Mystery Stalks Street Where Speedboat King Met Violent Death

It is known as Boatbuild ers’ Row, Gasoline Alley or Performance Street, but, since early this month, it will forever be associated with the fast life and violent death of Don Aronow, a prototype of the American dream.

It was along this quiet street of a northern Miami suburb, near the ocean that made his pulse race, that Aronow built the boats that made him a legend of the sporting world. And it was here, on the afternoon of Feb. 3, that he was shot to death by a man who hailed his white Mercedes in the middle of the street.

Police say that the motive remains unclear. The possibilities are as varied as was Aronow’s life style, which his friends say was a constant quest for excitement in the forms of money, women, success and--above all--speed.

A child of the Depression, Aronow, who was 59, founded several of the world’s hottest speedboat manufacturing companies. His established a company’s reputation by winning races (the world offshore powerboat championship twice, the U.S. championship three times), then would sell the company at an enormous profit and start a new one next door.

Boatbuilders’ Row

Gasoline Alley--that is, NE 188th Street--bears the names of the companies that the self-made multimillionaire from Brooklyn made famous: Magnum, Apache, Donzi, Cigarette and the U.S.A. racing team.

“It’s incredible,” said F. M. (Ted) Theodoli, president of Magnum Marine, which he bought from Aronow in 1972. “This is the street that Don created, and he died right here in the middle of it.”

Like many of the boat builders along the street, Theodoli heard the shots that killed Aronow. He rushed to his window and saw the gunman making his getaway in a dark blue Lincoln Continental. Other witnesses described the killer as a middle-aged white man with wavy, medium-length brown hair, a dark complexion and stubbled chin.

As the 6-foot-2, 210-pound Aronow lay dying, one of the rescue squad members who had rushed to the scene asked: “Who is this guy?”

“That’s the king,” came the response. “He built this entire street.”

‘Triumph and Tragedy’

The incident was recalled at a memorial service for Aronow in Miami by a racing colleague, Florida eye surgeon Dr. Robert Magoon. Describing his friend’s life as a “mixture of triumph and tragedy,” Magoon added: “Don died as he would have wished--with his boots on and with front-page headlines. Those of us who knew and loved him know that he could never have tolerated growing old and being sickly.”

Among Aronow’s customers were Vice President George Bush, the former Haitian dictator Jean Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier, King Hussein of Jordan and King Juan Carlos of Spain. Some of his boats ended up in the hands of leading drug syndicates.

After drug smugglers started making use of his 90-m.p.h. Cigarette boats in the mid-’70s, the Customs Service equipped itself with a 39-foot catamaran, also designed by Aronow and dubbed “Blue Thunder.”

In an interview with the Miami News two hours before he was killed, Aronow joked that the Customs Service had bought 13 of the $150,000 catamarans “so they could catch smugglers using boats my other companies have made.” But he said he never knowingly sold a boat to smugglers.

Immigrant Worker’s Son

Aronow’s career was a rags-to-riches story lived by a character who was larger than life. His father, a taxicab owner whose family came from Russia, went bankrupt during the Depression. Don Aronow’s first job was as an usher, working nights and weekends at the old Kingsway theater in Brooklyn.

He was a gym teacher in the Bronx and served in the Merchant Marine before he got started in the construction business. By 1956, at the age of 28, thousands of new tract houses in northern New Jersey had made him a millionaire. He retired to Florida in 1960, and bought himself a speedboat.

He was unhappy with the boat’s construction, and decided to design one for himself. His first boat, made of wood, broke apart. His second, the Formula, was made of Fiberglas--and it was a winner. Suddenly, Aronow found himself in the powerboat business.

The Formula was followed by Donzi (which Aronow, characteristically, named for himself). The 36-foot Cigarette, which most experts consider his masterpiece, named for a type of boat that pirates used to hijack rumrunners during Prohibition. The idea of bad guys outracing other bad guys and seizing their fortune appealed to Aronow.

Design Skills Praised

“Don was to offshore speedboats what Ben Franklin was to electricity,” said one admiring Customs official. “I don’t want to make him out to be the greatest boat builder in the world, but in that particular class of boats, he was unequaled.”

After the memorial service, friends and rivals recalled Aronow’s dynamism and intense sense of competition. They also mentioned his macho personality, rough manners and occasionally explosive temper.

“Every day was an adventure for Don,” said Bill Wishnick, chairman of the Whitco Chemical Co., who was world offshore champion in 1971. “He was a fierce friend, but very outspoken. He would behave as if he didn’t given a damn about anybody.”

“He was a great bon vivant , a diamond in the rough,” said Jim Wynne, Aronow’s chief design engineer and inventor of the popular marine outdrive, a device that combines the advantages of inboard and outboard engines. “His language could be crude occasionally, but it fitted his personality.”

Theodoli, the present owner of Magnum, added: “He was a hard-nosed guy. Some people loved and adored him. Others did not. If he didn’t like you, he could find a way to abuse you.”

‘A Woman’s Man’

And then there were the women. Magoon described the lean, ruggedly handsome Aronow as a charismatic person who was both “a man’s man” and a “woman’s man.”

After divorcing his first wife, Shirley, with whom he had three children, Aronow married Lillian Crawford, a Wilhelmina fashion model and socialite. He regarded the marriage as a part of his success story, and boasted, “I’d never be married to a beautiful woman like Lillian if I hauled garbage for a living.” She gave birth to their second child four months ago.

Aronow’s boats--sleek, powerful and built for performance--were another extension of his personality. When a Miami Herald reporter asked him for a one-word description of the boats he liked to build, he suggested, “Erotic.”

“Winning is a natural aphrodisiac,” Lillian Aronow added.

Aronow quit racing in 1970. After surviving two motorcycle crashes, six automobile wrecks and a dozen boating accidents, he was in considerable pain. That year, his eldest son, Mike, began using a wheelchair after he nearly died in an automobile crash. Father and son decided to branch out--into racing and breeding horses.

One of their horses--named Don Aronow--won more than $200,000 in prize money. Others raced in the Kentucky Derby. The Aronow stables at Ocala, Fla., house about 40 2-year-olds in various stages of training.

In recent months, Aronow had spoken wistfully of returning to powerboat racing. According to his longtime friend and public-relations agent, John Crouse, he was planning to take part in the 362-mile Miami-Nassau-Miami race this summer, with a new, 45-foot deep-V shaped boat. A five-year “no compete” contract that Aronow had signed with the new owners of the Cigarette was about to expire.

Motive a Mystery

The circumstances of Aronow’s death mystified his friends and associates. They say that although he had made enemies with his business tactics, they doubt that a competitor would have gone so far as to kill him.

Another line of speculation was that Aronow had run afoul of drug smugglers. Detectives estimate that of the 235 murders last year in Dade County (it has one of the highest homicide rates in the nation), at least 25% were drug-related. Customs officials described the boat builder as “cooperative” whenever he was asked for information about a client.

The problem with this theory is that Aronow’s killing did not resemble a professional hit. The gunman drove his own car. He had attracted the attention of passers-by by hanging around in Gasoline Alley for some time before he acted. His escape could easily have been foiled if someone had managed to block the street’s only exit.

“It looks to me like a crime of passion,” said Crouse, who knew Aronow for more than 20 years. “Here in Miami, you can get into a killing fight in a restaurant or at a stop light. It’s quite possible that someone had a personal grudge against Don. He was an opinionated guy. If you got him riled, he would come at you.”