Two crashes, decades apart, changed Richards’s painting work
Kaieteur News reports that a 1977 crash injured Neville Richards’s arm but did not stop him painting cars. A more severe 2019 leg injury left him wheelchair-bound; after his remaining source of painting jobs died in 2025, Marcia Girard commissioned a Fielder Wagon restoration that took two weeks.
)
Kaieteur News reports that two road accidents had sharply different effects on Neville Richards’s work as an automotive painter. In 1977, a crash killed his reputed wife and severely injured his right arm, leaving him to raise their three daughters. Doctors put steel in the arm, but Richards continued painting cars. In 2019, a truck reportedly struck him as he crossed a road, injuring his right leg. After the injury left him unable to walk and wheelchair-bound, he struggled to find work.
The publication says clients stopped hiring Richards after the 2019 accident, with George Union the exception. Union died in 2025, after which Richards no longer had painting jobs and relied on his pension and help from his daughters. Marcia Girard then commissioned him to restore her Fielder Wagon. Kaieteur News reports the job took two weeks and that Girard promised to promote his business. Richards’s youngest daughter, Kim, helped with the work and returned to spray painting; he said he pays her.
)
)
)