|
Click
here to see ole Herb on U-Tube...
And yet, another U-Tube |
|
Herbie
Lives Forever….
This web site is
being dedicated to our son and his most favorite car in the whole world,
Herbie "The Love Bug". Now, as most of you know, Herbie was first created by
Walt Disney and appeared in his first full feature movie in 1969. There are
many web sites that deal with the history of Herbie both old and new. The
"Links" page of this site will give you a listing of some of the sites you may
want to visit.
However, this site mainly deals with our son Stephen and his car, a 1965
replica. Stephen is a 37 year old who was born with a disability that has
left him with many characteristics of someone in their pre-teen years (see
our homepage to read more about our family).
However, he has been able to overcome many challenges including graduating
from high school (at the age of 18) and holding the same part time job for
over 16 years. He loves to travel, swim, scuba dive, play Nintendo, bowl and
collect all kinds of miniature cars.. He lives at home with my wife and I
and has his own private suite. One of the features of his room is a HO
scale train set that runs completely around two adjoining rooms complete
with highways, buildings, etc. One of his favorite past times is just
spending time playing with his city and watching his Herbie movies…
In 1999, Stephen went into the hospital for a minor surgical procedure where
he contracted a staff infection (MRSA) in his blood stream that
unfortunately left him near death. But by God's grace and many, many
prayers, he did survive. However, due to a loss of circulation to his
extremities from some heavy medications given to him, they had to amputate both of his
legs and all ten fingers which we thought for sure would leave him
incapacitated
for life.. Well, within 3 months of being released from
the hospital, Stephen was up on his brand new prosthetic legs dancing the New Years in with a cute
young lady in Ocean
Springs, Mississippi, and he hasn't looked back yet. Overall, he is a
remarkable young man!
Now, for his car Herbie. Like we said earlier, the car is a 1965 Volkswagen,
Type 1 sedan with sunroof. Although the original Herbie was a 1963, there
is little difference in the two cars from the outside. The turn signals are
slightly larger and are yellow vs. clear, and the rear tag light housing is
bigger. Other than that, it's hard to tell them apart. In fact, Walt
Disney used many different cars and various years in the multiple movies
that they made. So we didn't feel too bad using this car as a starting
point. We purchased the car in 1997 and have fixed it up slowly over the
years. The latest work on the car was a complete restoration from the
ground up. In addition, Stephen's Herbie actually has a brain that allows
it to do a number of things on it's own such as opening and closing his own
doors and hood, turning on and off the headlights, turn signals and wipers,
and randomly letting people know he is there by squirting them with his
window washer or with oil (water) from his engine. His horn also sounds and he has both strobe lights and high
density Halogen driving lights for night driving. On top of everything, he
still has his original 40 HP engine and 6 volt electrical system.
In addition,
after talking to Stephen we decided that Herbie needed some friends to keep
him company so we decided to add a couple of lovable white bears and a dog
to the show. Beauregard, Daisy and Duke (their dog) are also animated
and they sit in front of Herbie at car shows, etc., and tell the complete
story as to how they first met Herbie and helped fix him up to make a
complete comeback. Of course Herbie and his friends add a little humor
to the show by playing a few jokes on each other and playing some of Herb's
favorite music.
We then took another step and
gathered autographs from most of the stars from Herbie's four major movies.
Not only did they autograph personal pictures of Stephen and Herbie
together, but they also autographed Herbie's glove box door for everyone to
see. And if this isn't enough, Walt Disney found out about ole Herb
and decided they wanted to film him in action. So on February 26,
2002, Stephen and Herbie became stars when Disney invited them to Walt
Disney World in Orlando, Florida and made them a permanent part of their
latest release of The Love Bug on DvD.
Well that's enough for now. We will try to include more detail on the
following pages. If anyone cares to comment or to drop either Stephen
or I a line, please feel free to do so using the link at the bottom of the
page.
If you would
like to see a movie of Herbie in action along with Beauregard and Daisy,
just follow the "Beauregard & Daisy" link on the left hand side or bottom of
this page.
Stephen's site is sponsored by
Small
Business Partners of Florida LLC.
Click here
to find
out more...

And click on the symbol above to
register to win up to $300.00 towards new purchases
at one of SBP's participating
businesses.
|
|