A 1986 359-Peterbilt truck — sold long ago to a Leamington trucker — was recently used to honour its original owner and carry her ashes back home to Tweed, Ontario.
Leamington’s Brooks Cook purchased the truck around 2009 from another Leamington-based trucker, Bob Sherman.
Sherman was the third owner of the rig. It had originally been owned by a female trucker who went by Kittyhawk (CB handle) and had the entire thing painted pink.
When Cook became the fourth owner, he had plans to restore the truck to its former glory. He and his son Ryan, who was apprenticing to be a mechanic, worked on it when they could, before friend Ron Platsko eventually put them in touch with a restoration company in Kitchener.
The truck spent three-and-a-half years there before it was finished, with Brooks and Ryan travelling all across North America in search of parts to fit the rare vehicle.
“It really was a one-of-a-kind truck,” he said. “We made many trips to junkyards, after-market places, you name it.”
When they finally picked the truck up in Kitchener, a reporter from a trucking magazine was present and told them about a story they’d done back in 1986 on the original owner, Teresa “Kittyhawk” Wheatman and her pink truck. It turns out she had quite a following.
“I took a lot of ribbing from everyone here who said we’d never finish it,” says Cook. “It felt good once it was done.”
After sitting idle for four years, he decided to put the truck on the road for a truck show in Clifford, Ontario, just south of Hanover, in 2023.
“When I drove in, I had a steady stream of people come up to the truck,” he says. “Most of them told stories about knowing the original owner and there was a reporter there who did a video interview that made it to YouTube.”
Brooks said he spent the day talking about the truck and most felt that Wheatman had passed away years before.
Then, last August (2024), he got a phone call. It was Teresa, the original owner on the other end of the phone.
“I thought maybe it was fraud or something, but the more she talked, the more I realized that she was the lady,” he said.
Teresa told Cook that she was in the final stages of ovarian cancer and she’d been looking for the truck for some time. She had sold the truck in the late 1980s and was hoping it was still around somewhere.
“She was travelling with her son and having a conversation about the truck,” he said. “She decided to Google 359 Pete Kittyhawk and up came the video from the truck show.”
She spent the next few weeks tracking down Brooks Cook and once they connected on the phone, they talked about the truck and Teresa sent him a care package which included quite a few items from the original truck, including the personalized plates.
She told him of plans for a live wake on December 15 at the Legion in Tweed, Ontario (near Belleville) and while Teresa could not attend (she was in palliative care in Alberta), Brooks and his wife Kim made the trip to Tweed in the truck — now painted pink and black with a touch of gold.
“Kim and I sat down and talked to her via Zoom,” he said. “Then she asked if I would go get her ashes and bring them back to Ontario with the truck when her time came.”
Cook says he gave it a lot of thought and through discussions with Teresa, they decided they could have the ashes shipped to Reid Funeral Home in Leamington and Brooks would then transport her urn to her sons in Tweed.
Teresa passed away on December 28, 2024 and Cook picked up her son Jordan in late January and brought him to Leamington to accompany his mother’s remains back to Tweed. It would be Jordan’s first time in a big rig.
They had a box built for the back of the truck that would hold and display the urn.
“It was a nice box with glass so everyone could see it as it was rolling down the 401,” says Cook.
When her son arrived, he was concerned about her urn being bounced around on the back of the truck, so Cook contacted Reid Funeral Home again and they fixed him up with an extra urn to put on the back, while Teresa’s actual urn — a bright pink heart adorned with a diamond — rode in the cab.
Above the box on the back of the truck, it said, “Her final request. One last ride in her pink Peterbilt. Kittyhawk Teresa (Prato) Wheatman. May 8, 1958-December 28, 2024. Rest in Peace.”
“Her son held on to that urn all the way from Leamington to Belleville,” said Cook. “She was always on the seat and never touched the floor.”
Cook says it gave him a special feeling to transport Teresa’s ashes with the truck that started out in her hands and he held Teresa in high regard, although he never met her in person.
“She had a very colourful history,” he said. “Back in those days, they (truckers) were absolute outlaws.”
In the end, a promise was made and a promise was kept — and that’s something that Brooks Cook should be proud of.
Photo submitted
Photo submitted
