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Editor’s Note: For this week’s column, we sat down with three Saugus residents who are officers of North Shore Corvettes of Mass. Inc. (NSCM) – a nonprofit club and charitable organization of more than 180 members that celebrated its 60th year as a club this week (July 11). Frank Puccia, a 1968 Malden High School graduate, is the president of NSCM. He and his wife, Linda, have been Saugus residents since 1986. They were high school sweethearts at Malden High and will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in September. Linda is a 1970 Malden High graduate. Linda is a member of the Club’s board of directors. They have two children. Son Christopher Puccia (a 1999 Saugus High graduate) is married to Alyssa and is a pilot for Delta Airlines and an instructional pilot for the U.S. Air Force in San Antonio. Daughter Gina Panarello (a 2003 Saugus High graduate) lives in Peabody with her husband Jarad and their three-year-old daughter Emilia. Frank received his Associates Degree from North Shore Community College in Beverly in electromechanical technology. He worked for 33 years at New England Telephone. He owns a 2011 C-6 Corvette Grand Sport, color Torch Red, with 51,000 miles.
Al Marotta, the club’s vice president, has lived in Saugus with his wife, Donna, for 48 years. Al is a 1965 Winthrop High School graduate. He served in the U.S. Air Force from 1966 to 1970, discharging as a sergeant. He and his wife have been married for 49 years. They have two grown children: Michael, 43 (a Saugus High School graduate) and his wife, Jessica; and Kristen Bannon (a 1996 Saugus High graduate) and her husband, Joseph, who have three daughters. Al owns a 2019 C-7 Corvette ZO6, color Long Beach Red (looks like maroon), with 16,000 miles.
Q: Al, what do you love about the Corvette? When did you buy one for the first time? What got you into the car?
Al Marotta: I bought my first Corvette in 2016. It was a C-51 Coup. I just fell in love with it. I just happened to go to the dealership on an afternoon with my wife, and I happened to hit this car perfectly and I fell in love with it and I bought it. It was Long Beach Red and had the tan interior, and the sun was just hitting it perfectly. I fell in love with it, I bought it and that was the beginning.
Q: You’ve had this one since?
Al: No, this is my second one – the 2019 convertible. I never had a convertible before, but it had the same combination as my 2016. And the body shape is a little different; it’s a little wider than the 2016, which for me makes it more attractive. I just fell in love with it, and that’s where I am going to stay, with this one here.
Q: Why did you get rid of the first one?
Al: Because I fell in love with this one here. One of the previous members had this car I just fell in love with, and I just went to the dealership and I said I want my friend Billy McGlaughlan’s Corvette and said that’s the one I want.
Q: If you could afford a Corvette, when would you first buy one? But I understand it’s tough when you have kids and you’re paying for college and stuff.
Al: Yeah, that was kind of out of the question. My wife used to get me toy Corvettes for Christmas, and she would say, “This is as close as you are going to come to one right now.” And, naturally, my heart would break, but I had to do what I had to do. But then when I got a little older and I was in my mid-60’s and, hopefully, getting ready to retire – which I never did until I was in my mid-60’s – all the kids were out, all the braces were done, all the college was paid for, the mortgage was gone – and I found an opening to it, and the wife says, “Go ahead, get your Corvette!” And it was like giving me a blind check. And that’s what I did. It was the greatest feeling in the world – going to the dealer and saying, “This is what I want, here’s your money.” Done deal!
Q: How old were you when it first crossed your mind?
Al: Oh, God – 15 or 16 years old. Yeah, when I used to see them, I just fell in love with them.
Q; What draws you? What’s the allure?
Al: The car itself: the styling of the car. It’s not so much the speed part of it. It’s just the style of the car, because the early Corvettes were pretty, but not very comfortable – if you have ridden in one of them. But I still loved them.
Again, it just wasn’t part of my life at that stage. I had other commitments. I had other obligations I had to meet: obligations before I could even think about owning a Corvette. And then I kind of put it on the back burner.
I would see them on the road. Every time I saw a Corvette, there was a silver-haired guy who could hardly fit in there. And I would say, “What is this guy doing in this Corvette? I’m young. I’m the one who is pursuing the chicks. I should have the Corvette.” And needless to say, that wasn’t part of the plan.
Q: Are you the first member of your family to get a Corvette?
Al: Yes – as a matter of fact I am. But I do have a cousin who won a Corvette, and it had money in the trunk. It had a million dollars in the trunk. He hit the lottery or something. He won a Corvette in Massachusetts. It was a lottery thing.
Q: How many years ago was that?
Al: It had to be 10 or 15 years ago.
Q: Let me ask you, what do you get out of the club? Why did you join the club?
Al: I joined the club for the camaraderie. I would never belong to any other club. I’ve been a member since 2016. We develop relationships. It just seems like you go through one part of your life being close to a certain amount of people, and they fade away and then you go to another phase of your life. And the Corvette is where I am right now. And I’m with a bunch of other people, and I’m surrounded by people like myself that have a love for a car.
But it’s more than that. It brings us together. We go out to eat all of the time. We share stories together. We help each other. We go through some good times. We go through some tough times with one of our members having an illness. But it brings us close together, so we help one another. So, with the Corvette, it’s kind of like the roots of a tree. It just grows. It just flourishes and with different branches.
Q: Anything else that you would like to share about the Corvette?
Al: No.
Q: Frank, tell me, when was your first love of the Corvette?
Frank Puccia: When I got married, the practicality of having a sports car was down the drain because I needed a regular commuter. You don’t drive a Corvette as a regular commuter car. Usually, you drive it in warm weather when it’s nice out, and you put it away for the winters. It wasn’t a practical car for me at the time because we both had to work. Having a third car wasn’t in the plans.
Q: So, when was your first Corvette?
Frank: My first Corvette was in 2005. I just retired in 2003 and I wanted to get a convertible sports car. And I have a cousin down in Florida that sells cars. I called him up and told him what I wanted. He said, “I have a Corvette in my garage. You want to buy it?” And I said, “Sure, why not.” So, I bought it from him. I had it shipped up from Florida. It was a 1990 C-4 Corvette, Torch Red, red interior with a black convertible roof. And it had really low miles on it for a car being over 20 something years old.
Q: How many miles on it?
Frank: It had 1,900 miles. The thing was like in the garage forever.
So, I had it shipped up from Florida. And I drove that car for five years until somebody hit me… t-boned me on the corner of Central and Lincoln. And I tried to get it repaired, but I couldn’t find any parts for it at the time to fix it right. I took the insurance money and I sold the car as is.
And then I went on a looking spree for another one. And I spent the winter online. And in 2011 I got the car I have now. I found it online on CarGurus in Springfield, Mass. I drove out there and checked it out.
Q: Torch Red?
Frank: Yeah, Torch Red. What other color is more popular for a Corvette? It’s Torch Red. If you look at all of the Corvettes sold, the Number One color is Torch Red. Number Two is White. The original Corvette in 1953 was only one color – white. If you’re going to have a Corvette, you’ve gotta have Torch Red. That’s my opinion.
When I got the Corvette, I started looking online. I saw that there were different car clubs and different car shows would go along. George Moriello, the barber, told me there’s a group of Corvette owners who would meet at the Liberty Tree Mall [Danvers]. That’s how I started getting into the different scenes with the car. Then I found out there was a Corvette Night at Sylvan Street Grill, so I went down there and people said I had to join the club. They gave me an application and that’s how it started.
Q: What do you get out of the club?
Frank: I enjoy the car. We enjoy taking nice rides with the car. We like the socialization with all of the people. Like Al had mentioned, we got a good group of people. We keep in contact with each other, go to all different places. We travel all over the place. It’s more like an eating club than anything. We go to more restaurants than you can shake a stick at. Almost every weekend, we’re driving somewhere and getting food.
Q: What’s the longest procession of Corvettes from your club?
Frank: Our club participated in a function, which was called “Vets to Vets.” And on the last Sunday of every September, all Corvettes converge at the Marriott Hotel in Billerica. And we have a procession from Billerica to the Bedford Veterans Hospital. When the first car leaves Billerica and gets to Bedford, they are still coming out of the parking lot in Billerica. Over 700 and something Corvettes participated in that event, and it gets bigger and bigger every single year. But as far as North Shore Corvettes, we had our biggest turnout with 55 cars last Tuesday on Cruise Night – 55 cars. We came to Cruise Night and formed a “60” with the cars. We put all of the cars together to form a “60” and used the leftover cars to form an underline to utilize all 55 cars that came that night.
As far as driving somewhere, the biggest one I would say was this thing we call “the Poker Run.” We have five stops along the way. And at each stop, you pull a car out of the hat, and then you go to the next stop and the next stop and the next stop. All those cars, I’d say we had 25 or 26 cars at one time, just from our club.
Q: What’s the biggest thing about being a Corvette owner? The passion? What does it mean? Please share.
Frank: I like the style of the car – the way the car looks and rides. I was always into sports cars, but I never really had the time or money to have them when I was young. Like Al said, everyone that has got one now has gray hair. That seems to be the majority of the case.
Now that Corvettes come out with this mid-engine, it seems to be drawing in a lot younger crowd now. The new style almost looks like a Ferrari. If you took the badge of a Ferrari and put the C-8 Corvette next to it, it looks almost the same. So that’s what’s driving the younger crowd now, to buy into that car.
I enjoy driving it and I enjoy the people and everything else. And then I got nominated to run the club. And I’ve been on the board now for four years now, going on five. This is my second year as president. My term ends in December.
Q: What is the most remarkable thing you can tell me about the history of the club? What is the most remarkable thing about this club?
Frank: The most remarkable thing – the fact that they were able to stay as a club continuously since 1963. To have a club grow… they started out with a handful of people in 1963 to grow to 180. Some people drop off, but newcomers join. Who knows, we might hit the 200 mark.
Q: Linda, please share with me. If it were up to you, what would the color of your Corvette be and what kind? If Frank says, “Okay. For your birthday present, I am going to buy you a Corvette.”
Linda Puccia: I’d drop dead! I like the older ones, around ’58. I don’t know what you call it with that little dent in the side. I like the look of it. And I do like the red.
Q: So, you would get Torch Red?
Linda: Yes – I think I would.
Q: It looks like a cross between an old Chevy and a Ferrari.
Linda: I would take whatever he gets me.
Q: Besides going along and being a good sport, what do you get out of it?
Linda: The friendships are incredible.
Q: So, you would probably connect with the wives of the Corvette owners?
Linda: Absolutely. We share stories.
Q: Are most of the Corvette owners married and they bring their wives?
Frank: The majority of our membership are husband and wife.
Linda: We do have a lot of women who have lost their husbands recently. There are, like, four women, offhand, who I think they drive their Corvettes. The women share stories and we go out. It’s so fun riding in the convertible on a beautiful day.
Q: Let’s say I’m going to buy a Corvette tomorrow morning. Tell me why I should join your club.
Linda: It’s so fun! It’s a lot of fun and great people. It really is. There’s a lot to do; it keeps you busy – going out to eat or just driving in the car – or going on an adventure.
Q: Anybody else want to share anything more?
Al: Obviously, we don’t live forever. And when we have a member that passes, barring it’s not in the middle of dead winter, we have a procession, so to speak, and the fellow who had inspired me to buy my Corvette had passed away. And it was a pretty good procession. There had to be 25 to 30 cars in that procession. It’s quite a sight. It’s a sad affair when you lose somebody you care for who is a member of the club. But it seems like the people honor it. We care for every member. We have a member who is going through difficult times right now. We kind of muster together and give him some support, whatever way any individual can. It’s close-knit. It’s almost like somebody has got the same blood type and heartbeat – DNA.
Linda: The guys get a lot of information on the cars – on how to maintain them.
Frank: And we’re a charitable organization. We raise money every year for St. Jude Children’s Hospital and the Edith Nourse Rogers Veterans’ Hospital in Bedford. That’s our main two charities, and every year, we give them a thousand dollars each. In addition to that, we do Toys for Tots.
