WORTH SUPPORTING
Charles Dyson: Financier, philanthropist
Charles Dyson at his desk at Dyson-Kissner-Moran Corp., about 1994. See larger image
This spring, Cornell announced that its undergraduate business school would be named for Charles Dyson in honor of a $25 million gift from the Dyson family. Who was Charles Dyson?
Born in New York City in 1909 to an English carpenter and his Irish wife, Dyson once noted that he'd inherited his father's English steadiness and his mother's Irish drive. That drive led him to work through high school as a caddy in Englewood, N.J., where he rubbed shoulders with doctors, lawyers and accountants, including the man who would give him his first real job as an accounting clerk for General Motors.
Dyson attended night school at what is now Pace University, studying accounting and business law, working days to help support his family. The experience, he later said, was "one long siege of working."
A 6-month-old Charlie Dyson in early 1910 with his parents (Lawrence, left, and Lillian) and an uncle. See larger image
After college, Dyson shot up the ranks at Price Waterhouse, but in 1939, was recruited by the federal government to help organize the Lend-Lease program, which distributed more than $50 billion in war material to allied nations. He was commissioned into the U.S. Army Air Corps and married his sweetheart, Margaret Macgregor, in 1941.
Without World War II, Dyson might have stayed in accounting. Instead, he served as a special consultant to the secretary of war, an architect of the International Monetary Fund for the treasury, and an Air Corps colonel who provided supply chain oversight in the European and African theaters during the war (although he was always stationed in Washington, D.C.). For his exemplary and varied wartime service, some of which was responsible for shaping monetary policy still in effect today, Dyson received a Distinguished Service Medal and was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
The military, Dyson once said, "left the accounting profession as a second choice. I made up my mind I was going to go into business and do something else."
A late 1930's family photo picturing Charles Dyson, at right, with his parents and sisters. See larger image
In 1954, after trying for many months to secure funding for what he thought was a simple concept, Charles Dyson finally garnered support – in the amount of $4.6 million – from the First National Bank of Boston to undertake what became known as the leveraged buyout. This ingenious deal – the purchase of another company with borrowed funds and only $8,000 of his own money – marked the launch of the Dyson Corp., one of the first holding corporations of its kind.
Around that same time, the Dysons found that they "were making more money than we expected," and thus founded the Dyson Foundation to organize and increase their already significant charitable giving. Asked why he started so early on a path of philanthropy, Dyson explained that he believed in tithing, and that he'd gotten the charity bug from his generous mother, who would "give the shirt off my father's back."
In 1957, Frank Kissner, a friend who'd served with Dyson in World War II, joined him as a business partner, followed 10 years later by John Moran.
Charles Dyson in 1940 in the Air Corps. See larger image
"My father freely acknowledged that if Frank had not joined him or Margaret had not been coaching in the background, he would have gone broke," Charles and Margaret's youngest son, Peter Dyson, told Ezra. "His success is tied to Frank and Margaret."
The Dyson-Kissner-Moran Corp. would go on to become one of the largest private corporations in the United States and a pioneer in leveraged buyouts of businesses internationally. In 1996, Forbes called Dyson the "father of leveraged buyouts."
Dyson's service on various boards was legendary. At one time in the 1960s, he headed his corporation while serving on six boards. "I don't know how I did it, when I look back on it," he later mused. He served on the Rockefeller University Council and as a trustee of the Hospital for Special Surgery, Common Cause, Greer Children's Services, the Center for Defense Information, New York Law School, the American Ballet Theater and Metropolitan Opera. Speaking about a trustee's duty, Dyson once said: "I think a lot of people said they'd lend their name. I just think that you can't lend [only] your name; you lend your pocketbook."
As chairman of Pace's board, Dyson donated tens of millions of dollars (the university's college of arts and sciences bears his name) and contributed considerable organizational leadership, acting as a primary fundraiser and helping to guide the school's transition from a technical institute into a college and then a university.
In 1969 he delivered a lightning-rod speech at Pace titled "Who's in Charge Here?" about America's involvement in the Vietnam War and what he viewed as the unseemly power of the "military-industrial complex."
Dyson's outspoken anti-war stance may have helped to place him, a lifelong Republican, at No. 5 on Richard Nixon's infamous "enemies list," which was leaked to the press and the U.S. Senate in 1973. Joining Dyson on the list were reporter Daniel Schorr and actor Paul Newman.
"I think it was an endorsement for good standards to be on the enemies list," Dyson quipped at the time.
A supremely confident man whose rise in American life, business and philanthropy was marked by relentless hard work, steadiness and a no-nonsense demeanor, Dyson died at age 87 in 1997. Today, the corporation he founded is headed by his son Robert. And his charitable foundation grants millions each year, primarily to safety net programs for people living in the Hudson Valley of New York state.
Trustee emeritus John Dyson '65 announces the $25 million gift to establish the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management this past June. Cornell President David Skorton is at left. See larger image
The Dyson family and Cornell
This June, the Dyson family and Charles Dyson's former business partner John Moran announced a gift of $25 million to create the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The gift is just the latest in three decades of generous funding from the Dysons, who include Cornell trustee emeritus Robert Dyson, MBA '74; Peter Dyson, a member of the AEM Advisory Council; John Dyson '65, a Cornell trustee emeritus, and their sister, the late Anne Dyson, who died in 2000. Their gifts and commitments to Cornell total nearly $65 million, including gifts to create professorships at the Johnson School, CALS and Weill Cornell Medical College, as well as funding for building construction and numerous scholarships.