by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
Matt Kenyon is a builder by choice. Forget the fact he’s a fifth-generation Kenyon in the construction business in Jacksonville. There was no pressure to follow in anyone’s footsteps and never was for any of the Kenyon’s who have made a living for over 100 years in the building industry.
“It was always a passion since I was a little boy,” said Kenyon, who is president and CEO of the Dana B. Kenyon Company with offices on the Westside on Timuquana Road. “Like my grandfather, my uncle and my dad, I set my mind since day one and never wavered.”
Kenyon may have been determined to be a builder — a drawing from the first grade is proof he’s been thinking about it since shortly after birth — but his father never pressured Kenyon to pursue a career in the family business.
“My father tried to talk me out of it. He said it’s hard work,” said Kenyon. “I like building buildings. I like the smell of sawdust and the welding and pounding nails. I had more of a passion for it than my father, the passion as my grandfather had.”
Kenyon does believe that if he’d chosen another line of work, the family company may have been dissolved.
“I think they would have sold,” he said, adding he has one uncle who doesn’t have any sons and one uncle with one son who didn’t express interest in the construction business. “I am the only male Kenyon that got in that wanted to.”
Will there be a sixth generation Kenyon running the family business? That’s up to Kenyon’s sons — Matt Jr. and Dana. Kenyon said both have been exposed to the family business as well as other industries and the choice, when the time comes, will be entirely theirs.
The company today employs about 50 people, down from a high of about 90 during the heyday of the local construction boom. Like others, Kenyon is real sure the industry will never be the same again. It’ll improve, he says, but never to the levels of 3-5 years ago.
As a result, Kenyon’s company has branched out into incorporating alternative and renewable energy into new construction projects and additions to existing buildings.
“It’s a byproduct of a passion I have always had but never felt the timing was right,” said Kenyon, who’s building is covered with solar panels.
Kenyon said if he didn’t go into the family business he’d likely be a pilot. He has his license to fly single-engine planes and has plenty of hours logged in multi-engines.
“I almost went into the Navy because I wanted to be fighter pilot,” he said. “But, I chose not to pick up my family and move every two years.”
In addition to being a builder, Kenyon enjoys fishing, surfing, diving, snow skiing, hunting and driving heavy equipment on his Clay County farm.
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