Hot rod connects son with late dad
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By Phil Rhein LEE NEWSPAPERS
Saturday, March 6, 2004 9:54 PM CST
PORTAGE -- Rusted, scratched and dented, the once-gleaming hot rod John Morauski Jr. was given for a graduation present 38 years ago is now missing not only windows and a passenger door but the high-performance racing engine with which he used to drag-race up and down country roads.
So when his son, John Morauski III, finally found the remains of that '66 Pontiac Tempest last fall, it was with competing emotions of excitement and disappointment.
''There wasn't as much as I'd hoped there would be,'' he admitted last week in a telephone call from his home in Seattle. ''But there's enough that I can restore it. It's still do-able.''
''It was a beautiful car in its day,'' said his mother, Peggy Brown of Portage.
She and her husband drove away from their wedding in the car on April 22, 1967, and Brown said Morauski Jr. always spoke fondly of the automobile.
''He always talked about the car to our son,'' she said.
Morauski recalled how his father described how he convinced his parents to make a gift of the car even after rolling a brand-new car two years earlier while racing.
''His parents said he couldn't have another V8,'' Morauski said, chuckling over how his father talked up the Pontiac's smaller V6 engine while neglecting to mention the overhead cam system and high-performance Sprint option that gave the car a considerable amount of oomph.
When her husband was drafted and sent to serve overseas in 1968, Brown sold the car to a second cousin before joining him in Germany. The relative, Al Sopha of Poynette, recalls driving the car for several years before eventually parking it in a corner of his salvage yard.
While Sopha wound up selling the engine and various parts of the body through the years, he never got rid of the car itself.
''I don't know why,'' Sopha said. ''I guess I figured someday his dad might want it back - I'm glad his son came and got it, to keep it going in the family.''
John Morauski Jr. died eight years ago and it wasn't until last year that the idea of tracking down and restoring his father's favorite car occurred to his son.
After asking his mother for some details, he got in touch with a few relatives and quickly tracked the car to the Sophas. On a visit to Portage last fall, he went out to look at the car.
Finding the original factory key chain still dangling from the ignition, Sopha gave the car to Morauski and it was towed to a friend's house for storage.
''I got lucky,'' Morauski laughed. ''It's almost miraculous it wasn't a huge painstaking ordeal.''
This June, he plans to bring the car back to Seattle and start go to work on the car. Having done a couple restorations in the past, Morauski's looking forward to the challenge presented by his dad's car, a project expected to last five years and cost roughly $20,000.
''Some people see the reality of what I'm starting with and think I'm crazy,'' he admitted. ''But it's my dad's car - this is supposed to happen.''
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