Prominent Sarasota civic leader, lumber entrepreneur dies at 95

G.W. Jacobs had long admired what his friend and longtime fellow FCCI Insurance Group board member Charlie Stottlemyer had pulled off when it came to big family trips. Stottlemyer, with more than a dozen grandchildren and even more great-grandchildren, put together a big family adventure once a year. Destinations included Colorado and other places out West. 

Jacobs, CEO of FCCI from 1999 to 2011, often told Stottlemyer how much he admired that, hearing the stories and memories. “If anybody deserves the title patriarch,” says Jacobs, “it was Charlie.” 

So when Jacobs turned 60 in 2004 he got his brood — 15 people — together and paid for the crew to go to a ski resort up north. He took the family on trips like that for the next decade, culminating with a European vacation. “Charlie did the same thing,” Jacobs recalls with a chuckle, “but he didn’t have to bribe his family to come. They always wanted to be together.”

Stottlemyer died March 20. He was 95 years old.

Stottlemyer’s influence in the Sarasota community is widespread, from businesses he helped grow to organizations he co-founded to multiple young business leaders he mentored and counseled. He also had an outsized influence on his family, through those trips, Christmas gatherings and more. He recently celebrated 73 years of marriage with his wife, Dee. The couple has four children, 15 grandchildren and 19 great-grandchildren. 

Community pillar

Morton’s Market owner Todd Morton is one of several who called Stottlemyer an inspiration. When he was growing up, Morton says, his grandparents were best friends with Stottlemyer and his wife, Dee.

“He was the epitome of a pillar of the community. He was one in the top dozen people that really helped grow this town with his company and his influence,” recalls Morton, the current president of the Argus Foundation — a pro-business group Stottlemyer helped launch in 1983, initially to fight against a proposed two-year new construction moratorium. “He was the kind of guy that if you want any information, you go to Charlie Stottlemyer. He was very well connected and helped grow this town. He will be missed.”

Halfacre Construction President Jack Cox, an FCCI board member and past chair, says Stottlemyer, beyond being influential, was easy-going, disarming, and all-around friendly. “I don’t think I ever heard a bad word about Charlie,” says Cox.

With a full name of Charles Edward, Stottlemyer was born in Anderson, Indiana Nov. 19, 1929 — a few days before the stock market crashed, ushering in the Great Depression. He was the second of six children, according to his obituary, and the eldest son of Garnet and Maggie Dee "Peggy" Stottlemyer. He excelled in football, baseball and basketball, playing on Anderson High School’s 1946 Indiana State Championship Basketball Team. Stottlemyer graduated from Indiana University in 1951 and then entered the military, where he was a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Army during the Korean War from 1951-1952.

Life choices

Two other key moments in Stottlemyer’s life came together in the early 1950s. He made what, according to his obituary, was “one of the best decisions of his life” in courting and marrying Dee. A few years later the couple, with the first of four children, moved to Sarasota.

In Sarasota, Stottlemyer, along with his dad, and later his brother-in-law, John Shoemaker, founded the Stottlemyer & Shoemaker Lumber Co. They ran the company for more than 30 years, growing it to three locations. A British firm bought the company in 1988.

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Stottlemyer, in a 2003 interview with the Business Observer prior to receiving an Argus Foundation lifetime achievement award, said the early days of the lumber business were tough. There were already six other entrenched lumber-distribution companies in town, for one. "You have to remember that Sarasota had not arrived in 1954,” he said in 2003. “That didn't happen until the late to mid-60s, when things started to move, when the first condos started popping up on Siesta Key. We just did a lot of the work ourselves and took almost (no money) out of the company. We were young and anxious to succeed."

The early days of the lumber business coincided with the early days of FCCI, when Stottlemyer and a small group of others in the local construction industry wanted to save money on the cost of worker’s comp insurance by pooling risk. He would go on to serve on the FCCI board for 40 years, Jacobs says, from 1965-2005. And while he wasn’t chairman, Stottlemyer’s influence, Jacobs says, was felt in rational and calm decisions and an adherence to integrity and ethics. “Nothing really happened at FCCI if Charlie wasn’t part of it,” he says “The chair always looked at Charlie.”

Adherence to a strong moral compass stretched to Stottlemyer’s personal life. Jacobs recalls a trip he, Stottlemyer and a half-dozen other people took to Amsterdam. A tour guide took Jacobs on a bit of diversion, to the city’s infamous red light district. When Stottlemyer caught up with the group, he scolded the tour guide, says Jacobs, giving her “a real cross examination” about how she could support that activity.

More seriously, like others in Stottlemyer’s life, Jacobs learned a lot by watching him work. “The one thing he and (the other FCCI founders) kept together was their sense of community and making Sarasota a better place.” 

Elizabeth King contributed to this story.