After father’s death, son plans to keep rental company on track

Donald “D.K.” Waybright became a larger-than-life figure in the VCU area, renting apartments to thousands of students. But after his death on Nov. 25, his son Jonathan plans to keep moving forward with the family company, Waybright Investments.

Waybright got into the rental business after his time as the university’s rowing team coach in the 1970s, said Christy Cyrus, office manager for the company.

“It started with noticing problems some of the people on the rowing team had with housing,” she said. “That’s how he got into it.”

“He was just a giant person. The students loved him,” said Jonathan Waybright. “He started off buying an old rooming house, the 1600 block of West Grace Street, got a loan, got in it and renovated it.” He said from there it snowballed to the point where the company owned 14 buildings and 500 apartments. But they stayed focused on students.

“Students would go in, and he’d sit and talk to them. Sometimes he’ll sit there for an hour and talk to you before he’d show you anything,” Cyrus said.

Waybright agreed about his father’s storytelling.

“I used to yell at him for spending so much time with them. He always wanted you to sit and say, ‘What’s going on in your life?’ ”

He wants to keep renting the company’s 250 or so apartments primarily to students. A professor in the School of World Studies for the past nine years, Jonathan Waybright said it was a great symbiotic relationship that attracted him to work both jobs.

“I thought it would be a nice thing to be able to rent apartments to students, work with my dad at a family business and teach at VCU.

“I want to maintain the system. It’s such a wonderful niche to be involved with young people in the first steps of their lives,” he said.

Jonathan Waybright said he is considering a scholarship or two in his father’s name after being closely involved with the university community for over 30 years.

“We’re going to think through those possibilities of moderate scholarships that will be in his name. I’d like to do one through the School of World Studies,” he said.