Santa Rosa car dealer Sam Wood, 87, carried on family’s extensive business legacy

Retired Santa Rosa car dealer Sam Wood, who died Aug. 7 at 87, was the progeny of Sonoma County pioneers who grew hops and other crops on fertile land alongside Laguna de Santa Rosa as far back as the mid-1800s.

Wood’s father was a hops rancher who changed course upon cultivating an avid interest in what rolled out of early American automobile plants. Sam Wood worked for decades alongside and then succeeded his dad, the renowned Babe Wood, the county’s inaugural Cadillac dealer.

Sam Wood inherited his father’s love of people and dedication to old-fashioned customer service, and he honored those traits as he and, in time, his son, Bruce, ran the dealership that grew into the Corby Avenue auto row’s Wood Pontiac Cadillac Mazda. When they sold it to the Hansel Auto Group in 2007, that transaction concluded the Wood family’s 81-year run selling cars in Santa Rosa.

Sam Wood, an ardent outdoorsman who was at home in Sonoma County when he wasn’t savoring a second home near Truckee, was 72 when the dealership was sold and he retired. The past 15 years he savored golf, hiked, listened to jazz and other music and spent unrushed time with his family and friends.

“Sam was soft-spoken, with an infectious laugh,” said longtime pal Vic Trione. Both Trione and his brother, Mark, were close to Sam Wood.

The Trione brothers’ father, late business and community leader Henry Trione, was a great pal and hunting buddy of Babe Wood. Vic Trione said he regarded Sam Wood, who was 12 years his senior, diligent, respectful and modest, as a role model.

“He was great company and had a keen sense of humor,” Trione said.

Said Sam Wood’s daughter, Susanne Wood-Lytle, of Santa Rosa, “There was so much about my father that most people didn’t know because he was very humble through all of his life. He was not a showy man but a very calm, present, kind man.”

Samuel Talmadge “Sam” Wood Jr. was born May 1, 1935, in Santa Rosa to Florence Marie Wood and Samuel Talmadge “Babe” Wood.

Sam Wood’s Sebastopol-born father, the former hops rancher, had begun selling a muscular precursor to the pickup truck, the REO Speedwagon, on Third Street in Santa Rosa in 1926. Babe Wood added a DeSoto and Plymouth franchise, and in 1936 opened a brand-new Cadillac dealership on Mendocino Avenue, just blocks north of what was then Courthouse Square. He added Pontiacs in 1939.

His son grew up in the Grace Tract neighborhood. Sam Wood’s daughter Susanne said he worked for his dad as a kid, washing cars and performing odd jobs at the dealership.

Wood attended high school at San Diego County’s Army and Navy Academy. He lived and studied there with one of his closest Santa Rosa friends, Ed Peterson, whose father also had been a Sonoma County hops farmer.

Upon graduation, Wood enrolled at San Jose State College. He studied business, then returned home to work at his dad’s automobile dealership, over time learning about and assuming more responsibility for every aspect of the enterprise.

The Wood dealership flourished. Sam Wood was working in the parts department when he met fellow Santa Rosa native Emily Gail Barnard, a 1961 graduate of Santa Rosa High School.

They married in 1965 at Presbyterian Church of the Roses. They’d have three children.

Babe Wood was 70 when he passed the running of the Wood dealership to his son in 1971. Five years later, Sam Wood moved the operation from downtown to the Corby auto row.

Sam Wood’s son Bruce joined him in the dealership, and the two of them worked side by side until the sale to Hansel 15 years ago. It was two years later that patriarch Babe Wood died at age 103.

Retirement allowed Sam Wood to get sufficiently serious about golf that he and Gail purchased a home on a course near Truckee. They split their time between there and Santa Rosa.

In recent years, cancer depleted Sam Wood’s energy to the point that he couldn’t play golf, so he sat on his deck beside the second tee and got a kick out of watching others play. He’d enjoy talking to golfers, and they to him.

“He was a social guy, enjoyed getting to know people,” Bruce Wood said.

Observed son-in-law Steve Lytle, “Sam was a true gentleman. And he was as humble a man as you’ll ever meet.”

In addition to his wife and his daughter in Santa Rosa and his son in New Hampshire, Wood is survived by son Barret Wood of Fargo, North Dakota, and three grandchildren.

At Wood’s request, there will be no services.

His family suggests memorial donations to: Tahoe Forest Foundation Cancer Center or the foundation’s Cancer Center Oncology Support Program, 10121 Pine Avenue, Truckee CA, 96161 or online at secure.acceptiva.com/?cst=72bf03.