West Haven man reconnects with late father at Old Glory Days car show
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- West Haven resident Timm Kleeb’s yellow 1932 Ford coupe and Ogden resident Steve Weaver’s 1956 Ford Thunderbird are displayed at the Old Glory Days Car Show in Riverdale on Thursday, July 4, 2024.
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- West Haven resident Timm Kleeb’s 1932 Ford Coupe is pictured at the Old Glory Days Car Show in Riverdale on Thursday, July 4, 2024.
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- West Haven resident Timm Kleeb’s 1932 Ford Coupe is pictured at the Old Glory Days Car Show in Riverdale on Thursday, July 4, 2024.
RIVERDALE — The Fourth of July is a time for people across the U.S. to celebrate their country, the freedoms it offers and the sacrifices that were made to secure them. But, for many, it’s also a time to gather with family and friends, to come back to the people and places that made them who they are.
For West Haven resident Timm Kleeb, this year’s Independence Day served as another opportunity to reconnect with his father, Ray, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 70.
Kleeb made the trek to Riverdale Thursday for Old Glory Days to show off his yellow 1932 Ford “deuce coupe” at the city’s July Fourth car show. The car — which Kleeb said still has its original “Henry Ford steel” — belonged to his father, who found it behind a Brigham City Flying J, brush-painted white and missing a motor and transmission.
The elder Kleeb purchased the car for $350 and, beginning in 1961, rebuilt it from the ground up. Over the decades that ensued, he tinkered with and performed restoration work on the car. He would also take it to shows like Riverdale’s.
Now, the car is owned by Timm and his brother, Ty Kleeb, and the former is following in his dad’s footsteps by driving it and sharing it with the community.
By doing so, Kleeb says he can be with his father once again.
“I feel my father — I feel my dad when I’m driving this car. I feel him with me, you know,” Kleeb told the Standard-Examiner. “And I could never sell the car because my dad loved this car. That’s all he talked about.”
He loved it so much, in fact, that Kleeb says his father joked about taking it with him when he died rather than passing it down to his children.
“He used to tell me, ‘You’re not ever going to get this car; I’m getting buried in it.'” That’s what he told me,” Kleeb said with a laugh.
Despite that affinity for the deuce coupe, Kleeb says his father would still let him drive it as a teen. On a summer day in the 1980s, one might have spied him or his brother cruising down Washington Boulevard with the windows down and Motley Crue or Ratt providing the soundtrack.
These days, Kleeb doesn’t take the car to as many shows as he used to. But, when he does, it garners the kind of reaction that might have made his dad proud.
“People come up to me, and I’ve never met them before, and they say, ‘I know that car!’ or ‘I remember your dad!'”