Dayton Preston, former executive and ‘father figure’ to Columbus leaders, dies at 90
Dayton Preston was a diminutive man with a giant presence.
“Dayton was not very tall, but we all looked up to him,” former Columbus mayor and Superior Court Judge Bobby Peters said of the ex-baseball and Chamber of Commerce executive who died Thursday at age 90.
Those who knew Preston well remembered his enthusiasm for the game of baseball and the city of Columbus, and how devoted he was to promoting both.
For years he led the Columbus Astros baseball team that was part of the Southern League, before the team moved away. Preston’s primary investors were doctors with the Hughston Clinic, and though the team lost money, Preston kept it going as long as he could.
“He was the glue that held it together,” said Columbus Councilor Glenn Davis, who was among the players Preston helped mentor.
“He took me under his wing,” said Davis, joking that being under Preston’s wing was a challenge because he is 6-foot-3 and Preston was maybe 5 feet tall.
“He’s probably one of the reasons I’m in Columbus today,” Davis said, later adding, “He was like a father figure to everybody.... He was very instrumental in building character in the players.”
He had standards he expected players to live up to, Davis said, and that meant behaving yourself when you came to Columbus. “Don’t embarrass my city. I love my city. Put on your best behavior,” was the message Preston conveyed, the councilor said, adding, “Dayton could make your career or ruin your career with one call.”
Preston’s devotion to Columbus was evident when he went to work for the chamber, promoting the city to businesses and working to recruit overseas manufacturing, Davis said: “There’s nobody that could package and sell Columbus like Dayton Preston.”
Mike Gaymon, president of the chamber from 1988 to 2017, said Preston was instrumental in helping bring Japanese manufacturers here.
He recalled that Preston could not speak Japanese, yet became close to one of the executives for Matsushita. “He found a way to get to know him,” despite the language barrier, Gaymon said. “It was the first international company that we’d brought in, in a long time.”
Preston took the executive fishing, and the guest was casting when he accidentally threw Preston’s rod and reel into the pond, a story Preston later would recount with relish.
He was known to entertain friends with his anecdotes. “You could sit and listen for hours to his stories,” Davis said, adding, “Dayton just loved people, and people loved him.”
Said Gaymon: “He knew about everybody in Muscogee County.” He maintained that gregarious demeanor after retiring from the chamber, and then taking a part-time job as a court bailiff at the Columbus Government Center.
When a friend heard Preston took that job, he joked that “he didn’t know they made suits that small,” Gaymon said.
Preston took such jests without offense, Gaymon said: “Dayton always enjoyed humor, but if you gave him a job to do, he got it done.”
Said Peters: “No matter what was going on, he was always upbeat.... He was tall in everybody’s eyes.”
This story was originally published August 6, 2021 at 1:56 PM.