A Band of Brothers

Words: Ken Denison

Boatbuilding brotherhood runs deep in the Denison family

In the fall of 1973 when this picture was taken, I was attending Broward Community College after dropping out of Rollins College two years earlier. I was 20 years old and along with attending BCC, had started a photography business specializing in, you guessed it yacht photography.

My brother Kit, (father of Bob Denison), was 10 years older and had just come down from New York City with his wife Ann and their three-year-old son, Christopher to work at Broward Marine. They were temporarily housed in our family home inside the boatyard property at the NW corner of the yard on New River. I think I was living either in a mobile home park that a captain friend owned or at another friend’s house at this particular time frame. Peering through this piece of scrap metal (pictured right) at this point of our lives we were two brothers who clearly were at other ends of the success spectrum.

Kit grew up, as I did, literally, inside the Broward Marine facility on SW 20th Street now officially Denison Way. My other older brother, Skip, grew up there as well. While all of us are currently involved in the boat business, back then, all of us, for a period of time, worked alongside our mother and father at Broward Marine in various capacities. As brothers, our playground was the shipyard. Later on, during high school, we also worked there. For young boys, it was a magical place. Especially if you liked boats... and we all did! Our closest neighbors were captains and crew. At Thanksgiving and Christmas there were always “strays” that were onboard boats that Mom always set a place for at our table. We drove our go-carts around the entire yard, when the yard had closed for the day and, at night, entertained the Jungle Queen when it drove by the house on its nightly trips down the south fork of the new river.

I played the trumpet while Skipper jumped on the trampoline. Kit left for college when I was 8 and really didn’t come back to live here until just about the time this photo was taken. I really can’t say we spent a lot of time together growing up however he was decidedly the “big brother” that I looked up to as most “little brothers” do.

Kit and Skip were both far more athletic than me. Kit played high school basketball and Skip lettered in almost any sport he was involved in. Kit, on top of this was far more academically gifted, at least compared to me, as I was more concerned with playing in our garage band, Colored Rain, than attending an Ivy League school. Kit graduated at the top of his class at Pine Crest and went on to graduate from the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania. A career at the radio division of ABC in New York followed along with meeting his wife Ann. They married and started a family. Their first son Christopher was born in New York.

Our father had an unwritten understanding that his “boys” need not apply to work at the company business right out of college. Kit’s time in NYC was about 5-6 years when he decided to bring his family down and start work at the yard. Skip worked at a large Michigan-based restaurant chain where he was managing their largest store when he decided to come back to Florida to run the repair side of the yard a few years later. After graduating, I stayed up in Michigan where 10 years earlier, Broward had built a second plant on our family property in Saugatuck. I went into the real estate business right after college and, five years later, decided that I would like to be part of the business.

I joined the business on my 30th birthday in 1983 and started out lofting boats in the Michigan yard. Lofting, before computers was the process that drew the full-sized shape of the hull onto plywood patterns which were used to cut out the aluminum frames. By the end of that summer, Labor Day, I was told by my father to get down to the Florida yard. He and Kit had parted company. As time went on, and for various reasons, both Skip and I, left the company after working there for about 10 years. Skip in the mid-eighties and myself, on my birthday, 10 years from the day I started. All of this created a huge vacuum between all of us. Mother, Father and most decidedly, brothers.

I think it was the courage and tenacity of Bob Denison to connect us all within his company.

Kit went on to start his own company Denison Marine and almost immediately started selling boats. At Broward I was extremely “green” and looked on in awe as he developed jet driven, high speed yachts and sold them to an entirely new breed of yachtsman who were looking for speed. His new plant in Dania was state of the art and quickly filled with his new age designs and production techniques. Not so much for myself. The only two boats I sold that first year were to customers from California who I think never knew that Kit had left. Kit had the charisma and intelligence that brought him huge allegiance from his workforce and customers alike. My brother was a seriously tough act to follow.

While there’s no longer a Broward Marine or a Denison Marine, what has evolved and healed, for the most part, is the relationship between us as brothers. I think it was the courage and tenacity of Bob Denison to connect us all within his company. It could have been a disastrous decision to bring in those family ties that certainly were far from perfect. But he did it anyway.

I recall the day that Kit and I decided to go forward with a co-listing on a large, 50-meter, jetboat for my client and friend. It was a decision on my part, to bring alongside the most knowledgeable person I knew who understood the complexities of this kind of boat and I knew it was my brother Kit. While we never sold the boat. What we did do, in large part, was to bring together a rift that had for far too long, set us apart.

It felt good.

As we celebrate Kit’s big 80th birthday, I still am in awe of both of my brothers and how they continue to be productive selling and marketing boats. I am also aware of how much both of them have contributed to our family’s legacy in the boat business. When our dad was interviewed in his mid-80’s, the interviewer of a boating publication asked him... “Frank...don’t you think about retiring at some point.” Dad answered him...

“I’m too old to retire.”