By RAY QUIROGA
publisher@sbnewspaper.com
Not many family-owned businesses in San Benito can say they’re approaching the 100-year mark, yet San Benito’s lone Ford dealership is quietly approaching that feat.
In 1937, L.T. Boswell, living in Houston, answered a newspaper advertisement seeking a partner in a Resaca City Ford dealership. The elder Boswell answered the call, and three generations later, the dealership is still going strong.
Today, Sam P. Boswell, Jr. is a third-generation Boswell running one of San Benito’s stalwart businesses, Boswell Elliff Ford, which graces the landscape on 1401 US-77 Bus., in San Benito and employs some 25 area workers from mechanics, salespeople, managers, finance professionals, and more.
Throughout the decades, Sam Boswell, Jr. has experienced the automotive industry’s highs, lows, evolutions, and trends, and all the while, the feisty San Benito dealership has come through for the Resaca City. For that, and all he gives to the community, Sam P. Boswell, Jr., has been named the 2025 San Benito News Citizen of the Year.
Born and raised in San Benito, Boswell, now 63, was born at the now defunct, but historically significant, Dolly Vinsant Memorial Hospital, once situated in the heart of San Benito on Business 77. The only time Bowell left his beloved hometown was during his collegiate years when he attended the University of Texas, Austin. Boswell met his wife, Maria Flores, of Brownsville, at work.
“My father hired her here to be our office manager/comptroller back in the mid-80s. She worked here for a couple of years, and we eventually started dating and got married,” Boswell recalled.
The marriage resulted in three children, including a son who works for Ford Credit in Kansas City, a daughter who lives in Denton and recently completed missionary work overseas, and another in graduate school.
According to Boswell, a year after his grandfather answered that fateful newspaper advertisement, he bought out his partner. “Back in those days, Ford Motor Company would not let you use the name ‘Ford’ in the name of the dealership. That’s why it was never L.T. Boswell Ford, just LT Boswell,” Sam, Jr. explained.
The elder Boswell’s sons, L.T., Jr. and Sam, joined their father at the dealership after their military service, eventually succeeding their father in the mid-late 1950s as owners of the business.
L.T. was eight years older than Sam and eventually retired prior to Sam in the late 1980s, at which point Sam and Sam Jr. bought out L.T. Jr.’s interest in the dealership.
Sam Sr. and Jr. remained partners until Sam Sr. could no longer participate due to health reasons, at which point he left the business.
Sam Jr. gave it a go on his own for a good three years, but found that running a business solo was tough. That’s when he was approached by the Elliff family to see if a partnership was feasible. “So I brought in Bill and Joe Elliff as partners in 2015,” said Sam Jr.
Boswell said that the biggest change he’s seen in the industry was the evolution of the electric vehicle, saying that when Ford decided to “get into that game” the requirements — financial and otherwise — were steep.
Now, the industry and Ford have taken their proverbial foot off that pedal, opting for a more nuanced approach. The future, Boswell believes, will be in a variety of fuel choices based on owner’s need.
As for his future, given his age, Boswell sees retirement on the horizon, and with no other Boswell looking to take the reins, he contemplates that the dealership may be sold to owners outside of the family.