King of the Road

McKenna is also a huge supporter of responsible graduation-night celebrations for high school seniors. But as a student himself, he was involved in a 90-mile-per-hour, alcohol-fueled, graduation-night car crash, which left the driver and six of the occupants with either a concussion or broken bones or, in McKenna's case, both.

However, McKenna talks the talk and walks the walk. For nearly a decade, the owner of car dealerships in Windward Oahu, Kona and California has been putting his money (and his cars) where his mouth is. Since 1996, he has donated automobiles to schools that have at least 95 percent attendance at their alcohol-free, drug-free graduation parties.

Photo: Karin Kovalsky

"When Kathie Wells, who was head of Kalaheo High School's Project Grad, asked me for a donation for their party, I asked her what it would take to get attendance up near 100 percent," says McKenna. "She was just joking around and said, 'probably a car.' I said, 'You got it, as long as you get 95 percent of the kids to that party.' They turned out 97 percent and we haven't looked back. Today, we offer them to all four Windward Oahu high schools as well as one in Kailua-Kona, near our dealership there."

McKenna's spirit of giving didn't stop with his cars. In the fall of 1996, McKenna was contemplating strategies to boost sales in December, a notoriously slow month. Then he had an idea: What if we give $100 to the customer to give toward their local school? The promotion worked better than expected. Instead of the average 60 to 70 cars sold that month, 113 cars moved off his lot. He was so happy with the response from both his customers and the schools that he instituted the policy for every day of every month.

His Spirit of Giving to the Schools program has given away donations to 430 Hawaii schools, both public and private, with individual schools' totals to date ranging from $100 to $30,000. The donations, which are given with no strings attached, have been made in the names of nearly 10,000 new-car customers. Later this month, McKenna expects to have his 10,000th customer and give away his personal goal of $1 million to the schools.

Last May, McKenna was honored for his community service by the American International Automobile Dealers Association and Newsweek magazine, which named him the National Dealer of the Year.

"I was shocked. I had originally gone to Washington, D.C., to visit with our senators and congressmen. I had no idea I was even being considered for the award," says McKenna. "I was really tickled by it, but I was really happy for the state, because it's the first time we got something like this. And there were a lot of tough cookies up for it."

Even though he'll reach his million-dollar goal soon, McKenna says his giving program will keep on giving, even despite sales at his Windward Ford and Mazda dealerships being down 20 percent to 25 percent. The businesses draw as much as 50 percent of their customers from the nearby Kaneohe Marine Corps base, which has many of its personnel deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"That's OK, we'll be fine," says McKenna. "They'll be back soon with plenty of money to spend on cars."