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Thursday, October 29, 2026Oct 29

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Remember When, Chattanooga? Trotter Pontiac was an iconic Chattanooga car store on Broad Street

In this 1959 photo, Andy Trotter (far right), hands over the keys to a new Pontiac to the Rev. Walter S. Bush representing the Cerebral Palsy Evaluation Center. Also pictured, from left, are Eugenia Dobson and Christoper Sheffield. Contributed photo from ChattanoogaHistory.com by John Goforth.
In this 1959 photo, Andy Trotter (far right), hands over the keys to a new Pontiac to the Rev. Walter S. Bush representing the Cerebral Palsy Evaluation Center. Also pictured, from left, are Eugenia Dobson and Christoper Sheffield. Contributed photo from ChattanoogaHistory.com by John Goforth. In this 1959 photo, Andy Trotter (far right), hands over the keys to a new Pontiac to the Rev. Walter S. Bush representing the Cerebral Palsy Evaluation Center. Also pictured, from left, are Eugenia Dobson and Christoper Sheffield. Contributed photo from ChattanoogaHistory.com by John Goforth.

In this 1959 newspaper photograph, Chattanooga car dealer Andy Trotter, far right, is seen handing over the keys to a new car to an official of the United Cerebral Palsy Evaluation Center.

The photo was published in the Chattanooga News-Free Press on Sept. 8, 1959, and represents just one installment of a charitable giveaway by the dealership that went on for decades.

The image is part of the Chattanooga Free Press gallery of photos at the website ChattanoogaHistory.com, curated by local history enthusiast Sam Hall.

For more than 20 years, beginning in the 1950s, Trotter-family car dealerships here made yearly gifts of vehicles to the United Cerebral Palsy Evaluation Center, which used them to transport disabled children, according to newspaper reports. The center provided evaluation and counseling services to children with the movement disorder.

Trotter Pontiac Co., seen here, was at 3150 S. Broad St. in the 1950s and was billed at the time as East Tennessee’s largest Pontiac dealership.