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When Andy Gregory was growing up, one day the boat he was steering hit a bridge. The steering wheel came off, and the accident left the boat badly damaged.
He called his father, Stu Gregory, to tell him what happened. The first question his father asked: “Are you OK?”
It wasn’t about the damage to the boat. And it wasn’t because he was talking to his son. “He does that with everybody,” Andy Gregory says.
Stu Gregory was the owner of Bradenton-based insurance agency Des Champs & Gregory Inc. If a client got in a car accident, Andy Gregory says, his father wouldn’t ask what kind of claim it was first, he would ask the same question — “Are you OK?”
“The kind of person he is, if someone had a fire, he’d be at their house helping them clean it up,” adds Andy Gregory.
Stu Gregory died March 26. He was 83.
A fourth-generation Floridian, Stu Gregory is survived by his wife of 60 years, Gerry Gregory, as well as his four children, 11 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.
He went to Florida State University on a basketball scholarship, and was the team captain. After he graduated, he entered the U.S. Army Reserve and served active duty during the Berlin Crisis in 1960.
In 1964, he moved to Bradenton and, with business partner English Des Champs, purchased the Joe Fant Agency. That launched Des Champs & Gregory. Andy Gregory, now president of Des Champs & Gregory, says his father taught him what insurance is really about — helping and educating people.
That help philosophy spread to other agencies. For example, Jim Boyd, CEO of Bradenton-based Boyd Insurance & Investment Services, says Stu Gregory reached out to him early in Boyd’s insurance career and said, “We’re competitors, but we’re always going to be friendly competitors.”
Gregory told Boyd he would be happy to help him, and over the years, Boyd took him up on the offer. “It was comforting for me to know that if I needed sound advice, I could always call him,” says Boyd, also a Republican state representative. “That was just the kind of guy he was.”
Gregory was big on helping people outside insurance, too. The list of community organizations he was involved with includes the Manatee Chamber of Commerce; the Manatee Community Foundation; the Boys and Girls Clubs of Manatee County; Goodwill Manasota; and Just for Girls.
Gregory handled commercial insurance for Just for Girls, hosted lunches to tell people about the organization and was active in raising funds to construct its Leadership and Learning Center. “He really embraced our mission,” says Executive Director Becky Canesse. “He understood the importance of raising up girls to be their full potential. I think he’s the most caring man I’ve ever met.”
Boyd says Gregory’s legacy will live on through his family and his actions. He says, “I hope at the end of my road I can be half he man he was.”
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