Club members’ cars are on display in the 2010 Corvettes on the High Desert, a fundraiser for Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch. The club holds charitable events every other year, drawing in visitors from other parts of the Northwest. The next is scheduled for July 2012.

Back in 1991, the members of the brand-new High Desert Corvette Club took a memorable first trip together.

“During that first year, our first tour, we went through Sisters just after the (rodeo) parade, recalls cofounder Kemi Broadley, 47. “Our Corvette got hit by a tractor with a drunk driver on it,” she says. “It got mentioned by Paul Harvey News; you know, ‘a Corvette got overtaken by a tractor.’ That was kind of funny.”

She and husband Mike, 63, had decided to start the club in June of 1991 after spending a year driving across the hill to participate with a Portland club also dedicated to the car.

Today they are still active in the club and sharing a blue 2000 Roadster. The first meeting she recalls was held at the former Rolaine’s Cantina on Bend’s south side, with just seven or eight Chevrolet Corvette aficionados in attendance.

Today, the club is still going strong, much like the car that inspired it. Membership swelled to 90 members, with about 60 cars among them. Club members range in age from their mid 40s to late 70s. Some drive their cars year-round, others squirrel them away for the warm months.

The one common denominator: All own at least one Corvette, which Chevrolet began producing in 1953. According to the National Corvette Restorers Society, which has been around since 1974, clubs such as High Desert Corvette Club began popping up around the country in the ’50s. Today there’s a National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky. Warehousing some 70 models, the museum sports a Corvette Cafe and serves as home of the Corvette Hall of Fame, “to confer the highest honor and recognition upon the most influential individuals in the history of the Corvette.”

That the zippy car inspires such devotion doesn’t surprise members of the High Desert Corvette Club, which also goes by the shorter name High Desert Corvettes. Many of its members, the majority of whom are in their 60s, fell in love with the cars during their youth.

“Most of us are older and retired, and so sometimes it looks a little out of character to see these sports cars with these old guys running around them,” say John Burgess. His wife, Sande, is the club’s president.

Today, they have two Corvettes, a 1973 and a 2005. The 1973 “is very similar to the one we had when we got married in 1969,” says John Burgess. The 69-year-old says that for some car enthusiasts, “sometimes it’s a dream fulfilled” when they get their first Corvette.

Members pay annual dues of $30 for individuals or $40 per couple to be in the club, which has several single women and single men among its ranks. Participating in the annual Sisters Rodeo Parade and touring in caravans to other towns and states remains a part of club life.

“We may have as many as 20 cars going in a string, and so we do get a lot of eyeballs. Even four or five of them; they’re kind of head-turners,” Burgess says.

There have been six generations of the car, according to the website www.corvettehistory.com. The C1, made from 1953-62; the C2 Sting Ray, 1963-67; the C3, 1968-82; the C4, 1984-96; the C5, 1997-2004; and the C6, 2005-present.

Kemi Broadley believe that people tend to fall in love with whatever generation of the car was being produced when they were in high school.

Redmond couple Ralph and Elaine Hakkila have been in the club for 18 years. Elaine believes the appeal of the Corvette is its sleek look.

“It’s kind of different than most cars,” she says. “They all have their own, unique style.”

Ralph adds that the appeal of Corvettes lies in the “beauty of ’em,” he says. “And it’s a true American muscle car.”

The 65-year-old adds that as a young man growing up in Southern California, he’d always wanted a Corvette, “But I couldn’t afford them back then.”

The couple’s first Corvette purchase was a 1971 C3, which they bought used in 1993.

“We bought if from Mike Alvarez, and he belonged to the Corvette club,” explains Elaine, 57. “So he said, ‘Now that you bought my car, you gotta join the club. So that’s basically how we did it.”

She found the club more comfortable than the low-slung car, however.

“Then we went to an ’88 Roadster, and then my lovely wife let me buy this new C5 in 2000. But it’ll probably be the last one. We’ll see,” Ralph says with a chuckle.

He adds that among the misconceptions about Corvettes is their gas mileage. He’s gotten as much as 28 miles per gallon. “Long as you keep your foot out of it, the computers are awesome,” he says.

Says John Burgess, “They’re fun to drive. They’re quick-response kind of cars. It can go fast, but most of us aren’t interested in going fast anymore.”

With better gas mileage than the old cars, which might get 15 to 16 miles per gallon, the newer Corvettes can go farther, too. Burgess and his wife just completed a 3,000-mile road trip in their 2005, visiting Mt. Rushmore, the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone National Park and other destinations.

“To do that length of a trip in an older car, even a 1973, would have been intolerable,” he says. Newer models “are very comfortable, good riding and quiet. They’re not nearly as nice handling on the road, but they have the classic look of what people refer back to when they think of the old Corvettes.”

The club has been hosting regional Corvette events every other year since 1996 to raise money for charities such as Boys and Girls Clubs, Healing Reins, Kiwanis Food Bank and Crystal Peaks Youth Ranch. Last year, that figure was around $5,000.

Virtually all the members The Bulletin spoke to for this article emphasized the club’s fun, social aspects much more so than wrenches and horsepower.

In fact, one couple that participates in the club hails from Spanaway, Wash. “They met us over on the coast one year and they just liked our club,” says Ralph Hakkila.

Member Phil Johnson has owned and restored some nine Corvettes over the years, although he and wife, Donna, now have just one, a red 2003 C5 Corvette. “And in the winter, says Donna, “our baby stays in.”

There may be one more common denominator besides owning a Corvette, says Elaine Hakkila. “Probably age is the most common one: We’re all gettin’ old.”

Adds Donna Johnson, “In a lot of ways it’s like big-boy toys. It’s a bunch of people acting like we’re still in high school, but having a lot of fun doing it.”

Get revved up

For more information about the club, visit www .highdesert corvettes .com.