No problem, the photos were nice but the pictures you painted with words were even better. I thoroughly enjoyed it and feel as if I know Don Aranow a little.

Padraig

Thanks Padrig. Here is another little known fact about The Don. He was generous as well as tough.

He was in construction and he built, homes, office buildings, plazas and apartment complexes. One of these apartment complexes was in the Atlanta area and was near an African / American college.

This school had lots of students that wanted to go there, but they were a little short on both money and housing. Don heard about their problem and stepped in and donated an apartment complex that was very near the campus.

The photo shows Don getting a letter of appreciation from the college president and he was also given a Lifetime Membership in the NAACP

I stand about 5"11", so you can see that Don was a big man physically as well as a businessman and racer.

This was taken in front of the Magnum office door when Don owned it.

Great picture Charlie!.....and really didn't know he was that generous to the less fortunate!

Bringing this "to the top" where it belongs all day today!

Don & me in my 28 SS in 1977
 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]564384[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]564385[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]564386[/ATTACH]
A friend of our family.
My wife went to school with his daughter in South Orange N.J.

Love him or not he was one of the people who made our Hobby, Sport, Passion what it is today. I was fortunate enough to spend time at Cigarette, Apache, Magnum and Hawk when they were both still running strong on 188th thanks to Scott Smith and Craig Barrie. The stories are endless from back in the day.

CIG3 love it , if share you some

On one trip in 93' we stopped in to see Scott at Cigarette. He gave us a quick look around and even a our of Don's office where they had all the build files stored. Very cool. He was pretty busy that day so we said we were going to head over to Fort Apache to look around. Scott said to drop his name and we would (laughing) probably get bounced out on our head. First we stopped at Hawk and Bud Larow showed us around. Got to see a set of the 600 Cu.In. Sonny Leonard motors for a new 46 Rough Rider that was being built for the owner of the Florida Marlins (Race Boat) very cool. After that we figured we'd hit Apache to see what was up. After walking around for few minute who comes out of the office but Bobby Saccenti. He spent nearly an hour with us looking at all the boats in the place. We got to crawl around a brand new 36' they were building for Arizona Iced Tea owner. Years later I met Bobby again at the Miami show and he remembered be and our visit. Really cool guy.

I just think he was perfectly suited to become even more of an innovator in hull design had he lived.........he ditched every successful boat company before the boredom set in -or- as soon
as the first sign of it was felt.
How many people you know would leave a successful company and then move on to another startup only to make that new one successful? ..........he did it 5 times!