I have always wanted to own a restored 1949 – 1953 Chevrolet 5-window pickup. I looked high and low for years but never found the right project truck until my brother ran across an ad online for my truck. The truck was in St. John’s Arizona and the owner (Jim) had owned it for the last 30+ years, and also had the dream of restoring the truck to original condition. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with COPD and the disease had progressed to the point where he could no longer work on the truck. I drove out to St. John’s hopeful that this would be the project I had been looking for. When I got there the truck was in pieces – the body was off the frame (in pieces), and the current owner had substantially completed the restoration of the chassis and drivetrain. After two round trips to St. Johns I got the truck back to las Cruces and began the tedious task of researching the 1949 Chevy pickups to try and understand what I had and what I was missing to restore the truck as close as possible to original – this is where LMC truck came into the story. Unfortunately, as with many trucks of this era I quickly realized that most of the body parts I had were not off a 1949 model and thank goodness LMC truck was there to provide me with 95% of the parts I needed to complete the restoration. I had the bodywork and paint job done locally, but remainder of the restoration still needed to be completed and if I relied on my time to get the project done it would not have been done for at least another decade, and I was hoping to get the truck done in a timeframe that insured Jim would get to see it before it was too late. After looking locally, I decided that there was not the expertise and resources here to complete this important restoration, so I turned to the one guy I really wanted to complete this truck for me – Dan Short at Fantom Works in Norfolk, Virginia. I submitted my request and after a few months I did not hear back, so I personally called the business. The young lady I was fortunate enough to talk to – listened to my story. She indicated that Dan usually will not take on a partial project because of obvious liability, but she indicated that she would pull my request from the bottom of the stack of hundreds that he had to review and put it towards the top where he would at least see it but said “don’t be offended if he doesn’t call you back because he gets hundreds of requests every week and will only do a small percentage of these projects each year”. So a few more weeks went by and I began to look for another alternative to get my project completed, but low and behold I get a call from Dan and we talk for about an hour about this project, then he agrees to take on and complete my restoration. I loaded the truck and all of the parts I thought I needed to complete the project in the truck and shipped it to Virginia. My wife and I met the truck there and we told Dan what we envisioned for this truck. Six months later we were on our way back to Virginia to pick up my dream truck – which turned out better than I could have imagined. This project would not have been possible without the help of LMC – there are many folks out there that sell restoration parts for my truck, but none of them come close to having the selection of parts necessary for a job like this. For those parts that LMC did not have because they flat out were not available anywhere – Dan had to compensate by using good old fashioned ingenuity. When the truck was done I reached out to Jim, as promised, to show him the truck but could not reach him at the number I got from him over two years earlier, so after an extensive search I finally managed to track him down in a different City in Arizona – somehow his prayers had been answered and he was called about undergoing a double lung transplant, without which he would not be here right now. I sent him pictures of the truck and he was able to watch the show that chronicled what it took to complete the project he always wanted to complete himself – he was very moved to see his truck completed and was impressed that I kept my promise to him to get his truck completed. So this is a story where dreams were fulfilled (his and mine), and prayers were answered – happy endings all around, and I thank LMC Truck and Dan Short for being part of those dreams! Thank you.