women have done well in the car business for decades no comments
by The 95-year-old matriarch of the Heller family, (1919-2006), resisted pressure to sell the family’s Ford dealership after her husband’s death in a plane crash in 1959. I wanted to share her story as she is a great woman with the drive and spirit to navigate her car dealership through rough waters.
Born Helen Maxine Hill on Dec. 18, 1910, in Waitsburg, Wash., she was the middle of five children. Helen shared her early life with two brothers and two sisters, working with the parents of Scottish and English descent in the family’s bakery businesses in Minnesota, Iowa, Washington and Long Beach, Calif.
On Sept. 17, 1933, Helen Maxine Hill married Homer Miller Heller in a family ceremony at her parents’ Long Beach home. The couple met in junior high school in Long Beach and also attended Cal Poly High School there. They shared a Dec. 18 birth date, two years apart. The late Mr. Heller, born in Halsey, Neb., in 1908, had moved to the city from Grand Junction, Colo., after the 1923 death of his 54-year old father, Andrew Jackson Heller.
Homer Heller, 14, and his older brother John, 18, hitch-hiked to Long Beach in November 1923 to be with relatives and take jobs so they could send for their mother and two sisters, who arrived from Colorado by train the following February. And older brother followed later.
In 1940, the Heller’s and their two young children moved from Long Beach to Escondido as new owner-partners of the local Ford automobile dealership. The following year, due to a partner’s illness, they became sole proprietors, just 11 months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The name of the business was Homer Heller Ford.
Mrs. Heller proved her abilities as a business leader after her husband died in a November 1959 private airplane crash. She was 49-years-old and struggled to hold onto her family automobile business. Ford Motor Company did not “view” women as business owners in the ’50s. At that time, she was perhaps the only woman in the world to be granted a franchise by the Ford Motor Co. About that experience, Mrs. Heller said: “I was dealing with my husband’s death and trying to qualify for a Ford franchise as a woman in a man’s world. I asked my son Don (19 at the time) if he was interested in learning the business. With his ‘yes’ I said, ‘OK, I’ll fight for it.’ “Ten years later, Don Heller became general manager of the family business and today Don’s son, D.J. Heller manages the 65-year-old firm now named Heller Auto Group.
Today’s North County Transit District system is traced to the Heller family. During the World War II years, Homer and Helen Heller applied to the state and were granted a permit to operate a bus line between Escondido, Vista and Oceanside. It was inaugurated by using a station wagon — and later a bus — to transport both passengers and Ford parts to and from the Santa Fe Railroad Station in Oceanside. They later sold the permit and that bus line became today’s NCTD.
Noted for her community and business accomplishments, Helen Heller was one of 10 women honored at the 2001 annual “Women of Merit” luncheon, sponsored by the North County Times newspaper. She was a sponsor and founder of California Center for the Arts, Escondido, and was a charter member of Escondido’s PEO Chapter B, a philanthropic and educational organization.
The Heller Auto Group is located in Escondido, California, and continues to be owned and operated by Heller family members.
http://www.blogher.com/helen-heller-woman-car-dealer-saint-and-my-new-hero
