Local reception center expands to offer free auto museum

by Matthew Weaver<br>Herald Staff Writer
| June 30, 2006 9:00 PM

Moses Lake businessman puts vehicles on display

MOSES LAKE — Ask Jack Leftwich which of the nearly 80 entries in his new museum is his favorite, and he replies he doesn't know.

"I've got some that I like better than others, because there's no more of them," he said, pointing to a 1919 Scripps-Booth. "In its time, that was one of the fanciest cars that was built."

A 1926 Rolls Royce is another crown jewel in his collection.

Next week, the Memories R Forever reception center will expand to offer an automobile museum, free to the public, which officially opens with a ceremony Monday.

Leftwich said he thinks it's probably as nice a car museum as any in the nation.

He has owned many of the cars in the museum for 30 years, and said he had many of them in Utah when he decided to open his museum.

"My father-in-law owns eight or nine of them out there, and I own all the rest," he said.

Leftwich was not sure how he got started collecting.

"I just always liked them," he said. "I had them in storage in different places, and I just thought, nobody ever got to see them. My home in Provo, I had a seven-car garage and I had them stuck down there, and probably 10 people a year would see them. So I decided to bring them all up here and build a nice museum."

Some of the cars in the collection date back into the 1910s. About 10 are still out at the foundry getting ready for inclusion in the museum.

Leftwich purchased the Moses Lake property to build D&L Foundry in 1990, and actually built the operation in 1991. He made the move to Moses Lake permanent himself in about 1996, he recalled. He purchased and completely remodeled the reception center about three years ago.

The reception center and museum will both operate under the Memories R Forever name. Leftwich will continue to own and operate the foundry as well.

"That's the horse that makes this run," he said with a chuckle.

Even before opening, there has been interest in the museum, which Leftwich began building last fall.

The museum will employ three people, all of whom have already been hired. Hours of operation have not yet been determined.

"The car museum gives you a look back on the past, how things have evolved," Leftwich's son-in-law, Garric Mickelson, said, noting there's been very few museum's like it in Moses Lake, save for Monte Holm's House of Poverty Museum. "As each generation comes up, it's nice to have something of the past. As far as a tourist attraction, it's more so people come in to see; give them a place to stop, fill their time."

Mickelson added that the museum is always on the look out for more additions.

"It's just a hell of a good thing for a city like Moses Lake," Leftwich said. "We put some signs out on the freeway, I'm sure they'll pull people into the businesses in town that normally wouldn't stop in Moses Lake."

The museum will open Monday at noon and be open until 6 p.m., with a ribbon cutting ceremony at 1 p.m.