A Rare Appearance
When Dewaine Gillott of Butler attended his 40th high school reunion recently he went with an old friend that he used to run with at Butler High: the 1972 Chevrolet Chevelle he bought in 1976 when he was 16.
Gillott, the owner of Gillott Tax Service, 324 S. Main St., said, “It's been my longest relationship ever. I've been married three times and had the same car for 40 years.”
“A couple of people remembered the car, but the kids I hung out with don't live around here anymore and didn't come to the reunion, ”he said.
Barb McKissick of Butler, one of the organizers of the reunion July 28, said nearly 175 members of a class of more than 900 showed up at Aubrey's Dubbs Dred Golf Course, 124 Aubrey Drive.
She said, “I missed him and his car. I must have been inside.”
Gillott's lifelong companion came into his life in 1976, with an assist from his mother.
He said, “It was bought from Charles “Bud” Holbein. He owned a gas station in Meridian and sold cars on the side.
“My mother and I bought it,” he said, with him using money he had saved up working at the old Thoroughfare supermarket.
“I bought my mom out after I got out of high school,” he said.
The Chevelle was his everyday car until he graduated.
“I did crash the front when I was 17,” Gillott admitted.
The Chevelle has all original General Motors parts and a nearly pristine original interior.
In 1984, Gillott said, he “tore the car completely apart” which proved to be an education.
“Back in those times you couldn't buy that stuff, so I had to make the parts,” he said of the process of 'pro-streeting' the car, or making a street-legal custom car.
“All the rear suspension was handcrafted. The original frame was narrowed,” he said, adding the work was started in 1984 and took 12 years to complete.“I had the frame all done in about a year but it took me the rest of the time to put the car back together,” he said.The car's present paint job was done in 1998 and has held up so well because the Chevelle is only on the road for 50 to 60 miles a year. The rest of the time it waits in the one of the garages on Gillott's property on Whitestown Road that used to house Crevar Trucking. The Chevelle joins his other vehicles, including a 1963 Corvair, a 2010 Camaro and a 1968 Impala Supersport that right now is little more than a bare chassis.He is in the process of rebuilding the Impala, a project that keeps getting put on the back burner as Gillott helps his son make renovations to his recently bought house.“My dad was into cars, too,” he said. “He had a '40 Chevy he rebuilt.”But surprisingly, Gillott said, his father forbid him from taking auto shop in high school.“He told me auto mechanics was something I could learn on my own or something he would teach me,” said Gillott.Instead he took wood shop. “Mr. Nicodemus was one of my favorite teachers.”Through all the work and trial and error of reassembling the Chevelle, “I never thought of selling it. It was my first car,” he said.Although his mother proved to be a little less sentimental.Gillott said his mother sold a 1963 Corvette she owned to Bret Michaels, the lead singer of the rock band Poison.“He came to the house and I didn't know who he was. He didn't look like someone who could afford to buy a Corvette,” he said.“He painted it red and had everything gold plated. Later on, he wrecked it,” Gillott said.“I like the old cars, but I would never drive one as an everyday car. They rattle and shake too much,” he said.These days, Gillott admitted, he is more interested in boats than cars. He said he has a 25-foot Warlock Catamaran on the Allegheny River at East Brady that can reach speeds of 105 mph.
