Kirkwood kicks it up

When Wayne Kirkwood received Lee County's economic development lifetime achievement award recently, the electrical contractor got some good-natured ribbing about his wardrobe.
More specifically, his trademark cowboy boots.

“I always notice, for some reason, his boots,” says Robbie Roepstorff, in a video that played for more than 1,000 people who gathered to celebrate Kirkwood's award at the industry appreciation event at Harborside Event Center in Fort Myers.

“He's worn those for as long as I've known him,” says Denis Noah, chairman of the Horizon Council, the economic development organization in Lee County.

And they're not just any old boots, either. “These are snake skins he's wearing,” says Noah, partner at Henderson, Franklin, Starnes & Holt law firm in Fort Myers.

But as they say, the boots don't make the man.

“Sometimes men who wear boots are trying to make a statement,” says Roepstorff, president of Edison National Bank in Fort Myers. But not Kirkwood, she notes. “That's just Wayne, that's his whole profile. He's just very grounded.”