The business of car sales has impacted the Shepherd family for generations, with current owner David Shepherd’s father, grandfather and great-uncle each being involved in the business.

But that heritage will change in the upcoming weeks as Shepherd completes the sale of the Shepherd Team Auto Plaza in Fort Scott to the Briggs Auto Group and begins a different stage in his own life.

“I’m looking forward to really being able to move on to the next chapter,” Shepherd said.

Shepherd’s father bought the Fort Scott Ford dealership in 1952 when there were 13 car dealerships in the community. But that number decreased as the business changed over the years with consolidation and the addition of internet sales.

Shepherd said he first started helping his father’s business as a 10-year-old washing and cleaning the vehicles there.

After going through the Fort Scott education system and attending McPherson College, Shepherd turned down the opportunity to join the Peace Corps as well as an offer from the Ford Motor Company in order to stay closer to home and a woman he met at college, a decision he does not regret now after 43 years of marriage. Shepherd worked at a dealership in McPherson for a year before returning to Fort Scott in 1972, the same year he married his wife.

“My father was very happy when I came back,” Shepherd said of that move, which also allowed him to again work in the family business.

Working as a sales person and then a sales manager, Shepherd continued to learn about the business as he trained to become his father’s successor.

“As time went by I was given more and more responsibility,” Shepherd said, saying he was even given the task of improving the sales of certain areas of the dealership as it continued to expand to include other manufacturers’ vehicles.

Shepherd eventually took over the business from his father, having now run it for about the past 30 years. Shepherd’s father continued to visit the business however until Alzheimer’s prevented those visits.

In 1981 the dealership added Buick, GMC and Pontiac vehicles to those already on sale, including Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Dodge, Chrysler and Plymouth. In 1988, they added Chrysler and also became one of just two dealerships in the country that year that were asked to add Toyota vehicles to their dealership.

“That was a big year for us,” Shepherd said. “We felt real honored.”

While the dealership continued to expand to include four manufacturers and employ about 50 employees, Shepherd said he never found the one employee that could be his successor. His two sons never showed an interest in the business and Shepherd said he never pressured them to follow his own profession.

“It takes a special kind of person to be a dealer in a small city,” Shepherd said, saying he has had great employees but none that were the perfect fit.

After searching for that right person for the past seven or eight years, Shepherd said a combination of his age, time in the business, no growth in the dealership and tiring of working six days a week for 43 years led him to the decision to sell the company.

After beginning the process before Christmas of last year, Shepherd said he came to an agreement with dealership owner Russell Briggs, who started in auto repair 40 years ago and currently owns nine other dealerships in Kansas. With the months-long process finally reaching an end, the dealership will switch hands within the next two to six weeks.

“He’s a hard worker and has been very successful,” Shepherd said of Briggs, who he said is known for taking good care of his customers and employees and having a high volume of vehicles. “I think that’ll be very good for the people in this area…We’re leaving the store in good hands, I believe.”

Despite selling that dealership, Shepherd said he will continue to own Bourbon County Cars, but looks forward to having more time available to be a part of the community through programs such as Circles and the Fort Scott Area Community Foundation.

“I don’t really think of myself as retiring,” Shepherd said, but doing something different.

Shepherd said the same employees will continue to work at the dealership and it will continue to service vehicles purchased there while it was Shepherd’s.

Since announcing the sale, Shepherd says he has heard from customers and friends who congratulated him but also said they were sorry he was selling.

“We appreciate greatly their support,” Shepherd said of those customers, saying because of them and his employees the dealership lasted 63 years instead of the average 10 years and sold about 100,000 vehicles.

The Gordon Parks Museum used the weekly Chamber Coffee gathering as an opportunity to share information about this weekend’s 12^th Annual Gordon Parks Celebration events with local business representatives Thursday morning.

“I think this is one of Fort Scott’s hidden gems,” USD 234 business manager and Chamber Coffee moderator Gina Shelton said of the museum and the annual celebration.

Museum Executive Director Jill Warford described new exhibits and books the museum has to offer this year, including an exhibit featuring an interactive children’s area as well as one highlighting African American ancestry in Fort Scott.

“It’s about [Parks’] heritage and history,” Warford said of the new exhibit, which portrays segregation in Fort Scott including in schools, parks, pools and churches and also features early African American doctors, businessmen and law enforcement in the community.

Members of the community are invited to see the museum located at Fort Scott Community College during the weekend’s celebration event, which also includes tours of Fort Scott, a jazz concert Friday evening, reading of Parks’ narrative “Back to Fort Scott” and other events throughout the weekend.

Already county elementary students were able to participate in a poetry contest Wednesday evening.

“We have a lot of things going on this weekend,” Warford said, saying it is available to anyone and is a good opportunity for people to meet others in the community they might not meet otherwise.

Other announcements from local businesses and organizations included:

• The Forks and Corks: Taste of Fort Scott event still has spaces open for food vendors who would like to participate. People are also still able to enter their salsa into the salsa contest. Live and silent auctions will also be held during the Nov. 7 event at Memorial Hall. Tickets are available for $20 or $25 at the door.
• The Beacon organization in Fort Scott will again provide the opportunity for people to “adopt” a low income family from the area, purchasing Christmas gifts for the elementary-aged children. It will be made available the week before Thanksgiving.
• Fort Scott Community College will be holding their homecoming event Saturday during the halftime of their football game against Independence at Frary Field. A tailgating event will provide free hot dogs and snacks starting at 11 a.m.
• Members of the Young Professionals League of Bourbon County are encouraged to visit Fort Wise pumpkin patch, located six miles west of Fort Scott on Highway 54, with their families Sunday afternoon, 4-6 p.m.
• New Wave Broadband will soon begin putting up a new tower near the Fort Scott Lake, which will help them provide better broadband and internet services to residents in that area.
• The Halloween Parade will make its way through downtown Fort Scott Saturday morning beginning at 11 a.m. Other activities such as face-painting and photos at Walgreens will begin at about 10 a.m. while the Buck Run Community Center will hold a pumpkin carving contest earlier that morning.
• A workshop sponsored by Union State Bank will be held Friday, Oct. 30, at the Empress Event Center, 9-11 a.m., with guest speaker Marc Willson sharing information for businesses concerning areas such as customer service and the use of social media.
• Fort Scott Family Dental will be offering continuing education classes over the next couple months as well as offer six-month smiles, braces that work more quickly in less severe cases.

The Fort Scott City Commissioners presented a framed certificate to City Attorney Bob Farmer for his 40 years of service to the community during their final October meeting Tuesday evening.

“Thank you, Bob, for all you’ve done,” mayor Cindy Bartelsmeyer said.

The commission also approved New Wave Broadband’s tower to be built near the lake, on property leased to the Kansas Parks and Wildlife, in order to provide internet coverage to that area.

Commissioner Jim Adams said he has heard from residents who live near the lake that they are excited about the tower coming to their area.

Already, New Wave Broadband is using Fort Scott’s three water tower locations to provide internet services to area businesses and residents within line of sight of those towers. The new tower will allow them to broaden their reach.

“One of our concerns has always been reliability,” Harry Lee of New Wave Broadband said, saying they frequently have backup systems in place in case something goes wrong and also strive to “over-provide” their services rather than not provide a strong enough signal.

Work on the tower will begin in the near future.

Director of Finance Jon Garrison also gave an update on the clubhouse being built at the golf course, asking that the commissioners allow him to look for a contractor to help complete the interior of the building so it could be ready by March.

“I think we need to speed that up,” Garrison said of the project, which would not be complete by the spring without other assistance. “I think it very critical to get the clubhouse done.”

With the exterior of the building complete, Garrison said it could serve as a winter project for a contractor. Projects remaining include the wiring, plumbing, insulation, sheetrock and painting.

The commission agreed that Garrison should meet with contractors to discuss what the remaining work would cost.

Bella Roma, an Italian restaurant that came to Fort Scott less than a year ago and shared a building with Fort Scott Inn, closed its doors on Oct. 5, a move that came as a shock to some employees and the owners of the Fort Scott Inn.

“We were actually surprised,” Fort Scott Inn owner Alex Desai said of the restaurant’s sudden closing.

Desai said he was out of town when the restaurant closed and he returned to find items from the building being packed up.

“I never got to truly speak to the owner himself,” Desai said, saying though his attempts to contact the restaurant owner Giovanni Elezi were unsuccessful, Desai was able to speak with the owner’s brother.

That brother said they had opened too many restaurants at one time, and slow business and not enough manpower led to their decision to close their Fort Scott, Iola and Nevada restaurant locations.

Desai said he has begun contacting others he believes may be interested in opening another restaurant at the same location.

The weekly Chamber Coffee event hosted by SEK Financial Thursday morning gave representatives from businesses in Fort Scott as well as some high school students the opportunity to learn about SEK Financial and what other businesses in the community are doing in upcoming weeks.

“We work with twenty-something different school districts,” representative Jim Sather said of SEK Financial located in the Industrial Park south of Fort Scott, but added they do much more than just working with schools, such as helping others through investments, insurance, IRAs, 401K plans, rollovers and other financial advice.

“We are able to stay plenty busy,” Sather said. “We love what we do.”

They have also held social security seminars, informing community members of Medicare and Medicaid facts. Businesses interested in inviting them to come speak on that or other financial topics can contact them.

“When we give advice, we just try to do the very best that we can here,” Sather said, saying their doors are open to those who would like to chat with one of their representatives.

Other announcements included:

• The new Bleeding Kansas and Civil War exhibits at the Fort Scott National Historic Site are almost ready as final inspections are completed.
• The Gordon Parks Celebration will begin next Thursday and will include videos, speakers, tours and other events such as a concert by a jazz band from Kansas City Friday evening.
• The Halloween Parade will make its way through downtown Fort Scott Saturday Oct. 24, at 11 a.m. Families and businesses are invited to participate.
• On Friday the 30th, the city will host a speaker who works with small businesses and will be discussing topics such as staying relevant to the changing customer and art as a business, giving business owners new ideas to help grow their company.
• Tickets for the Forks and Corks: Taste of Fort Scott event, which will be held Nov. 7, continue to be sold around the city.