In July of 2015—that’s 10 years ago, for the many humanities majors among us who aren’t mathematically inclined—about 100 people packed into an events space at Cocina 214 on East Welbourne Avenue for Winter Park Magazine’s first celebration of the city’s Most Influential People.
For the record, the inaugural class of honorees included Dan Bellows, president, Sydgan Corp., (“The Fighter”); Daniel Butts, CEO, Battaglia Group Management, (“The Insider”); Mary Daniels, retired product administrator, volunteer docent, Hannibal Square Heritage Center, (“The Conscience”); Jeffery E. Eisenbarth, vice president for business and finance and treasurer, Rollins College, (“The Financier”); and Steve Goldman, entrepreneur and philanthropist, (“The Renaissance Man”).
Also, John and Gail Sinclair, chair of the department of music and the Winter Park Institute, respectively, Rollins College, (“The Educators”); Patrick Chapin, president and CEO, Winter Park Chamber of Commerce, (“The Booster”); Carolyn Cooper, city commissioner and retired director of contracts, (“The Gadfly”); and Allan E. Keen, chairman and CEO, The Keewin Real Property Co., (“The Dealmaker”).
Also, Debbie Komanski, executive director, Albin Polasek Museum & Sculpture Gardens, (“The Believer”); Linda Kulmann and Susan Skolfield, past president and executive director, respectively, Winter Park History Museum; Steve Leary, the city’s mayor and owner/partner, Leary Management Group, (“The Leader”); Patricia A. Maddox, president and CEO, Winter Park Health Foundation, (“The Caregiver”); and Lambrine Macejewski, partner and co-Founder, Cocina 214, (“The Entrepreneur”).
Also, Anne Mooney, editor, Winter Park Voice, (“The Scribe”); Betsy Rogers Owens, executive director, Friends of Casa Feliz, (“The Preservationist”); David Odahowski, president and CEO, Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation, (“The Steward”); John Rife, owner, East End Market, (“The Epicurean”); and Thaddeus Seymour, president emeritus, Rollins College (“The Magician”).
Also, Dori Stone, the city’s director of planning and development, (“The Gatekeeper”); Fr. Richard Walsh, pastor, St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church, (“The Shepherd”); Harold Ward III, attorney, Winderweedle, Haines, Ward & Woodman, P.A., (“The Icon”); and Rebecca “Becky” Wilson, partner/shareholder, Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor & Reed, P.A., (“The Advocate”).
Quite an impressive roster. And, frankly, we originally figured it to be a one-off sort of editorial venture. But people seemed to enjoy the gathering so much—and to relish the opportunity to celebrate neighbors for their accomplishments—that we decided to hold an encore event the following year.
And we’ve continued doing so ever since, never running short of nominees and with a backlog of luminaries still to be honored. (We can think of no other small town where such an embarrassment of riches would be possible.) About 150 people from all walks of life have been recognized over the past decade—and we’re not finished yet.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Winter Park’s Most Influential People, we’re doubling down. In this, our summer issue, we’ve selected 10 “All-Time Influentials” who’ve all appeared on the list before. But we believe that they deserve special recognition (“lifetime achievement awards,” if you will) that honor their decades of difference-making.
Then, in our fall issue, we’ll present a selection of entirely new Influentials and, as usual, will celebrate them—along with the All-Time Influentials—at a gathering in October. As usual, Influentials are selected by Winter Park Magazine’s editorial staff in consultation with community leaders representing business, development, preservation, education, human services, and arts and culture.
In conclusion, compiling a list of only 10 was nearly impossible—strong cases were made for dozens—but we narrowed the choices somewhat by considering only individuals, not married couples.
Arbitrary, yes, but past lists have included, among others, Marc and Sharon Hagle, Tony and Sonja Nicholson, Jim and Alexis Pugh, Chuck and Margery Pabst Steinmetz and the late John Lowndes and his wife, Rita. So many spousal teams would have been automatic selectees, in fact, that we decided it would be necessary to focus specifically on a list recognizing only power couples next year.
In the meantime, let’s join and congratulate Winter Park’s 10th Anniversary All-Time Influentials. Thank you for all you’ve done—and are continuing to do—to make our city an even more special place.
Richard O. Baldwin
Retired CEO, Baldwin Brothers Cremation
The funeral business has been dubbed “the dismal trade.” But nobody who knows Rick Baldwin would describe him as dismal. In fact, Baldwin—who is warm and witty—has for decades worked to improve the lives of children and senior citizens. Baldwin was raised in Winter Park, where longtime locals will remember Baldwin Hardware Store on Park Avenue. (That local institution was operated by his grandparents from 1926 until 1970.) He earned a degree in mortuary science from Miami-Dade Community College and an undergraduate degree in accountancy from UCF. Then, at age 27, he founded what eventually became Baldwin-Fairchild Cemeteries and Funeral Homes, which he sold a decade later. He then bought and later sold a funeral home chain based in Quebec before he founded Baldwin Brothers Cremation Services in 2013. He retired after selling that company in 2021. A civic powerhouse, Baldwin has served on numerous nonprofit boards, including Winter Park Memorial Hospital (now AdventHealth Winter Park) and the Mayflower at Winter Park as well as both the Hamilton Holt School and the Cornell Fine Arts Museum (now the Rollins Museum of Art). Lately, he has turned his attention to several significant legacy organizations, serving as board chair of The Gardens at DePugh Nursing Center and an advisory board member of the Welbourne Avenue Nursery and Kindergarten (of which he was president for eight years). He is also a board member of the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park and the Winter Park Historical Association (for whom he delivers engaging presentations to civic groups on the history of Winter Park). In addition, Baldwin is a member of the dean’s advisory council at UCF’s College of Business and an inductee into the UCF Business Hall of Fame.
Dan Bellows
President, Sydgan Corporation
Can we agree on this much? No single individual has ever orchestrated a more striking local neighborhood redevelopment project than Dan Bellows has in Hannibal Square. The sometimes-combative Winter Park native may not be the most mannerly entrepreneur in the city. But a more timid (and more tactful) soul could never have assembled more than 24 acres on city’s the west side and transformed a blighted commercial strip dotted by rooming houses and anchored by a bar where the tables had to be nailed to the floor so they wouldn’t be used as weapons into a vibrant, trendy shopping and dining destination. When Bellows began buying and renovating Hannibal Square properties in the early 1990s, it was difficult to find anyone who thought this was a good idea. Even some west side residents who conceded that the area had become downright dangerous were suspicious of—and sometimes hostile to—the brash young builder, whose bull-in-a-china-shop approach sometimes infuriated locals on both sides of the track. Yet, against all odds, Hannibal Square is now regarded as a signature business district alongside Park Avenue. And Bellows isn’t done yet. He continues to develop property on the still-gentrifying west side—although he encounters opposition when his high-density projects stray into surrounding residential neighborhoods. More recently, over a period of years he assembled a ragtag bunch of small properties at the corner of U.S. Highway 17-92 and Lee Road and launched a mixed-use project called Ravaudage. This 90-acre project has thus far developed hotels, apartments, restaurants, retailers and offices. There’ll also be a 90,000-square-foot luxury “athletic resort club” and a three-story events center that will boast a rooftop deck—with much more yet to come. Still, however, the rebirth of Hannibal Square remains the achievement that makes Bellows the proudest.
Jane Hames
Founder and President, Embassy Consultants
When Jane Hames started Jane Hames & Associates (now Embassy Consultants) in 1984, many businesses were just coming to realize that their success depended, in large part, upon sophisticated communications plans created by outside experts. So Hames—a journalism graduate from the University of Florida—established herself as a pioneer in the emerging field of “professional services marketing” in Central Florida. Concurrently, she used a combination of charm and savvy to infiltrate the region’s good old boy network and helped to pave the way for a new generation of women to emerge as power players. Hames—who specializes in public relations, government relations, media relations and crisis management for a roster of A-list corporate clients—believes that “paying civic rent” has been integral to her continued effectiveness. She is most proud of her work with the Mary Lee DePugh Nursing Home (now The Gardens at DePugh Nursing Center), previously a relic of segregation that had relied on community sympathy to keep its doors open. As board chair in 2008, Hames helped to attract funding from major charitable foundations—which paid for a makeover of the grounds—and implemented a marketing plan that emphasized the home’s stature as the only certified skilled nursing facility in 32789. Today, the highly rated 40-bed facility—which has adhered to its original mission while attracting an eclectic and diverse clientele—is not only surviving but thriving. In addition to notching numerous industry awards, Hames has appeared on virtually every local list of movers and shakers, including Orlando Magazine’s 50 Most Powerful People and Orlando Business Journal’s Top 10 Women Who Mean Business. In 2024, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Community Service from an organization she once chaired, the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce.
Allan E. Keen
Founder, Chair and CEO, The Keewin Real Property Company
Allan Keen has developed new home communities for over four decades, but none with more relevance to Winter Parkers than Windsong, a 150-acre enclave on hallowed ground that was previously part of the peacock-populated Genius Drive Nature Preserve. And none more downright charming than his meticulous restoration of a single 109-year-old downtown Winter Park bungalow that everyone expected would be torn down. The Kummer-Kilbourne House was for several generations the only single-family home with a direct view of Central Park and the shopping district on Park Avenue. In 2011, the grandchildren of lumberyard owner Gotthilf Oscar Kummer, who originally built the home, finally found a buyer they trusted in Keen. The major-league dealmaker, who was responsible for quietly assembling the 1,000 acres on which Universal Studios Florida now sits, renewed the 2,500-square-foot bungalow and relocated his company to the first floor. The well-connected Keen is a graduate of Rollins College with an undergraduate degree in economics and an MBA from the Crummer Graduate School of Business. He was elected to the college’s board of trustees in 1989 (he’s now the longest-serving board member) and served as chair twice: from 2006 to 2008 and 2015 to 2019. He has also helmed the boards of Enzian Theater, Valencia College, the Winter Park Health Foundation and The Catholic Foundation of Central Florida. (He was knighted by Pope Francis into the Order of St. Gregory the Great in 2018.) In 2020, Keen mined his legendary Rolodex to raise funds for a passion project: a three-ton bronze sculpture of Fred Rogers that now charms visitors to the campus of Rollins. Keen, who is now also an author with a book called Relationships and Reputation published earlier this year, was named Citizen of the Year by the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce in 2022.
Randy Knight
City Manager, City of Winter Park
Since 1949, Winter Park has operated under a commission-manager form of government. The city manager is essentially the chief executive officer, responsible for implementing the commission’s policies while ensuring that the city remains on solid fiscal footing. Sounds straightforward enough, except that in Winter Park, the makeup of the commission changes every year. That all but guarantees ever-shifting balances of power and, at times, abrupt policy reversals. Randy Knight, who has been city manager for 18 years and was finance director and assistant city manager for 16 years prior to that, has navigated the turbulence and now runs the day-to-day operation of a city with an enviable AAA bond rating, a healthy reserve fund of nearly $22 million (about 27 percent of the city’s annual operating costs) and a millage rate that hasn’t changed since the Great Recession of 2009. He is most proud of the fact that the city bought its electric utility system from Duke Energy in 2003—a decision that was controversial at the time but is now widely lauded—and has undergrounded about 80 percent of the utility’s power lines. (The undergrounding project, which is credited with preventing significant power outages during Hurricane Milton, should be complete by 2030.) Says Knight: “I had hoped it would be done before I retire—but maybe they’ll invite me back to pull out the last pole.” Knight, a CPA who graduated from Florida Southern College, also oversaw purchase of the 18-hole Winter Pines Golf Course in 2022 as well as an extension and expansion of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency in 2024. He plans to retire in January 2027 but will leave behind a legacy of stability and a blueprint for aspiring city managers everywhere to follow that essentially says: “Listen more than you talk and understand your role. It’s the city commission’s job to set policy and it’s your job to carry it out whether you agree with it or not. Then move on to the next thing.”
Jeff Briggs
Retired Planning Manager, City of Winter Park
Jeff Briggs, a New Jersey kid raised on a New England aesthetic, had just earned a master’s degree in planning from Georgia Tech University when, in 1977, the City of Winter Park advertised an open position. “The next thing I know I’m walking in my wool suit on Park Avenue and the rest is history,” he says. Since then, Briggs has worked for a grand total of 11 mayors and 32 city commissioners. He announced his retirement last year but remained as planning director emeritus until early this year. The long arc of his influence can be seen in how Winter Park looks today—still visibly linked to its roots as a haven for cold-weather tycoons that was thoughtfully designed in the 1880s. His operating philosophy, he says, was to balance the pressure for new development with the city’s desire to keep its scale and character intact. “My job wasn’t to pitch projects,” he says. “It was to help developers bring in projects that were approvable.” One of his most lasting imprints, though, has nothing to do with planning. Briggs was just a year into his job when City Commissioner Jerome Donnelly suggested that the newly acquired freight depot near Park Avenue could be used to host a farmers’ market. Briggs was tasked with making it happen—and the result can still be seen every Saturday morning in the larger West Meadow of Central Park. In 1992, Briggs joined former Rollins College President Thaddeus Seymour and developer Hal George to start Habitat for Humanity of Winter Park-Maitland. The group, which Briggs still serves as treasurer, is now working on its 60th home. Briggs, as liaison to the Historic Preservation Board, has spearheaded the effort to add more than a dozen historical markers in the city and personally raised some $200,000 in private donations—half the total required—to erect wrought-iron entryway arches at the northern and southern ends of Park Avenue. Says Briggs: “That was the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”
David Odahowski
President and CEO, Edyth Bush Charitable Foundation
“Make Central Florida a better place for all of its citizens,” insisted Edyth Bassler Bush. An actress-turned-philanthropist who married 3M executive Archibald Bush in 1919, she moved permanently from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Winter Park following her husband’s death in 1966. Edyth Bush died in 1972, and for the past four decades, David Odahowski has carried forth the lofty mandate of her foundation—which distributes more than $5 million annually and has, over the years, given at least $128 million to some 920 nonprofits. Among the most notable: $750,000 toward building the Winter Park Library and Events Center, a project that was controversial in some quarters and might have faltered without the foundation’s highly influential imprimatur. Odahowski graduated from Hamline University School of Law, in (coincidentally) St. Paul, and had directed another private philanthropic organization before relocating to Winter Park. His tenure here has seen the establishment of the Bush Executive Center and the Bush Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership Center, as well as renovation of the Archibald Granville Bush Science Center at Rollins College. The foundation was named by the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce as the Community Organization of the Year in 2018, while Odahowski (who always deflects credit for personal kudos) was honored as the chamber’s Community Champion of the Year in 2020 and its Lydia Gardner Citizen of the Year in 2021. In 2026, the foundation will host the Florida Philanthropic Network Summit, a professional association that Odahowski helped to found. Attendees will hold their meetings at the foundation’s 17,000-square-foot, state-of-the art headquarters—known as “The Edyth”—which opened in 2022 and has created an incubator for big ideas in the heart of Winter Park.
Thaddeus Seymour
Former President, Rollins College (1928–2019)
The death of a 91-year-old man is never truly a surprise. So when word came in October 2020 that Thaddeus Seymour, 12th president of Rollins College and arguably the most beloved citizen of Winter Park, had passed away following a year of precarious health, the reaction was grief tempered by gratitude for a life well lived. The towering Seymour and his wife, Polly, came to Rollins from Indiana’s Wabash College. (Prior to that, he had been an English professor and later a dean at Dartmouth College.) An ebullient intellectual who also enjoyed performing magic tricks, the unconventional Seymour was a perfect fit for the college and for locals who appreciated his humor and lack of pretension. But Seymour was more than an entertaining raconteur. During his presidency, which lasted from 1978 to 1990, he led the college’s centennial celebration, raised funds to construct the Olin Library and the Cornell Social Science Building and reinstated Fox Day (a random spring holiday heralded by the appearance of a small fox statue on Mills Lawn). In his so-called retirement, “Citizen Thad” volunteered at the Winter Park Library’s New Leaf bookstore—which was founded by Polly, herself a past Influential who passed away in 2024—and co-chaired Preservation Capen, the volunteer group that raised funds to save the historic Capen House (now an events space at the Polasek Museum & Culture Gardens) from demolition. But for Seymour, dozens of less showy homes built by Habitat for Humanity of Winter Park-Maitland were even more important. Seymour co-founded the worldwide nonprofit’s local chapter in 1993 with developer Hal George (yet another past Influential). In 1997, the Seymours were named Citizens of the Year by the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce. And the college, appropriately, still celebrates Thaddeus & Polly Seymour Acts of Kindness Day.
John V. Sinclair
Professor of Music, Rollins College
Artistic Director and Conductor, Bach Festival Society of Winter Park
John V. Sinclair—“Doc” to his friends and colleagues—is perhaps the most recognizable figure in the regional cultural community. He made Winter Park significant in the classical music universe and, over the course of 35 years, transformed the local Bach Festival—founded in 1935 as a weekend event—into an eclectic, monthlong extravaganza with renowned guest artists who perform on their own or in elaborate productions with the festival’s 50-member orchestra and 175-member choir. In fact, the Bach Festival Society of Winter Park operates year-round with concerts and educational programs. Sinclair most recently established the Bach Vocal Artists, an elite chamber ensemble, and initiated the inaugural American National Oratorio Competition, which took place during this year’s Bach Festival. The down-to-earth maestro—whose graduate degrees in music education and conducting are from the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s Conservatory of Music and Dance—also helms performances by both the International Moravian Music Festivals and Orlando’s Messiah Choral Society. Plus, he has notched more than 1,000 trips to the podium to conduct the holiday Candlelight Processional at Epcot. A master teacher, Sinclair holds the John M. Tiedtke Endowed Chair of Music at Rollins College and, until he recently decided to put aside his administrative duties, headed the college’s Department of Music. “I subscribe to Thomas Jefferson’s quote, ‘I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it,’” says Sinclair, whose seemingly boundless energy delights and confounds his admirers. But he’s not ready to take it easy just yet. After all, he’s still having fun: “I always say our seats should be reserved, but we shouldn’t be.”
Ed Timberlake
Retired Banking Executive
Ed Timberlake retired in 2021 after a 50-year career as a banker but has continued to burnish his legacy as a selfless community builder. His lengthy civic resumé includes chairing the boards of the Heart of Florida United Way (where he remains an emeritus member), the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness, the Community Foundation of Central Florida and, as of 2022, Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. He has earned such honors as the Tree of Life Award from the Jewish National Fund (2006), the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Fundraising Professionals (2009) and the Champion of Service Award from Volunteer Florida (2015). The roster of kudos grew earlier this year when the Orlando Economic Partnership (OEP) presented Timberlake the James B. Greene Award—its top honor—which annually recognizes individuals whose “selfless service and community impact” reflect that of Greene, a civic dynamo who passed away in 1988. (Among the past award recipients: the late hotelier and philanthropist Harris Rosen.) These days, Timberlake is most focused on the arts center, which is gearing up to develop the remainder of its 9-acre downtown campus. In 2005, when he was president of Bank of America Central Florida, Timberlake orchestrated a $1 million donation to the arts center—which wouldn’t break ground until 2009—and joined the board as a founding member. He ascended to the chairmanship when the legendary Jim Pugh, the founding chair and a fellow Winter Parker, stepped aside after 19 years at the helm. Timberlake, a native of Yakima, Washington, and a graduate of Adelphi University in Garden City, New York, says that banking and civic involvement are symbiotic: “It’s an obligation of leaders to give back,” he says. “But it has also been good for me personally because I’ve learned so much.”
Harold A. Ward III
Retired Attorney, Winderweedle, Haines, Ward & Woodman, P.A.
Harold Ward—the city’s iconic father figure—is among the last of those who can trace their civic lineages to the origin of “modern” Winter Park. A retired attorney, Ward’s best-known clients included the Charles Hosmer Morse Foundation, which owns The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, and the Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation, which, among other charitable activities, helps to support the museum. Ward remains chair of these historically important foundations, which were begun by Rollins College President Hugh F. McKean and his wife, Jeannette Genius McKean. (Jeannette was the granddaughter of Morse and the daughter of Elizabeth Morse Genius.) Industrialist Morse, you’ll recall, bought half the property in the city from the failing Winter Park Company in 1904 and hired Ward’s grandfather, Harold A. “Harley” Ward Sr., to run a new entity, the Winter Park Land Company, which developed the genteel community to his exacting standards. The younger Ward—who earned his law degree from the University of Chicago and clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black—continues to quietly nurture worthy local causes. He has served for 42 years (and is a four-time chair) of the board of trustees at Rollins and was previously a trustee and attorney of record for Winter Park Memorial Hospital (now AdventHealth Winter Park). He became the Winter Park Chamber of Commerce’s only two-term president in 1971 and 1972 as well as its Citizen of the Year in 1999. Rollins presented him with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1986 and its Decoration of Honor in 1998. In addition, Ward was an honoree at the Winter Park Historical Association’s Peacock Ball (along with fellow attorney Kenneth Murrah) in 2009. Another notable success story: Ward’s 66-year marriage to Mary Lewis “Libby” Ward, who passed away in 2024.