Today, Rosi is a resident and business owner in Homer.

Now in its 50th year, Rosi Auto Electric and its owner have witnessed more than cars passing along Main Street. They have seen Alaska become a state and Homer become a city. They have been through a record-breaking earthquake and seen Homer's first phone lines installed.

Rosi has a wealth of memories and memorabilia of Homer and Alaska from a different time.

He opened Rosi Auto Electric in 1954 on Pioneer Avenue. Kept in a weathered frame hung in the shop are all of Rosi's Alaska business licenses from the last 50 years, a handful of which have Territory of Alaska rather than State of Alaska printed across the top.

Rosi also has saved all the phone books printed since Homer first installed phone lines, some of which are no bigger than pamphlets.

He remembers a time before the phones, when he and his wife, Mickey, would keep in touch during the day between the house and the shop on a CB radio.

In 1959, Rosi built a new home for his business on Main Street, where he still works as a Jeep mechanic and sells auto parts. The shop is one of the oldest on the Kenai Peninsula, and Rosi has done much with it over the years.

For thirty years, Rosi ran Homer Jeep Sales, the only authorized Jeep dealer on the peninsula. In 1976 he was named the top Jeep Dealer in Alaska.

Rosi moved to Homer from Fairbanks in 1951, his wife following soon after. They have been married for 49 years, and neither of them are strangers to running a business.

She kept me alive (by) feeding me," said Rosi of his wife, who he met in Fairbanks, where she ran a local restaurant.

After moving to Homer, Mickey operated Mickey's Market, a grocery store on East End Road, for 20 years until it closed in 1982. Between the two of them, the couple has compiled many years of experience in several different businesses.

"I've got a lot of firsts," Rosi said.

Those firsts include the first automobile dealership in Homer, the first mechanic in Homer, as well as the first to introduce new equipment and tools as the trade changed over the years.

Much of Rosi's family still lives in the area, including Guy Rosi Jr. who lives in Homer and has often worked with his father in the past. For 15 years father and son ran a Goodyear Tire dealership from the Main Street shop.

Rosi's daughter and granddaughters are also close by. They live in Seldovia year-round.

Rosi said Homer has proved to be a good place for himself, his family and his business.

"Alaska's been good to me, period," Rosi said.