It was a friendship driven by old-time automobiles.
And it started with 91-year-old George Sage’s appointment to see a nurse.
Mr. Sage’s visit to an ear specialist led to his meeting nurse Sarah Mpare, and he mentioned the Ford Model A he was restoring. He also learned they had something in common—the two from Redmond, Washington, were both once Spokanites.
This neighborly chitchat led him to invite Ms. Mpare to bring her two kids, then 14-year-old Samuel and Isabel, who was 13, to come to see and sit in that old antique car of his. And so they did.
They honked the horns and took pictures. And then Mr. Sage showed them inside the engine, including all the moving parts. Samuel was captivated.
“You can tell by the way people ask questions as to just how interested they are,” Mr. Sage told The Epoch Times. So, out of the blue he gave Samuel a Model A engine—on one condition. “If he would take it apart and put it back together,” Mr. Sage said. “He accepted the challenge and we went from there.”
All of this was during COVID, and there wasn’t much else Samuel would be doing. “I was going to be driving in the next two years,” he told the newspaper. “This really spiked my interest in cars and especially engines and how everything kind of works together—all the physics and science behind it.”
Samuel was as good as his word. He did a “wonderful job,” Mr. Sage said.
In fact, his work even plugged him into the wider local Model A community, and car enthusiasts started offering Samuel components that he needed.
Furthermore, as a reward for his interest, a Model A Club member even tracked down a rolling chassis to give to Samuel. “It’s a frame and wheels but no motor, no body,” Mr. Sage said.
Together with the engine, it would become a new and much larger restoration project for the two. There was just one problem. The chassis was way out in Lindon, Utah.
“So, I called the Model A Ford clubs between here and Utah,” Mr. Sage said. Soon word got around and a relay was set in motion. A series of helpers began picking up the frame and handing it off to the next, one by one. “That frame went 900 miles [1,450 kilometers] in three days,” Mr. Sage said.
It finally arrived at his shop near Seattle in the spring of 2021.
It was a 1929 four-door sedan, but it still needed a lot of work. So, Ms. Mpare would bring Samuel to Mr. Sage’s shop and they worked together: There was disassembly and painting to be done. By late 2022, they had put the body on. They installed the transmission.
One day, Ms. Mpare came to get Samuel and asked him, “What have you been doing?” He said, “Well, we rebuilt the steering column and we put it all in … We put the pitman arm in—and then we took it off and put it on right.”
They had a good laugh.
Just a few weeks ago, Samuel and Mr. Sage drove the 1929 Ford Model A for the first time in the Fourth of July parade in Kirkland. It’s drivable with seats and dash installed, though the interior doors and roof upholstery still need installing.
All of the excitement the project has stirred came as a surprise for Mr. Sage. “When I offered him the engine, that was a spur of the moment,” he said. “All of a sudden it seemed like the right thing to do.”
Samuel, now 17, is thinking of taking propulsion engineering in college. He offers advice to those who have dreams of their own:
“Find what you’re interested in and just ask around,” he said. “For sure you'll stumble upon someone that is just as interested, or more interested, in doing it, and work together and you can make something amazing.”
