Walter Prochnow was so successful in the mere seven years that he owned Ann Arbor Buick that his death at the age of thirty-three was reported on the front page of the Ann Arbor Daily News. Ella Prochnow was left a thirty-four-year-old widow with two small children, Walter and Bette. At first, a manager ran the dealership, but then Ella decided she’d rather do it herself. She knew very little about cars, according to her sister, but “they were her lifetime interest from then on.”
