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Philanthropist Fortune diesBy CRAIG BASSE, Times Obituaries Editor© St. Petersburg Times published January 1, 2002 ST. PETE BEACH -- Joan Fortune, a philanthropist who was a founder of Academy Prep, a private school for troubled children, has died at 56. Mrs. Fortune, a veteran traveler, musician and retired lawyer, died Saturday (Dec. 29, 2001) at her home in St. Pete Beach of colon cancer. In 1995, Mrs. Fortune and her husband, Jeff, who had sold their lucrative beach resorts, met retired educators Bob and Barbara Anders and began exploring a mutual vision to start a school for at-risk children. A mutual acquaintance brought them together, and an educational partnership and friendship developed among two couples who seemed, at first glance, to have been very different. While the Anderses had spent their lives in schools, Mrs. Fortune had specialized as a lawyer in estate planning. Her husband was the former owner of a string of beach hotels, including the TradeWinds Resort. In the two years after they met, Mrs. Fortune and the three other visionaries quietly moved their plans along, gathering local support and visiting private, inner-city schools around the country. Research led them to Nativity Mission School in New York City, an inner-city middle school founded in 1971 that offered intense instruction to disadvantaged boys. Mrs. Fortune and her husband and the Anderses chose to call their new facility a "center" rather than a "school." In the spring of 1997, they submitted plans to the city to create Academy Prep, a private school for disadvantaged boys on the brink of adolescence. It was to be a free school with both strict discipline and academic standards. It would be at 2335 22nd Ave. S, near the heart of the racial unrest that had broken out in 1996. The only entrance requirement was living below the poverty line. Mrs. Fortune and her husband wanted children of poverty to have the same opportunities to flourish and compete that their own sons had in an exclusive private school. "Why should it just be our kids?" she once asked. Academy Prep Center for Education, a private school for boys in grades five through eight, opened with 30 students in 1997. It pledged to do what few schools could or would do: bring at-risk children back from the brink of failure by using whatever resources, whatever time and money, assuming whatever role, even that of parent, necessary. Some of the original class were lost along the way, but nine boys stayed to graduate in 2000. Each received a full scholarship to a private high school. A girls school opened in the fall of 2000 with a fifth-grade class. Survivors include her husband of 36 years, Jeffrey L.; and two sons, Eric, Baltimore, and Marc, Orlando; a sister, Paulette Gnidziejko, Camden, Maine; and two grandchildren. A wake will be at 7 p.m. Jan. 18 at the TradeWinds Island Grand Resort in St. Pete Beach. Donations can be made to Academy Prep Center for Education. -- Information from Times files was used in this obituary.
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