Southern Nevada Model T Club

Mr. Harold Mann

Photograph and profile by G.A. Villa , copyright G.A. Villa SNMTC 2018.

Harold Mann has been with the Southern Nevada Model T Club from the very beginning when Harold joined four others in forming the club in 1992. Mr. Mann initiated the successful effort to bring the Southern Nevada Model T Club into the Model T Club of America as a charter member. During that time, Harold has served as club President for five years and has served variously as Treasurer and Tourmaster. Notably, Harold has edited and produced the SNMTC newsletter, T Driver , almost exclusively during his 20 years with the club. That newsletter has and continues to reflect his generosity with the club members and his sensible passion for the Model T Ford. One may note briefly that he has a background in aeronautical engineering and that he has worked as a professional petroleum engineer, but what is most important to him is his work with the Southern Nevada Model T Club and the great pleasure he derives from driving any one of his four cars: 1925 Ford Model T Runabout; 1926 Ford Model T Runabout; 1918 Ford Model T Touring Car; and his 1913 Metz Speedster (one of four original Metz model speedsters known to exist). The picture included with this profile is, fittingly, one of Harold driving one of his Model T Ford cars. In 2010 Mr. Mann was one of three members given an award of appreciation by the Southern Nevada Model T Club for his prominent role in the organization and creation of the club.

Michael and Kim Copperthite

The Southern Nevada Model T Club is a group of remarkable men and women who do not make much of their expertise about and historical devotion to the Model T Ford. Often there is little opportunity for their knowledge and craftsmanship to find its way to public recognition. (There are, of course, parades.) They do help one another with Model T restorations, and that is more often than not a private celebration among themselves. There are men and women among the members who do put information out for the members at large and for any in the public who might have a budding interest in physical history in general and the Model T Ford in particular.

It is an event of significance when citizens such as Michael and Kim Copperthite reach back in their own family history and find one of their original 1914 Connecticut-Copperthite Pie Company delivery trucks tucked into a flower shop in Pasadena, California, and decide that they would like to thank and honor their forebears by buying the truck and restoring it. Michael Copperthite reached out to the Model T Club of America and had the good fortune to be directed to Art Goldstrom of the Southern Nevada Model T Club who gathered up the physical and human resources of the club and orchestrated the restoration of the truck seen above in John Craft's wonderful photograph.

It is not unfair to spotlight the late John Craft for a moment as he repeatedly wrote and photographed so very well about the club, its members, and events. His original recap about this particular Southern Nevada Model T Club effort follows in the next section.

Michael and Kim Copperthite's wanting to look back on the family over time has led all of those who became involved to the ultimate spot in the history of the nation: the Smithsonian Museum.

Gerald A. Villa

July 10, 2019