When Gordon Killebrew joined the Corvette Hall of Fame in 2007, he had a well-earned reputation as the guru of C4 Corvettes. Originally a mechanic at the GM plant in Bowling Green, he became a central figure in the operations of the Corvette Action Center, an advisory phone line for Corvette technicians, dealers, and owners. Killebrew offered instructions to customers for troubleshooting their cars and compiled feedback on improving the Corvette. Armed with expertise in the C4’s design, Killebrew edited service manuals, owner’s manuals, and technical bulletins before their final release. He even started a training school, educating Corvette owners on the technology and operations of their cars.
For fans of the C4 era, Killebrew was known as both a mechanical wizard and a purveyor of Corvette culture. He and his wife Chris, a fellow Corvette aficionado, were popular in the Corvette community and honorary members of many clubs. It is therefore no surprise that Gordon and Chris filled up a whole photo album with pictures of one such meetup. The album, donated recently to the National Corvette Museum by Gordon, features pages of color photographs of Corvettes surrounding the Killebrew home in Tennessee. The vast majority are C4s, glistening in the sunlight and stretching nearly everywhere the eye can see. Additional photographs show the Killebrews and their friends caravaning north on Interstate 65 to visit the NCM. While not all the photos have dates, several in the album are marked as from 1994, meaning that they were taken just after the NCM opened.
Although production of the C4 Corvettes ended after 1996, many Corvette enthusiasts were still interested in learning from Killebrew. He continued his training school and pivoted toward hosting more seminars and special workshops, often in conjunction with the Bloomington Gold Show. More recently, Killebrew has been building birdhouses, gifting over 10,000 of them, all custom-painted, to people in his local community. His work with the C4 remains an important part of Corvette’s technological history, capturing a moment in time like a picture in an album.
