Keith Tholin , 73, a retired medical device executive living in San Clemente, Calif., on his 1955 Chevrolet Corvette, as told to A.J. He would buy these old cars and he would teach my brother and I how to work on them. He taught us how to tune up the engines, how to paint a car. Over the years, while my brother and I were in school, he probably had five or six C1 [first generation, from 1953 to 1962] Corvettes. When my brother and I went to college in Illinois, my father was in San Francisco and a number of times my brother and I drove these Corvettes back and forth.

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