuff we did.”
The two lost touch after Reid bought the car from Lynn. Then fate intervened in the form of the newspaper story and Burnell’s powers of recollection, and the old friends made contact again.
They’ve swapped stories. They’ve shared pictures. They’ve marveled at the similarities in their lives, including that both courted their wives in the same car, both got married the same year, and both had three children.
“I’m 87 years old, and it was amazing that I could contact a person I enjoyed working with 71 years ago. It really boosted my life a lot,” said Lynn, who spends winters in Sarasota, Fla., and the warmer months in Ashtabula.
Health challenges had left Lynn depressed recently, but the renewed friendship has brought back his old spark, his wife and daughter said.
Already Kirk and Dot Reid have had Cynthia and one of her sisters over for lunch. Come early June, they’re planning to play host to the whole Lynn family so everyone can see Genevieve in her restored splendor.
The old girl will once again be the object of the two friends’ affection.
Some loves just never fade away.
Mary Beth Breckenridge can be reached at 330-996-3756 or mbrecken@thebeaconjournal.com. You can also become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/MBBreckABJ, follow her on Twitter @MBBreckABJ and read her blog at www.ohio.com/blogs/mary-beth.