SWEET TEA: Dorothy’s birthday lime-green VW dream

— The appropriately protective boys’ first concern about their mother’s lime-green convertible Volkswagen 70th birthday dream - that her legs were too long - sank like a rusted-out 1966 VW.

(VWs, you recall, floated. Check out http://tinyurl.com/floatingVW.)

“We did go out and take a test drive,” says 5-foot-6 Dorothy Clement Fortney, who reports that her legs fit fine. “It was super.”

Her sons pointed out other concerns, like insuring two cars. She might need to sell her practical white four-door.

Practical prevailed. Dorothy’s 70th birthday came and went, and she stuck with her grown-up car.

Andrew Saunders, the only son of Dorothy’s brother, visited his Aunt Dorothy on Christmas afternoon 2008.

“I showed him a family picture that was made for my 70th birthday,” Dorothy says. “I told him I wanted a lime-green Volkswagen for my 70th birthday.”

“Aunt Dorothy,” he said, “you should have bought it.”

“I’ve gotten over it,” she assured him.

“I can see it in your eyes,” he told her.

Andrew Saunders, Central High Class of 1986, grew up in Little Rock and lives in Los Angeles. He is a marketing executive for Warner Brothers’ TMZ site. Before that, he was head of marketing at Fox Internet, says Jane McMullin, his mother.

He returned from his Aunt Dorothy’s home to his mother’s with an idea.

On December 27, Andrew informed Dorothy, a friend would drop off a gift for her.

“Look in your driveway,” said the woman who knocked at Dorothy’s door.

Dorothy saw a lime green VW. “I wouldn’t get in it,” she says. She told the woman: “I can’t accept that.”

She caught Andrew by phone as he changed planes in Dallas. She thanked him but told him she was reluctant to accept it.

He happily insisted. He had leased it for two years and paid for insurance.

“All you have to do,” he said, “is put in the gas.”

Nearly two years later, Dorothy is still delighted with the gift from her nephew. Family and friends weren’t the least concerned that she had to give up her practical white four-door.

“We’ll take you where you need to go,” they told her, “if you’ll just take us out for fun.”

When people in parking lots and at traffic lights compliment her car, she replies: “It’s the cutest car in the state of Arkansas.”

Although she had dreamed of this car, once she actually owned one, she mentioned a concern to her son, David.

“If people saw a gray haired lady driving this,” she asked, “would they laugh?”

“No, Mom, I don’t think they’d laugh,” David replied after a pause. “But they’d smile.”

Arkansas, Pages 7 on 09/21/2010

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