Former Round Rock Mayor and car businessman Nyle Maxwell is this year’s honoree at the Cattleman’s Ball in recognition of his philanthropic efforts and legacy in Williamson County.
The Williamson Museum fundraiser will take place at Kalahari Resorts & Conventions in Round Rock and will feature live entertainment, food and an auction to support the museum’s educational programs. The event takes place from 6:30-9:30 p.m. on October 15.
“I am very very humbled by the list of prior recipients to this award,” Mr. Maxwell said. “If I can help the Williamson Museum raise the amount of money they need to raise, then I’m all over that too.”
Recent honorees include Ride On Center for Kids founder Nancy Krenek, legendary Wilco Cowboy Bill Pickett and Williamson County Sun publishers Clark Thurmond and Linda Scarbrough. Mr. Maxwell said he is especially proud to share the honor with past winner Nancy Rabb, who led the Central Texas Community Foundation in its first years while he was the mayor of Round Rock from 2002 to 2008.
Mr. Maxwell and his wife, Nancy, are now residents of Georgetown. They founded the Central Texas Community Foundation, which has distributed $40 million to nonprofits since its inception in 2004. He’s also a strong supporter of Honor Flight Austin, an organization that takes veterans to Washington, D.C., to see the monuments constructed in their honor.
He said his wife has been crucial to his philanthropy, and she currently serves as a board member of the Williamson County Advocacy Center. Mr. Maxwell said Nancy is his moral compass and the CEO of the household. He often jokes that she is going to pull him up to heaven with her.
Mr. Maxwell has been involved in the automobile industry for more than 40 years, but he said his decades-long journey as a business owner has not been without its detours.
He opened his first car dealership in Taylor in 1984. Early on, Mr. Maxwell said he was a nervous, hot-wired person who made many mistakes when handling his employees. Even as he made charitable donations and served on nonprofit boards, he said, overall, he was disorganized in his philanthropic giving.
In 1998, he sold all his dealerships, dissolving a partnership with his father and father-in-law. He ended up buying one back in 2005, then two more in 2009, with a stronger focus toward philanthropic giving and his employees, who he wanted to be the “hero of their household,” he said.
Mr. Maxwell today still owns car dealerships in Taylor, Killeen and North Austin, where he spoke with the Sun. His second-floor office is decorated like a woodsy hunting lodge but has a sweeping view of the freeway. Deer mounts and many photos of him smiling beside exotic animals hang on the wall as cars zoom across Interstate 35 through his window.
Mr. Maxwell described his first philanthropic donation in 1990, when he saw on the evening news that there was a boy in need at Brackenridge Children’s Hospital. A generous donation prompted an invitation to be on the hospital’s advisory board. Before taking on this big responsibility, he had someone pull him aside and put it bluntly.
“He said, ‘Nyle, if you're going to be an effective board member in a fundraising foundation, you've got three options — or you could do all three — but you've got to do at least one of them. You either get it, give it or get off.’”
Mr. Maxwell went on to hold chair positions on the Children’s Hospital Foundation of Austin and the Dell Children’s Hospital Foundation. His community involvement was supercharged in 2003, when he ran for mayor of Round Rock, which wasn’t his idea.
“I didn’t wake up one morning and decide I wanted to become mayor,” Mr. Maxwell said.
He wanted to focus on his family, as he and his wife had just adopted their youngest daughter, Gracie, from Kunming, China. However, on November 21, 2003, Round Rock City officials Alan McGraw and Robert DeLuca took him for coffee at IHOP and a crucial conversation.
“Of course, I thought I knew what they wanted. They wanted money, just like a lot of people want from Nyle and Nancy,” he joked. “But no, that’s not what they wanted. I let them know that being mayor wasn’t on my radar, but they continued to force the issue.”
They convinced him that his active involvement in the community would make him a good mayor.
“It took the civic and business community of Round Rock a solid month to talk me into it, and over much cussing and discussing and prayer — Nancy and I decided that I would [run for mayor].”
Mr. Maxwell described his time working as mayor as amicable and free of fighting. He said he didn’t have a political agenda and focused on serving the community.
In 2005, he bought back the Pontiac GMC dealership in Round Rock, which required little management but kept him out of the house. Four years later, in 2009, when the economy collapsed, he had just finished his second term as mayor. He was presented with the option of buying back two more of the dealerships for their net asset value.
“Nancy sat me down and said, ‘Okay, honey, if we’re going to do this, it’s going to be a different proposition this time.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, ‘Well, the first time around, you were always beating your chest and making sure everybody knew that you wanted to climb that mountain, and we did. It was very financially rewarding for us. It changed our lives. You accomplished what you set out to do. Now you don't have to do that anymore, because we need to concentrate on our employees this time around, and we need to support the communities.
“When we started over again in the business, we looked at it as a generator for our giving.”
In 2009, Mr. Maxwell also started the process of converting to Catholicism from being Episcopalian. He said the first time he owned the dealerships he was banking the money and then spending it. This time, he was using the Central Texas Community Foundation to organize fundraising and their own charitable giving.
Mr. Maxwell has also focused on making his dealerships a place where employees are taken care of and can help the next generation.
“Both Nancy and I had fathers who worked for big corporations. They were taken care of, and when they retired, they could do things like help their son and son-in-law build a business,” he said.
Mr. Maxwell is currently a board member of the Seaton Williamson Foundation and the Central Texas YMCA. He has been president of the Texas Wildlife Association for two years. He is on the National Dealer Council for Chrysler, where he has been TWA president for the past year. Mr. Maxwell also plays a crucial role in supporting his wife in her role on the board of the Children’s Advocacy Center.
“A lot of times, I’m the spokesperson and she is right there with me. Now, I’m helping her,” he said.