(Note: The following is an expanded version of a memorial published in the Dec. 8, 2010, issue of PAW.)

Fred was born Jan. 16, 1929, in Jacksonville, Fla., and prepared at the Bolles School (1946)  and the Lawrenceville School (1947). He graduated from Princeton in 1952 but elected to remain a member of the Class of 1951, his original affiliation. He majored in history and belonged to Key and Seal.  

On Aug. 11, 1951, he and Nancy Jane Reilly of New Orleans were married. After a brief stint in the CIA, Fred served as an artillery officer in the Korean conflict, earning a bronze star. In 1955 he attended the University of Florida School of Law and then entered the Barnett Bank management-training program, where he met the man who would be his lifelong friend — former congressman Andy Ireland of Florida.

Fred was a founder of Florida Wire & Cable, Platt Pontiac, Florida Trend magazine, and the Schultz Center, among other enterprises. He was a longtime director of Barnett Banks, American Heritage Life, Southeast Atlantic Beverage, Transco Energy, and Florida Steel and was a limited partner in South Atlantic Venture Funds for more than 25 years.

In public service, Fred began as a board member of the Jacksonville Expressway Authority, now the JTA (1961-64), and was a member of the Florida House of Representatives (1963-70), where he sponsored legislation to create the University of North Florida and Florida College at Jacksonville. In 1969 and 1970 he served as speaker of the house. In 1971 he was appointed chairman of the Citizen’s Committee on Education, a two-year study of public and private education in Florida, and in 1976 became chairman of the Florida Council on Education.

Also in 1976, Fred served as chairman of the Jacksonville Chamber of Commerce, which included his hosting the Amelia Island Conference. This in turn led to the creation of Leadership Jacksonville and the Jacksonville Community Council. In 1977 he became a member of the National Council for Educational Research, and in 1983 was chairman of the Florida Institute of Education. He was chairman of the Florida Workforce Development Board in 1994-97.

Fred taught a class on state government for a period at Harvard and became a Kennedy fellow of the Harvard Institute of Politics. He was a member of the advisory committee of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs for more than 17 years and established the F.H. Schultz Class of 1951 Professorship of International Economic Policy, a chair initially held by Paul Volcker ’49 and later by William H. Frist ’74.

In 1979, Fred was appointed vice chairman of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve Bank System. This was after he declined to serve as secretary of education. He felt that his work under Paul Volcker’s chairmanship of the Fed during the economic crisis of 1980-81 represented the culmination of his public-service career.



Undergraduate Class of 1951