A week and a half ago, we brought you Alki resident Charlotte Starck‘s story about her plan to journey to Detroit with a creation that had a place in automotive-industry history as well as family history – a 1930 Fisher Body Napoleonic model coach built by her late grandfather Irvin Starck, a Boeing machinist who put 18,000 hours into it over 55 years. Now Charlotte, her brother Jim Starck, and their special delivery, have arrived.
We asked Charlotte to let us know when she got there so we could publish a followup. She and her brother transported the coach in its container, which her grandfather also built:
Charlotte said the delivery was a two-site adventure:
First we met General Motors Director of Corporate Giving and Heritage Heidi Magyar at the new global headquarters for General Motors. They just moved in mid-January.
Then north 25 minutes to the new GM Heritage Center under construction that is the home for the coach now. We handed off to left to right in top photo) Rebecca Bushman and Chief of Heritage Kevin Kirbitz.
It is by far the most beautiful. They have a few others.
Charlotte adds that they were told theirs is the only known documented 193 inaugural-year coach, and that many historians think the early 1930 Fisher Body Guild coaches might have been the most technically sophisticated youth-craftsmanship-competition objects ever made in the U.S.
P.S. She’s been invited back when the Heritage Center opens.