VIRGINIA NESS

Virginia often accompanies son Morris Dillow, our current club president to our meetings.  Also along for the ride is Jenny’s 14 year old Shih Tzu, Samson.  He is an avid Model T buff.

Though she does not personally have a Model T, Jenny has watched Morris develop his old car hobby since he was in his preteen years.  She commented that when Morris was a young boy she always knew where he was when he was in the garage working on an old car.  Often times the dinner table was full of Morris’ friends that were out in the garage too.

Virginia was born in Missouri but moved to Illinois at five and a half where she grew up.  Her college plans to be a physical education teacher were interrupted and she went to Dallas where she worked for a photographer.  This work took her back to Illinois and Jenny’s ultimate profession of associate engineer at Northrop.  In route to being at Northrop Jenny worked on the timing equipment for the limb of the Apollo space mission at the research unit of the Elgin Watch Factory.  She was back into super secret technology at Northrop working in metrology (the science of measurement) on the SR71 Blackbird spy plane.  Jenny said that this was not only super secret but also super interesting and wonderful profession.

Virginia moved along with Morris to England, Arkansas in 1999.  Our summer meeting last year was held in her lovely 1903 colonial style home there. Then in 2006 they went on to Eureka Springs.  Jenny is retired now and she and Sam, the dog, are able to devote full time to old car trips.

MORRIS DILLOW

Morris is our current club president.  He has also been the president with the Fox Valley Model T Ford Club of Elgin, Illinois and 2^nd vice-president of the MTFCI.  He also spent several years as the club photographer of MTFCI. 

Morris grew up in Elgin, Illinois and lived there until moving to England, Arkansas in 1999.  He and mom, Virginia, moved to beautiful Eureka Springs in 2006.  It took many trips back and forth between the two towns to get not only household goods but tools, antique cars and other old car stuff installed in Eureka.  Morris is a professional electrician and also does some freelance photography.

Morris’ has three adult children, two sons and a daughter.  His pride and joy, of course, is the seventeen month old grandson.

Morris has been an old car buff almost all of his life.  His first antique car was a 1930 Model A that he paid $150.00 for.  He dragged the chassis of this old two door sedan home behind his Volkswagen with the rest of it in buckets and baskets. He tinkered with the A for a total of three months until he got it put together and running.  Morris went through numerous Model T’s, a ’29 Model A roadster and ’09 Hupmobile before his present Model T’s, a 1926 pickup and a 1911 touring car.