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Arnie Gachman Works to Make Fort Worth a Better Place

The industry titan-turned-philanthropist leads a recycling business and the community.

By TCU Magazine

May 16^th, 2022

by Lisa Martin

In honor of the 100th anniversary of his family’s recycling company, Arnold Gachman ’64 indulged his passion for art, commerce and the city of Fort Worth by commissioning a sculpture made of aluminum recycled from old car wheels.

“Eonothem,” as the work is called, rises 9 feet above Rockwood Park, its distinctive angles and twisted shapes inspired by an industrial shredder. Dedicated on June 30, 2020, the sculpture, created by artist Mike Ross and the Rebecca Low Studio, represents an enlarged take on the small byproducts of the metal recycling process.

That’s something Gachman knows well.

Gamtex Industries pioneered the scrap recycling industry in Fort Worth and is one of the city’s oldest family-owned businesses. As the third generation to lead the company, Gachman, who goes by Arnie, is now chair.

He has served on boards ranging from TCU’s AddRan College of Liberal Arts and Beth-El Congregation to the Sammons Transplant Institute at Baylor University Medical Center and Fort Worth’s Human Relations Commission.

“He’s the walking embodiment of giving back to the community,” said David Chappell, a longtime attorney for the Fort Worth Independent School District. “And Arnie never seeks or expects to receive credit for all the work he does.”

He is also a founding donor of the TCU School of Medicine.

“Arnie became a student and a scholar of our school and what we are doing right from the beginning,” said Dr. Stuart D. Flynn, the school’s founding dean. “His contributions are immensely valuable.”

As chair of Gamtex Industries, Arnie Gachman is the third generation to pilot his family's Fort Worth metal recycling business. Photo by Rodger Mallison

Cowtown Kid

Gachman’s paternal grandfather, Jacob, emigrated from Zhytomyr, Ukraine, in 1908. Pop was an undocumented immigrant, Gachman said. His grandfather hopped a ship to America, both to avoid persecution as a Jewish man and to seek economic opportunities. This quest for freedom and success — and the gratitude and work ethic it engendered — was more than family lore. The stories shaped Gachman’s worldview and honed his powerful work ethic.

Six years after arriving in Texas, Jacob Gachman founded a scrap metal yard in downtown Fort Worth. Soon he was traveling by rail around the state, hauling scrap metals he bought from individuals and smaller yards back to Fort Worth. The railroad contributed to the success of the enterprise, as did Pop’s innate business savvy. Soon he was buying up not just the scrap metals but other yards, too.

An only child, Gachman grew up on Park Hill Drive about five blocks from the TCU campus. Straight out of R. L. Paschal High School, he began his college education at the University of Texas at Austin but transferred to TCU for his sophomore year. As a finance major, he said, he appreciated the more intimate atmosphere the Neeley School of Business offered.

Business and community service are in his blood. His maternal grandparents, Irving and Lillian Klotzman, enjoyed success as partners in the Martha Washington Candy Co. in Fort Worth. By the 1940s, the business had a soda counter with cones that went for 5 cents and sundaes for as much as quarter.

Gachman’s father, Leon, joined his father at the scrap yard. “My dad never shared much with my mother about work. But when my grandfather would come over that was all he would talk about,” Gachman said, “and he wanted to talk to me about it, too.”

As a child, Arnie Gachman spent time at the scrap yard and eventually took a job there during high school after returning from a year at military school. “I was one of two students that was Jewish in that school, and I recognized what discrimination was. You have to stand up sometimes and, you know, be more vocal.”

Arnie and Harriette Gachman received TCU’s 2022 Royal Purple Award. Established in 1967, the award honors an individual’s extraordinary service and support of the university and the greater community. Photo by Rodger Mallison

Once he started working at the scrap yard, where they often hired people of color with criminal records, Gachman said he saw firsthand the struggles of the company’s employees. During those formative years, he listened with an empathetic ear to their stories about discrimination.

“You have to treat people fairly,” Gachman said.

At 27, he became general manager of Gachman Metals & Recycling. He was named president five years later. In the 1980s, he purchased the company from his family and renamed the multimillion-dollar business Gamtex Industries.

Gachman became a national figure in the recycling industry, thanks in part to his role as president of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a trade group that advocates on everything from environmental issues to state and local laws related to recycling. He received the institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013.

During his 1992-94 tenure as president, Gachman worked toward government recognition of the difference between scrap and waste. Local governments then can mandate recycling efforts for scrap and the proper disposal of waste.

His wife, Harriette Gachman, a TCU-educated interior designer whom he married in 1963, supported him through the career challenges. The Gachmans have two children, son Iric Gachman ’90 and daughter Lesha Carlson, and four grandchildren.

Today, Iric Gachman is president and CEO of Gamtex. As chair, Arnie Gachman works on the administrative side of the business, dealing with issues including government relations, insurance, banking and real estate.

He said he is proud of the fact that the average tenure of Gamtex employees is 12 to 15 years. “We are a family.”

Arnie Gachman has led the city’s Human Relations Commission and served as president of the national Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. Photo by Rodger Mallison

Helping Hand

Gachman’s commitment to the health and success of his employees is one facet of what can only be described as a life of service. In a professional capacity, he frequently worked with Fort Worth officials on issues related to his business, earning a reputation “as a doer,” Chappell said.

In the 1960s, Gachman volunteered on the presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy. He also pitched in on election efforts for Jim Wright, who would go on to serve as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Hugh Parmer, who served as mayor of Fort Worth from 1977 to 1979.

Gachman found he enjoyed putting his business knowledge to work to improve the quality of life for all Fort Worth residents.

“I have always believed that everyone deserves a chance,” he said. “That’s good for business and good for society.”

In 1978, Gachman joined the Fort Worth Human Relations Commission, which enforces the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance and federal laws regarding housing, employment and accommodation for disabled people. Gachman ended up chairing the commission, which he served on for nearly a decade.

“Discrimination is bad for everybody,” he said. “Whether you’re running a business or you’re running a country, you have got to be fair and to figure out a way for everyone to feel that they’re a part of things.”

He and fellow commissioners took that message to the Texas Legislature in the aftermath of the 1998 dragging death of a Black man, James Byrd Jr., in Jasper, Texas, by three white supremacists. Gov. Rick Perry signed the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act into law in 2001.

Arnie Gachman consults with longtime employees Diann Yanez, Omar Ortega and Michele Presgrove on the loading dock at Gamtex Industries. Photo by Rodger Mallison

Gachman also has long championed excellence in health care. His mother, Eleanor Gachman, was a 40-year breast cancer survivor. He honored her when his friends Joan and Howard Katz asked him to help with the founding of the Joan Katz Cancer Resource Center at Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center, which opened in 2010.

By then, he was midway into what would become nearly two decades of service as a trustee at the Fort Worth hospital. Gachman is one of 14 members on the Baylor Scott & White board of trustees, which provides insights and input on how to expand the organization and fulfill its mission.

Hospital president and CEO Michael Sanborn said Gachman’s assistance has been instrumental. “He’s always had this vision that Fort Worth can have exceptional health care, and from an entrepreneurial and business perspective, what he brings to the table is very valuable to us as an organization.

“And he’s not afraid to challenge us when he feels like we could do better.”

Gachman has proved a powerful ally in launching Fort Worth’s first new medical school in nearly 50 years.

He said he believes in the TCU School of Medicine’s mission to create Empathetic Scholars. “The ability to communicate with a patient, to have empathy for that patient and understanding that the patient is an individual is how you create the best outcomes.”

Knowing that Fort Worth faces a shortage of physicians in the coming decades, Gachman and his wife helped raise funds and awareness about the new medical school and the impact it could have on local health care.

“The medical school has a chance to do something different because we don’t have a situation where we have 150 years of tradition,” Gachman said. “It has the chance to change health care in Fort Worth because of the idea that many of the physicians we will train will stay here.”

“Whether you’re running a business or you’re running a country, you have got to be fair and to figure out a way for everyone to feel that they’re a part of things," Arnie Gachman, right, says. Photo by Rodger Mallison

The TCU School of Medicine became a passion project that he’s been delighted to watch unfold.

“In my industry, if you didn’t change, you didn’t survive,” he said. “You had to become technically advanced and mechanically advanced and customer-focused, which are all things that the new medical school was in a position to do.”

Flynn said he saw Gachman as an ally from the start, appreciating the way the businessperson had educated himself on the school and its mission as well as the state of health care in Fort Worth.

“What he does isn’t just about the money he raises,” Flynn said. “He’s an advocate for our school in every sense.”

Sanborn said Gachman has been “a huge advocate” for the Baylor Scott & White residency program, which welcomed its first graduate medical students in July. The program is expected to reach 150 resident positions during the 2027-28 academic year.

“He really wants to expand and diversify the health care opportunities that people have in the city and in Tarrant County,” Sanborn said. “He’s a very busy person who will leverage partnerships and relationships in the community to benefit the hospital.”

Comprehensive Leadership

Chappell said Gachman should have received public credit for his role two decades ago in recovering $5 million for Fort Worth ISD.

As part of restitution for a theft, the district received the title to a massive amount of scrap metal. The thief had used stolen money to buy automobiles and other vehicles, which he then forfeited after his conviction.

“I called him with this problem and said your school district needs your help,” said Chappell, who represented the district as its attorney at the time. Decades earlier, he and Gachman had worked together on Fort Worth’s Human Relations Commission.

Gachman volunteered his time and expertise to value the metal. Chappell credited his friend’s work with recapturing about 50 percent of the theft for the school district.

“We got $5 million for the kids of Fort Worth that we wouldn’t have without Arnie,” Chappell said. “That’s who he is, a great human being and a great representative of the best of Fort Worth.”

Arnie and Harriette Gachman have long collected art and have visited Picasso’s house in Spain and Monet’s gardens in Giverny, France.

Above the fireplace in the living room of their Westover Hills, Texas, home hangs a work by Frank Stella, whom the Whitney Museum of American Art describes as “one of the most important living American artists.” The canvas showcases Stella’s affinity for bold color. (A quartet of Andy Warhol flowers occupied the space prior to that.)

For this enthusiastic collector of modern art who has also made an indelible impact on Fort Worth, the Rockwood Park sculpture proved an especially apt way to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the family business. That the park, just northwest of downtown, is also right across the river from his company’s offices makes the piece all the more meaningful to Gachman.

As it enters its 108th year, Gamtex continues to thrive, as does Gachman, who said he has no plans to retire. Nor does he expect to step away from his roles with All Saints, TCU, the medical school or any of his other philanthropic commitments.

“I’ve gotten a lot back from giving of my time and investing in Fort Worth,” he said. “I have been fortunate to be in a position where I can help, and I intend to keep doing that for as long as I’m able.”

To mark the 100th anniversary of his family’s recycling business, Arnie Gachman commissioned a sculpture made of scrap metal from old car wheels. Photo by Rodger Mallison

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