Banner Graphic, Volume 15, Number 165, Greencastle, Putnam County, 12 March 1985 — Page 11
Making classic Chevy parts a boom business for brothers
By JOHN HOLUSHA c. 1985 N.Y. Times News Service SANTA ANA, Calif. The last 1955 Chevrolet rolled off a General Motors assembly line almost 30 years ago. But they are still in production here, or at least parts of them are, at a small factory that specializes in making components to help restore relics from the heyday of America’s love affair with the automobile. At Danchuk Manufacturing all the excesses of what one current auto executive calls the industry’s “baroque period” are lovingly preserved and reproduced. For $99.50 you can buy a freshly made, shining chrome hood ornament for a ’55 Chevy. With twin tail fins and a vaguely rocketlike shape, the ornament is an appropriate symbol of a time when a driver could look through the windshield of a new car and feel like he was reaching for the stars. The shelves bulge with the chrome ornaments, plastic brand and model badges, intricate side moldings and gold-colored grille covers that dazzled customers and made sales in the 19505. There are more than 1,300 different parts in stock, including sets of fuzzy dice to be hung from the rear view mirror for proper 50s effect. The Danchuk company, owned by the brothers Dan and Art Danchuk, concentrates on making parts for 1955 through 1957 Chevrolets, models that collectors regard as classics of the breed. In eight years, riding wave of nostalgia they admit surprised even them, the brothers have turned the company into a $2 million-a-year business with 20 employees. The Danchuk concern is by no means unique. Making old car parts is a nationwide cottage industry, according to John Gunnell of Old Cars Weekly. He said hundreds of small companies turn out everything from reproductions of old service manuals to automobiles that have been completely rebuilt from the frame up. “It’s the American Graffiti effect,” said David Brownell, the editor of Hemming’s Motor News, a publication for automobile
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To some owners of late model autos, parts is parts. But to Dan and Art Danchuk, owners of the Danchuk Co. in California, "parts" takes on a whole different meaning. The Danchuks' company manufactures parts for 1955-57 Chevrolets, models termed to be "classics." The brothers
Calls it a 'romantic, strange' place
Empire State Building holds a lot of memories for retiring guide
c. 1985 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK “Miss it?” said Bill Suchanek gruffly. “Miss this place? Miss working? Are you serious?” Who is he kidding? He loves it. He is like a kid from Keokuk up there. He has been working in the Empire State Building observatories for 39 years, and this week he was still walking around out on the 86th floor observation deck, pointing and saying, “Boy, look at that! ” and “Gee! ” and even “Wow! ” from time to time. “Well,” said the somewhat abashed 66-year-old one clear day this week, “this is a ‘wow’ day. You can see for 60 miles. Five states!” He said that he loves the way people go “Wooooo!” in the elevator on the way up, too. Suchanek retires Thursday. He received the plaque and the cake Tuesday, and although he does have a sailboat that he cannot wait to hop aboard, his insistence that he would not miss the place sounded like just so much retiree rhetoric. Bill (Keep-’em-Happy-Keep-’em-Moving) Suchanek has shepherded tens of millions of visitors through the 86th- and 102 d-floor observatories since 1946. It is possible that he has heard more people say, “The people look like ants,” than anyone in history. And he has never replied, ‘Yeh, yeh, I know, I know. ’ He shares their sense of wonder. ‘‘ls is true the buidling sways 20 feet in high winds?” a visitor asked. “No,” Suchanek answered. “It bends as much as 1.45 inches in either direction.” Suchanek’s head is filled with statistics that he continually rattles off: 1,454 feet 2 inches tall; 6,500 windows, l,B6osteps. With the approach of the moment when he must pick up his black onyx pen set adorned with two small Empire State Buildings and go home from the office for the last time, the memories of nearly four decades stir. He stood in the 86th-floor observatory and recalled witnessing
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collectors. “For a lot of guys a ’57 Chevy convertible brings back their high school sweetheart and the senior prom and moonlight nights. There is no rational reason to have these cars except for the way they tug on your heart strings.” One reflection of that interest is the rising price of older cars, particularly those that have been preserved or restored. “A ’57 Chevy Bel Air sold for about $2,500 brand new,” Brownell said. “Now a convertible with a V-8 engine that is in good shape will bring SIO,OOO or maybe more.” In fact, a 1957 convertible commanded $33,000 at a recent auction, according to trade sources. Dan Danchuk estimates that about one million of the six million 1955 through 1957 Chevrolets originally made still exist, many of them in daily use. One reason for their popularity, he said, is that the 1955 model was the first Chevrolet with a V-8 engine. It was an engine that could easily be “souped up” to increase the horsepower, an important point to the drag racers of the day. Engine displacement, was increased from 265 cubic inches to 283 in 1957, and that, along with the car’s styling, has made that year’s model the most popular of the three years. “Rarity isn’t the big factor with postwar cars as it is with the prewar classics,” said Gunnell. “The cars that were popular when they were new are popular with collectors today. They include cult cars like the early Mustangs, Corvettes and Thunderbirds.”
turned the company into a $2 million-a-year business. It's quite an accomplishment, according to Dan, who is shown with one of his own personal restored Chevrolets. (N.Y. Times News Service photo). I
weddings there, as well as seeing women dressed in black coming in solemnly and walking to the railing to scatter the ashes of loved ones. He remembered trying to talk people standing on the ledge out of jumping, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. One time, he and the guards lassoed a man on the ledge. And he remembered watching people place their children on the ledge before there was a fence to photograph them. He shuddered when he thought of it. He has six children of his own, and he said they all loved the observatories. They used to beg him to take them there at night when he came home from work. Most of the time he took them. “The view at night is out of this world!” he said. “It’s a fairyland.” He was involved in the decision to light the top 30 stories of the building at night and to turn them off during foggy spring nights and the fall bird migrations. He recalled shoving a horse in the elevator for a promotional stunt on the observation deck. He remembered being the host for hundreds of famous visitors, from the Queen of England to various dogs playing Lassie. He photographed many of the famous visitors, and in the photographs Fidel Castro, Nikita S. Khrushchev, Winston Churchill and the others look just as wide-eyed as the children who visit. King Kata Ragoso of Morovo in the Solomon Islands, a giant barefoot chieftain with a club tied to his waist, ran around the 86th-floor terrace clapping his and shouting with delight. “They say people are more blase and sophisticated these days,” Suchanek said. “I don’t see it. Not up here.” Part of his job is thinking up promotions to attract more publicity and more tourists to the observatory. He originated the Run-Up, a race up the stairs of the buidling, won the first year by a former firefighter on a disability pension. He lured the world’s tallest man there, as well as beauty queens of every con-
The Danchuks own 17 cars between them, including several 1957 Chevrolets, and it was their hobby of restoring old cars that led them into the parts business. “We were making surveying equipment in the mid-19705, and winter was always a slow time,” Danchuk said. “Our friends were complaining that they could not find parking light lenses for ’57 Chevys and they asked us to make some. We did it and sold them like crazy. Now Chevy parts are 75 percent of our business.” Danchuk said he has little contact with Chevrolet, which is more concerned with models of 1985 and beyond than it is with those of the 50s. If demand for a part starts to increase as old supplies are exhausted, the brothers simply take it off one of their own cars and use it as a model to make new ones. The passion of the purists is impressive. “Look at this,” said Danchuk, holding up a small plastic tail light lens. “See where the ‘Guidex’ logo is there in the middle. That’s the way the originals were made and you’ll lose points in a judging if its not there.” For Dan Danchuk, the success of his business has come at the expense of his hobby. Several partially rebuilt automobiles stand neglected in a nearby building that company employees call the “sandbox,” because that is where the brothers keep their toys. “We still play with cars when we can get the time,” he said. “The problem is that when I had the time I didn’t have the money. Now that. I’ve got the money, I don’t have the time.”
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As a highly regarded librarian, Rutherford D. Rogers believes there "are too many books" and the "library system" is becoming overloaded. Rogers is shown at the
Overstacked University libraries facing overload
c. 1985 N.Y. Times News Service “We’re drowning in information and starving for knowledge,” said Rutherford D. Rogers, who knows more about the strange new world of research libraries than most people know about the papers on their desks. “The old sausage grinder is going to turn out more sausage than you can eat,” he said, resorting to another homely metaphor for the 800,000 books, 400,000 periodicals and untold hundreds of thousands of other documents published each year around the globe, each in multiple copies. “There are too many books,” he said simply. Rogers, one of the world’s most respected librarians, is among a growing number of his colleagues in the United States who are concerned that the whole “library system,” as they call it, is suffering from overload. In self-defense against torrents of information, the most comprehensive libraries, mainly at universities, are being forced to pool their resources in a national and even an international network, a kind of superlibrary whose collections, catalogues, computers and lending practices are becoming more and more integrated. Yet the system is still reeling under the multiple pressures of too many books, too little money or space and technological changes that have left many library users mystified. Several prominent librarians suspect that the quality of academic research in some disciplines has declined as a result. Few experts have pondered such problems as a whole, or with a sense that research libraries face unprecedented pressures and changes, senior librarians say. “Universities aren’t paying enough attention to what I’d call strategic planning,” said Warren J. Haas, president of the Council on Library Resources in Washington. About the system as a whole, he said, “There are not enough philosophers looking at it.”
ceivable type, most of them shivering in swimsuits or holding down their skirts in the updrafts. Admiring the view from the 86th floor, he bemoaned the fact that much of the job is paper work now and that he must spend too much time in his basement office, which has two phony windows with Venetian blinds and fluorescent lights behind them. “Strange things happen up here,” said Suchanek, who told of the legendary red snow falling upward, a result of city lights and updrafts. And he recalled the tale of a work crew being pelted with stinging barley that had blown in from someplace in the Middle West. Static builds up in the observatory, and some people stick their hands through the fence, over the side of the building, and can see sparks fly from their finger tips. Sometimes lovers shock each other with their kisses. “It’s a very romantic place,” said Suchanek, who is professionally opposed to graffiti but has never been able to bring himself to get terribly upset with the hundreds of visitors who have scratched their names in the stainless steel of the enclosed 102 d-floor observatory. Inside the etching of a heart is inscribed, “Rocky ’n Denise 9-15-83 we were here” “We have to replace these panels from time to time,” Suchanek said sternly, adding in a soft voice, “You wonder where Rocky and Denise are now.” One of the low points of his career was learning that the World Trade Center would be built, with an observation deck. But business has not suffered at the Empire State observatories, with nearly two million visitors a year. Suchanek could see this day all the way up to Long Island Sound, where he will be doing much of his sailing after retiring. “I always hated the fact that I could always see this place where I worked even when I was out sailing on the weekends.” He reluctantly conceded that now it “might be kind of nice.”
Sterling Library at Yale University. Yale's libraries passed the eight million volume mark just last year. (N.Y. Times News Service photo).
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Roberta Jacobs tends to the bookshelves at the Seeley G. Mudd Library at Yale University. Many libraries, particularly those at universities, are said to be suffering from too many books, papers, journals, films and other materials, which compete for space. (N.Y. Times News Service photo). Nor are there enough qualified top managers, said William J. Welsh, deputy librarian of Congress.
March 12,1985. The Putnam County Banner-Graphic
Patricia Battin, head of Columbia University’s library system, said the education of librarians has fallen behind the facts of the profession and that a professional “identity crisis” has followed. New academic subspecialties are demanding that libraries buy books in fields that few people know anything about, while the common ideal of developing “a good core collection,” Mrs. Battin said, is causing “incredible problems.” “I think it’s very difficult now to know what constitutes a well-informed person,” Mrs. Battm said about the explosion of books, papers, journals, films and other materials that have been competing for library space. The search for an intellectual core within an ever-expanding world of specialties dates back many decades, Mrs. Battin conceded. But the difficulty of defining this core has grown painfully obvious to librarians only in the past decade or two. In some subject areas at Columbia, for example, librarians have acquired thousands more books since 1967 than they acquired over the previous century and a half. “That’s how bad it is,” Mrs. Battin said. “Nobody realizes it.” Rogers, who has been watching this process for decades from a series of command posts at the New York Public Library, Stanford University and other big research institutions, told similar stories about Yale, from which he retired two months ago as university librarian. Yale’s libiaries, which last year passed the eight million volume mark, acquire only 7 or 8 percent of the world’s new literature each year, or roughly 175,000 volumes. “You add four to five miles of books a year,” Rogers said of the shelf space required to store this annual aquisition. “You need 12,000 square feet of floor space just to house this stuff. ” Welsh, whose position at the Library of Congress makes him, in effect, the library’s chief administrator, has even larger problems as Rogers did when he Continued on B 8
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Bill Suchanek, who has worked as an usher at the Empire State Building for 39 years, takes a look at what most tourists see on the observation deck. Suchanek has seen it all during his ushering duties, which he will leave due to retirement. Famous visitors, suicide attempts and promotional stunts causes Suchanek to observe, "Strange things happen up here.” (N.Y. Times News Service photo).
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