Corvette Afficionados
Rochester car owners enjoy making the scene at the Corvettes at Carlisle Extravaganza
By John Addyman
There are special places on earth that people visit, drawn by their hearts.
Historical sites, religious sites, entertainment sites, body- and mind-refreshment sites.
On 82 acres in Cumberland County, south-central Pennsylvania, the Corvettes at Carlisle celebration brings 62,000 people and more than 4,000 Corvettes to enjoy three noisy, boisterous, colorful and hellishly hot days. It’s blissful.
And this year, members of the Rochester Corvette Club joined the scene.
Corvettes at Carlisle is a car show, a swap meet, seminars, contests, product introductions, history lessons and more. This year the first Corvette ever made (in 1953) was on display and you could talk to the first woman to drive a Corvette in the Pike’s Peak Hillclimb…or you could have won a resort weekend at a motorsports track in Nevada.
People coming into the “Corvette lifestyle” – owning a ‘Vette – have learned to appreciate its surprises.
Adam Franceschi, 69, of Canandaigua, found out how the car and a dedicated Corvette club can change your life.
When he and his wife, Sue, bought their first Corvette in 1984, they started meeting Rochester Corvette Club members.
“Steve Popple saw our Corvette and actually pulled into the driveway and introduced himself and the club to us. The first year my wife and I went to Carlisle, Steve told us, ‘Whatever you do, make sure you get into the parade.’”
The last event of the Corvettes at Carlisle weekend is a huge evening parade that slowly moves from the fairgrounds to downtown, where there’s a street party waiting.
“It was a blast,” Franceschi said. “The kids along the route had smiles ear-to-ear. They’d shouted, ‘Rev it!’ That was such an experience, seeing those little kids enjoying all the cars and liking the noise.
“When we parked after the parade, I must have had 25 kids who sat in the car, with their parents taking pictures. The smiles on their faces…that’s what it’s all about.”
He said some kids had approached the car on the parade route and left plastic flowered leis on the side-view mirrors.
“We still have those hanging on a lamp in our bedroom,” he admitted.
Popple, 77, from Canandaigua, also got his first Corvette in 1984 and is on his seventh now, a bright and very powerful special-edition Z06. “I love this one, I love the supercharger and the wide body,” he said. “The reason I have this, the day after Christmas in 2015, my buddy and I were at VanBortel’s Corvette in Macedon and this was sitting right in front. They had just taken it off the truck.
“The salesman asked, ‘Do you want to test-drive it? That was the year we didn’t have any snow. I took it out, stepped on the gas, turned around, got back to the dealership and said, ‘Get the paperwork out,” he said.
VanBortel’s is an important and enthusiastic club sponsor, offering significant maintenance and repair discounts.
Popple also had a recent “Corvette moment.”
“We were at a parade in East Rochester and a guy in a Ford 3500 pickup rolled down his window and said, ‘I liked yours the best.’
You get a thumbs-up on the road, at stoplights, from other drivers. People smile and wave,” he said. “Kids on the sidewalk say ‘Nice car.’”
He’s been a club member for 25 years and is a past president. “It’s the camaraderie,” he said. “We go to a lot of events and you always have friends to talk to – 90% of our friends are in the club.”
Mark Wollschleger, 55, of Bloomfield is the president of the Kanandaique Corvette Club, which has about 60 members (Rochester Corvette Club has close to 1,000). He’s working to find where new, younger members will come from. “A lot of our members are older who have been with the club for many years. We’re looking at how to grow the club so it doesn’t age out and disappear.”
One of the obstacles to getting into a Corvette is cost.
Jennine Campagna, 51, of Penn Yan, is the secretary of the RCC. She acknowledges that a Corvette is an “aspirational” car.
“A lot of people have had dreams about owning one or someone in the family owned one,” she said. “It’s a dream for a lot of people.”
Her husband, Dennis Whitmore, 76, argues that Corvette dreams can come true more easily than you might think. He’ll be RCC president next year.
“If you work at it, you can get a Corvette that’s reasonably priced. My first Corvette, the ’84, I paid $5,000 for it. My next one, I paid a lot more for it.
“As you get older, you don’t have kids you have to spend money on, your mortgage is getting low…I think a Corvette can be affordable to anybody, if you really want one and are willing to sacrifice a little to get into it. Then you trade your way up. Ever since I got my driver’s license, I wanted a Corvette.”
Doug Rigerman, 62, from Ontario, joined the RCC in 2013 when there were 300 members. He’s the social chairman now and arranges events like the group’s participation in the car show and parade at the Phelps Sauerkraut Festival in August. He’s watched friends aspire to Corvette.
“When you’re in your 20s and 30s, you’re just starting out with a family and you don’t have the means to do get a ‘Vette. You keep it in your mind — you’d kind of like to get one, then you become an empty nester and say, ‘I’m going to get that car that I want.’
It may not be a brand-new Corvette. But there’s no mistaking it for something else at the curb — it’s a ‘Vette.”
Rigerman had a couple of “Corvette moments” this spring.
“I had a small group of friends for what I call ‘Vette Out,’ getting the ‘Vette out of the garage for the spring,” he explained. “We went to Seneca Falls, to Penn Yan for lunch, then to Montour Falls, then last to Newfield and the covered bridge.
“We had five or six cars parked on the side of the road, and there’s a little deli across the street. Two kids come out, on their bikes. They were in awe of the cars. One of our drivers put his convertible top down and the kids said, ‘Wow! A Transformer!’
The owner of the deli came out and asked us, ‘Hey, park in front of my deli — I want to get some pictures for my Facebook.’
“Before we left, there were a dozen people taking pictures.
“It’s was fun, especially the look on the kids’ faces when they got to sit in the cars.”
Rigerman stressed that the RCC “was founded to give back to the community” and each year donates $10,000 to a charity voted on by members. Last year’s charity was the Willow Domestic Violence Center.
“We were at an event and I had a table set up with literature on it,” Rigerman said. “A woman came up and asked what Willow was. I explained what Willow is for. She told me, ‘I don’t know anything about it. I have a daughter at home right now that had a newborn. She’s in a bad situation and she’s in my house. This is something I’ve been looking for. I’m going to go back and tell my daughter about this. We need help.’
“That was worth more than what we gave to the charity because you could see where you’re helping someone who didn’t know what to do,” Rigerman said.
But every ‘Vette owner comes back to the same points.
“I just wanted a fun car to drive,” said Wollschleger. “I had no idea this fun social life would come with the car. At Corvettes at Carlisle, it’s that Corvette social life we discovered. We’ve met some really good people in the club who have become best of friends. We drove together to Carlisle early Thursday morning and hung out for the whole weekend, walking the fairgrounds, checking all the cars and seeing what other people do with theirs. We just had a good time. We’re loving it.”