STEVE REID
Editor & Publisher
sreid@lbknews.com
The familiar, guttural rumble of Detroit-engineered RPMs vibrated through the cockpit as Suzette Jones pulled the 1965 Corvette Stingray south onto Gulf of Mexico Drive and floored the engine.
Though Jones is 81 now, the sensation was instantly transporting. Fifty years ago, she had regularly raced a ‘64 Stingray, a relentless pursuit that earned her a fifth-place ranking on Michigan’s state racing circuit.
“The fun part was shifting down and feeling the engine,” Jones remarked, her eyes bright with the memory of speed.
Jones grew up on a farm in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Perhaps it was the legendary “Michigan grit,” or the tough independence common among that generation of farm families, but Suzette is, as her daughter Dawn Willoughby puts it, “extremely competitive.”
Dawn recounts a moment from her childhood when she and her brother were belted into the back seat, only to find their race car driver mom being challenged to an impromptu drag race on a two-lane highway.
“The kids yelled out ‘do it, Mom!’ and she did,” Dawn recalled. Jones’s own recollection is crisp: “I smoked them, and he turned early, and we never saw him again.”
The competitive spirit didn’t stop with four wheels. Jones also spent countless hours on her 350 Yamaha dirt bike and became the top women’s racquetball player in Grand Haven, Michigan, regularly besting the men in the region.
The Happenstance of Speed
Jones’s intoxicating drive down the sunny Florida highway was the result of a happy accident. Longboat Key resident Paul Karon, the owner of the ‘65 Stingray—a near-perfect
match for Jones’s old ‘64, save for the added louvers—was watching a tennis tournament at the Cedars club last weekend. He was there to see his friend, Steve Willoughby (Suzette’s son-in-law and one of the island’s top players).
While chatting with Steve’s wife, Dawn, and her visiting mother, Paul realized he was talking to a genuine racing legend. When Suzette gazed longingly at the sleek vehicle, Karon didn’t hesitate. “Hey, take it for a spin,” he offered.
Off she went, from Cedars to Publix and back, shedding decades with every push of the accelerator.
The Roar of Memory
The drive was exhilarating. As Jones opened up the engine, all of time and life seemed to evaporate. She was instantly back in the driver’s seat of her youth, revving the engine, ignoring the speed limit, and aggressively shifting up and then down just to hear that magnificent roar.
Ironically, Dawn and Steve have since retired to this sunshine paradise. When asked if she considers joining them, Jones laughed, recognizing the obvious temptation.
“If I retired here,” she mused, the thought lingering like exhaust fumes, “it would open up the opportunity to roar up and down Gulf of Mexico Drive. I might just have to get my own ‘64 or ‘65 Corvette.”
It seems that for Suzette Jones, the fastest way to travel is not forward, but 50 years into the past—and it only takes a legendary car and an open stretch of Longboat Key pavement to get there
Her daughter Dawn added that you have to understand her mother. “Her advice in life is if someone asks if you want to drive her Corvette or park a shark you say ‘yes.”’
And that advice has stuck with Dawn. Dawn retired as COO of Clorox company, no small accomplishment and certainly must have taken a different kind of drive to get there.
Suzette heads back to the freezing cold and nightmarish ice of Michigan this week but her deja vu drive in Paul Karon’s Corvette has planted both a seed and brought back memories.
Now, when she comes down to visit her daughter, it may not just be passively watching tennis and eating out, it likely will include lead-footed mayhem in a very controlled and precise and professional way on Gulf of Corvette Drive.
