Local Westchester Auto Dealer Recognized For Community Service

SCARSDALE, NY — A Westchester auto dealer has been nominated for dealer of the year. Bernard F. Curry III, dealer principal at Curry Acura in Scarsdale is one of 51 dealers from across the country who were nominated for the 2019 TIME Dealer of the Year Award.

Curry and the other dealers will be honored at the 102nd annual National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Show in San Francisco on Jan. 25, 2019. The announcement of this year’s 50th annual award was made by Jorg Stratmann, publisher, TIME, and Doug Timmerman, president of Auto Finance for Ally Financial.

The TIME Dealer of the Year award is one of the automobile industry’s most prestigious honors. Recipients are among the nation’s most successful auto dealers who also demonstrate a long-standing commitment to community service.

Curry, 66, was chosen to represent the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association in the national competition.

“Being a business owner gives me the wonderful opportunity to give back to my community through charitable work, to provide good jobs for more than 1,000 people, including 450 here in Westchester County, and to enhance the lives of their families,” Curry said. “I greatly appreciate this recognition and share it with the entire Curry team.”

While in high school and college, Curry worked at his father’s Chevrolet dealership in Scarsdale carrying on a long tradition in the retail automotive business first forged by his grandfather in 1919 in New York City. After graduating from college, he served as pre-owned car manager, general manager and director of dealership operations over the next 20 years, purchasing his own dealership group in 1995 and ultimately acquiring his father’s dealerships, known as Curry Automotive.

Today, the enterprise encompasses 12 dealerships across New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Georgia, representing brands Acura, Chevrolet, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Subaru and Toyota.

Curry is being recognized for applying his management expertise and personal philosophy to community causes, helping to transform a small local hospital into what is now known as New York-Presbyterian Hudson Valley Hospital.

“Our local hospital was not providing the quality of service members of our community expected and deserved,” Curry said. “I once sent a mechanic requiring medical care to a different hospital further away because of my concern about its quality and the level of care.”

When he was recruited to serve on the hospital’s board of directors after it hired a new CEO, he jumped at the chance to have a positive impact.

“I am proud to have played a part in what was the most dramatic organizational ‘turnaround’ that I have ever witnessed,” he said, noting that now the hospital’s campus includes a new cancer center, emergency room, digestive health center and rehabilitation center. And Curry continues to raise funds for the hospital.

Curry was also instrumental in the creation of the Westchester Children’s Museum, located in the landmark boathouses at Playland Amusement Park in Rye, New York, as a founding board member and museum benefactor. There, he currently sponsors an educational exhibit called Toddler Beach, which challenges a child’s motor skills through climbing and movement.

Curry was nominated for the TIME Dealer of the Year award by Mark Schienberg, president of the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association.

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Photo caption: Bernard F. Curry III. Photo credit: Submitted.