In 1946 a WWII
veteran named Bill Clay placed this want ad in the Chesterton Tribune
classifieds: “Any old car, just so it runs and has four tires. A war veteran
needs this car badly.”
A year later
another vet, Jim Marshall, hoped his Tribune want ad would solve the
same problem, only more economically: “Needs ride to Gary for the 4-12
shift.”
In ‘46 and ‘47 this
sort of classified was running in every newspaper in the country, a sign of
Americans’ clamoring demand for mobility, which was as much a precondition
of postwar prosperity as it was a product of it. Veterans needed to get to
their jobs in the demilitarized factories and emerging industries. And flush
with their wages they could afford to buy a brand-new automobile that would
get them to work in style. Get them, too, to their brand-new ranches and
split-levels in suburbia.
Here in Chesterton
the demand for mobility was met by a small cadre of dealers who were as
hungry to sell as the commuters were to buy, for on Jan. 1, 1942, the Office
of Production Management had frozen all civilian auto sales for the
duration. Wouldn’t have mattered a bit if OPM hadn’t, though, as on Feb. 22,
1942, the automakers stopped making autos altogether and started making
trucks, jeeps, tanks, and planes.
One of the dealers
in town, Harry Smith, had had the Buick franchise for a generation, since
1911, when he and his father, Myron, started selling Model 10s and 32s by
mail order out of their general store, M. Smith & Son, at 101 Broadway (the
Antiques 101 that was).
At a time when many
in Duneland still swore by the buggy whip, Myron and Harry were pioneers,
which is fitting really, as Harry had married Anna, the granddaughter of
Jesse Morgan, one of the first settlers of Westchester Township, and in
doing so had united two families whose entrepreneurship and salesmanship did
much to make Chesterton’s economy a going concern in the early years.
This isn’t their
story, though. It’s the story of the one who came later and did his bit for
the family, after the business-building was done, who had a chance to shake
the dust of this little town off his feet but instead planted them firmly in
his native soil.
Tom Smith
Ask a man who’s
worked all his life what he’s done with his life.
Ask Tom
Smith--Harry’s grandson, Myron’s great-grandson--who on the day after
Thanksgiving retired from Connors Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram, with 50 years of
car-selling under his belt.
Were he less
afflicted by modesty, Tom might say this: I sold people freedom of
movement, which is freedom.
What he does say is
this: “I fulfilled a need,” Tom says. “People need transportation. I sold
people what they have to have and I sold a product I believe in.”
Yet it wasn’t
perfectly clear to Tom, when he graduated CHS and went off to Franklin
College, that he was going to follow his father, Harry’s son Dick, into the
family business. It wasn’t even clear, when he was done with his schooling,
that he was going to return to Chesterton.
Smith Motors
In 1947--the same
year Jim Marshall put a want ad in the Tribune seeking a regular ride
to the mill in Gary--Harry and Dick started Smith Motors at South Calumet
and East Porter Ave., where Hopkins Small Engines is now. By that time the
Smiths were selling Pontiacs and Chevrolets as well as Buicks and business
was good. Duneland’s population was growing, new subdivisions like South
Park Acres and Indian Trails were coming on line and being populated by
young couples for whom a big part of the American Dream was Detroit Steel,
and the Smiths had a showroom of drop-dead gorgeous land boats to choose
from.
Tom’s interests,
however, didn’t immediately run to commerce. The Fifties, after all, were
the golden age not only of tail fins but of AM radio, and Tom was something
of a tinkerer.
“I built a radio
transmitter in high school, plugged it into the telephone line, and
broadcast to the neighbors,” he says. Who probably made a point of tuning
in. Because if you know Tom to talk to him, you’ve been soothed and moved by
that velvet voice of his.
In 1961--the same
year Harry died--Tom graduated from CHS and went to Franklin College, where
he parlayed that voice into a show on the campus radio station and then into
one on a local commercial station. In November 1964, WAKE 1500 AM went on
the air in Valparaiso and Tom snagged himself a real gig there.
“I was the first
one they hired,” he remembers. Tom played “middle-of-the-road” stuff, as he
calls it now, “soft rock”: the Beatles, Herman’s Hermits, Barbra Streisand,
Andy Williams.
For a year and a
half Tom spun the discs and was happy. Then in May 1966 an opportunity came
his way, maybe the opportunity. “It was a fork in the road for me,”
he says. “A friend of dad had a station in Indianapolis, WXLW. He found out
through my dad I was working in radio and he wanted me to come to
Indianapolis and work for him. He wanted me to work for him in the worst
way. I was young. I was 21.”
And Tom had his
whole life in front of him.
In the end he lived
it here. “To make a long story short I decided to join my dad in the
dealership. He needed help.”
Connors
Regrets?
Tom denies having
any. In any case, there was no better time in the history of the automobile
to be selling cars than in the late Sixties and early Seventies. “The GTOs,
the Firebirds, the Trans Ams. That was a great era in the car business. We
had a lot of fun with that stuff.”
Tom’s favorite
personal rides?
A 1970 GTO Judge:
“In orange.” And a ‘69 Grand Prix: “with that boat-tail look to it.” (“The
styling of those cars was fantastic,” Tom says. “John DeLorean was the
engineer who styled GTOs. He was a little ahead of his time.”)
For 10 years Tom
sold cars. In 1970 he made vice-president, only 27 and VP with a GTO in the
driveway. Then, in 1975, his father retired and sold Smith Motors to Jack
Connors. Jack was a superb businessman in his own right. He’d built the
Crossroads Truck Stop in Lake Station from scratch, then sold it to Phillips
Petroleum, and Jack had cash to spend. “He got interested in Smith Motors,”
Tom says. “And he talked me into staying with him. ‘You know everybody in
town,’ Jack said. And that’s the way it went.”
That is the
way it went, for the next 40 years. Tom sold cars--two or three a week, 10 a
month, 120 a year, year in, year out, figure 8,000 when all was said and
done. And Jack always treated him well, Tom says. Later his children did
too--Jack Jr., Tim, Kathy, Chris, and Mike--when Jack died in 2001 and they
started running the business themselves. Tom and Clan Connors have this in
common, to be sure: they were their fathers’ sons and daughters, they all
felt the gravitational pull of the family business, and they all chose to
stay close to home.
“Connors is one of
the greatest places to work,” Tom says, “with a real family atmosphere and
caring of their employees and all customers. You can see why our sales have
been through the roof year after year.”
Salesmanship
Yet for Tom the job
was never about--never just about--sales. “The true satisfaction is helping
someone,” he says. “The Connors family understands that. That’s why there’s
no pressure on the customers. Jack always wanted people to enjoy the process
of getting something new without a lot of hype and pressure. If you treat
people right, they appreciate it. If you exceed their expectations, you’re
doing your job right.”
Eventually Tom
found his own role evolving, as he began selling to repeat customers and
then to their children and then to their children’s children. He became a
small rock of constancy in the rushing stream of time, a minor tradition in
scores of households around Duneland, a provider of milestones. “After a
certain number of years the bulk of your business is repeats and referrals,”
Tom says. “That’s what good salesmen hope for: recommendations and the same
people coming back.”
“In later years I
found myself becoming a counselor to a lot of people coming in,” he adds. “I
would hear about their finances, their family situation. Customers felt
comfortable opening up to me. And I of course kept it confidential,
absolutely confidential. The fact is, every day is different. You learn from
everybody you talk to, steelworkers, engineers, teachers, all walks of
life.”
Tom doesn’t dwell
on that fork in the road, half a century ago. It was someone else’s fork,
who hadn’t built himself a life and a legacy. “I’ve got no regrets,” Tom
says.
“It’s been a good
life, living in this outstanding community we have. We all know what
Chesterton is, what a good place it is to raise a family. I was fortunate to
have raised my own here: my eldest son Brendan and his children, Ian,
Marissa, Gillian, and Blaire, and my youngest son Mark.”
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