Ocean Bay, Massachusetts-Rhode Island Chapter of the Studebaker Drivers Club

August 20th was another warm and sunny afternoon. The club's monthly meet was held down at the home of Bob and Alice Valpey. The couple has a beautiful 25 acre property right on the lake. This meet was a joint meet with the Ocean Bay Chapter and the Tri-Spokes Chapter. The couple's home is located in Center Harbor N.H. The longest people had to drive from what I heard was about a two to three hour drive depending on traffic. The cars were all parked at the bottom of the driveway on the lawn and the opposite side of the driveway held a few of the late comers. It was actually a good amount of Studes including what Bob had on display of his outside. The guess were also a good amount around 70 to 80 people I heard attended this event.

The arrival time for this event was set to be 11:00 a.m. with cold cuts and other sandwiches and salads being served around 12:00. After lunch comes dessert and from what I heard even though all the desserts looked delicious just like they tasted the homemade Chocolate chip cookies and the cherry squares were amongst the favorites. Stomachs full, it was time to go see Bob's collection. It was a walk up the driveway to the garage he had it in. If you were one of the lucky ones you got to board the Studebaker bus and head up to the garage.

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As I have said many times, “God must be driving a Studebaker” and he was definitely driving one on Saturday August 21st, the day of the Studebaker Drivers Club 2010 Northeast Zone Meet at the Sturbridge Host Hotel in Sturbridge Massachusetts. (At least he must have been driving one on Friday and Saturday of the meet, not sure what he was driving on Sunday!) As most of you know by now the 2010 Zone Meet was a huge success, it all started on a beautiful Friday evening at Ocean Bay’s hospitality suite. It was a great evening; Studebakers started driving in throughout the afternoon from all over New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and even Ontario Canada. This year Ocean Bay hosted a great Hospitality room in the Presidential Suite of the hotel which overlooked beautiful Cedar Lake complete with patio and a great gas fired fire pit. Our guests enjoyed cheese and crackers, munchies, dessert, cold drinks and a cash bar. By evening we were all sitting around the fire pit enjoying each other’s company and talking about great times and old friends and of course our Studebakers.

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With April comes spring showers the saying goes and that was the case with Ocean Bay’s Annual Spring Kick-Off Dinner and Auction but it did not stop members from coming. Although there were not too many Studebakers that day, we did have a great showing of members and a lot of great automotive stuff for the auction. The only thing that was missing was George Manoogian Ocean Bay’s resident auctioneer! George who never misses a Spring Kick-Off was vacationing in Florida; this left us without an auctioneer! Without anyone volunteering to be the auctioneer it left me no other option but to try to step into George’s shoes! Yup old marble mouth me as an auctioneer! Well I guess I did okay since we brought in the most revenue we have seen in a number of years at the Spring Kick-Off Auction, $415.00. Not bad for a marble mouth auctioneer but I can’t take credit for the success! This year we had a great amount of good automobile material to auction off. I would personally like to thank all our members who were responsible for bringing so many great parts. I would also like to thank Dave Thibeault for being the auctioneer’s assistant as parts runner and Janet Thibeault for being the auction scribe and of course I would like to thank all the members that made this auction such a success.

About a month or so ago while browsing one of the many automotive news websites I visit daily I came across a photo of a 51 Studebaker parked on the side of the road in this perfect little 1950s town. After looking at the photo quickly I thought this must be a movie set or something so I clicked on the link to read more about it and was surprised to find out that these where just diecast cars and scale models of buildings. After looking at some of the other photos I was really impressed and clicked on the link to the person’s Flickr site where I found hundreds more. I must have spent an hour looking through them never once noticing the photographer’s name. After I was finished I forwarded the link to my father to check out. A short time later my father called me and asked where I came across this Michael Paul Smith site, that’s pretty neat? Michael Paul Smith, WOW I guess I am embarrassed to say I never look at the name because i was too busy looking at the photos!

Welcome to the new Ocean Bay Chapter website, it's been a long time coming. I have been working on the site for a few months when I have time in-between projects and finally have it to a point that I can put it up. There is still more work needed to finish things up but I think we have a good start. I will be adding more features over the next couple of months but let me give you a quick rundown of where we are. There are two main areas that are not yet finished.  First if you have a calendar event, classified or news item that you would like to contribute to the site you will need to send it to myself or Dennis Jolicoeur and I will add it to the site, in the future I hope to have this as an automated process. Second, the news page is not totally working, you will notice that there is a "View By" section on the right side of the news page this will eventually sort articles but is not functional at the moment.  There also are some tags at the bottom of each news article that will let you find related news items on the site - again at the moment those are not functional, the good news is we don't have many news items on the site at this time so you shouldn't need any of these functions for a while.

Browser compatibility, the site has been tested with Internet Explorer 6 and up, although I recommend if you are still using 6 you should upgrade anyway. The site has also been tested with the latest versions of Firefox and Safari.

Well that's if for now - enjoy the site and if you find any problems or have any suggestions please feel free to send them along to info@oceanbaychapter.com

Enjoy!

Ocean Bay’s Christmas Party was a great success this year; we had a little larger group than we have had in a few years which always makes for a more lively party. It is great to see old friends especially at this time of year. The Christmas season always brings out a joyous feeling among our friends and this year was no exception. It is hard for me to believe that this Christmas Party is the 22nd year Elaine and I have hosted this event. It gives me great pleasure to see so many old friends show up each year and continue to enjoy this party. Members started showing up around 2:00 PM and our Pot Luck Buffett was served around 4:00 followed by the annual Yankee swap. Over the years this has been the hit of the party. As most of you who have attended know, there have been some funny moments. In the past we have had fun with many of the handcrafted time pieces made by Ron Therien but this year the spotlight was on a rather large spotlight, or should I say a gigantic flashlight,t that seemed to shine on every member as he or she unwrapped their gift. At one time I saw it in the hands of Marylou Luukko then I think Chick Nauha had it for a moment but that did not last long! That light flashed its way around the room a couple of times before it landed in the hands of Hugh Parkhurst. It was definitely the hit of the Yankee Swap!

In spite of the weather we had over the last few weekends in October, we had a beautiful fall day for Ocean Bay’s Octoberfest on the lawn of the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline Massachusetts! A little cool if you were in the shade but beautiful in the sun! This year we also had a little change in the Concours Classes with the addition of a Packard Class for the first time which drew in 6 beautiful post war Packards. Packards as well as other makes that were manufactured under the Studebaker name have always been invited to attend Ocean Bay’s Octoberfest but I believe making the effort to personally invite the Packard Club this year made a difference. This is a class that maybe we should continue with for the future, I would like to hear your thoughts on this.

It was a beautiful warm September day as I drove west to Palmer Massachusetts for Ocean Bay’s September Meeting at the Steaming Tender Restaurant followed by a visit to the Pease Collection of Historical Instruments. I was not sure how this meet would go since I did not know how many Ocean Bays members were interested in musical instruments. That goes to show you how much I know! As I drove into the Steaming Tender’s parking lot I did notice a couple of Studes. I got out of my Hawk to see who was around and look at the great vintage 1915 Porter Steam Locomotive & Tender that dominated the parking lot. The first members that I ran into were Chet and Ann Webster, Bill Cathcart and Pete Fryer - my first thoughts were this is a long distance for these members to travel, maybe it is going to be a good meet! As I stood there talking I was amazed at the number of Studebakers that started pulling into the parking lot. Before long even Dave Thibeault showed up!

What a great day for a picnic in the park! The weather was perfect and we found a great spot at Colt State Park in Bristol to relax with some of our fellow Ocean-Bay friends.

We parked under a line of trees not far from the park exit, and what really caught my attention was how everyone who went by either stopped, or slowed to a crawl to admire our cars. I saw traffic backed up a few times, and no one in line seemed to mind a bit. Not once did anyone blow their horn to speed up the line! Quite a few folks pulled over to chat about our Studebakers, ask us questions, or share their Studebaker stories.

We ate our lunches and packed up around 3:30 to head off for an ice cream dessert at the Eskimo King on Rt 6. After that a few of us headed to the cruise night at the Wal-Mart/Sams Club parking lot in Seekonk to end the day where there was a good deal more admiration of our cars. My only regret is that more of you didn’t make it to this event.

Colt State Park is one of Rhode Island’s most beautiful family parks, and if you have never been there I hope you will try to see it soon.

On a hot August Sunday morning many Studebaker drivers ventured out for breakfast at the Star Diner in East Providence RI. Long time Ocean Bay member Quentin Sanford and his sister Bethany Smith opened this historic Star Diner in East Providence in February. There were nine or ten Studebakers that showed up for this event. This was a much better turnout than expected based on the heat and humidly of the day. We had a great line up of Studes in front of the diner to make a great photo opt. After a great breakfast and some picture taking we all paraded about a mile down Newport Avenue to Slater Memorial Park at which point just about all the Ocean Bay members that were there, including Dave Thibeault, hopped on the 1895 Looff Carousel for a ride down memory lane. It was quite the ride, much longer than expected at a fast clip. The motion of the carousel did not help my picture quality but everyone had a great ride! Before leaving the park most of us traveled over to the Daggett Farm ice cream stand to cool down with a great ice cream sundae.