The Tulsa World published a follow-up to the merger Jan. 5 of the National Historic Route 66 Federation and the Route 66 Alliance into the U.S. 66 Highway Association.
And look who was in a video made by the newspaper — the grandson of Cyrus Avery, who helped found the U.S. 66 Highway Association in 1927. The video, which auto-plays, is below the jump:
Michael Wallis, one of the co-founders of the Alliance, implied that an all-encompassing 66 association was needed since the Mother Road began to revive itself.
“One thing that’s happened clearly in this renaissance period is we’ve had a lot of factions at odds with each other,” Wallis said. “It’s not been epidemic or it’s not been so negative that it’s stopped the revival. You have one state saying it’s concerned with the road in their state.
“What the old-timers knew, what Avery knew, what those people in the association knew so well is that what’s good for Cuba, Missouri, is good for Sapulpa, Oklahoma, is good for Tucumcari, New Mexico. So they worked together and the road became what I often call is this seamless linear village … That’s starting to happen.”
The U.S. 66 Highway Association will be headquartered in Tulsa, and the main officers of the Federation and Alliance will continue to have a voice in the new organization.
(Image of the gate at the Cyrus Avery Memorial Bridge in Tulsa by JT via Flickr)