Greg Hodges Jr. is back living where he grew up -- the apartment above the Acura dealership on Gordon Highway.

It is a workaholic's dream.

"I like living here during the week. On the weekends, sometimes I wish that I had a house," he said.

Even when he's home, he's not really away from work.

"In the mornings, for instance, you can hear the music playing downstairs in the Acura building; you can hear some paging," he said.

Greg is the general manager of Saturn of Augusta, a part of the Stokes-Hodges Group, two doors down from the Acura dealership that his father, Greg Sr., started in 1989. Last year, he was the finance director for Acura, a position his younger brother, Daniel, now fills.

Since their teen years, the Hodges brothers have worked at the collection of car dealerships, from washing to sales. Now they are being groomed for other roles, eventually to the rank of their father before his death in 2003.

"The ultimate thought is that we get experience and then become viable in running the group," Greg said. "My ultimate goal is to be what my dad was, a vital part of running the group."

Filling the shoes of Greg Hodges Sr. away from the dealership might be the more daunting task. He was involved in the Kiwanis Club and Augusta Futurity and was a member of the General Aviation Commission. He was an early supporter of the Boshears Fly-in at Daniel Field.

The brothers haven't selected civic groups yet, but they're planning to increase their community involvement.

Selling cars is the only career they have had and there has not been a thought to do anything else.

"It's in the blood," Daniel said.

After all, the car lot was their playground as children. It is as much home as a job can be.

On the lot

Greg was born in Charleston, S.C., in May 1983; Daniel, in April 1986.

Their father was already working for the Stokes Automotive Group and would later become a partner.

Ed Stokes started his group in Charleston with a Honda motorcycle dealer before expanding into cars.

Greg Sr. started his career sweeping floors, moving into motorcycle repair, then motorcycles sales, then car sales. He worked his way up to running the Honda dealership in the South Carolina port city.

The family lived in a house near the dealership. Greg Jr. doesn't recall much about his time in Charleston.

"I remember there was a pond behind the house and alligators. It flooded one time, and my mom wouldn't let me go out and play in the water because the gators were behind the house," he said.

When the Stokes group started its expansion in the late 1980s, Greg Sr. went west to Augusta and an Acura store on Gordon Highway near the thriving Regency Mall.

The family of four started life in Augusta above the dealership. After their parents divorced, the brothers lived with their mother in Evans during the week, but on Saturdays and Sundays, the car lot became their playground.

"My dad was always working, so it was a chance to always be close with him some because it was demanding as far as the hours go," Greg Jr. said.

The boys had water balloon fights with service technicians.

"We used to terrorize the lots on dirt bikes," he added. Greg Jr. needed first aid from the technicians once because he crashed behind the dealership and skinned his arm.

He said his mother was happy the day he sold his bike and stopped riding.

The rule while the dealership was open was to stay behind the service desk so they didn't disturb the customers.

"Everybody in this store, they saw me grow up. They always joke, 'I remember you when you were this tall,' " Daniel said with his hand held out waist high.

When they boys entered their teen years, the car lot took on a new role: a job.

Greg Jr. said his first job was picking up trash at age 14, then washing cars. During the summer between middle school and high school, he was detailing cars every day. Approaching 16, he started to think about which car he was going to get when he was able to drive.

"Everyone is telling me, I bet you get to pick which car you want," Greg Jr. said. "Well, my dad ... came from nothing. He wanted me to work and earn everything that I had."

His mother and father helped him buy his first car, matching what he had earned on his own from a full-time minimum-wage job. It was a used 1996 Acura Integra. A cousin had owned it before him.

Greg Jr. sold the car two years ago after putting 150,000 miles on it.

Daniel also paid his dues during high school, working as a salesman for three hours on Saturdays.

"I had a lot of people that couldn't believe it. They'd ask, 'How old are you? 17. Really?' It was fun, though," he said.

Time to learn

Greg Jr. is the only member of his immediate family to get a college degree.

Daniel briefly attended Augusta State University but didn't like college.

"This is my school right here, doing it," he explained from his office.

Greg Jr. moved back to Charleston to continue his education.

"All my friends from high school were going to Georgia and Georgia Southern. I decided to get away a little bit. I moved back to Charleston because I liked the city and I liked the beach," he said. "When I started school, I didn't know what I wanted to do."

At the end of his freshman year, he told his father that he wanted to follow in his footsteps.

"He was excited about it," Greg Jr. said. "He always told me: Do whatever you want to do. He was big on me going to school. He wanted me to have a college degree. He didn't have one."

He also went back to work, moonlighting at the Stokes dealerships in Charleston, selling Mitsubishi cars in the summertime, spending time in the parts department, doing a little bit of running for the accounting department. By the time he graduated with his business degree in 2006, he was selling cars full time.

Two important events happened before he graduated.

He met his future fiancee, Annie Cobetto, in the fall of his junior year, in Accounting 201.

"I got into class and found the best-looking girl and sat next to her, hoping she could help me get through accounting," Greg Jr. said. "She's smart. Helped me a lot through that class."

They were study buddies before dating, he said. Together for five years now, they will get married in October.

About six months before they met, Greg Sr. died from brain cancer.

In May 2002, he had a stroke while eating lunch with others at work, Greg Jr. said. The cause was a brain tumor.

"It was the kind that had tentacles going through the brain," he said, so even if the doctors removed it, there would still be remnants.

The survival rate was low, so friends and family expected him to die.

"I didn't want to count him out. He was the kind of guy who fought it," Greg Jr. said. His father was always active, the kind of guy who jumped out of planes and skied down mountains.

"He did everything under the sun to defeat it," Greg Jr. said.

His father pursued alternative medicine and chemotherapy and saw doctors across the Southeast.

"I just tried to spend as much time with him as I could. It was hard. I was young, 20 years old," Greg Jr. said. "The chemo, it wore him out. You could see it on his face; he was a different guy when he died."

He died in April 2003.

The brothers both have a quality that their father had: light-heartedness.

"They goof around a lot," Ms. Cobetto said. "Greg tends to be a little more serious, I would say. Daniel is wide open; he does not hide anything from anybody."

Making plans

Greg Jr. has one of the most visible offices that anyone can have. It is a glass case sticking out into the parking lot of the Saturn dealership.

The good thing about it is the ability to see what's happening outside all the dealerships.

"He hates it. He's never in it," Ms. Cobetto said. "He wants to be really involved -- he's walking around, he's helping the finance manager call stuff into the bank, he's working with customers in the lot. He doesn't need to be in there too much."

Now 25, he is the general manager of a 25-person car dealership.

"I've been waiting forever. It's almost the top. When you are responsible for everything in a dealership, it is a big accomplishment," Greg Jr. said.

It is a difficult time to be in charge. The auto industry combatting lower sales in the recession, and Greg Jr. has a staff trying to sell a General Motors product that is being battered daily for its financial problems.

"The publicity about Saturn makes it harder. We're in a tough time in the auto industry right now," he said. "I think Saturn will come out of the turmoil. It has always been a company that had a tag line of being different."

Greg Jr. said GM's decision not to supply parts to Saturn after 2011 might be a good thing, because GM's products are too similar.

"I always though Saturn had a good niche," he said. "It is too big and too many people have a stake in the company to let it go away."

Daniel, at 23, has joined his brother in management, though he would rather jump into a sales manager role for a while before becoming a general manager. Greg Jr. went from finance director into a general manager's job.

"Dad was big on promoting from within. It gives you something to work for if that is part of the culture of the company," Greg Jr. said. "He really cared about employees and the families of the people working for him. That carries across to the customers."

Greg Jr. said he is always mindful of his father's legacy and tries to tailor his decisions around what his father would have done.

"I've never heard anyone say anything bad about him. It is almost scary. This is the legacy that I'm carrying on. The shoes are gigantic to fill. So I try to be mindful on how he managed and lead people," he said.

That management style was: Do what you want to do, but let me tell you what you should do. "Try it your way first," Daniel said.

The brothers have different business personalities.

"He's more laid-back. I'm more tell you what I'm thinking," Daniel said. "He's more analytical. I'm more of a doer. He would hire somebody to work in the yard; I would do it myself."

They both have their father's work ethic. Daniel didn't work on Good Friday, the first day off he's had in three months.

Daniel said he also worries about filling his father's shoes, but he realizes he's got to be his own person.

They're trying to navigate their way into community service like their father.

"Without the community, we'd be nothing," Daniel said.

Greg Jr. is leaning toward Rotary Club, Daniel said, while he has his eyes on an Exchange Club or Kiwanis. Greg Sr. was a past president of Kiwanis.

The dealer group is back to being the storage facility for the Kiwanis' annual Vidalia onion sale.

"Eight pallets, nothing but 25-pound bags of onions. The whole shop smells," Daniel said.

The brothers talk about the future frequently and hold meetings with their immediate boss, Barry Nestor, about being groomed for leadership roles.

Mr. Stokes is still the boss, Greg Jr. said.

"He's given opportunities to my dad, to me and my brother. They are like family to us," he said.

They spent Easter with him in Charleston. They grew up spending holidays with Mr. Stokes and his family.

He is like another grandfather, Daniel said.

Greg Hodges Jr. said that as far as he's concerned, the group will always be known as Stokes-Hodges.

Reach Tim Rausch at (706) 823-3352 or timothy.rausch@augustachronicle.com.