My father passed away on Aug. 1. In the weeks after, I found myself telling the story of my first car, a 1984 Toyota Celica convertible. It wasn’t just a car. It was my dad showing off a little, teaching me how to be cool before I even knew what cool was. I told that story in the Light, and readers shared their own stories about their first cars — Celicas and Beetles, Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs — all tied to memories of fathers, freedom and growing up.
Then something remarkable happened.
I met my friend Dana Sandweiss for coffee. We talked about her work with Missouri Access, my work at the Light, and, as always seems to happen after loss, we talked about family. Dana told me she was preparing for a trip with her mother, Meri, and her sister, Jennifer. They were flying to Arizona, then on to California. Their mission: to visit their late father’s first car, a Porsche 356 Cabriolet they knew simply as “Silver.”
I froze. Not just because I had been writing about my dad and first cars, but because the Porsche 356 was my father’s dream car. He always called it “the upside-down bathtub.”
That’s when I felt it — what we Jews call beshert, destiny. I felt pulled by that beshert to tell this story. It felt right. It felt necessary.
The day Silver came home
In 1974, Meri was outside their Phoenix home with 5-year-old Jennifer when Steven Friedman pulled into the driveway in a gleaming silver 1963 Porsche 356 Cabriolet. “It was the most adorable car,” Meri told me. “He drove up the street and into the driveway and I just remember being thrilled. It was so darn cute.”
The car had red leather seats, a black convertible top, and cost $2,500, purchased from an Arizona State University student. Steven named it Silver, and for 10 years it was part of the family’s story.
Meri still sees Steven bent over the car with a rag in his hand. “He was always cleaning it. He just loved it. It was exciting. It was fun. We only had two cars, and this one was his. Even in the Arizona summers with no air conditioning, he drove it every day. For him it was adventure. And for me, it was him. He even taught me how to drive a stick in that car.”
Jennifer remembers sitting scrunched in the tiny backseat with Dana, knees pressed to their chins. “As a child, you don’t want to bring attention to yourself. And this car was loud. People didn’t appreciate vintage cars back then the way they do now. So we’d beg, ‘Mom, please just take us in the Volvo.’”
Dana laughed as she added, “Sometimes I’d hide under the tarp if Dad drove us to school. He’d put the cover over the passenger seat like it was just him and his briefcase. And his briefcase was always there.”
To Jennifer, her father’s love of Silver was about more than the car itself. “My dad was sentimental and a historian. For him it wasn’t about materialism or status. The car was a piece of history, and then he got to write his own story with it. Within something extraordinary, he created our family’s ordinary adventures.”
A letter in the mail
Steven eventually sold Silver in the mid-’80s. Phoenix summers were brutal, and with no air conditioning, the car wasn’t practical. But the memory of Silver never left.
A few weeks after Steven died in 2015, a letter arrived in the mail. It was from a man named George, who believed he had their original Porsche. A devoted car enthusiast, he had tracked the car’s lineage through the Porsche 356 registry and even uncovered the old advertisement Steven had placed when he sold Silver decades earlier. That ad gave him a name and a phone number, enough for an accountant’s persistence to do the rest. George had written the letter months before but hadn’t sent it right away. By the time it reached Meri, Steven was gone. At first, she ignored it — friends had warned her to be wary of strange mail after a spouse’s death — but eventually, she called.
The connection was instant. George told her about his love for the car. Meri told him about theirs. “I said we had an Airedale that used to ride in the backseat, and he said, ‘We have an Airedale too, and we do the same thing.’”
That was the beginning of an unlikely friendship. George started sending postcards of Silver, lovingly restored and polished, now living in Paso Robles, Calif. “Every card he sent, he talked about Silver like it was a person,” Meri said. “‘Silver wasn’t feeling well today, had to go to the shop.’ I’ve saved them all.”
For eight years, the Friedmans and George exchanged letters, emails, photos, even olive oil and vinegar from Paso Robles. And this summer, Meri finally said to her daughters, “It’s time to go visit Silver.”
The yahrzeit trip
The timing was no accident. Dana, Meri, and Jennifer planned their trip to California for Steven’s yahrzeit, the Hebrew anniversary of his death. They spoke of him often during their travels, carrying his memory with them in every step of the journey. For them, the trip wasn’t just about seeing a car — it was about honoring their father in a tangible way, marking the date with something he would have loved.
When they arrived in Paso Robles, George and his wife Ellen welcomed them warmly. The garage door opened like a curtain rising, revealing four Porsches in a row, Silver the smallest of them.
Meri said it felt like an unveiling. “There was Silver, more beautiful than I remembered. Immaculate. I thought, ‘It never looked this good when we had it.’”
Jennifer added, “George and Ellen have taken painstaking care of Silver, but I remember Mom and Dad doing the same. The car looked just as good when we had it. The engine might be a little cleaner now, but an impeccable car remains an impeccable car — only richer as it matures.”
George insisted each of them take a ride. Dana said she felt gratitude. “I felt joy that the car is so loved. It felt like Dad’s passion for the car is being honored.”
Jennifer admitted she felt a pang. “Seeing it was bittersweet, because he wasn’t with us. But then I looked at the three of us together and thought, he is with us. And this car, it’s part of that quilt of connection he gave us.”
For Meri, the ride was surreal. “I was trying not to get too emotional. The car hugged the road, smooth and strong. I just thought, it’s in such good hands. I’m happy.”
Silver’s second family
Over the years George and Ellen have made Silver part of their lives. They bring it to car rallies, let their dog ride along and keep it polished and safe. A watercolor sketch of Silver, painted by the man Meri now dates, hangs framed in their garage. Tucked in the back is the original letter George sent, preserved like an artifact.
Jennifer reflected on the generosity of that hospitality. “They didn’t have to open their home to us. But they did. And it wasn’t transactional. It wasn’t about money or show. It was about connection.”
Dana agreed. “They gave us this gift,” she said.
Jennifer went further. “We live in a world where everything feels transactional and fleeting, dominated by social media. This wasn’t that. This was grounding. It was strangers coming together through a car, and each of us walking away with something richer.”
A story bigger than a car
What started as a car story became something more. A man drives home with a Porsche in 1974. A family builds memories around it. Decades later, a letter finds its way into a widow’s hands. Eight years of postcards turn into a pilgrimage.
And three women, carrying their father’s ashes in a pocket, mark his yahrzeit not with candles and prayers alone but with an engine’s roar, a top-down drive through California wine country, and the knowledge that his beloved Silver still shines.
For me, sitting across from Dana in that coffee shop weeks after my father’s funeral, this was more than coincidence. My dad dreamed of the Porsche 356 but never owned one. Dana’s dad did, and now his daughters were traveling to see it again.
That’s beshert. The unexpected intersections, the stories that weave together in ways we couldn’t plan. I felt pulled by that same beshert to tell this story. It felt right. It felt necessary.
