To me the 55 Imperial is hands down the best styled and performance car of that year!
Tribute to Don Rook and his Cm23u0c196877 final history?
- Thread starter haywire 440
- Start date
To me the 55 Imperial is hands down the best styled and performance car of that year!
LMFAO, Such an Embellisher Don waz. Miss him still
The second photo is from 2020 and Posey Hollow has commandeered the old car door.
My wife and I have stayed in touch with Mrs. Kathy Rook through these years and she was thrilled and gave her blessing to continue after we surprise her with a printed copy of this story. Kathy even sent me some additional items to enhance the tribute. The obituary below is from the Polk County newspaper.
I think this is a good beginning of chapter 2.0 and please add anything that would add color to Don’s life, as Kathy hopefully will chime in sometime. This too (2.0) will be made a hard copy.
This “dive bar” has been located in this spot in two states for a long long time. The gal who sold me a beer and my wife a root beer said it’s been in the family since the ‘30s. Think of the story and what may have happened at this true HonkyTonk. The gal stated she’s never been far from home, really she’s only been to two states. Time changes even here at the HonkyTonk, because the bar license was for low alcohol beer (Oklahoma thing) the family is still waiting for the local officials to grant/change the license (now the state sells full alcohol content beer). I could not open my beer in the bar and even though there was a picnic table on the Oklahoma side she advised me not to drink there. I did anyways, I figured I could make a run for the Arkansas border (well really a meander or hustle!)
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Continuing with written history, provided by Kathy Rook, is this Newspaper Article. The Reporter did an excellent job of telling Don’s story which is quite colorful. I personally like the part where Don and his fellow workmates decided to help their company by notifying the Big Big Boss that their boss was a slacker. Now be taken to somewhere in ARKANSAS:::::::
Polk County Harbors Extraordinary Collector
by Michael Reisig, Reporter
Ouachita Mountain Neighbor, April 15, 1997
Don Rook started collecting things at a fairly early age. Before his 10th birthday, he had stamp collections and coincollections, but it was at age 12 that he saw his first Packard automobile. It was a long, sleek and shiny black, and it was then that he knew what he really wanted to collect.
Rook, a feisty 62-year-old with a quick wit and an infectious laugh, is the kind of guy that goes out and gets what he wants.
“I like to collect cars,” he says. “I don’t work on ‘em, I hardly ever restore ‘em, I just like to collect ‘em.”
And collect them he has. When he and his wife moved from Pennsylvania to the Mena area in 1990, they brought with them 123 antique cars from the years of 1930 to 1970. He’s down to 81 now, in various stages of restoration or deterioration, depending on his interest.
He has sold automobiles to buyers around the United States and across the globe, from Cleveland to Australia and from New York to Finland.
Rook willingly states that he’s been fired from almost every job he ever had, and apparently, it’s a good thing he was or he might not have started his own electrical motors company and ended up as the extraordinary car collector of Polk County.
He was born to a freight train brakeman and his wife and raised in Abington, PA. He grew up, went to school, and started work there.
He’s not a newcomer to hard work. Some of his earliest childhood recollections are hawking papers on V-J Day and V-E Day before the age of 12.
“I was making 18 cents a day selling papers,” he says. “I was already collecting stamps and coins then. I used to get the bus drivers to let me go through their change.” He laughs. “If I found a dime and a couple of nickels I wanted for my collection, I could only afford two of the three.”
Today, he still has a complete penny collection that dates from 1850 to 1956. “And other fairly impressive coin collections,” he says with a smile.
In 1952, he left Abington for Susquehanna University, paying for his tuition by selling tickets for the railroad each summer.
“I started at the beginning of summer vacation, working straight through without a day off until I went back to school,” he says. “But I managed to make over a thousand dollars, which was what I needed.”
He graduated in 1956 and later that year went to work for U.S. Electrical Motors at their Philadelphia office. “At that time, there was no such thing as the Philadelphia, MS; Prescott, AZ; or Mena, AR offices for U.S. Electrical Motors,” he says. He worked for them for two years, relocating 11 times in that period. Rook ended up in Memphis where in 1959 he was fired for the first time.
“In 1959, I bought myself a black ’55 Eldorado convertible and was making calls on customers in it. The district manager got wind that I wasn’t driving a Ford, Chevy, or Plymouth, like company cars were. He called me and said, ‘You’re gonna have to get rid of that Cadillac.’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.” He said, ‘I’m coming down to see you; pick me up at the airport in a company car.’ I picked him up in the Eldorado and he fired me.”
Laughing, he adds that they brought his replacement down from Saint Paul, MN. “The guy drove in behind the wheel of a ’55 Cadillac! But he bought a Chevy within the first week.”
By this time, Rook had begun to buy and collect cars: A ’41 Caddy convertible, a ’51 Studebaker, and his first Packard, a six cylinder, then an eight cylinder four door. Shortly afterward, he returned to Pennsylvania “with no job, no prospects, and a couple cars.”
Rook says he got a job with a company called Baker Engineering. “There were only five of us there working,” he says. “The boss was never there. He was always out running around, flying airplanes. We all got together and went to the owner in Richmond and told him what the boss was doing. We figured he’d be pleased with us and let us run the company. Instead, he fired us all. I was out of a job again.”
His next job offer came from Allis-Chalmers whomanufactured controls, motors, and pumps, and it fit in perfectly with his background at Electrical Motors. “Sixty three to ’65 went fine,” he says. But in 1966, a dispute over relocation got his dander up and this time he quit.
Shortly afterwards, he went to work for one of Allis-Chalmers’ distributors as a salesman and worked his way up in the company until, once again, he was fired. “I had become vice president and general manager, working for an absentee boss in Florida who had two kids. The two kids, one of which hadn’t even graduated college yet, decided they knew more about electric motors than me, so they fired me.”
In 1972, he started his own business, RT Electrical Repairs and Sales, Inc. Two years later, he bought William Hendrickson, Inc., another electrical motors company. At this point, he was well on his way to “doing whatever I wanted to do, whenever I wanted to do it.”
“For all the previous years, I had been collecting Packards,” he recalls. “But somewhere along the line Packards started to get more expensive than I could afford. Back before then, I liked the look of the ’65 Chrysler but I couldn’t afford a new one. Back in 1966, with the new job, I could buy a used one. I bought a yellow Chrysler convertible and the whole time I was on the road as a salesman, I was known for driving a yellow Chrysler convertible. In fact, I had several of them, all the same color.”
It was during this time that his interest in the Chrysler 300 series began. “They only made the 300 series for 11 years, from 1955 to 1965,” he says. “I thought a guy could get one for each year if he really put his mind to it. So I started collecting them.”
The year of 1981 brought considerable change to Rook’s life. He sold William Hendrickson and although he still owned RT Electrical, for all intents and purposes he retired. It was that same year that he met his wife, Kathy. They came to Arkansas and bought the property that would become their home.
“I wanted the warmest mountains within a two-day drive of Pennsylvania. I took a map of the United States and crossed off all the areas that had things I didn’t like,” Rook says. “Among those were hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes. They don’t have tornadoes in the hills of Arkansas,” he says with a chuckle.
After several forays into the countryside with a variety of realtors, they finally found the property they wanted, 40 acres of almost virgin country bordered on two sides by national forest and overlooking Ironsfork Lake.
They began clearing and putting in driveways to reach the hillside location they had chosen for the main house. In 1982, they built a 14- by 18-foot cabin with a half loft to stay in when they came down from Pennsylvania to work on the place.
In 1985, after a five-year courtship, they were married. In February of 1991, they settled into their cabin in the woods permanently. In the process, Rook transferred his 123 antique cars, truckloads of car parts, furniture, and personal belongings into the rows of huge tin sheds he had erected on the property. They also began construction of the nearly 8,000 square foothome they have only recently moved into.
In 1991, Kathy opened a catering service called “Raspberry Hill Inc.” “Raspberry Hill also produces jellies, jams, and manufactures gourmet foods and molded chocolate of any shape, color, or variety of colors,” she says.
Rook has continued collecting and selling rare autos, although he does more selling than acquiring these days. “People come to me because they’ve heard by word of mouth what I’ve put away,” Rook says. “I’m not a dealer, I’m a collector. I know a lot about authenticity, so I get a lot of calls for advice. I’m not an official appraiser but I can make suggestions where you can best market your vehicle and what you should get for it. Just this afternoon, I was talking with a guy from New Zealand.”
Rook is down to 81 cars and many of them have interesting histories behind them. He has the 1941 Packard LeBaron used in the movie, “The Godfather.” He has Lionel Barrymore’s 1941 Packard Formal Sedan, which was specially designed to accommodate his wheelchair, complete with the wheelchair. There is an Eisenhower administration ’65 Imperial available, and he has a ’68 Imperial Stageway stretch limo which ferried famous country singers in Nashville and later transported infamous mafiosos.
The Rooks have settled into the second and third floors of their palatial home while chipping away at the sizable task of completing the remainder of the house. Rook says that with the exception of super highways and a slightly over-enthusiastic bureaucracy, he and his wife, Kathy, are very happy here. “We liked what we saw when we first came here,” he says. We hope it doesn’t change too much more.”
Polk County Harbors Extraordinary Collector
by Michael Reisig, Reporter
Ouachita Mountain Neighbor, April 15, 1997
Don Rook started collecting things at a fairly early age. Before his 10th birthday, he had stamp collections and coincollections, but it was at age 12 that he saw his first Packard automobile. It was a long, sleek and shiny black, and it was then that he knew what he really wanted to collect.
Rook, a feisty 62-year-old with a quick wit and an infectious laugh, is the kind of guy that goes out and gets what he wants.
“I like to collect cars,” he says. “I don’t work on ‘em, I hardly ever restore ‘em, I just like to collect ‘em.”
And collect them he has. When he and his wife moved from Pennsylvania to the Mena area in 1990, they brought with them 123 antique cars from the years of 1930 to 1970. He’s down to 81 now, in various stages of restoration or deterioration, depending on his interest.
He has sold automobiles to buyers around the United States and across the globe, from Cleveland to Australia and from New York to Finland.
Rook willingly states that he’s been fired from almost every job he ever had, and apparently, it’s a good thing he was or he might not have started his own electrical motors company and ended up as the extraordinary car collector of Polk County.
He was born to a freight train brakeman and his wife and raised in Abington, PA. He grew up, went to school, and started work there.
He’s not a newcomer to hard work. Some of his earliest childhood recollections are hawking papers on V-J Day and V-E Day before the age of 12.
“I was making 18 cents a day selling papers,” he says. “I was already collecting stamps and coins then. I used to get the bus drivers to let me go through their change.” He laughs. “If I found a dime and a couple of nickels I wanted for my collection, I could only afford two of the three.”
Today, he still has a complete penny collection that dates from 1850 to 1956. “And other fairly impressive coin collections,” he says with a smile.
In 1952, he left Abington for Susquehanna University, paying for his tuition by selling tickets for the railroad each summer.
“I started at the beginning of summer vacation, working straight through without a day off until I went back to school,” he says. “But I managed to make over a thousand dollars, which was what I needed.”
He graduated in 1956 and later that year went to work for U.S. Electrical Motors at their Philadelphia office. “At that time, there was no such thing as the Philadelphia, MS; Prescott, AZ; or Mena, AR offices for U.S. Electrical Motors,” he says. He worked for them for two years, relocating 11 times in that period. Rook ended up in Memphis where in 1959 he was fired for the first time.
“In 1959, I bought myself a black ’55 Eldorado convertible and was making calls on customers in it. The district manager got wind that I wasn’t driving a Ford, Chevy, or Plymouth, like company cars were. He called me and said, ‘You’re gonna have to get rid of that Cadillac.’ I said, ‘I don’t think so.” He said, ‘I’m coming down to see you; pick me up at the airport in a company car.’ I picked him up in the Eldorado and he fired me.”
Laughing, he adds that they brought his replacement down from Saint Paul, MN. “The guy drove in behind the wheel of a ’55 Cadillac! But he bought a Chevy within the first week.”
By this time, Rook had begun to buy and collect cars: A ’41 Caddy convertible, a ’51 Studebaker, and his first Packard, a six cylinder, then an eight cylinder four door. Shortly afterward, he returned to Pennsylvania “with no job, no prospects, and a couple cars.”
Rook says he got a job with a company called Baker Engineering. “There were only five of us there working,” he says. “The boss was never there. He was always out running around, flying airplanes. We all got together and went to the owner in Richmond and told him what the boss was doing. We figured he’d be pleased with us and let us run the company. Instead, he fired us all. I was out of a job again.”
His next job offer came from Allis-Chalmers whomanufactured controls, motors, and pumps, and it fit in perfectly with his background at Electrical Motors. “Sixty three to ’65 went fine,” he says. But in 1966, a dispute over relocation got his dander up and this time he quit.
Shortly afterwards, he went to work for one of Allis-Chalmers’ distributors as a salesman and worked his way up in the company until, once again, he was fired. “I had become vice president and general manager, working for an absentee boss in Florida who had two kids. The two kids, one of which hadn’t even graduated college yet, decided they knew more about electric motors than me, so they fired me.”
In 1972, he started his own business, RT Electrical Repairs and Sales, Inc. Two years later, he bought William Hendrickson, Inc., another electrical motors company. At this point, he was well on his way to “doing whatever I wanted to do, whenever I wanted to do it.”
“For all the previous years, I had been collecting Packards,” he recalls. “But somewhere along the line Packards started to get more expensive than I could afford. Back before then, I liked the look of the ’65 Chrysler but I couldn’t afford a new one. Back in 1966, with the new job, I could buy a used one. I bought a yellow Chrysler convertible and the whole time I was on the road as a salesman, I was known for driving a yellow Chrysler convertible. In fact, I had several of them, all the same color.”
It was during this time that his interest in the Chrysler 300 series began. “They only made the 300 series for 11 years, from 1955 to 1965,” he says. “I thought a guy could get one for each year if he really put his mind to it. So I started collecting them.”
The year of 1981 brought considerable change to Rook’s life. He sold William Hendrickson and although he still owned RT Electrical, for all intents and purposes he retired. It was that same year that he met his wife, Kathy. They came to Arkansas and bought the property that would become their home.
“I wanted the warmest mountains within a two-day drive of Pennsylvania. I took a map of the United States and crossed off all the areas that had things I didn’t like,” Rook says. “Among those were hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes. They don’t have tornadoes in the hills of Arkansas,” he says with a chuckle.
After several forays into the countryside with a variety of realtors, they finally found the property they wanted, 40 acres of almost virgin country bordered on two sides by national forest and overlooking Ironsfork Lake.
They began clearing and putting in driveways to reach the hillside location they had chosen for the main house. In 1982, they built a 14- by 18-foot cabin with a half loft to stay in when they came down from Pennsylvania to work on the place.
In 1985, after a five-year courtship, they were married. In February of 1991, they settled into their cabin in the woods permanently. In the process, Rook transferred his 123 antique cars, truckloads of car parts, furniture, and personal belongings into the rows of huge tin sheds he had erected on the property. They also began construction of the nearly 8,000 square foothome they have only recently moved into.
In 1991, Kathy opened a catering service called “Raspberry Hill Inc.” “Raspberry Hill also produces jellies, jams, and manufactures gourmet foods and molded chocolate of any shape, color, or variety of colors,” she says.
Rook has continued collecting and selling rare autos, although he does more selling than acquiring these days. “People come to me because they’ve heard by word of mouth what I’ve put away,” Rook says. “I’m not a dealer, I’m a collector. I know a lot about authenticity, so I get a lot of calls for advice. I’m not an official appraiser but I can make suggestions where you can best market your vehicle and what you should get for it. Just this afternoon, I was talking with a guy from New Zealand.”
Rook is down to 81 cars and many of them have interesting histories behind them. He has the 1941 Packard LeBaron used in the movie, “The Godfather.” He has Lionel Barrymore’s 1941 Packard Formal Sedan, which was specially designed to accommodate his wheelchair, complete with the wheelchair. There is an Eisenhower administration ’65 Imperial available, and he has a ’68 Imperial Stageway stretch limo which ferried famous country singers in Nashville and later transported infamous mafiosos.
The Rooks have settled into the second and third floors of their palatial home while chipping away at the sizable task of completing the remainder of the house. Rook says that with the exception of super highways and a slightly over-enthusiastic bureaucracy, he and his wife, Kathy, are very happy here. “We liked what we saw when we first came here,” he says. We hope it doesn’t change too much more.”
