NMCA Makes History

Blue Bars is a national magazine publication from the National Council of Corvette Clubs (NCCC), which NMCA is a member of. In early 2021 Phil Ellison contacted NCCC/Blue Bars and secured the coveted front cover to announce that NMCA would celebrate 60 years as a Corvette Club in 2022. Once secured, the mission to come up with the cover photo began. 8 months went into this effort.

October 24, 2021 was a perfect day - sun, warm, blue sky and not a whisper of breeze. Following months of behind-the-scenes efforts to secure a club photo location, the location was finally discovered. But even that was problematic. The site selected was a city park, with restrictions. One restriction - No Driving On The Grass! Through some kind words, diplomacy and a little bit of begging, NMCA was granted access onto the second largest all-grass park under the City of Albuquerque's control. Throughout this photo operational effort there were many roadblocks and hiccups requiring a re-think. This access was the last, and perhaps biggest hurdle.

The next big hurdle was getting member turnout on relatively short notice, as we were granted a small window of time to use this park. We arrived at the Zia symbol for our formation which represents New Mexico, and is incorporated into our club logo. NMCA member Larry English spent countless hours creating a Zia symbol/NMCA logo using Corvettes and placing them appropriately. The minimum to accomplish our goal was 32 Corvettes. 38 were really needed. This RSVP number kept increasing, meaning Larry would need to recalculate where the new arrivals would be best positioned. At 9am that Sunday our confirmed count was 40 Corvettes. We're done, right? NO. We went to work getting Corvettes into place according to numbers assigned to each Corvette. We approached 40 Corvettes, and found that we had another 6 joining the photo shoot. Larry said "nobody gets left out" and worked his magic to get every Corvette represented.

NMCA hired a professional photographer who used a drone. This helped a lot, as from ground level we thought we had Corvettes lined up straight. From above, a different story. More than an hour went into shifting Corvettes a bit this way and that way. We got pretty near our goal when the sunlight began to become an issue. So, we took what we could get.

We did take multiple photos with and without members. Sadly, due to the angle of the sun, all photos with members included where simply unusable.

Finally, later that day we discovered that social media was buzzing with "What are all those Corvettes doing at Vista Del Norte Park". We did circulate a Thank You card and had everyone sign it - then sent to our contact at the City who was instrumental in helping NMCA, and for slightly bending the rules for us!

See other Blue Bars cover photos from throughout the decades

Source: Phil Ellison - NMCA

Posted 11/11/22