DALTON, Ga. — When Ed Brooker returned to northwest Georgia after fighting in the South Pacific during World War II, his son Allen Brooker said his father got married, started a family and was driving a school bus and raising chickens when he first got into the car business. 

Even then when Ed Brooker took a job with Allen Burnett at Burnett-Jones Plymouth, DeSoto and International Harvester, his primary job was selling tractors and freezers under the International Harvester brand. 

“He’d put a freezer on the back of a truck and a tractor on a trailer and he would go out and trade it for a mule and an ice box,” Allen Brooker said. “It was a major step forward for a lot of people, and looking quite a ways back, it shows how we have developed over the years.”

The Brooker name has been part of the local automotive retail fabric of the area since Brooker Motor Co. started in the 1960s. Ed Brooker and Allen Burnett were partners in the business, which would later become Ed Brooker Ford, which would be a mainstay in the community beginning in 1977. 

Through the years, the Brooker family has sold cars of many varieties and many models — Ford, Toyota, Chrysler, Plymouth, Mercury, Lincoln, Hyundai and Isuzu. But Brooker Ford, which it became following the death of Ed Brooker in 2010, was the longest lasting of those businesses and the name ingrained into the community. 

Now, after nearly six decades, the Brooker name will not be part of the local car business landscape. 

Recently, Brooker Ford officially became Ford of Dalton as Allen Brooker and his older brother Bob “turned the keys” over to a new ownership group led by Jason Denson. The new Ford dealership will continue to be on Shugart Road where the business has been since 2007. 

“We looked at everything involved and how the business has changed and how things were going and we felt like this was a good time to make our exit strategies,” said Allen Brooker, who has been working at his father’s businesses since he was washing cars and cleaning parts rooms at the age of 12. “A lot of time the lines get blurred from it being just a business and being who you are and your place in the community. I was sensitive to that local tie when it came time to sell. I felt good about Jason’s group coming in because it was still going to be locally owned and locally managed. I think the new dealership will still be local and won’t lose that local tie.”

Denson himself has been part of the Brooker family of dealerships in the past, working for the commercial division of the company and turning it into one of the top commercial divisions in the Atlanta metro market.

“In a lot of ways, with Jason’s success, I am going to feel vicariously like it is part of my own success,” Allen Brooker said. “I have trained and mentored him a lot over the past 20-something years. He is his own man and very smart and very savvy and has his own ideas, and I have no doubt that he will be a success.”

A success is what the Brooker family has been in the community and most of the credit goes back to Ed Brooker, who worked for four years at Burnett-Jones while he and his wife Sara started their family after the war. 

In 1953, Ed Brooker mortgaged his house for $5,000 and bought into the business with Burnett. By 1960, there was an opportunity to buy Kelly Ford, a dealership on South Thornton Avenue. Allen Brooker said 24 hours later his father and Burnett were Ford men. For the next 12 years, the two men ran two dealerships — Burnett Ford and Brooker Motor Co. In 1972, they moved to property which currently is home to Panera Bread and Five Guys on Walnut Avenue. 

By 1977, the dealership was Ed Brooker Ford and Ed Brooker bought into the Toyota distributorship even though he had fought against the Japanese in the war and wasn’t initially convinced to enter into the market with the foreign maker. Throughout the years, while he was building his business and his family’s name in the local economy, he was also making a difference in the community. 

Ed Brooker served on the boards of the hospital, the Cherokee Boys Estate and several bank boards, according to his son. 

“Dad was always community-minded. We almost always took a backseat whenever we went to a public gathering, we would have to wait on Dad because he was talking to someone — whether it was about selling a car or politics or business or something. They were drawn to him and would want to talk to him. That has been ingrained with us too. If I am out in the community, the immediate association with the community is always there.”

Allen Brooker said he and his family have tried to live up to his father’s legacy and said even though the Brooker name is coming off of the building, the same commitment to service and quality will remain. 

“My dad used to tell me remember who you are and what that represents,” Allen Brooker said. “We have always operated that our word was our bond and we take a lot of credence in making sure we represent our name, our brand and our customers in the right way. We’ve tried to do that the best we can, and I don’t think that will change hardly at all.”