Tampa’s Loss

Let me add my two cents’ worth to that of those who have weighed in on the recent death of Tampa businesswoman and civic leader Deanne Roberts.

Deanne was a natural resource–and her legacy is a Tampa better than it would have been without her. The Tampa native was a prominent leader who made time to raise two sons and found time to chair the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce and Leadership Florida. She was also  the driving force behind CreativeTampaBay and Emerge Tampa. She mentored the next generation of stewards and leaders and served on myriad boards–both private-sector and not-profit.

She died much too soon at 59. Much too soon for a high-impact life with more to contribute, much too soon for a city and a region that need all the high-octane, unapologetic, can-do proponents they can muster.

I met Deanne in the early 1980s. She was barely out of her 20s and had her own public relations firm, Roberts Communications. She hired away one of our staff writers, Joe Hice, at Tampa Bay Business Journal. Roberts & Hice resulted. The last iteration was ChappellRoberts.

What I learned is that not all PR people were flacks and hucksters. If you chose your clients as much as they chose you and if you lent your expertise to public affairs and civic causes, you could be invaluable to society as well as the business community and your employees.

She was savvy beyond her years back then, as well as creative, optimistic and infectiously enthusiastic. She was a good listener and a quick study. Whenever she represented a client to the media, you knew–as media–that the client had a leg up on the credibility scale. What’s good for business can also be, well, good. Even then you knew that her favorite client was Tampa. To her dying day she was still asking about progress and change in the community she loved and expressing optimism for the future.

Some people are hard to replace; others, impossible. Deanne was the latter. We’ll do our best. We still have the model, if not the person.