Dennis Edward Nelms

Life of adventure

SELF PORTRAIT

Date and place

of birth: Sept. 24,

1970 in Wichita,

Kan.

Occupation: Co

owner, Adventure

Subaru

Family: Wife Fran

Free, daughter

Lily Nelms, son

Levi Nelms,

stepdaughter Lucy

Free

Something I’d

like to be better

at is: This is

always changing.

When I’m

stressed, I like to

exercise.

My favorite item

in my closet is

a blue Patagonia

shirt.

A person I would

like to meet is

Yvon Chouinard

(founder of

Patagonia).

The biggest

change in

Fayetteville from

when I grew up

is the number of

people.

One thing

people would

be surprised to

learn about me

is I know how to

sew.

My favorite

movie is the

Lord of the Rings

trilogy.

As a football

player, I worked

hard.

The longest I’ve

gone without

sleeping indoors

is 60 days.

What gives me

inspiration is my

family, especially

my wife.

As the boss, I

strive to enjoy

empowering

people to do their

best.

What I like about

being in a drum

circle is it sees

people express

themselves

spontaneously

and surprising

themselves.

What I learned

from my parents

was we all

deserve to be

happy in our lives.

A phrase to sum

me up: a man not

afraid to laugh at

himself.

FAYETTEVILLE - Dennis Nelms thinks a lot about the descendants of his son Levi.

Levi’s not a dad yet, or even a grownup;

in fact, he’s less than a year old. But Dennis is deeply concerned about the world his son will inherit - not to mention the kind of world that will be here in seven generations.

Going backward seven generations, the co-owner of Adventure Subaru notes, brings one back to the early days of the Industrial Revolution, as radical a transformation of society as there has ever been in America. Going forward seven generations, we don’t know what our world will look like, but Nelms is deeply concerned that it be a cleaner, more fulfilling place.

“You think about it; what do you really enjoy?

It’s your kids,” he says. “All this stuff is for what?

For them. … Some of those decisions that you make businesswise, surely we can figure something out here [to preserve the planet]. You’ve got to think about it now.”

There’s plenty Nelms believes we can do today, which is reflected in the new facility his family’s dealership opened in 2012. The interior is a testament to sustainable living, with solar tubes, natural lighting and bathrooms that use less water.

So is the garage, where a 20-plus-foot fan reduces the energy needed to produce a constant blast of air conditioning, as well as a car-wash system that reuses water but gets the cars clean.

“He definitely brings out the best in everybody here,” says Matt Dickhut of Fayetteville, the usedcar sales manager for Adventure Subaru. “He’s very involved, and very interested in what everybody’s doing, and definitely concerned about everyone’s well-being, both inside and outside of work.”

Yet Nelms is far from someone who would forgo the joys of living today for the sake of worrying about tomorrow. Far from it; the guy’s having an awful lot of fun along the way.

There are rugged bike rides and backpacking trips. There’s rock-climbing and playing in drum circles. There’s lots of quality time with his wife and their three children, time for attending and supporting events that benefit local nonprofit organizations.

And then there’s the auto dealership, which lured Nelms back to his hometown of Fayetteville after close to a decade in the western half of the country, years often spent either in nature or in positions where it was his focus.

“His biggest impact is in trying to create a healthy environment and happy employees,” older brother David Nelms says. “That results in happy customers. You can tell the difference when people walk into the dealership; they like being here.” DIFFICULT EDUCATION

When he was a kid, Nelms’ favorite subjects in school were gym and recess.

He was OK with math, too, but just about anything else was a real struggle. Nelms has severe dyslexia, and making decent grades in the Fayetteville Public Schools seemed nearly impossible.

“My grades were horrible,” he says. “If I made a C, I was happy; I worked for my Cs! In football, I always had to run extra because of my bad grades.”

Nelms’ dyslexia was diagnosed when he was in second grade, and he was quickly ushered intospecialized classrooms. He stayed in them until he was about to begin high school, when he got fed up and asked to be let back into regular classrooms.

Schoolwork finally got a little more manageable when he enrolled at the University of Arkansas. There, he was provided with books on tape and other instructional aids that helped make college courses doable.

“Dennis always struggled with the names of things, the d’s and b’s of things, because his mind sees things differently,” says David Nelms. “Both he and my dad [Don, who also has dyslexia] have really had to compensate, but it also made them both very creative, [which] serves entrepreneurial people well sometimes.”

Born in Wichita, Kan., Dennis was a year old when Don Nelms moved his family to Fayetteville so he couldlaunch House of Honda. His father started out selling motorcycles, added cars to its inventory a few years later, and the business grew from there.

The Nelms boys spent plenty of time around their dad’s dealerships, which both say they enjoyed, but neither dreamed of working in the auto business as grown-ups. (The elder Nelms went on to build Nelms Autopark, an enormous car dealership off Interstate 540. Don Nelms sold the dealership in 2001, and today it is known as Fayetteville Autopark.)

Exercise and physical activity have always been important to Dennis. In high school he lettered in football and track. He was an All-State center in the former and “usually finished around second” at the conference meets as a shot-putter.

Offensive line and the shot put demanded Dennis hit the weights hard and bulk up. That size led to athletic success in high school, but when two college friends took him rappelling at White Rock Mountain for the first time, it proved a hindrance.

“I really liked it,” Nelms says. “It was exhilarating. But I was a big kid, and I couldn’t get to the top. We went back a week later, I got to the top, and something happened. I clicked. I could not not think about climbing.”

Like that, Nelms began a process that saw him ultimately lose close to 50 pounds.

FINDING HIS SPOT

While Nelms was new to rock climbing, he was already a seasoned outdoorsman.

When he was about 6 years old, he says, his dad’s business partners invited him to spend time at their cabin on Beaver Lake. He immediately fell in love with the outdoors, something that has never faded.

As a boy, Nelms would hop on his bicycle and fish with friends on golf course ponds until he was kicked off. As a man, he encourages the people around him to get active and join him outside.

“He’s actively setting the example for an active lifestyle, with the exercise activities he likes to do,” Dickhut says. “Fishing, mountain biking, hiking, rock climbing, all those things, he invites employees to go with him, because he’s concerned with everybody trying to be their best.”

Nelms was planning to be a geology major at the UA, and as he went through college he found himself increasingly intrigued by the idea of living where he could be surrounded by nature.

So in 1992, Dennis struck a deal with his dad: If he worked on his father’s congressional campaign, Don would pay for his son to travel to Wyoming and attend the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS).

Recalling how much he worked on the campaign, Dennis laughs at what a bargain his dad got, but adds that it was definitely worth all the labor. The leadership school, a 32-day mountaineering course in the Wind River Range, changed his life.

The program didn’t focus on learning from books; it was learning by doing.

“He could use his creative mind to problem-solve and work with other people,” David Nelms says. “It helped him kind of see his path in life, how he could function. I think it was an important event in Dennis’ life.”

When the program concluded, Dennis told the instructors that he wanted to do what they were doing. They advised him to leave Arkansas and move out West.

So he did.

MOVING OUT WEST

For the next five years, Nelms lived a “very nomadic” life.

He’d work seasonal jobs, then take a few months off and either climb or trek around the country, on foot or by bike. There was a 21-day biking trip from Portland, Ore., to San Francisco, long backpacking trips in the Indian Peak Wilderness Area in Colorado and Grand Canyon National Park. He climbed Mount Rainier in Washington state, and El Capitan and Half Dome in Yosemite National Park.

When he worked, it was for Pacific Crest Outward Bound, where he was involved in outdoor-education courses. Later, it was in the Grand Teton National Park area, at its ski range and school.

“Dennis can work a map and knows nature as good as everybody I’ve seen,” says friend and general sales manager Marcus Hall of Fayetteville. “He had a broad scope [of knowledge] of everything outdoors, I don’t know of anything outdoors he hasn’t done.”

In the late ’90s, he moved to Portland, where his brotherwas living. Dennis became a certified massage therapist, and then in 1999, he landed a job with Oregon Mountain Community, an outdoor retail store.

Just as the National Outdoor Leadership School had changed his life’s course, so did Nelms’ work at Oregon Mountain Community. He worked as its buyer, and discovered that he really enjoyed retail work.

After close to a decade in the western half of the country, Dennis returned to Fayetteville in 2000. A year later, he opened Adventure Subaru with his brother and father.

“I’ve lived in some amazing places, but when I started thinking about settling in, Fayetteville’s a hard place to beat,” he says. “It’s my home. There’s a lot of good people here, so it was kind of a natural choice.”THE RIGHT COURSE

During much of the year, Nelms participates in a weekly drum circle.

It’s a total escape for him, a chance to be surrounded by friends, many of them new, and to focus on nothing but being in the moment, keeping his rhythm as the beats change.

“He brings good energy to it,” says friend Ben Johnson of Fayetteville, who drums with Nelms. “He’s a good drummer too, a good addition toour group - when he can find the time. He’s a busy guy, that’s for sure.”

Nelms is not someone to do things halfheartedly, so when he returned to Fayetteville and launched Adventure Subaru - it was briefly known as Nelms Subaru upon its opening - he threw himself into it. He began in its service department, and eventually moved into the role of general manager.

From the start, he says, the owners were determined to eliminate the sometimes antagonistic relationship car salesmen have with customers. They decided the best way to do this was by taking their salesmen off commission.

Hall says that the decision to pay people a salary benefits employees and customers.

“This system makes sure customers get the cars that are right for them, without interference from a salesperson,” says Hall, who has been with the dealership for 12 years, after being recruited to work there by Nelms. “And when car sales people were having a tough go of it in 2007, 2008, our no-commission people were able to make it through.”

Dennis doesn’t like to think of himself as a boss, but realizes that he plays a major role in setting the tone at Adventure Subaru. (He owns 40percent of the dealership, David owns 9 percent and their father owns the remaining 51 percent.)

This is why he’s giving his employees books like Yvon Chouinard’s The Responsible Company, and asking them how they can lessen the dealership’s environmental impact. In addition, he’s encouraging them to lead active, healthy lifestyles - not being a nag about such things, but by doing things like constructing a communal garden behind the dealership.

There, vegetables are thriving, and will ultimately be taken home by the people who work at the dealership.

A better world starts locally, Dennis believes, which is why he also believes it’s important that the dealership sponsor about 40 local events each year. The bulk of these events are geared toward healthy living, runs and races and things that benefit health-focused organizations.

If it comes down to another dollar on advertising or another dollar that will make his hometown better, he says, it’s no choice at all.

“These events aren’t always the No. 1 way to sell cars, but he tries to support the things our employees enjoy,” Hall says. “Putting money back in the community helps us to share our story, and it’s a good way to help other people.”

Northwest Profile, Pages 33 on 06/30/2013

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