Personality profile: Linda Hans says goodbye to Cal Hans Ford dealership after 60 years
LOUDONVILLE ‒ For Linda Hans, the change is bittersweet.
Hans has left the Cal Hans Ford dealership where she had worked for nearly 60 years. Bill Harris Auto recently purchased the Ford dealership at 506 E. Washington St., off state Route 3.
“This building, this place, this job has been home for me for 60 years,” she said in a recent interview. “In this job, I have been a part in the sale of an estimated 7,000 vehicles since I started in the mid-1960s, over 400 cars some years. I have done just about everything there is to do in a dealership. I always wanted to sell cars, and I ended up doing a little of that, along with everything else.”
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Linda Messner meets Cal Hans
The former Linda Messner, daughter of Charlie and Rosella Messner of rural Loudonville, began her involvement with future husband Cal Hans when she was 14. She was eighth grader and he was a freshman at Loudonville High School.
“At first, my parents wouldn’t let us date, but we hung around in school as much as we could,” she remembered. “We were married after I graduated from high school in 1959. Cal graduated the year before.”
After their son Kevin was born, Linda starting to work at the dealership, then McClure Motors.
Cal started working at McClure’s before finishing school, starting out by sweeping floors and washing cars, but not long after he was selling cars. He became a partner in McClure Motors in 1977 and took over the dealership, renaming it Cal Hans Ford, in 1985. He died unexpectedly in 1997.
Son Kevin had joined the dealership as a salesman. He and his mother have run it ever since Cal’s death.
About nine months ago, Linda said, “we started negotiating with the Bill Harris dealership, and they should have totally taken it over by the end of November. I am very happy with them. They are a family-oriented business just like us. That helps. It is wonderful to like the people that bought it.”
The 1956 Ford Thunderbird in the showroom
A long-time symbol of both Ford and the Hans family was the vintage 1956 Ford Thunderbird Linda Hans displayed in the dealership showroom for over 20 years.
“That car, a classic, was Cal’s pride and joy, and over those 20 years we had dozens of offers for it,” Hans said. “Finally, two years ago, a couple from West Virginia came in and the wife, whose name was Rosemary, same as my sister’s, fell in love with it. We came up with an acceptable price, and they bought it. He took it back to West Virginia in an enclosed trailer and told us he was going to build a garage for it.”
“Loyalty, from both customers and employees, are another very rewarding part of our time here,” she said. “I was on a first-name basis with hundreds of customers, here both to buy cars or get them serviced. And we had some fantastic employees, like Ken Ernsberger, who worked here until the day he retired, and my secretary, Deborah Jenkins, who has remained here with me while knowing that my time here was short. She’s been here 10 years, and told me she would never leave me. All in all, people have been very nice to me.”
The last three years, since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, “have been awful,” she said. “Supply chain issues, particularly difficulty getting computer chips required in new cars, made it almost impossible for us to get new cars.”
Hans said her son “will continue to work with the dealership for a while.”
Hans has lived on Hoffman Road in Loudonville since the mid-1960s. Her first priority in retirement is “doing things with the house that I haven’t had time to do because I was always working here.”
“I’ve come to work almost every day for so long, I’m not sure how I will cope not doing so,” she said, flashing a bittersweet smile.
This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Linda Hans retires from Cal Hans Ford after sale to Bill Harris Aulto
