With sorrow, we report that former longtime Lubegard sales manager Ken Thomas, 76, passed away from a heart attack on Oct. 5. Ken created friendships and business relations over many years at Lubegard during which he seemingly attended every weekend seminar, distributor open house and industry trade show. Ken (pictured above) will be remembered as being a friend to everyone he met. Ken is survived by his wife, Lorri; a daughter, Meagan Catano and her husband James and three grandchildren.
Additionally, the passing of California industry pioneer Art Carr was reported to us last Friday. Art owned transmission shops before his name became synonymous with high performance transmissions on the West Coast and beyond. Art was 90 years old and remained active until the middle of this year. His latest venture, California Performance Transmission, manufactures Art’s line of performance automatic units, converters, valve bodies and accessories.
A fitting thought about Art was expressed by HGM Electronic’s Mike Hoy who observed, “in my head, Art and Gil [Younger] are sitting at the lunch table with a couple of cold ones, with Jetaway valve body in hand, trying to figure out how to make it hold low gear and not blow the coupling cover out.” Carr is survived by three daughters and six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.