Six Days of excessive heat and humidity lifted for Sunday’s annual Ray Behnke Memorial Model T&A Rally.
Over 20 vintage cars and trucks lined up for the pre-rally show in the Illinois Department of Human Services parking lot before 16 took to the road for two 30-mile laps taking Henry Ford’s mechanical marvels, some near 100-years old, taking their drivers and passengers on a sunny Sunday ride down the back roads to Galva, Bishop Hill and back.
Along the way participants drew poker cards at stops with the winners announced and prizes awarded at the afterparty at the Elks Lodge in downtown Kewanee where drivers backed their vintage autos into the parking spaces along Tremont Street setting up a brief car show.
The rally began as a race in 1968 as the idea of Ray Behnke, a local Model T enthusiast, and has been a part of the Hog Days weekend ever since. Over the years the format was changed from a timed race to a noncompetitive event for safety reasons and because the cars were getting less dependable due to age. As the number of the older “T” models began to dwindle, owners of Ford’s next big seller, the Model A, were allowed along for the ride.
Behnke died in 1994 and his daughter and son-in-law, Ruth Anne and Bill Scott, who had been involved in the event since it began, took it over, joined over the years by four generations of their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great grand-children, who all live in the Chicago area but return to Kewanee every Labor Day weekend to help.
With health issues looming, Ruth Anne and Bill have turned organizing next year’s rally over to the extended O’Neill family, descendants of the late Howard O’Neill, one of the original group of local Model T owners who helped start the rally and continued to participate until his death several years ago.
Howard’s daughter, Carrie (O’Neill) Wakefield will take over as organizer of next year’s rally. The Scott family will continue to be involved.
