Talk about a “who’s who” gathering of Dallas business and civic leaders! That was the scene for sure at Communities Foundation of Texas on Thursday, May 12, when Dr. Bobby B. Lyle was inducted into the EFNT Ring of Entrepreneurs. The EFNT (Entrepreneurs for North Texas) group is a CFT program focusing on small- and mid-sized companies, and its annual Ring induction honors “world-class entrepreneurs” who’ve excelled at giving back.
The who’s who assembly included the likes of Margo and Jim Keyes, Gerald Turner, Ruth Altshuler, Phil Romano, John Wiley Price, Tom Leppert and Garrett Boone. (Garrett and Jim were previous Ring inductees—Garrett in 2015, and Jim in 2009.) Bobby, of course, is the legendary Dallas philanthropist, corporate board member, founder of Lyco Energy Corp., and Dallas investor in fields ranging from real estate and manufacturing to cattle ranching, and green energy.
As the guests streamed into CFT’s meeting room for EFNT’s 15th Annual Spirit of Entrepreneur event, called “Engineering Philanthropy,” a Salvation Army band struck up “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Outgoing CFT CEO Brent Christopher welcomed everyone with a quip: “I’m not sure we’re all saints, but we all came marching in!”
With that Patrick Brandt, chairman of the EFNT board, took the stage to present the group’s annual Spirit of Entrepreneurship North Star awards to Oliver Wyman and Sendero. Next came a video about Bobby, with tributes to the much-admired engineer, executive, entrepreneur, professor, and civic leader from Garrett, Jim, and Ray Hunt. The man of the hour was then introduced by his daughter, Sharon Lyle, who said she “learned grit and tenacity from dad,” adding, “There’s no one I trust more with my life and my business.” At that Bobby took the mic and was presented with the blazer and cuff links traditionally given to Ring inductees, as well as a colorful scale model of SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering complex.
“Out in the lobby,” Bobby told the crowd, “I saw people I’d seen yesterday, some I hadn’t seen in a couple of months, and some I hadn’t seen in a couple of years.” Then he embarked on a conversational, “360-degree tour of our city,” applauding the people behind such progressive developments as the AT&T Performing Arts Center (among them, Bill Lively); the Trinity River project (Dr. Gail Thomas and Lyda Hill, for example); “SMU’s transformation” (Turner as well as Carl Sewell and others); the Perot Museum (Forrest Hoglund and Nicole Small among them); and the Bush presidential library (Laura and George W. Bush and others).
The evening concluded with a casual talk between Bobby and Brent about Lyle’s long and distinguished career. In it, Bobby admitted that he was “probably scared to death both times” when he took on developing the Dallas Galleria shopping center and, later, when he pioneered fracking and horizontal drilling in the Bakken Field oil-shale play in Richland County, Montana. A key player in getting the latter project off the ground, Bobby said, was Dick Cheney, who was then with Halliburton.
Summed up Brent: “But you saw how to connect the dots.”
* Photo credit: Can Turkyilmaz