Schwyhart’s trajectory in business got early start

Bill Wayne Schwyhart’s birth certificate lists his parents’ address as the Star Motel in Stockton, Calif. His father, Joe, was working in a rice mill. His mother, Betty, usually worked as a waitress.

Joe Schwyhart bought a Shell service station five years later. Bill Schwyhart said he started pumping gas there at age 6. His parents divorced about that time, and for the next nine years, Bill Schwyhart attended 13 schools in 12 towns from California to Oklahoma.

“I was drug all over the country,” he said. “Some people would let that baggage keep them down. I just had to shake it off.”

For two years in elementary school, Bill Schwyhart lived with his father in the St. Francis Motel in Stockton. The room was equipped with a kitchenette where they cooked meals, Bill Schwyhart remembers.

From the eighth grade through high school, things settled down for Bill Schwyhart, who was living with his father in a house he had bought in Stockton.

“My father raised me for all intents and purposes,” Schwyhart said, “so you start envying people — kids with stable families — and you start looking at people who have security, who live in the big houses.”

Schwyhart said he had a deleted: an unusual but happy childhood.

“I think my childhood was unusual for mainstream America, but it prepared me for life,” he said. “I don’t ever remember being unhappy in my childhood.”

Joe Schwyhart, 79, said his son was always an entrepreneur. Soon after starting at the gas station, Bill Schwyhart had a paper route. Later, he ran a bicycle repair shop in the basement of their house. The young Schwyhart even made money catching tadpoles in a creek and selling them at school.

“I started reading the business section of the San Francisco Chronicle when I was 13 years old and taking an interest in business,” Bill Schwyhart said.

At age 15, Bill Schwyhart had a wreck when the Honda SL350 motorcycle he was riding collided with a car.

Schwyhart said he regained consciousness in the back of an ambulance.

“I thought I was in heaven for a brief instant,” he said. “I thought I was in heaven because all I saw was fluffy white — frosted glass and white sheets. It [the wreck] smashed my face, knocked my teeth out, fractured my skull. For that split second, I was almost out of body.”

Before the ambulance picked him up, a woman came out of a nearby house and loosened Schwyhart’s helmet strap because he was choking on his blood.

“She saved my life,” he said.

Schwyhart went back to the house twice afterwards to say thank you but never found her. He doesn’t know who saved his life.

Schwyhart lost two toes on his right foot because of the accident.

“I was on crutches,” he said. “They wanted to amputate my foot. I was tore up pretty good.”

But he recovered. In 1975, at age 17, Bill Schwyhart graduated from high school and left home to begin his business career. He stocked shelves in the paint department at a Sears store, worked as a savings and loan management trainee, worked at a gas station, worked at a pharmacy at night as an accounting clerk and attended community college. Still, he found time to buy, recondition and sell cars.

Two years later, Schwyhart loaded everything he owned in his 1967 Mercury Cougar and moved to Missouri. Schwyhart had $20,000 in savings — primarily insurance money from his motorcycle accident — that he used to buy one-third of a Chrysler dealership in Marshfield, Mo. His father, who had already retired to the area, was a one-third partner in the dealership.

But the Marshfield dealership closed in 1979, and Schwyhart moved to Rogers to manage a Dodge dealership. He spent his first year in Northwest Arkansas living in the Jan-Lin Motor Inn, a Rogers motel that is now called the Guest Inn. Schwyhart said he worked long hours, so he didn’t spend much time at the Jan-Lin. He was making $700 a week and paying $700 a month to live at the motel. With his spare money, he bought some rental houses.

Also in 1982, Schwyhart bought the Buick, Pontiac and GMC dealership in Rogers, making him the youngest Buick dealer in America at age 24. He called it Hart Motor Co., using the last syllable of his name. Schwyhart had two partners in the dealership — his father and Robert Thornton. Schwyhart and Thornton would be partners on several projects over the next three decades.

Schwyhart met David Glass, then vice chairman and chief financial officer of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., at RJ’s Coffee Shop in Bentonville one day in 1982. He talked Glass into leasing cars for Wal-Mart’s store planning department.

“I got a six-car deal with Mr. Glass,” Schwyhart said. “That was the beginning of thousands and thousands of cars that were leased by Wal-Mart.”

Bill and Joe Schwyhart had a falling out in 1985 and didn’t speak for 12 years. Joe Schwyhart had a heart attack while living in Carthage, Mo., and his wife called Bill to let him know.

“I walked into his room after 12 years like I’d seen him yesterday,” said Bill Schwyhart.

In the meantime, Thornton had become a father figure to Schwyhart.

“When my dad left, Bob and I were partners, but we grew into a family,” Bill Schwyhart said. “We see each other every day, just like we have for 30 years. He mentored me in life. He mentored me in business.”

“He’s a fine fellow,” Thornton said of Schwyhart. “He’s a man of his word, and I can’t say enough good things about him.”

Thornton, who is still business partners with Schwyhart, said he believes they’ll be able to weather the rest of the recession.

“He’s got it all figured out,” said Thornton. “It’s going to take some time, but we think we’re going to make it.”

“This recession for us is dealing with all these issues,” Schwyhart said, referring to lawsuits along with the economic problems most businesses are facing. “We have to get to the other side of the river.”

In 1988, Schwyhart bought out his father’s interest in the dealership and purchased the local BMW dealership from Don Nelms of Fayetteville. In 1997, Schwyhart sold all his dealership lines except for BMW. The next year, he was awarded a Volkswagen dealership.

The next year, 1998, Bill Schwyhart got saved, baptized, married and made his first two big real estate investments.

Schwyhart said he was saved on Palm Sunday of 1998 in Pastor Ronnie Floyd’s office at First Baptist Church of Springdale. He was baptized in the church a week later, on Easter Sunday. In 1999, he helped Floyd find a spot for the Church at Pinnacle Hills in Rogers.

Schwyhart said his Christian faith still guides him.

“Every day I get up and ask God, ‘What are you teaching me today?’” said Schwyhart.

Schwyhart married Carolyn Corter in 1998. He has a son from a previous marriage, and she has a daughter from a previous marriage.

Schwyhart sold the BMW and Volkswagen dealerships in 2003 to MetroNational, a real estate investment, development and management company in Houston.

Rogers Mayor Steve Womack, this year’s Republican nominee in the race for the 3rd District congressional seat, has been friends with Schwyhart for years.

“To his credit, his fingerprint is clearly on the development that we’ve had in the last decade in Rogers,” said Womack. “He has been very instrumental in helping us achieve that success.

“I know the last couple of years have been very difficult,” Womack said. “It’s been difficult for a lot of people, and I know he’s had his share of that, but that’s one of the realities of being in the development business.”

Gerald Johnston, the former chief financial officer at Tyson Foods, said he has been friends and business partners with Schwyhart for years.

“He’s never been anything but fair with me,” Johnston said. “He’s always been straight up with me. There’s no question about that.”

State Rep. Uvalde Lindsey, D-Fayetteville, who was instrumental in the development of Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport in the 1990s, said Schwyhart was an early appointee to the airport board.

Lindsey praised Schwyhart for his vision, pragmatism and attention to detail.

“Obviously, he was a good businessman and a person who had a vision for what the future held, what the future could bring,” said Lindsey. “He made a good board member. He was easy to work with and gave us a lot of good advice.”

As one story goes, Schwyhart couldn’t pay for earth and utility work he had done at his Pinnacle District development, so a bulldozer operator pressured him into handing over his 1999 Bentley so he could sell it and pay his crew.

But it’s not true, said Jimmy Jones, owner of Jimmy Jones Excavation Inc. of Berryville.

Jones said he made a deal for the Bentley up front. He said he has acquired about 15 vehicles and a motor home by doing business with Schwyhart.

“He traded me a lot of automobiles,” said Jones. “I’m in the hot-rod business myself. Bill Schwyhart traded me just like he said it would. We’re 100 percent square.”

Jones said he gave the car to his girlfriend, who has been driving it around Berryville.

“It had 20,000 miles,” he said. “It looks brand new.”

Schwyhart said he didn’t own the car. It was leased from his brother-in-law, who operates Pinnacle Motorsports in Rogers. Schwyhart borrowed money from his brother to pay Jones, and Jones used the money to buy the Bentley.

“The depression is not discriminating from anyone,” said Jones. “If he gets on his feet, we’ll help him again. ... We really hope Bill gets back in the game.”

Driving home from a Mexican restaurant recently, Schwyhart said he passed by the old Jan-Lin.

“I’m sitting at the light at the Jan-Lin thinking it was only yesterday that I was living in Room 140 there at the back,” remembers Schwyhart.

Schwyhart’s home at Pinnacle Hills Country Club was appraised for $1.53 million this year.

“It’s a little nicer than the Jan-Lin,” Schwyhart said of his home at the country club. “The drapes aren’t faded. I’ve got a family now. We couldn’t all live in the Jan-Lin. ... But it’s not that far away. We can still see the Jan-Lin from here.”

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