Seekins Ford Lincoln, Inc.: creating a culture of family, community, and employee satisfaction.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: Alaska's Top 49ers: Featured 49er - Seekins Ford Lincoln Mercury Inc

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If you want an idea of what makes a company tick, take a peek inside the boss's office.

At Seekins Ford Lincoln in Fairbanks, Ralph Seekins's sunny, expansive office is filled with awards and accolades. He sits behind an oversize desk in front of multiple computer screens, with piles of paperwork and invoices scattered over the gleaming surface.

Bookcases and Alaska artifacts adorn the walls and statues of horses prance on the windowsills. A couple of comfortable overstuffed chairs flank a fireplace topped by a giant flat-screen TV. A battered fur hat, which Seekins wore when he ran the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race in 1989, is displayed nearby.

One item seems oddly out of place--a large Mickey Mouse telephone cheerily sitting atop an elegant jade coffee table--but it speaks volumes about Seekins and the success of his company.

The phone is for his grandkids--he has fifteen. "They love to come in and get popcorn and see Gramps," Seekins says. "I have to have something for them to do." He said he will sometimes see a television turned to a cartoon channel and note that children have been to visit. "At least I hope it was the kids," and not his employees, he says laughing.

At the annual Christmas party, which often includes an evening of ice skating at the Carlson Center, dinner, and a small gift for the younger kids, Seekins says he looks around at his employees and their families and goes home thinking about the company's responsibility to them. It boils down to: "Are we doing all the right things, are we making sure Morn and Dad have a job?"

He credits a strong management team and hard-working employees for the dealership's success. Many of his employees have been at the dealership for more than twenty-five years, including three generations of one family, he says.

"It's a business, but yet I think if you look around, it's a very family-oriented business. It's good for them to know where their parents work."

Seekins, sixty-eight, was born in Duluth, Minnesotta, and grew up in Wyoming and Montana. Early jobs included carpentry, welding, custom metal work, and driving a school bus. He and his wife, Connie, have four children. His son Aaron also works at the dealership, which has deep roots in Fairbanks.

Jim Barrack owned the Ford dealership in 1910, which he ran out of Samson Hardware. In the 1940s, Barrack sold the dealership to Dan Lahman and it was moved to Second Avenue in downtown...