03/05/2021
Marion Roche's Business Basics
This is retyped from an article published in a supplement in the Sullivan County Democrat. There was no date or byline on the article. The dates mentioned in the piece would indicate it was written in 1985. The picture did not go with the article. It’s a screengrab from a family movie. It shows Jim and Marion Roche in front of Roche’s Garage some time in the 1930s with their two eldest children, Mickey and Maureen.
During the past 54 years Marion Roche has watched a small automobile garage started in 1931 by her husband Jim and herself grow into one of the most successful Pontiac dealerships on the east coast. Roche's garage, which keeps expanding each year at its location along Callicoon Creek, came into being when Jim Roche took over a small garage from Ed Hermann at the start of the Great Depression.
"The Depression was difficult," says Marion, who has kept the books for the family business since its inception, " but you just kind of went along with it. I don't think that kids today could do it, because they're used to having many things."
Marion, who was born in New York City and grew up in an eastern section of the city near the Tri-Boro Bridge, met James Roche in 1930. Her family had moved to Sullivan County in 1927 when they bought a small restaurant (now known as Davis') in Callicoon. Jim, an immigrant from Ireland, married Marion in 1930 and a year later the young couple bought Ed Hermann's garage and started selling Willy's auto parts and gasoline.
"I never did any of the mechanical work," says Marion. "I thought I was doing good if I pumped gas."
From that humble beginning a very thriving small business has emerged, one which is now run by two of Marion and Jim's sons, James Francis "Mickey", the oldest of the four children, and Maurice William "Rease", the youngest.
Terrence, the second youngest is a colonel in the U.S. Army and is commander of Fort Drum. Maureen Knipp, the only girl, is a teacher in the Washingtonville school district.
"All of the children were born in the upstairs apartment over the garage," says Marion.
Jim and Marion moved the business from Main Street, Callicoon to the present location on the outskirts of the hamlet in 1932. The almost continuous additions to the garage have altered its original look since that time.
"I think one of the keys to success is that you have to be honest. You have to build a good reputation and you have to be courteous. The main thing is to give good service and stand behind your product," say Marion.
"In this business you have to be a hard worker and you have to work long hours so you have to like what you're doing.
"The automobile industry is very interesting. Some businesses get monotonous, but not the auto business. The boys seem to enjoy it. All four of the children have great determination. They probably get that from their father.
"In the winter, when business was slow, Jim would find other work to do, like thawing frozen pipes. He worked all year round. He was very happy when he was working and unhappy when he was idle."
Jim Roche died in 1965, and ironically Marion, who certainly had plenty of opportunity to drive some of the top-line Pontiacs that have been manufactured, didn't learn how to drive until after her husband died.
"It's just as well," she says. "If I knew how to drive, I would have been out on the road delivering parts."
Instead Marion concentrated, and still concentrates, on keeping the books for the blossoming business.
"If you keep at the books all the time it's not difficult. You can't let it pile up. You have to be efficient, that's for sure.
"One of the problems that a bookkeeper and a small business face is accepting credit from customers.
"Credit is one of the greatest difficulties for a business, particularly in a rural area. That's why so many small businesses fail -- credit kills them. During the Depression you had to take credit, but most of the people were hard-working, honest people back then, and they paid up."
The success story of Roche's Garage depends a great deal on the efficiency of Marion Roche's bookkeeping and more importantly on the basic tenets of hard work and honesty which she and her husband Jim have tried to instill in their four children, who in turn, along with Marion, are teaching to Marion's 12 grandchildren. No doubt the continuing success of the family business started in 1931 will depend on a continuation of the Roche family's tradition of working hard and being honest.
