All this Kansas City man wants for Christmas is his mother’s stolen Thunderbird back
On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, Dick Purucker drove up to Janesville, Wisconsin, to buy his mom’s diamond blue 1962 Ford Thunderbird convertible back from the gentleman she’d sold it to 35 years ago.
“I’d been hounding this guy for a long time,” Purucker said on Wednesday afternoon, seated at his kitchen table and surrounded by old photos of the car. “I tracked him down through an old receipt we had from the transport company. He kept the car at his lake house. And for years he didn’t want to sell it. But finally he said OK.”
Purucker drove the Thunderbird back to Kansas City and on Thanksgiving Day cruised into Claridge Court, the Prairie Village retirement community where 103-year-old Mary Ellen Purucker now lives. She was surprised.
“She almost started crying,” Purucker said. “She said, ‘I feel so much younger just seeing it again.’”
The reunion would be short-lived. Somebody stole the Thunderbird Tuesday night.
“I’m just beside myself,” Purucker said.
Purucker lives with his wife, former Kansas City Councilwoman Jan Marcason, in a new house on Locust Street near 40th Street. They woke up Wednesday to discover the Thunderbird was no longer in their downstairs garage, which overlooks Gillham Park. The police came by — “They said, ‘We’ll get back to you,’” Purucker said with a skeptical shrug — and their son posted the classic car as missing on the Stolen KC Facebook page, where one commenter wrote, “Stealing a treasure like this should be a death penalty offense.” But so far, no luck.
Purucker estimated the car’s worth at $60,000. He unfolded a document and pointed to a long number printed at the top. “You see that ‘89’ in the VIN number? That means it’s a Sports Roadster. They only made 1,400 of those — 1,427, to be exact.”
“Dick’s mom, she was very active in Kansas City social circles,” Marcason said. “She was the president of the Lyric Ball and one of the founding members of the Saddle and Sirloin Club. She gave a lot of her life to volunteering for charity causes in the city. People knew her, and they knew her car. She’d pull up to events in that car.”
Purucker slid another old photo across the table. The Thunderbird, top down and parked on a driveway packed with snow, a decorative Christmas tree poking out of the fiberglass tonneau cover in back.
“This was taken in the winter of 1962-63,” Purucker said. “My dad put that little tree back there. Now, look at this one.”
He laid out a photo taken last week in his backyard. A small Christmas tree was planted in the back of the car, just as it was 59 years ago. “I put that tree there, for my mom,” Purucker said, almost choking up. “I tell ya, I’m just devastated.”
If you happen to spot this baby-blue beaut on the street, contact the Kansas City Police anonymous TIPS Hotline at 816-474-8477. You’d be performing a Christmas miracle for the Puruckers.
This story was originally published December 16, 2021 at 10:14 AM.
