Daughters take charge of fathers’ legacies

It’s an old and cherished pattern: The father starts a business, then grooms his sons to take it over, and they, in turn, pass it on to their sons. But more and more often, it’s the daughters who are taking over, even in industries long dominated by men.
Take Blount Boats Inc., the ship-building company founded in 1949 by Luther H. Blount, an engineer from Warren who also founded Bay Queen Cruises and American Canadian Caribbean Line. He had a hand in the family business until his death in September, at age 90. Now his daughters, Julie, Marcia and Nancy, run the company.
“We grew up in the shipyard,” said Julie Blount. “We actually played in the shipyard. … It’s in our blood.” In fact, the cruise line offices are located where the family homestead once was.
The sisters formed an executive team to run the business together. “It is different to have three women run shipbuilding – not a lot of are women doing it,” said Nancy Blount.
“We are the only female employees in the shipyard, excluding the cruise line operation,” said Marcia Blount. But many of their workers have been with the company for more than 30 years, so they know the sisters well. “They have grown up with us to this place and time,” said Julie.
And, as she put it, “we have put in our time here.” The women have experience dating back to the 1960s, holding many positions including welder, stewardess, marketing, operations, purchasing, accounting and indeed all the management ranks.
“When dad started the cruise line, we all worked on the boats. We were the crew,” said Nancy. “My father’s vision has become our own lives’ work.”
Marcia holds an MBA from Columbia and has also worked outside the family businesses as a CPA. And the executive-team idea is working out well, the women agreed.
“We’re all getting along fabulously,” Julie said with a laugh. “When you’re working with family it can be difficult. Everyone was kind of holding their breath. … It’s working out much better than we anticipated.”
“This is an exciting time for Blount Boats,” said Nancy. “As a team, we have negotiated our first new build contract with South Ferry Co. of Shelter Island, N.Y. Like ourselves, they are family-owned and operated for many generations, so it was an especially sentimental experience.”
On Federal Hill, another prominent business is also run by sisters: Scialo Bros. Bakery.
Both Carol Gaeta and Lois Ellis had other jobs before taking over the business that their father, Luigi Scialo, had started with his brother in 1916 at 257 Atwells Ave. Gaeta was a medical secretary and later worked for a caterer – and she loved baking at home – and Ellis was a teacher and also kept the books for the family business.
When their father died in 1993 at the age of 103, the sisters had a decision to make. “Do we want to take on the responsibility?” Ellis said.
The sisters had grown up with the bakery, living upstairs with their extended family. But their parents, Ellis said, “were concerned with education, and we went to Wheeler, and we’ve all been to college.” And since then, “our family, like others, had moved off the Hill.”
The sisters decided to put the bakery on the market. They even got a buyer, but the deal fell through. Then customers started to call and write.
“Our customers made us take a step back,” said Ellis. So they decided to give it a try.
“We are the only actual bakery left on Federal Hill,” said Gaeta. But a third sister, in Florida, didn’t want to come back and work with them, and when they sought a U.S. Small Business Administration-backed loan, they found it wasn’t easy.
“It was difficult in the early ’90s for women to get an SBA loan,” Ellis said.
“At least it was for us,” added Gaeta.
As they were applying for the loan, another wrench was thrown in the works. A “smoke fire” started in one of their ovens. Each day, the ovens are brought up to temperature sometime in the late afternoon, and some flour in the ovens began to smoke.
Employees at the business didn’t know it wasn’t an actual fire and called the fire department. Water from the fire hoses hit the hot bricks and cracked the oven. All of the baked goods at Scialo Bros. have been and still are made in brick ovens. So, after getting the loan, it still took the sisters about a year to get everything back into order.
“But it was good. We upgraded the plumbing and wiring … the whole building,” including two apartments and the space next door that is now an art gallery, Gaeta said.
And they had an advantage, “We didn’t have to re-establish ourselves,” said Ellis. “We’re the second oldest family-owned business on the Hill.”
They enjoy what they’re doing. “And even though we’ve been here all of our lives, it is still all new and different every day,” Gaeta laughed.
And as far as another generation of Scialo offspring will be taking over after the sisters retire, Gaeta said that her and her sister’s sons have worked at the bakery, but they, like their mothers before them, are doing other things.
“I always tell my tour groups that we were not supposed to be doing this, either, so one never knows where life leads you,” she said.
Sheree Kaplan, CEO and owner of the Jake Kaplan’s Ltd. car dealerships in Warwick and Norwood, Mass., did see her future coming. She started working at the family business 25 years ago.
“My father didn’t have a son, and I showed an interest in working with him,” Kaplan said. “Twenty-five years ago, it was pretty much a male-dominated business.”
Kaplan started in the leasing department. “The transfer happened over time. For your father or anyone, it takes time to get confidence in your employees,” she said.
“Whether you’re a son or a daughter you have to work harder than anyone else,” Kaplan said. “I wouldn’t even take a vacation for years. I really wanted to prove myself to him. We were very good friends. And we fought,” she laughed, “over things like keeping employees. And now I find I’m a lot like him.”
Unfortunately, Kaplan’s father became ill; by that time she’d worked her way to vice president. “I was running it with him, and as he got sicker and sicker he turned the business over to me,” she said. Her father died in 1991, and she’s run the dealerships herself since.
“I love the excitement. I love the people – customers and employees; I love them all,” she said.
Now, her 17-year-old son is showing an interest in the business.
And so the Kaplans may put yet another twist on the old pattern: Maybe the mother will bequeath the business to the son.