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his isn’t really a Shelby article.
It’s more about one family doing
their very small part to help
keep our hobby alive.
Look at any automotive magazine
or forum and it’s probable that you’ll
see comments about the demise of the
automobile hobby, and I suspect
there’s some truth to this. When spark
plugs last a 100,000 miles, suspension
characteristics are changed in a few
seconds from the driver’s seat, and a
squirt of software will completely alter
an engine’s performance, there isn’t
much reason to lift a hood. Unless a
younger person is really inquisitive or
grabbed by things mechanical, there’s
a good chance the casual car owner
will know little about what he or she
drives. Still, many guys and gals are
making mods to their newer genera-
tion cars just as we did years ago. The
difference is that us gray-hairs simply
grew up in a different era.
When I was growing up, my father
did his own additions to the house. He
also maintained the cars, lawn mow-
ers, bicycles and anything else that
broke. He was drag racing his ‘54 Ford
when the starter was a flagman. For
my brother Tom and me, learning how
to rebuild an engine was simply part
of our normal life at home. And it
didn’t stop there; our sister Judy drove
a Mach 1 and Kate had the ‘67 Mus-
tang being passed along in the family.
My wife, the former Patti Anne
Callahan, grew up in a similar envi-
ronment. She didn’t learn how to re-
build engines but the setting was
similar. Her father and uncles helped
each other build their homes. Her fa-
ther owned an auto repair shop and he
built race cars for the dirt tracks. Pat
had five siblings and most of them had
a car connection.
When Pat and I were dating, and
well into the first years of our mar-
riage, it was normal for the Callahans,
Devlins, and our friends to be working
on cars together and racing on week-
ends. In the staging lanes at Maple
Grove Dragway, Pat and I would some-
times hand our toddler, Shelby, back
and forth depending on who was ad-
vancing to the starting line. I was rac-
ing our ‘67 GT500 (67400F4A03179)
and Pat would race the tow car – her
‘69 Cougar XR-7 428 Cobra Jet. One
side note: Shelby’s name isn’t con-
nected to the car or Carroll Shelby.
Pat just liked the name.
At some point along the way fam-
ily life took over. Between relocations,
work schedules and raising our
daughters, Pat and I drifted away from
the cars. The Cougar was replaced
with something more practical. Our
second daughter, Nicole, was born and
before long it was school projects,
homework and more traditional
daughter things. We kept the Shelby
and I still worked on the cars, but that
was to keep them running. It wasn’t a
hobby. In hindsight, I could have done
more to keep the girls engaged when I
was doing routine auto or house main-
tenance but I was almost always on a
tight schedule. Plus, they had their
own activities and friends. To be fair,
they did help with some things, and
we even painted our two story house
ourselves. Still, many opportunities
were missed.
The turnaround began when the
girls were grown and out of the house.
The Shelby sat for years and Pat and
I finally decided it was time to have it
restored. The girls weren’t sand blast-
ing parts but they had a genuine inter-
est, and over the several years the car
was with Danny Walker and Mid-
Cities Mustang, in Euless, Texas, they
helped with chasing parts, taking pic-
tures and occasionally just stopping in
to check on progress and chat with Mr.
Walker. That interest stuck and now
they’re an essential part of the Devlin
crew for the annual Yellow Rose Clas-
sic Car show, an indoor, all-Ford car
show hosted by the North Texas Mus-
tang Club. Actually, they’ve taken over
some aspects of the car show. Danny
Walker will not finalize our spot in his
designated area until I check with the
girls.
Backing up, we missed a great op-
portunity many years ago when Nicole
was a freshman in high school. She de-
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Fall 2016 64
– Bill Devlin
T