Mack Reid joined Caldwell Trust Company’s board of directors in August 2013 but he and the company have shared a mutual respect for nearly 20 years, almost from the day Caldwell was founded. In his gentle southern drawl, the now-retired CEO and president of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Sarasota County recalls his early days in Sarasota with Caldwell founders Roland G. Caldwell, Leo O’Meara and R.G. “Kelly” Caldwell Jr., and Caldwell vice president, secretary and trust officer H. Lee Thacker, Jr.
Mack met them attending community events. Caldwell would be there, often as sponsors, and had worked with them since the mid-nineties. Caldwell has also managed retirement plans for the Boys & Girls Clubs for years.
Mack had discovered Boys & Girls Clubs as a 10-year-old and became an employee while attending Jacksonville State University in Gadsden, Alabama. He took college classes in the morning; each afternoon he was arts and crafts director at a Club. In January 1970, one month after graduation, 23 years old and single, Mack became a unit director. Later in the 1970’s, he was assigned to the then – Boys Club of Sarasota County, where he reported to executive director Ray Humphrey – and became interested in Ray’s daughter Lynne, a club volunteer. They married in 1974 and moved to Tuscaloosa in 1975 for Mack’s promotion to executive director. After their two sons were born, Lynne taught school full-time and earned two degrees from the University of Alabama. (J. Mack, Jr. is now chief operating officer for Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida and Dustin is manager of information technology at Williams, Parker, Harrison, Dietz & Getzen, a Sarasota law firm.)
Mack became executive director of a club in Albany, Georgia, in 1985 but took a detour two years later, moving to the trust department of C&S Bank in Alabama. He soon discovered that he missed the Clubs, realized he made a mistake and returned to the Boys & Girls Clubs where he was tasked with resuscitating a nearly dead club in Sarasota. He succeeded so well that when he retired in 2011, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Sarasota County comprised four Clubs and six after-school programs, serving thousands of children each year. He is now a consultant for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.
Over the past 20 years, Mack couldn’t help but notice the commitment Caldwell has for the entire community and what a close-knit family they are. Caldwell makes this a better place for all of us to live and work and is proud to be a part of it!
