CHEYENNE — A dad who once traded a black powder rifle for a rusted Model T decades ago left his four daughters and son with a lot of memories, and a lot of antique cars and parts.
That Model T acquired in the late 1950s began a hobby and series of antique cars that over nearly 70 years kept Alex Connell, who died on May 1, 2025 — and sometimes his kids — digging into Wyoming dirt for rusted treasure.
They once scoured a national park as part of their dad’s effort to uncover car frames and find parts that would be transformed by the self-taught craftsman.
Now Connell’s legacy fills two garages and a barn on the north side of Cheyenne that contains three Packards mostly restored and nearly all the parts for an extremely rare 1907 American Underslung Roadster.
There also are scores of other parts for Packards, Model Ts and Model As.
“We had Bonhams come and look at them and they were so excited,” said Kathy Dillmon, Connell’s youngest daughter, referring to the international auction house. “We let them take a 1916 Studebaker, it wasn’t the best one.”
The price the car went for at an Arizona auction was well below the value the Bonham representative told the family it would likely bring.
Their dad left them his estimates of the value of his cars. Now the heirs are looking at a long and winding road to determine next steps in selling their dad’s passion and collection.
The remaining nearly restored cars include a 1909 Packard Limo, 1909 Packard Touring Car, and 1929 Roadster.
Connell’s children — Kim Parker, 72; Kay Irwin, 70; Kris Connell-Johns, 67; Tom Connell, 65; and Dillmon, 67 — now have the cars listed with Horseless Carriage Club of America at reduced prices.
They know that the older generation interested in antique models like these has given way to Baby Boomers more interested in Mopar muscle cars.
But they have stories to tell about family outings at Cheyenne Frontier Days parades, where they were all dressed in period clothes while riding in one of their dad’s restored machines.
Parker said both of their parents were born in Michigan, Alex Connell in Muskegon and Luann in Holland.
Connell enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after graduation from high school and was assigned to F.E. Warren Air Force Base for his technical school as a lineman.
After arriving on the base in 1952, one day her dad told his squadron’s leadership a story after mail call.
The American Underslung restored by Alex Connell. (Courtesy Connell Family) 
Alex Connell and a Minneapolis Steam Tractor. (Courtesy Connell Family) 
The Packard Limousine retains its original upholstery. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Alex Connell gets ready to trailer some more treasures. (Courtesy Connell Family)
The Story
“Daddy told his commanding officer that he got a woman in trouble in Michigan and he had to get married right away,” she said. “That was a lie.”
The family story is that Connell hopped a train “like a hobo” and went back to Muskegon to knock on the door where Luann lived.
Her mother answered on a Friday night and asked him what he was doing back in Michigan.
“I’m here to marry Lucy and we’re going to do it tomorrow,” Parker repeated her dad’s lines. “We’re going to get a train and go back to Cheyenne by Monday.”
The unsuspecting Luann, aka “Lucy,” agreed.
Her mother and grandmother helped put together a Saturday wedding and they were married. She was 17, he was 19.
The couple caught a train back to Wyoming that had them sitting up in passenger seats for 24 hours, Parker said.
When they got to Cheyenne, they walked seven blocks from the depot to an apartment he had rented for them.
Two years later, both his mother and Luann’s mother died of cancer, and Connell obtained a hardship discharge. They moved back to Michigan with 1-year-old Kim to help their families.
In Michigan, two more daughters (Kay Irwin and Kris Connell-Johns) were born. But the couple missed the West and the mountains.
They moved back to Cheyenne in 1957 and Connell joined the pipefitters’ union and became an apprentice, and then journeyman, Parker said.
Connell’s children said that their dad’s career involved several construction projects that included schools, a water plant, hospitals and a lot of work for the Air Force on missile silo construction.
Kay Irwin remembers her dad one day being contacted by an F.E. Warren Air Force Base officer to do some welding at a missile site and how a helicopter was sent to pick him up and take him out there. He returned home at the end of the day.
Luann and Alex Connell spent more than 70 years together. (Courtesy Connell Family) 
A 1909 Packard Touring Car nearly restored by Alex Connell. (Courtesy Connell Family) 
The Packard Limousine driver’s seat. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Taking their cars to the Cheyenne Frontier Days parades was something that happened during the summers. (Courtesy Connell Family)
Car Hobby Begins
Tom Connell said his dad’s love of antique cars and restoring began before he returned to Wyoming.
He had been a aficionado of black powder rifles when he learned about an old Ford someone had in Marne, Michigan.
“He traded a black powder rifle for a Model T,” he said.
Alex Connell went on to become a self-taught craftsman and expert restoring cars, graduating to Model As and more upscale Packards, American Underslung and Pierce-Arrow Motor Cars.
In an article written for the Horseless Carriage Gazette in 1983, Alex Connell described how he restored a 1910 American Underslung after a friend showed him a flexible brass tube that he found while antelope hunting next to what he thought were remnants of an old Ford.
Connell pestered the friend to take him to the location, and when he got there saw the potential for something special.
“There, in a wash, lay the entire body, fenders and hood from a 1910 American Underslung just as it had been left there during the first part of World War II,” he wrote. “I found the owner of the property and he told me how he wrote to a scrap metal dealer in Torrington and instructed him to go to the ranch … and scrap out the old cars and machinery there and buy war bonds in the name of the owner.”
Connell wrote that he began his effort to restore the car, which spanned several years of finding parts, learning to fabricate his own on a metal lathe or using wooden frames and sheet metal to fashion parts.
Over the decades, his children estimate their dad collected and restored dozens of antique cars, then traded and sold many of them.
As part of their dad’s restoration efforts, the Connell kids remember their mother finding and making period clothing for them all to wear and driving the cars in a succession of Cheyenne Frontier Days parades.
The Connell siblings hope to find a new owner for this Packard Touring Car. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily) 
Luann and Alex Connell stand outside their garage in Cheyenne. (Courtesy Connell Family) 
A Lincoln Bus sits outside the garage at Alex Connell’s home. He had hoped to restore it. (Courtesy Connell Family) 
Alex Connell had several horns for the antique cars he hoped to refurbish. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
Movie Showcase
Parker said when the movie “The Great Race” was released in 1965 starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, the local theater recruited her dad to display the American Underslung at the theater.
“It was such a great movie that the Paramount Theater downtown asked dad if they could put his main Underslung in the theater, and it was all roped off with beautiful brass poles and red velvet,” she said. “It was a beautiful showcase car.”
The Connell children grew up in a home that their parents built that came mostly from recycled materials from an Air Force base warehouse that their dad contracted to tear down.
It was part of several home showcase tours, they said.
All remember their father coming home from work and going to garage where there were metal lathes, saws, and tools for his restoration work.
There was always a project going on.
“I remember when I was, like, 10 years old, he had taken me in his truck and he was going to get this car frame out of Horse Creek that was kind of buried in the sand, and he dug and dug and couldn’t get it out,” Kay Irwin said.
“And he put a two-by-four under the frame and he had me lean over on that two-by-four and bounce on it and try it get it out of the creek bed. We finally ended up getting it,” she added.
Parker said the only real family vacation they ever took involved their dad announcing they were going to go to Yellowstone.
The family piled into a cab-over truck with a big trailer behind and instead drove to the south entrance of Grand Teton National Park.
Her dad parked the rig in the middle of a forest.
That’s when Alex Connell broke the told his family that they weren’t going to vacation in Yellowstone and instead search for a Packard body that he heard was buried in a creek somewhere in Grand Teton.
“So, we spent days and days looking for that body in a creek,” Parker said. “I was walking in the woods and I couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13, and I walked up on an elk that was fully horns.
“I backed up, he just stayed there and watched me.”
After days of no luck finding the Packard, the family went to Yellowstone to visit Old Faithful, watched it erupt, then drove to Thermopolis to go swimming, she said.
Alex Connell worked as a pipe fitter during the day and spent a lot of his hours at home in the garage. (Courtesy Connell Family) 
The Connell family in a 1915 Studebaker. (Courtesy Connell Family) 
Alex Connell first came to Wyoming while serving in the U.S. Air Force. (Courtesy Connell Family) 
The hood ornament on one of Alex Connell’s Packards. (Dale Killingbeck, Cowboy State Daily)
Restoring Pierce-Arrow
Tom Connell tells the story of his dad meeting a man in a town east of Colorado Springs who owned an old Pierce Arrow Roadster that was identical to his dad’s Packard.
The owner who was up in years told Alex Connell he bought the car when he was kid.
“He wanted to drive that some day before he died and he didn’t want to sell it,” Tom Connell said. “Right next to it was an old Lincoln Bus, and in the spur of the moment (dad) said, ‘I’ll take that car home and restore if for you in exchange for that Lincoln Bus.'”
Tom Connell said he and his dad hauled the Pierce Arrow back to Cheyenne and over a period restored it so that it was able to be driven and returned it to the Colorado owner.
That man cried when they brought it back to him.
Alex Connell got the Lincoln Bus, but never got around the restoring it. It remains on the property as an item for his children to deal with.
Dillmon said her father sold and traded his restored cars and parts with people throughout the country and Europe, and she has boxes of his correspondence about parts and other facets of his restoration expertise.
Alex Connell also got into refurbishing big, old Minneapolis Steam Tractors and took a class to learn to drive them.
The family story is that Luann Connell made him sell them because one day he drove a tractor into the house. The tractors were sold to a man in Argentina.
Working hard on his restoration efforts into his 70s, Alex Connell slowed down in the last two decades of life, but maintained his efforts in the garage for as long as he could.
Luann Connell died in January 2025, and that same month Alex Connell fell and developed a brain bleed that required surgery.
Alex Connell died May 10, 2025.
His children remain busy trying to find the right homes for his beloved antique vehicles and parts, but thankful for the memories he left behind.
“The goal is to find passionate buyers within the vintage car community who will drive, preserve, and enjoy them,” Dillmon said.
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
