The Turkey Award
The Turkey Award was created by our 2005 competition director, Kurt Schwamberger, after a rather hilarious incident happened to one of our members at the Spartan Speedway low-speed event. Kurt just felt the moment shouldn’t go unrecognized, and thus the Turkey Award was born.
The award is now presented by the President of Capital City Corvette Club at the Winter Fest party in January, in recognition of the member who had the funniest or most out of the ordinary accomplishment during the previous year.
2012
Our 2012 Turkey Award was presented by President Craig Iansiti to Jerry and Dominique Palacio. Somehow, during our 2012 spring Rally, Jerry and Dominique ended up losing a complete page of instructions - yet managed to find their way to the final destination on route and on time. Everyone got a big laugh out of that one, and they still haven't disclosed what special technique they used to accomplish this miraculous ending. That is true teamwork by a couple of our favorite turkeys!
2011
Simon Reiffer was the recipient of the 2011 Turkey Award. One Saturday morning, as he pulled into Sophia’s Restaurant in Grand Ledge for a CCCC Let's Meet for Breakfast event, he forgot how long the front end of his 1977 coupe was and bumped into a pole, chipping the paint. Simon says “it was not my fault as the pole moved” just as he pulled into the parking space. No matter whose fault it was, the car is now completely repainted. We figured a $4,000 pole dance was worth the Turkey Award for this year.
2010
The winner for 2010 had to be Terry and Chris Burke for showing up to a June breakfast at the wrong Cracker Barrel restaurant. Terry and Chris ended up having breakfast alone and wondering what happened to everyone else. Needless to say, the rest of us were all at the right Cracker Barrel enjoying our breakfast on the other side of town. The award was presented to both Terry and Chris because as our president said, “even with two heads between them, they still couldn’t figure it out.”
2009
Joe Thomas was the leader of the Michigan contingent of the National Corvette Caravan to Bowling Green, Kentucky in September of 2009. Half way to Bowling Green Joe’s 1992 Corvette broke down and had to be left at a dealership for repair. This meant Joe had to finish leading the caravan driving a rented steel-body car. How could we pass up giving Joe the Turkey Award for that one?
2008
The winner for 2008 was Bob Maynard. July of 2008 was our club’s 50th anniversary with NCCC and Bob had been chairperson for our big 50th Anniversary Party. After all his planning and encouraging of members to participate and not miss the big event, Bob himself missed most of the party. Even though Bob’s excuse was illness, we just couldn’t give him a break, and so he won the Turkey Award.
2007
The award for 2007 was not presented because Kurt forgot to bring the trophy back to the president in time for the awards banquet. Due to his lapse in memory, we all just figured Kurt was the Turkey Award winner again for the second year in a row.
2006
Kurt Schwamberger (better known as Schwamy) was the winner of the award for 2006. The incident that earned him the award happened at the Spartan Speedway low-speed event. Kurt had taken charge of laying out the course for the event, so he should have been the most familiar with it. However, when Kurt’s turn came to drive the course, he immediately took a wrong turn. Oops! Hard to live that one down!
2005
The award for 2005 was presented to Randy Putmon. Randy had driven his 1981 C3 at our Spartan Speedway low-speed event in July of that year. During one of his runs he went off the track, went airborne and landed in the infield. He scooped up so much turf he was still cleaning it out the following spring. Our ever diligent Webmaster, Gloria Reiffer, snapped a shot that captured the whole moment for posterity. Randy accepted the award with his usual good humor.
Submitted by Janet Iansiti
