Do you know the Carpenters?

[Rick Henry]

Have you or anyone you know ever met Karen or Richard Carpenter?

Living in Southern California I know two people who have met them. One is one of my closest friend whom I have mentioned before, I call him Yaleman. The other is my very own dad.

It's pretty late right now and I am tired so I will come back and share these two stories with you tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to hearing from all of you out there on this topic...

[Rick Henry]

I've finally been able to make it back and write about the two people I know who have had the opportunity to meet to meet Karen or Richard or both of them.

First I will begin with my friend who prefers to be known only as Yaleman on the internet. Yaleman doesn't remember exactly when it was but judging from the picture he took of Richard I believe it was somewhere around 1992 to 1994. Yaleman met Richard Carpenter when he was visiting the Yesterday Once More Auto Museum which Richard had in Santa Fe Springs, California for a while in the late 80's to late 90's. Yaleman is a major car buff and goes to several car shows and meets as often as he can. When his car club advertised this event Yaleman quickly bought tickets to go. He ended up meeting Richard, had a short conversation with him about cars (not music) and took a picture of Richard. I have the picture and have posted it on this forum. I'll have to find it and repost it for everybody.

In 1977 (the year that "Passage" was released my dad had the opportunity to meet both Karen and Richard. This meeting happened in Pebble Beach, California at the Concours d'Elangance Car Show (although I thought he said it was in Long Beach that year... I could be wrong as 1977 was a long time ago). Anyhow both Karen and Richard were at this event. My dad said there were quite a few people around them but he did get the opportunity to shake their hands and get an introduction and he mentioned that his son that being me) was a fan. My dad said that Richard smoked quite heavily, one cigarette after another and that Karen was much smaller than she looked in photographs, that she was very petite.

[Ming]

Hello Rick,

Did your dad meet them when they were relaxing on the beach?

Ming

[Rick Henry]

Jan 29, 2010 9:25:46 GMT -5 Ming said:

Hello Rick,

Did your dad meet them when they were relaxing on the beach?

Ming

Hi Ming... thank you for asking. I must apologize I forgot to mention the event of which Carpenters, my dad and a few other thousand people were attending. It was a car show held annually called the Concours d"Elangance. I went back to my original post and edited the information into it so it makes more sense now.

Both meetings that I've mentioned by my friend Yaleman and my dad are car related. Seems many in my circle are car buffs. My dad started a auto body shop back in 1976 called Vette Set Auto Body. It became very popular throughout the late 70's to the mid 90's when he sold the business. My mom worked with him and was his co-owner and I worked at the body shop for about a year in 1976-77. In the mid 80's we (my family) sponsored a few huge car shows in Palm Springs at the Angels Stadium, we had over 25,000 people showed up in the course of 2 days each year we had the event. These events were great fun and a lot of work. One of the shows was called California Legend Corvette Show another was called California Classic Corvette Show. Several celebrities showed up for these events... I don't think Richard showed up for any of them as these were corvette meets... I don't think Richard owns any corvettes. Let's just say if he was at any of our shows we didn't know about it.