1964 Corvette

It was Saturday, May 1, 1964, and Frank Ellis was competing in the citywide track meet at Noyes Field in St. Joseph, Mo. Ellis was on the track team of Christian Brothers High School, and his steady girlfriend, Carmen Guardado, a student at Bishop LeBlond High School, had been selected as the track queen. He was her escort.

 He had competed in one event earlier in the day, raced to his school to change clothes and came back to the field. When Guardado rode into the stadium in a Daytona Blue 1964 Corvette convertible, Ellis said he wasn't sure which took his breath away first, the car or the girl, but "when I saw the car, I flipped out."

 The image of that dark blue Corvette was irresistible. Many popular songs of that era, such as "Blue on Blue," "Blue Velvet," "Blue Bayou," "Wedding Bell Blues" and "Crystal Blue Persuasion," only reinforced his memory. It was, he said, as if he was haunted by that car.

 After dating for six years, Ellis and Guardado married. The bridesmaids' dresses were, you guessed it, dark blue. Like the Corvette.

 The couple moved to Kansas City and both went to work for Hallmark. One day in early 1986 Ellis saw a 1964 Corvette while he was sitting at a traffic light. "It was a white convertible with a son and dad in it," Ellis recounts, "and I watched it in my rearview mirror until it went out of sight. I said to myself, 'I'm going to get that car.'"

 Ellis studied price guides and talked with friends. The more he talked about the car, the more his "Corvette fever" grew.  He found a '64 sitting on a farm in Knob Noster, Mo., but it was red. It needed some restoration, so Ellis figured he could just change the color. The owner chuckled and said the original color had been Daytona Blue. Plus, it was built in the same month and year that Ellis and Guardado started going steady. That did it. Ellis had the car painted Daytona Blue before he brought it home.

 "That car has not had a drop of rain on it since we bought it," Carmen said. "When we go somewhere, he parks the furthest away."

 Ellis, whose great-great-grandfather Joseph Robidoux was the founder of St. Joseph, loves driving his Corvette back to St. Joe to cruise old haunts. When he does, the days of his youth, filled with so much excitement and possibility, seem close at hand. Every trip in the Corvette also reminds him of that beautiful day in May, 40 years ago, when his life took a turn that forever bonded him with his wife and a Corvette.

 "Whenever I drive this car," he said, "I think of Carmen, and I think of us."