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Auto dealer Ingersoll makes good on promise of a fresh car to latest Bethel grads

Auto dealer Ingersoll makes good on promise of a fresh car to latest Bethel grads — three times

BETHEL – A police-escorted caravan snaked through town Friday to make good on a promise.

During his commencement address at Bethel High School`s June twenty graduation, Todd Ingersoll, proprietor of Ingersoll Auto of Danbury, had asked the seniors to send him two-page handwritten letters explaining why they need a fresh car, and promised to give one to the student who made the most wooing case.

«Success in life is influenced in equal measures of both luck and choices,» Ingersoll told the graduates. «Interestingly enough, luck can be created by some of the choices you make, so choose wisely.

«The bounty will be delivered to one of you whose essay has created your luck,» said Ingersoll, who graduated from Bethel High in 1988.

Ingersoll gave the graduates ten days to send the letters, and said he`d drop off the keys to the winner July seven while on Facebook Live.

But after reading «60 fabulous essays,» Ingersoll switched his mind. As he explained in a 29-minute movie on the dealership`s Facebook page, he altered the terms of the deal.

«We determined today that we`re not gonna give away just one car,» Ingersoll said. «We`re gonna give away three.»

As of Monday afternoon, the movie showcasing him presenting the cars to the winners has racked up 135,000 views.

Christopher Joyce won the top prize – a brand-new black two thousand seventeen Chevrolet Cruze – for a letter outling how a car would help him while in college.

Joyce, who had been watching on Facebook Live as Ingersoll drove through Bethel, said it leisurely dawned on him that he was the winner when he realized that Ingersoll was talking about his essay.

«My heart has never hit quicker,» he said.

Ingersoll said Joyce`s openness about his faith, his volunteer work and his time in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps separated him from the pack.

Joyce, a Catholic, will attend High Point University, a Methodist school deep in North Carolina`s Baptist country.

«The nearest parish is like ten miles away,» Joyce said Monday. «The car helps me give back to the fresh parish I`ll be a part of in North Carolina.»

Two other grads won the impromptu second-place prizes of used Chevorlet Cruzes, which Ingersoll had delivered earlier in the day. Nadya Redmond won a light blue Chevy and Sophie Morten was awarded a black one.

As he was delivering the cars, Ingersoll told the students how much reading their letters had meant to him.

«It indeed tugs at your heart strings, some of these stories,» he said. «I can`t tell you how proud I was to read the essays that you wrote.»

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