Bette Garber, renowned for truck photos

BETTE GARBER would be driving on a highway in her van when she would spot a truck she thought was interesting. She would pull up next to it, contact the driver on her CB and ask him (or her) to pull over.

Chances were that the driver would recognize her name and be happy and honored to pull over so this remarkable woman could photograph his truck.

She would arrive at a truck show or rally and the drivers would gather around her. "Hey, Bette, shoot my truck!" they would call out.

Chances were that they had copies of one or more of the four books she published of her photos of the big rigs that she adored.

Bette Garber, whose photos and articles appeared in numerous publications devoted to trucking in the 30 years she had been shooting and writing about the trucking industry, died Thursday of pneumonia after a staph infection. She would have been 66 today. She had lived in Chester County for 33 years, first in West Chester and lately in Thorndale.

On her Web site, Highway Images, she tried to capture her feelings about trucks.

"Something about the big metal machines grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let go," she wrote. "The fiercely independent souls who choose to drive the big rigs captured my heart, and today I count many of them as my close personal friends.

"I see trucks as objects of beauty, power and majesty. I love the sight of trucks thundering down a highway and those golden ribbons of marker lights late at night as endless processions of trucks roll towards their destinations."

She logged thousands of highway miles a year, chasing the trucks or riding with the drivers, hanging out at truck stops or attending truck shows and rallies.

To better know the truckers' experience, she attended the Bordentown Truck Driving School in New Jersey, earning her commercial driving license. Her training truck was a 1992 Peterbilt conventional 18-speed stick shift, pulling a 53-foot van trailer.

One caller to a two-hour nationwide memorial that was broadcast on Sirius Radio Friday described her as the "Annie Leibovitz of the trucking world," referring to the famous American portrait photographer.

Bette was known to do anything from strapping herself to the roof of a truck, to dangling by a rope from a highway bridge to get just the right angle on the truck she was shooting.

Her brother, Joel Friedman, said there was a saying she liked to quote: "If you got it, a truck brought it."

"She had zero ego," he said. "I don't think she ever realized how famous and respected she was. Until two months ago, she was climbing on stuff and jumping off. I think she always thought of herself as being 18.

"She was fascinated by the culture of the highway, and was famous for her encyclopedic knowledge of what she called the 'knights of the road.' She knew the drivers. She knew their life stories, their families, their frustrations and their dreams.

"She knew the trucks and photographed and wrote about the men and women who did the custom paint jobs, custom chrome, custom lights and custom interiors, from the workaday to the opulent.

"When she took their pictures and wrote their stories, she would always promise, 'I can't make you rich, but I'll make you famous.' "

Her stories and photos were published in such magazines as Overdrive, Truckers News, American Trucker, Mother Trucker News, RoadStar and Heavy Duty Trucking.

At the time of her death, she was editor-at-large for Heavy Duty Trucking Magazine.

Highway Images offers more than 50,000 photographs of working and custom trucks, most of them shot by Bette.

"When steel from the World Trade Center was hauled to a Mississippi shipyard to help build the USS New York, she was there to capture the emotions of the men and women who felt honored to make the run.

When hundreds of truckers organized a caravan to Washington, D.C., recently to protest high fuel prices, she chronicled their frustrations and determination from a behind-the-wheel point of view.

One of her more important articles was on sleep apnea and how it affects truckers, published in Heavy Duty Trucking Magazine. It led many truckers to start CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) therapy to help them combat what she called "The Sleep That Kills."

Because of her photographic skills, she also was called on to shoot celebrities like David Letterman, George Thorogood, Waylon Jennings, Hoyt Axton, and Karl Malone of the Utah Jazz who, in addition to his basketball career, owned a big rig.

Bette was born in Chicago, where she graduated from high school and went on to graduate from the University of Illinois. After a career as a fashion copywriter, she and her ex-husband founded Structure Probe Inc., a Metuchen, N.J., electron-microscopy company specializing in materials analysis.

Then in the mid-'70s she gave in to her fascination with trucks and made photographing them and writing about them her life's work.

"She touched so many lives," said Kim Grimm, a trucker and photographer whose photos also appear on Highway Images.

"We're going to have an annual memorial truck show for her in Carlinville, Ill., July 24, 25 and 26."

Besides her brother, Bette is survived by her companion, Leo Trotman, and a sister, Myra Friedman.

Joel Friedman said his sister will be cremated and her ashes placed on a highway and taken along with some truckers, so "she'll always be on the road." *