Winning ways
From winner’s circle to philanthropic circles,
Rob Dyson’s in the driver’s seat
By BOB ROZYCKI

Rob Dyson can be considered a gentleman racer, not specifically an attribute of his or his racing team’s performance on the track, but rather in the same vein as a gentleman farmer.

He travels in three different circles: as owner of Dyson Racing; as chairman and CEO of The Dyson-Kissner-Moran Corp., a privately owned, diversified holding company; and as president of the Dyson Foundation.

He acknowledges the three don’t intersect, but their spheres of influence are international in scope and transcend the strata of power, finances, politics, religion, lifestyle, social status, race and ethnicity.

The fans that cheer on his Dyson Racing team know of his dozens of wins over the last 33 years racing everything from boxy Datsun 510s to low-profile, road-blurring Porsche RS Spyders.

But the Dyson name goes beyond investments and racing. Colleges and hospitals in the region bear the Dyson name somewhere on their respective campuses, testament to a family that began its philanthropic way back in 1957 when Margaret and Charles H. Dyson decided to give back to the community.

The foundation marked its 50th year by giving away “substantial sums,” as Rob Dyson modestly puts it, $28 million to be specific. The biggest winner was Pace University, which received $7.5 million. Another $5 million went to Health Quest Inc., which includes Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, Northern Dutchess Hospital in Rhinebeck and Putnam Hospital Center in Carmel.

 

“The idea on all of that was to support organizations that historically fit in with what we had been supporting since my mother and dad started the foundation in ‘57. We wanted to do a little bit more than usual in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the foundation. On a normal basis we give away $16 million and $18 million a year. We just wanted to do a little more.”

DOWN ON THE FARM

Charles Dyson founded the holding company in 1954 and was considered a pioneer in leveraged buyouts. The same year the foundation was created, Margaret and Charles bought a farm in Millbrook as a getaway from their Scarsdale home and a place to let their children pursue their individual interests.

There were four children in the Dyson family: John, the oldest; then Rob; followed by Anne and Peter. Dyson said he and his siblings were an active bunch.

“My parents said these kids need some room and they didn’t want to send us to summer camp,” he said. “My brother John was interested in agriculture; I was interested in anything that had nuts and bolts and screws … my younger brother was interested in that kind of thing, too. My sister was interested in horses. The farm was the perfect blending of everybody’s interests.”

Farms being farms, it had tractors and old trucks and machinery that served as a bit of heaven for the young Dyson.

“Take something apart and put it back together again and hope you don’t have any parts left over. That’s still true today. As long as it runs … who needs brakes,” he said and laughed.

Any free time the family had was spent on the farm.

“Who wanted to stay in Scarsdale when you could go hunting, trapping, fishing and working on stuff?”

Self-taught, Dyson graduated from tractors to an old Model A Ford that he drove in high school. “That thing needed a tune-up all the time.”

 

During a business trip to Indianapolis in 1961, Charles Dyson had taken ill and was hospitalized. Margaret Dyson had her two older sons accompany her to visit her husband. As a youngster, Rob Dyson’s take on his dad was “he looked like my ol’ dad to me.” A business associate stopped by the hospital and asked the boys if they would like to visit Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which back then was all the city was known for.

He started off by visiting the speedway museum, then a very small building on the outside of the track. But once he got in a van for a tour of the actual track he had his epiphany.

The driver gave blow-by-blow accounts of the historic events and tragedies.

“The driver said this is where Bill Vukovich was killed. This is where Roger Ward hit the wall. You hear the names of all these great drivers and see this great facility … even today when I go out there it’s so impressive.”

But it was the cars that sold him on racing. “The wide tires on the cars … the chrome exhaust … man, this is where I want to be.”

BUILDING SPEED

After studying business at Marietta College in Ohio, Dyson was medically exempt from the service, so he started working. Marriage quickly followed and then graduate school.

But the racing bug stayed with him.

It started slowly. He read all the racing magazines that were available then and also followed drag racing.

Growing up, races weren’t shown on TV. The only races he saw were in person, whether it was going with his dad to Indianapolis, going over to the Dover drag strip in Wingdale or going to Middletown to see the dirt cars.

“When I was a kid, your source of information was National Speed Sport News, a rag out of New Jersey; a terrific newspaper edited by Chris Economaki, one of the all-time great characters.”

Racing never made it to the front page of a newspaper unless there was a major wreck and people were killed, he said.

“Now, it’s too mainstream.”

 

After graduate school, he bought a Datsun 510 and started racing it in the summer of 1974. He won his first race at Watkins Glen.

The Datsun racing wasn’t the top class, but Dyson said it was a great way to start because there were a lot of parts available, including at the junkyard. The other and more important aspect was that a lot of racers were using Datsuns, so Dyson could gauge how he was faring with his racing. He won some regional races and built on his experience.

He had no crew when he started other than his wife, Emilie. He then added a couple part-time mechanics. He then met Pat Smith, who lived in Pleasant Valley and taught auto mechanics at a vocational school. “He stayed with me and he was my crew chief for 28 years. We won a lot of races together. We won championships and we just raced all over and we won a lot of races in a lot of places, in a lot of different cars.”

Dyson progressed from Datsun 510s to a Datsun 200SX, which was a little faster. Then it was onto a Pontiac Firebird, a Porsche 962 and an Indy car.

“I raced a succession of different kinds of World Sports Cars, the Riley and Scott was one. We won a lot of championships with that. And then we got into Lolas and now we’re back with Porsche again.” His team now races the new Porsche RS Spyders.

“The old saying, quitters never win and winners never quit, well I just never quite quit.”

Dyson still drives, just not the Porsches. He drives a Daytona prototype, which is made by Crawford and Crawford Composites Inc., and is different from the Spyders.

 

“It’s a slower car. The Porsche Spyders are very sophisticated, very high powered, very fast automobiles. The Daytona Prototype is a little less extreme.”

But, he said, “it keeps you young. It keeps you competitive. It makes you more sympathetic or maybe more demanding of the guys who work for us full time driving. You say, hey, wait a minute, I’m not asking you to do anything that I haven’t done, so get on with it.”

SHIFTING GEARS

Ferrari had approached Dyson in the early 1990s asking if he would be interested in running its 333 sports prototype car. “I just felt no, it would be more just fun to run our own deal. We’re all, all the guys here, we’re inherently hot-rodders. If we get something we’re gonna modify it, make it different. With the Ferrari, I don’t think we could’ve done that. So we didn’t do it. So we ran Riley-Scotts then out of Indianapolis and off they went. We beat the Ferraris pretty regularly.”

Racing was never a full-time effort for Dyson and he says it still isn’t.

“My primary business in the early days was I had a chain of radio stations in the mid-Hudson Valley and then I expanded that nationwide and had a fair number of radio stations. And then I got pulled into the family business. My dad asked me to take care of individual projects and I ended up running the place.”

He does say that racing is never far below the surface.

 

“It’s important to me. It’s a challenging part of my life. It’s still an important part of my makeup. We’re effective, reputable, competitive, honest, good contributors to the sport. At the same time, we want to win every race we’re in.”

As the cars started getting faster and more complex, Dyson started adding more mechanics. And in 1983, he bought an old building in Poughkeepsie for his base of operations. The building had been the site of a steering wheel manufacturer for Ford Motor Co. He rehabbed the whole facility for adaptive reuse and rented out the space he didn’t need.

“We went from doing races that were within driving distance, in essence sort of local races, to races all over the country. First we had to get a truck and then get a guy to drive the truck and get guys to fly out to the races. And then we had to fly myself out to the races. So all of that stuff affected our need for help, people and good mechanics.”

Several of the mechanics have been with Dyson since early 1980s and he stresses that he was able to build his team with mechanics from the area.

“People like success and we all help each other. It’s really gratifying to see everybody enjoying it as much as they do.”

He now has a full-time staff of 14 for the two cars. “We’re probably the smallest race team in the country.”

Joining the team as a driver a few years ago was Dyson’s son, Chris. In high school, he did dirt go-cart racing and took to it, Dyson said.

 

“I didn’t think he’d ever want to do any real racing. But it turned out he did and he enjoyed it.”

Dyson put his son in a car one year at Watkins Glen and “he ran very, very capably.” He was fast in testing and Dyson decided to have him drive. It was a three-driver, six-hour race and Dyson was going to be in it with one other guy. “I said, ‘Well Chris, why not make this your first big-car race?’ He had done some spec race and pro Spec Racer Ford racing, so, he knew his way around a racetrack and was fully competitive plus he was in great shape physically … and mentally he was tuned up. He just got in the car and had no problem at all running hard. He ran very effectively and did a nice job. We brought him in the fold and I guess to a certain extent I guess he’s replaced me.”

SHARING THE WEALTH

Away from the racetrack, Dyson’s other focus is on the foundation that he has overseen since his sister, Anne, died of breast cancer in 2000.

Dyson says foundations have come a long way since the Rockefeller Foundation solved the problem of tapeworms by telling everyone to drink castor oil.

“Ring worm, castor oil; that was a simple kind of a fix. You start talking cancer. You start talking major blood diseases, clearly private foundation support helps. But major NIH (National Institutes of Health), major public health grants are what really drive it,” he said.

“You can’t move big things without big money. And the only real source of big money is the government.

“Can we help? Absolutely.”

The foundation has given out more than $164 million since its inception.

 

Just as racing was soaked up by his son, so has the philanthropic aspect been soaked up by the next generation of Dysons.

“My kids, my son and my daughter, and my brother’s kids, and my younger brother’s kids, they all know that philanthropy is an integral part to the good fortune that our family has had and it’s a direct response to it and a direct responsibility because of it,” he said.

“There’s no magic to try to get kids and family to understand it. It’s just that it’s really important. When the kids see that this is something integral to the makeup of the family not unlike our heritage or our in-laws or where our people come from or what our national origins are, that’s what philanthropy is, it’s the same thing. It’s important, it’s positive, it’s very interesting; you meet people and do things you’ve never done before.”

One such endeavor is to build the longest pedestrian walkway over the Hudson River where a rail line once crossed at Poughkeepsie.

Dyson said no where else can something like this be accomplished other than through philanthropy.

“Nobody is going to do it as a for-profit thing. This is a great opportunity. What a great project. We build hospitals and expansions to the schools. We build church annexes. This is all stuff that’s not only interesting and important, but it’s fun to see what you can do to change or improve an organization and their ability to do stuff. And that’s what you do every day. Where else would I be able to build a hospital? Well, we’ve helped build a big wing on a hospital; we’ve helped build a college in Westchester County. All due to philanthropy. It’s interesting, fun and important. It’s for the public good. And I think it’s a responsible giveback for the good fortune that the family has been able to have.”

 

As far as focusing on regional and American concerns, Dyson said, “this is the greatest country on the planet and we’re trying to make it a little bit better. We give in the United States because that’s the basis of our wealth, the freedoms that this country brought us. My mother was an immigrant. My dad was a first-generation American, so they felt just as much as my brothers and I feel, and my sister before us, that there’s enough need and enough causes and problems that we can contribute a little bit as assisting and helping solve it.

“I’d like to think we made a difference.”

 

 

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