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Catching up with ex-bay area big shots

By ROBERT TRIGAUX
Published August 22, 2005

Stick around the constantly revolving Tampa Bay business community long enough, and everyone here becomes a newcomer again.

Corporate turnover, retirements, relocations and new job opportunities often produce new generations of area business leaders and influentials. It's the Florida way.

Not that we should, or can, forget those who made a special splash here before moving on. In water-cooler conversation, "Whatever happened to ..." or "Where are they now?" can prompt dozens of tales of the best and worst in business.

I made a recent mental list of 30 people who were prominent in the Tampa Bay business arena soon after I arrived in the early 1990s. Many have moved on to other pursuits elsewhere, while others have grown old enough to put their feet up and enjoy the gulf sunset.

Curious where someone once big in business here is now? E-mail me (trigaux@sptimes.com) If I hear from enough readers, I'll track down the better-known names and catch up with their lives and corporate conquests in a later column. For now, here's a sampler updating the lives of five former business big shots:

Mention the name Dick Korpan around the local power companies and the reaction is palpable. A tough guy. A hatchet man. A guy who sold the local electric utility and waltzed away with more than $15-million.

Though Korpan departed more than four years ago, his name has staying power. He was hired in 1989 by Florida Progress chief executive Jack Critchfield as his right-hand man in anticipation of a deregulation revolution in the power business that never happened. Korpan became president of the St. Petersburg company and, when Critchfield stepped aside, assumed the role of CEO in 1998.

The 1990s were rough years of change for Florida Power and its parent, Florida Progress. The burly Korpan was the day-to-day guy who oversaw heavy job cuts, and who later promised that Florida Progress would be a survivor in the more competitive years ahead. But by 1999, the company was on the selling block. First snubbed by a Scotland power company, Florida Progress was sold in 2000 to Carolina Power & Light, which today operates as Progress Energy.

Korpan left soon after the deal was done with more than $15-million, a princely sum that still grates on company alums. He moved to the town of Evergreen in Colorado. He has since joined the board of a South Dakota energy company called Black Hills Corp., where the proxy statement inflates his executive titles at Florida Progress as chairman and CEO "from 1991 to 2000." Korpan also serves on an advisory board for the University of Denver's business college. No word if he counsels MBA grads on how to cut sweet exit packages.

Antoinette Rodriguez helped found what is now the well-regarded Tampa Bay Technology Forum. But it was her unvarnished 2001 speech in Tampa, in which she told the chamber of commerce community to wake up and smell the tech revolution and to open the doors of power to others, that caught everyone's attention.

"Why do chambers continue to only populate their leadership positions with older white male bankers?" Rodriguez asked. Her remarks became local legend.

Alas, Rodriguez soon departed for New York City, an unfortunate reminder that this area must work harder to keep its spirited entrepreneurs. Since then, Rodriguez has published her downloadable e-book, 101 IT Sales & Marketing Tips, got married at Tavern on the Green to a former executive of Tampa's Z-Tel Communications (now called Trinsic) and taken a job with Merrill Lynch's private wealth advisers. And she has a 5-month-old daughter, Sofia, that Rodriguez on Friday called "a total joy." Loafing around, it seems, is not in her vocabulary.

Clarence McKee was a business fixture here in the 1990s. As a co-owner of WTVT-Ch. 13, he helped create the first Florida Lottery Television Network. He ran McKee Communications media consulting firm, and served on area boards of directors at Florida Progress and Checkers Drive-In Restaurants. He was part of the (unsuccessful) effort to bring the 2004 Republican National Convention to Tampa. Early in his career, he worked for Sen. Jacob Javits, R-N.Y., and helped write the food stamp and school lunch legislation. He also was a legal adviser at the Federal Communications Commission to former FCC commissioner and NAACP president Benjamin Hooks and helped draft equal opportunity rules for the broadcasting and cable industries.

McKee now calls Miramar home in South Florida. He works as a principal and consultant on lobbying, government, and community and media relations at the Ruden McClosky law firm, and is married to NBC-6 TV anchor/reporter Trina Robinson.

As the daughter of Hugh and Joy Culverhouse, Gay Culverhouse lived for years in the shadow of the family-owned Tampa Bay Buccaneers. In the 1990s, she became the president of the Bucs and chaired the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce in some rocky times.

Amid such notoriety, Culverhouse never felt completely at home in the Tampa Bay scene. She had earned a Ph.D in education but was distracted, to say the least, from pursuing such a career. In 1995, authorities charged Ralph Gene Johnson with conspiracy and two failed attempts to carry out a five-year plot to kidnap Gay Culverhouse or her daughter and seek a $1-million ransom.

Small wonder Culverhouse has moved on. She taught or served in administrative jobs at various schools up north. She became involved in the classy world of Paso Fino horses, Spanish horses known for their high-styled gait. She stays close to the horse world at a rural home in upstate New York, though she owns several homes and declares Florida her primary residence. She's also enjoying her grandchildren and, friends say, purposely maintaining a low profile.

The Tampa Bay area lost one of its livelier characters when Home Shopping Network co-founde r Roy Merrill Speer moved on to other pursuits. HSN, for those who have lost track of its corporate owner, is part of IAC/InterActiveCorp, run by the now-richer-than-Speer Barry Diller.

The restless (now former) billionaire, joined by his son, built a video and music production business in Nashville. Speer later dabbled in promoting various natural health and vitamin services. He invested in companies such as LenTek and, tapping Speer's interest in biometrics, joined the board of Pay by Touch, a business using the touch of a finger as a payment device. And, like everyone else with a buck (or hundreds of millions) to spare, he's invested in real estate.

In the meantime, Speer enjoyed his yen for yachts. Big yachts. Aboard the 206-foot Big Roi, Speer had one entire, 3,000-square-foot deck to himself, accessible by private elevator or interior stairway. He reportedly sold the yacht in the past year to the Italian Formula One team owner Flavio Briatore, whose menswear store Billionaire Couture stocks and sells $12,000 double-breasted, pony-skin coats. As for Big Roi, the yacht is now called Force Blue.

In recent years, Speer has slowly slipped down the annual ranks of Forbes magazine's list of the 400 richest Americans. Hanging on at No. 328 in 2003 with a mere $775-million, Speer was off the list by 2004.

Times researcher Carolyn Edds contributed to this column. Robert Trigaux can be reached at trigaux@sptimes.com or 727 893-8405.

[Last modified August 21, 2005, 01:03:38]