Car raffle to create scholarship at Southeast High

 2 comment(s)  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

By MARGARET REIST/Lincoln Journal Star

Before long, the silver and black Mustang with the brand new paint job and purring motor will be gone from Tommy Bender’s garage.

With its departure, Southeast High School will have a scholarship in memory of Josh Grimes, a former student of Bender’s.

The car, a project of the Southeast Car Club, will be raffled on Sept. 14, the result of nearly two years of work on behalf of the 15-year-old student who loved cars.

Grimes, who died of a rare form of cancer in March 2006,  was a Southeast High School student who struck up a friendship with his oral communications teacher because both had a thing for cars.

Before he died, Grimes had been bugging Bender to get a car club started at Southeast. He’d gotten his own car, a 1972 Ford LTD, from his grandpa, another car enthusiast.

After Josh’s death, Bender wanted to do something to

remember his student — and find a project for the school’s new car club.

Enter two 1986 Mustangs, one of them in parts, that he got on eBay.

Bender and about 20 members of the car club spent the next two years rebuilding the 1986 GT convertible — and raising money to make it happen.

“It just takes a lot of hours,” Bender said. “You basically have to strip it down to pretty much nothing and start over from scratch.”

 With no auto shop at Southeast, Bender opened up his own garage to the club.

The students got elbow deep in grease and oil. They sold Stars tickets and grocery store coupon books and hosted a number of car shows to raise money for the project.

Rebuilding the Mustang cost between $10,000 and $12,000, Bender said. The students raised about half of that. The rest was donated by various businesses.

“We had people who donated at least $1,000 worth of parts, services, that kind of stuff,” Bender said. “Some of that stuff is hard to put a price on, too.”

They also spent a lot of time drumming up interest, driving the still unfinished convertible to car shows and other events. Sometimes Bender drove it in the winter, with no top.

He’d hear people talking, wondering why this guy was driving around without a top in the middle of winter. Bender would push the button to raise the top, so people could see  how much of it wasn’t there. 

“It worked,” he said. “We did get a lot of help.”

The Rebels Car Club will run the raffle and has helped work out details of the scholarship.

Josh’s grandpa, Larry Wentink of Seward, is a longtime member of the club. Josh became an honorary member and the club created an annual youth car club in his honor.

So far, the Rebels have sold about 1,600 of the $10 raffle tickets. To fully endow the scholarship, they need to sell about 300 more before the raffle.

The scholarship will go to Southeast students interested in the the automotive field, Bender said.

It’s been a lot of work, a lot of tricky logistics and a lot of space lost in Bender’s garage. But he’s glad he and the car club did it.

“Every time I talk to the family, it hits home again that it was the right thing to do,” Bender said. “It’s been a neat process and if we can pull this off, I’m going to be thrilled. We’re so close.”

Reach Margaret Reist at 473-7226 or mreist@journalstar.com.