MARCH 2012

chaldean chamber Awards
Left: “Uncle Joe” Sesi launched
the dealership.
Top: The New Center Market
opened in the early 1930s.
driven to succeed
Car dealer Joseph Sesi is Business Person of the Year
By Ken Marten
Have you driven a Ford lately?
How about a Lincoln?
Enough people have to keep
the Ann Arbor automobile dealership,
Sesi Lincoln, in business for
more than 60 years.
And now the Chaldean American
Chamber of Commerce has honored
dealership owner Joseph A. Sesi
by naming him 2012 Business Person
of the Year.
“I’m privileged to get an award
like this,” said Sesi, 58. “We’re
a longtime business; we’ve been
around since 1946. It’s a unique
business within the Chaldean community.
“It was a surprise, getting the
award,” he added. “It’s really a family
honor that starts with my uncle.”
Sesi’s Uncle Joe moved to the
United States from Iraq as a teenager
in 1920. He was lured to Detroit
by auto mogul Henry Ford’s famous
“five-dollars-a-day” promise to workers
on the automobile assembly line.
But Uncle Joe didn’t land an auto
factory job. He found work instead at
the Wonder Bread factory as a delivery
boy for Chaldean grocers.
“There weren’t many Chaldeans
in Detroit at that time – just five
or six families,” Sesi said. “They all
lived together in a home on Orleans
near Jefferson.”
But Uncle Joe’s destiny was tied
to cars. In the early 1930s, during the
Great Depression, he opened New
Center Market in the shadow of the
Joseph Sesi
newly built Fisher Building. Customers
ranged from working-class tradesmen
who installed the ornate details
of the Fisher Building, to upper-class
automotive executives.
That’s where Uncle Joe met
lifelong friend and future business
partner Alan Chapel – “they were
inseparable,” Sesi recalled – who introduced
him to Henry Ford.
“He met Mr. Ford and they
photo by David Reed
formed a great friendship through the
Depression and World War II,” Sesi
said. “Uncle Joe had a very infectious
personality. He had lots of charisma.
People were naturally drawn to him.
He had vision and he took a lot of
risks, although in a responsible way.”
Ford was so impressed with the
men and the market that immediately
following the conclusion of
the war in 1945, he gave them the
opportunity at an assembly plant in
downtown Ypsilanti that manufactured
synchronized rings and roller
bearings. Both men worked around
the clock running the machines during
a labor strike that year; Ford was
again wowed by their efforts and offered
them a car dealership.
Chapel Motors opened its doors
in 1946, offering Lincolns and Mercurys
in the same building as the
plant. The dealership occupied the
front half and the factory occupied
the back. Chapel died in the mid-
1950s and Uncle Joe bought his
interest from Chapel’s widow, then
changed the name to Sesi Lincoln
Mercury.
“Today, we’re the beneficiaries of
all his hard work, so we’re grateful for
that,” Sesi said.
The younger Sesi began benefiting
at the dealership in 1968 at age
14, having arrived in the United
States with his parents and eight
siblings five years earlier. By then,
the business had grown into one of
the nation’s largest Lincoln Mercury
dealers.
Sesi started on the bottom of the
dealership ladder and held every
position over the years, from porter
to salesman. He worked throughout
college while earning a degree in accounting
and finance from Eastern
Michigan University.
42 CHALDEAN NEWS MARCH 2012