These plates take artistic license

Larry DeCostes' territory is one square mile, the City of Central Falls. He drives his 2008 Smart car around the city looking for kids who are not in school. Larry is the attendance officer for the Central Falls School District for the past 10 years. In April he was the 16th person to own a Smart car in Rhode Island. He has ATTEND as a vanity plate.

When Gerard Bogossian, of Cranston, was 12, he would get excited to see his dad, Alan's, 1979 midnight blue Corvette. He would brag to his friends about how fantastic the car was and what a cool plate he had, YRUSLO. He even took the car to his high school prom. Sadly, in the 1990s the car was sold and the registration was never renewed. Recently, Jerry was in the market for a new car, and it was going to be Mustang. He had driven one 16 years earlier but didn't buy it. It was too much of a machine for him at the time, his dad said. So he bought a 2008 Mustang GT and tweaked it a bit to add to the performance. Jerry stopped by his dad's house right after registering the new Mustang to show it off, and much to his dad's surprise, YRUSLO was now on the Mustang. "Dad, we got it back," Jerry said, and the torch was passed.

Lee Pierhal and his wife, Brenda, of North Kingstown, were just out for a drive and stopped at a local Jaguar dealership "just to look," as Lee explains. But lo and behold, smack dab in the middle of the showroom floor was a very long, very black, very gorgeous 2000 Jaguar Vanden Plas, with all the proper appointments that one would get in a Vanden Plas, even the fold-down trays on the back of the front seats to read the paper on, which is what the past owner of this Jag did while being driven to the Ford Motor Co. in Michigan. While Lee and Brenda were filling out the paperwork to buy the car they remarked to the salesperson, "I wonder how much revenue this car will need to keep it on the road?" They looked at each other and said, "Gee, that would be a great plate." The dealer said REVENU was available and that was that. Brenda gets plenty of comments in Canada where she goes to visit family. In Canada a black Jaguar with a vanity plate looming in the rear view mirror means a government car, so people move over quickly.

Byron Wilcox, 18, of Wakefield, says, "I've never been a speedy worker, I take my time." An automotive student at New England Institute of Technology, where speed and accuracy are always being sought after, Byron has been into cars since the age of 8. He has owned and tinkered with BMWs and other sports cars ove" the years. Two years ago, for fun, he got the vanity plate SPDFRK, short for "speed freak," and put it on a '98 Saab 9000 CSE. It is not known as a real fast car in the sports car world.

Spero Karol, 90, of Seekonk, had the license plate MARLIN, for 30 years when he lived in Cranston. The letter combination on the plate is the shortened names of his daughters, Marilyn and Linda. Spero did not realize what a ruckus he would create with fisherman in the Ocean State, as he was constantly being asked if he would part with the MARLIN plate, as they assumed he was passionate about fishing. He was passionate about his two daughters, and still is. Spero has moved in with his daughter Marilyn and her family in Seekonk, and has a new plate, MARLN. They think a Bay State fisherman reeled in the Massachusetts MARLIN.

Beth Zibolis, of Wakefield, has had the Rhode Island license plate LUCKIE, since 2000. But the New Hampshire plate LUCKY has been in the family for decades. It all started with her dad, Edward Leconte, of Nashua, who as a boy was run over by an oil delivery truck. The doctors told the family he would never walk again, but he did and became a star high school football player, and was known to all his friends as Lucky. When Beth was 19, she received the plate LUCKY and put it on her first car, in 1969. Now her sister Lise Jamelle, of New Hampshire, has that plate, which Beth is holding in the photo, and Beth has the Rhode Island version, LUCKIE. Oh yeah, Beth’s husband, Glen, at left, just got the Rhode Island license plate LUCKEE.

For more than 40 years, Frank Pellegrino, of Cranston, has fixed things. Mostly for a large company that made mail-inserting systems, postage scales, and the like. When the equipment broke down, Frank's job was to repair it. His success as a technician was much appreciated by his customers, but less so by the sales manager of the company, Frank says. Frank had many discussions with the sales manager as to why he did not send more sales leads to the manager's desk. Frank directed the sales manager to look at his vanity plate. IFIXIT explained it all.

"Grandma asked me to e-mail you. She's 77 years young and has been a resident of Break Water Village, Point Judith, Narragansett, since 1940, and she has autographs from the service men stationed at the Point Judith lighthouse station during World War II to prove it," writes Sean Healey. Virginia "Ginny" Bateman and her family go back to the 1940s, when Rhode Islanders in the area made their summer homes from wooden frames and tenting material. Ginny is also twice widowed by WWII veterans. Her plate is PTJDTH and she has had it for a very long time, on many different cars. She says she got the plate so the New Yorkers wouldn't get it.

Diane Ribeiro, of Bristol, has had the vanity plate PIKLES since 1977. It started with the nickname given to her father, Anthony, when he was a teenager because he was tall and skinny. In the 1950s, he drove stock cars and raced under the name of "Kid Pickles." "As I got older, I inherited the nickname. At first I was known as Pickles' daughter. In 1977, I went to the registry and ordered PIKLES. Soon after I received the plates I asked my dad if I could borrow his Lincoln that he recently bought, to go to work. I attached the new plates without telling him. When I brought the car home after work that night I asked him if he had seen the car. He said, "Please don’t tell me you got in an accident with it." I just looked at him and said "Dad, please just go out and look at the car." He went outside and came back with the biggest smile on his face. I shouted, "Merry Christmas!" Anthony Ribeiro passed away in 1985, but the vanity plate can still be seen driving down the streets of Bristol on Diane's car.

Alan "Eagle" Whittaker, of Hope Valley, joined the Boy Scouts at age 12, with Troop 1 in Conimicut in Warwick. On Nov. 9, 1964, he was awarded the highest rank in scouting, the Eagle award. A few years later the state started the vanity plate program and Whittaker was able to get EAGLE as his plate and has had it for 43 years. Whittaker was also involved in scouting when he served in Vietnam in the '60s, teaching young Vietnamese Boy Scouts to tie knots and learn sign language. Through the years Whittaker has helped start local troops and attends many scouting functions. "Once you're an Eagle scout you're always involved," says Whittaker.

"Should I put on the grass skirt and hat?" asks Suzanne Piturro, of North Kingstown, while holding a stuffed parrot. Looking confused, I say, "I think the parrot and the Hawaiian shirt will work fine." Suzanne is a lifelong Jimmy Buffett fan. Piturro has been listening to Buffett since she was a kid sitting in her room with a radio tuned in to his music, so she was compelled 10 years ago to get the license plate FINSUP. "It's quite a conversation piece among Parrotheads," Piturro says. She's stopped everywhere and is often passed by cars on the highway and given the official fins-up salute. Her husband, Greg, often drives the car and was once stopped by a local police officer, who it turned out was also a Parrothead. The officer and Greg talked about a recent concert and he didn't write the ticket.

Jerry Anderson, of Block Island, is the proud owner of a 1965 Austin Mini Cooper S. The car came to the island from another island, England, in 1991. Jim Berry, a good friend of Jerry's in England, where they were both living at the time, owned the car and traded it to Jerry for two weeks' vacation at Jerry's Block Island home. The car has been on the island ever since, except when it's at Kane Motorcars in North Kingstown, for repairs. Jerry had Kane's cut the top off and extensive body work will be done to make it look good again. Jerry says he drives it about 200 miles a year - and on a 10-square-mile island, that's quite a bit of driving. Jerry's wife, Priscilla, named the car VRROOM.

Russell L'Esperance, of North Smithfield, was looking for a job back in the 1980s, when a friend of his father's found him a position with a local company, making deliveries. The deliveries were of explosives to construction sites for blowing up ledge rock. Russell worked his way up the ranks and now has other people deliver the nitro-based dynamite to him at the job site where he gets to make things to go "boom!" His largest job was to blow up a quarry in Richmond. It took 35,000 pounds of explosives. "That was big," says L'Esperance. So what better plate to get than XPLODE for his car and NITRO for his Harley-Davidson.

Bonnie Gray, of West Warwick, is a retired elementary school teacher who moved from Connecticut to Rhode Island in 2006. While she lived in Connecticut, her vanity plate was AEIOUY and her husband, Don, had the plate AEIOU. Bonnie says the plate helped her while teaching phonics to her second graders. "The kids were always commenting on my plate," she said, with one small student saying, "Mrs. Gray's car had a vowel movement." When they moved to Rhode Island, they were thrilled to find both plates available and they got them. They have great fun on the road when kids notice the plates and recognize the meaning of the tags.

Her real name was Bonnie, but as a pup she was always walking around with a bone in her mouth, so Kevin Higgins, of Pawtucket, started calling her "Bones," which soon became "Bonesy." Bonesy spent the next 17 years with the Higgins family not just as a faithful companion, but as the best bird dog Kevin ever saw. One Christmas, Kevin's kids decided to give their dad a tire cover for his Jeep and he decided to make it a tribute to Bonesy, with a portrait of the dog and a vanity plate, BONESY.

Rafael Guevarez had just sold his home and wrapped up his affairs in Puerto Rico, and came back to Pawtucket with the intention of returning to his long-haul trucking job and his five children. It all ended tragically four weeks later on his first job, on Feb. 26, 2007, in Westport, Mass., in an accident that took his life. Rafael Guevarez Jr., his 21-year-old son, above, was devastated. "It is very important to try and keep him alive in our hearts," said Guevarez. To honor him, he decided to get a license plate, RIPDAD.

Jennifer Givan, of West Warwick, loves her VW as much as her vanity plate, MYVDUB. Jennifer and her husband, Curtis, were searching for a car on Craigslist recently and found this white VW Cabriolet. They loved it and bought it. After getting it home and doing some research on the car, they realized they had a Wolfsburg Edition, which is a more desirable model and worth more money. Curtis thought they should have a vanity plate for their new fun car and after a while they came up with MYVDUB. Jennifer drives with the top down whenever the weather is nice, even in the winter.

Dennene Olivier, of Warwick, is proud of her plate, TOES. It belonged to her mom, Jean, who was nicknamed "Toes," because she liked to dance. Her mom ordered it in 1966 when the state started to offer vanity plates. Over the years, The Providence Journal has published articles about vanity plates, and TOES has been in the paper several times. "At one time a podiatrist offered my mom money for the plates. She said, 'No way.' Six years ago my mom became terminally ill, and one important issue was the plate. It meant a lot to her, so she left it to me. So now people are calling me Toes, and someone asked if I was a belly dancer. I said, 'No, just Toes!' "

Mary M. Morse, of Hope, is proud of her plate, MCUBED. Morse teaches math at Ponaganset Middle School. Her students think she's the consummate math geek and they get a laugh out of the plate. "My 15-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, often asks why I spend money on these plates when I am so frugal with everything else. I tell her that I deserve one indulgence and the smiles make it worth it."

Lynne Michael-Diamante, of Cranston, a former Miss Rhode Island and Miss Teen USA, loves cars, fast cars. Lynne learned about cars from her two brothers, who told her about the importance of changing your own oil and tires. The family had a produce business and there were always lots of trucks coming and going. "I've always worked on my own cars," she says, and her friends have given her two nicknames, "Danica" (after racer Danica Patrick) and "Gear Head." Lynne is on her eighth Corvette, a 2006 C6 with a stick, that is velocity yellow, like a bumblebee. When Lynne runs into friends they always ask her how Bumble's doing, like it's part of the family. So it was off to the registry for the plate BUMBLE.

Ray Dauplaise, of West Greenwich, has had GWINRU for 10 years. It is the result of a trip to western France in 1995. "Gwin ru" is Breton for red wine. Ray learned this from a Breton when he learned of his fondness for the beverage. "Although I only spoke passable French, he wanted to teach me some Breton, the language they spoke in this part of France when it was part of the British empire. I told them it would make a great name for a boat, because I knew that Rhode Islanders went to great pains to have original names for their boats, especially a name that would drive other boat owners nuts." Not being a boat owner, Ray thought it would make a funny license plate and it has generated plenty of questions.

Wayne Russell, of Warwick, drives a 2005 Chrysler 300 Hemi and loves it. From the first time Wayne saw a picture of the new Chrysler, he knew he had to have one. "It reminded me of the old-style gangster cars with the low roof and curves." So he went out and got the vanity plate GNGSTA. "I'll tell you it gets a lot of laughs with the R.I. plates when I'm traveling."

Beth Bruneau, of Cranston, got her first vanity plate, BLAZEN, in 1988, on a 1988 Chevy Blazer. After a few years, she sold the Blazer and bought a Toyota Tercel and BLAZEN just did not fit the car, Bruneau says. “It was a big decision, but I decided to turn BLAZEN in.” Eleven years later, she bought a 2003 Z28 Camaro, took a chance and checked with the DMV to see if the plate was still available, and it was. Bruneau filled out the paperwork and the plate has adorned her Camaro for four years. “A fast name for a fast car,” she says. Beth also has a Harley Sportster with the plate BLAZN to match.

Gloria Taylor, 81, of East Greenwich, bought her first car in 1970 when she was 42. She was a late learner and needed to get to work, so she bought a blue Chevy and slapped the vanity plate "MAHALO" on it, meaning "thank you" in Hawaiian, and has kept it ever since. The plate story starts when the family took a vacation to Hawaii in 1969 and she fell in love with the islands, the people and the laid-back lifestyle. The islands inspired her to return every 10 years. Years ago when she drove more often, people would honk and wave after seeing the plate. College kids would give her the Hawaiian wave, with their thumb and pinky finger extended, rocking back and forth, which means, "hang loose". Once, while driving, a man passed her, tooted his horn and waved. She looked at the rear of his car and noticed he had a USS Arizona Survivor Pearl Harbor sticker on the trunk. It made her smile. That moment has always stayed with Gloria. She loves her plate.