Meet Dan Hooks, ARA’s 59th president

Dan Hooks, CERP, president, Party Reflections, Charlotte, N.C., will become the American Rental Association’s (ARA) 59th president in February.

Hooks is the second-generation leader of the company founded as Chair Rental Service in 1958 by his father, Wayne Hooks, with a small inventory of tables and chairs in a garage a few miles from the company’s current corporate headquarters in Charlotte.

Today, Party Reflections has four locations, including Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh, N.C., and Columbia, S.C., and has been an ARA member since 1985.

Hooks says he was raised in the country but attended private school. “I was able to see life through two separate visions. I was taught hard work while living in the country, but I was also taught to appreciate an education and to learn as much as I possibly could to give myself every opportunity for success. Nothing was handed to me without having earned it,” he says.

After high school, he graduated from Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, N.C., in 1989 earning a degree in business administration.

Growing up, he says he initially wanted to be a doctor until he was in college. “My parents seemed to think I would have made a much better lawyer than a doctor. Apparently, I like to argue a lot,” he says, adding that he immediately went to work for the family business after college and has been there ever since.

Outside of work, Hooks enjoys golf, hunting and spending time with his family. He recently spoke with Rental Management about becoming ARA’s president, his business, the impact of the pandemic and more. Read the full conversation in the January issue of Rental Management magazine.

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