Kelley: the pilot who became a Dodge dealer in ninety days

1952 — present

The founding: Jim Kelley was born in 1918 and raised on the family farm in the Depression, one of nine children, and he credited his work ethic to those years for the rest of his life. Off the farm he earned a pilot's license and co-founded Kelley Flying Service with Lester Myers. Among his airplane-service customers was an Indianapolis Dodge dealer, who told him he really ought to be a car dealer. Jim's own account of what followed is the founding document of the Kelley Automotive Group: "I didn't know a darn thing about selling cars, but 90 days later, I was a Dodge dealer." The date the group has always kept is 21 August 1952 — kept the more easily because it was also the day Jim's son Tom was born.

The second generation: The Dodge store of 1952 was joined in time by a Buick franchise — the record does not fix the year, and prints the course as it can be documented: by 1974 the group had Jim Kelley Buick, and that is where the second generation starts. Tom Kelley grew up at the new-car shows — "sometimes I'd be the only kid there, but I loved it" — and joined the company in 1974 straight out of Indiana University, as a salesman at Jim Kelley Buick. He worked in all areas of the dealership for seven years, became general manager in 1981, and in November 1983 purchased the Buick dealership from his father and changed its name to Tom Kelley Buick, the transaction he describes as the fulfillment of a dream. Father and son then ran as partners, the founder's rules still audible in the son's telling: "If you were a customer, you became a friend of Jim Kelley, and if you were a friend, you became a customer." And the advice Tom quotes from him still: "Never short anyone, be honest, and if you do and have the right attitude, you will turn out ok."

The growth: From the one store of 1952 the group grew to nine dealerships in Fort Wayne and Decatur offering fourteen brands — Buick, GMC, Chevrolet, Cadillac, Ford, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, BMW, Volvo, MINI and Jaguar Land Rover among them. Kelley Chevrolet stands at 5220 Value Drive and Tom Kelley Buick GMC at 555 Grand National Drive, and the group has been developing fifty-five acres on Fort Wayne's southwest side off Interstate 69 at State Road 14. The Decatur store, Tom Kelley Chevrolet at 1313 S. 13th St., carries the founding story in its own telling: founded by Jim Kelley on the same day as the birth of his son Tom, 21 August 1952.

The standing: The group marked its seventieth anniversary in 2022. In January 2023 Tom Kelley stood among the forty-eight nominees for the TIME Dealer of the Year award, honored at the National Automobile Dealers Association show in Dallas — the trade's own measure of a dealer of his generation. His civic founding matches the commercial one: he helped establish the Boys & Girls Clubs of Fort Wayne in 1989 and remains on its board. The closing line the leg's rules call for is the group's own: a house founded in Fort Wayne on 21 August 1952 by a pilot who knew nothing about selling cars, run today by the son who was born that day, still family-owned in its eighth decade.

Sources:

1. Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center, Kelley Automotive History (the flying service, the ninety days, the 1974–1983 course).
2. Business People, "Cars and Core Values" (the first dealership in Fort Wayne, 21 August 1952; the nine stores and fourteen brands; the fifty-five acres).
3. Tom Kelley Chevrolet Decatur, the house's own history page.
4. WOWO/US 93.3 report, 6 January 2023 (the TIME Dealer of the Year nomination; the Boys & Girls Clubs founding).