Profile in Business: Sean Cota: Doing it the Old Yankee Way

Vermont Business Magazine, Feb 01, 2003 by Marcel, Joyce

One of Cota's close friends is longtime legislator and former Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives Michael Obuchowski; sometimes they brew beer together. He calls Cota an "old-fashioned New Age business person."

"I think that he is very dedicated, visionary public servant, and he views that as part of his responsibility to the business community," Obuchowski said. "He takes a lot of the qualities of the past into his business: service, honesty and value. But at the same time, he realizes that there's a public service role associated with being in business. For the Bellows Falls Union High School alumni dances, for example, he used to clean out the buses after they were used, sometimes singlehandedly, sometimes until 2 am. And he's not even an alumni."

Obuchowski observed that community movements happen in stages, with visionaries coming first, and then people who implement the visions. "When I look at the rebirth and renaissance occurring in Rockingham and downtown Bellows Falls right now, I remember Sean Cota when he was president of the Chamber," Obuchowski said. "He was one of the visionaries who saw the potential and possibility and was willing to stick his neck out - in a time when it was just a potential."

And that brings us back to "It's a Wonderful Life." Cota owns three copies.

"Sometimes I feel like George and I want to get out of town," Cota said. "I just never seem to do it. There are the Bailey families and the Potter families in every community. You can make an impact. People remember things for generations. Our company still benefits from the goodwill generated by my grandfather."

Cota recalled the time, just after he came back from college, when a stranger dropped in.

"He said, 'You don't know me,' but years ago, in the 1950s, I was complaining that I didn't have money for my family, and your grandfather heard me and gave me $100.'" Cota said. "A while later he tried to pay my grandfather back, and my grandfather said,' Don't pay me back. You have to do something for somebody else'."

Telling the story, tears welled up in Cota's eyes.

"It still trips me up," he said. "That's a tough tale, a true tale. So that's where we came from. The goodwill we provide dayto-day is going to last longer than us."

Family History

Cota is a seventh-generation Vermonter.

"The name Cota was originally a French Huguenot name," he said. "The family lived in northeast France. When they had the Protestant Wars, the family got thrown out of France and went to Quebec. They didn't like the Protestants there, either. So they got thrown out of Quebec and ended up in Vermont. By the 1770s there were Cotas in Putney. But we're all-American mutt at this point."

In 1941, Cota's grandparents, Kenneth O'Brien Cota and Helen Prescott Cota, bought a Shell dealership and founded the company together. "My grandmother always said she was 'a full partner and then some,'" Cota said. "They had a very good reputation and always had high expectations of everyone. My grandmother was a great one for the adage, 'Idle hands do the devil's work,' so she kept everyone busy all of the time. Things we do today have links back to the things they've done." At first the company sold kerosene for sidearm heaters and range oil. As it became more plentiful, fuel oil, also known as heating oil, replaced kerosene; it is a lower grade product with more energy input, but it needs to be burned with specialized equipment. It contains paraffin wax, so it congeals at 15 degrees; that is why heating oil tanks are usually placed in basements. Mobile homes, which have outside tanks, typically use kerosene. Kerosene doesn't congeal until about minus 60 F. Since liquids were easier to transport and to