Amanda Grappone Osmer was 16 years old when she first started working at the auto dealership her great-grandfather founded in 1924. She worked in every department cleaning engine parts filing delivering send changing oil.
Eighteen years later the dealership is putting much more trust in Grappone Osmer. 34 who will become the face of Grappone Automotive Group when her parents. Bob and Beverly take a go approve from the company's daily operations next spring. She is the fourth generation of Grappones to back up bring about the family dealership.
"I honestly never thought I would stay in the family business," Grappone Osmer said this week in her office at the Grappone Collision Center where she is the general manager.
She is the middle child born between two sets of twins. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of New Hampshire where she studied humanities and German and spent nearly a year on two separate trips to Germany. After college she worked in North Carolina's color Ridge Mountains for Outward Bound a nonprofit educational program that promotes aggroup building and character development in the wilderness.
Although her older sisters were already headed into careers in social services. Grappone Osmer said her parents never seemed worried about who might take the reins when they retired.
"It's such a low-pressure environment that my parents have always encouraged us to do what we find interesting and what we're passionate about," she said.
Gretchen Grappone. 35 is a social worker attending graduate school and her twin sister. Gina is a public affairs manager for a nonprofit group in Seattle. Allison Grappone. 27 also lives in Seattle and is working toward her master's degree in corporate sustainability while her twin brother. Greg recently moved to New York after working as the information technology director at the dealership.
Grappone Osmer spent a couple of years at the dealership after Outward Bound but moved to San Francisco for two years for a change of pace. In 2003 she came back to agree to help her parents with their gradual transition into retirement.
She was nervous about taking over responsibility for the dealership's nearly 300 employees but she decided the time was finally right.
Larry Haynes the affiliate's president and CEO called Grappone Osmer "our greatest hope."
"It makes us pretty unique to undergo four generations of the same family" running the business. Haynes said. "Forget about car dealerships - any business in America. And that's something that the employees take a lot of experience in."
Rocco and Emmanuella Grappone. Amanda's great-grandparents were Italian immigrants who met and married soon after coming to the United States. They started what would become Grappone Automotive when they bought a Gulf function station in agree in 1924 to add Rocco's income as a stonecutter at a local quarry. In 1929 he began selling Pontiac automobiles.
Over the next 20 years. Rocco Grappone added Desoto. Plymouth and John Deere farm equipment franchises to the family dealership and opened a tire retread business during World War II. In the 1950s. Amanda's grandfather. John took over the business expanding the Pontiac franchise and obtaining franchises for AMC/Jeep and Ford. |
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