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It was a few days after the death of his wife, Beverly Smock, when area construction executive Bill Smock was going through hundreds of sympathetic Facebook messages. Many of those messages carried the same theme.
"They would say, 'The first person I met at the builder's association was Beverly ... she made me feel loved,'" Bill Smock says. "That was a common thread."
The impact of Beverly Smock was undeniable when it came to the Manatee-Sarasota Building Industry Association, where she worked for 27 years, most recently as deputy executive director. Smock died Sept. 13 at Sarasota Memorial Hospital from COVID-19. She was 62.
"Everything she did, she did with love and kindness," Bill Smock says. "And it didn't matter what she did, she wanted to be the best at it. She cared, and she called herself a Type A-plus-plus-plus person."
Beverly Smock was working for a temp agency in 1994 when she landed a job as a receptionist at what was then the Home Builder's Association on Main Street in Bradenton. She moved up the ladder quickly, becoming what her husband calls "the right hand of the executive officer."
Eventually she received the title of deputy executive director. She used to tell her coworkers she was the only one in the office who could carry a gun because she was the deputy.
The Home Builder's Association became the Manatee-Sarasota Building Industry Association and she went through 15 executive directors over her 27 years, often acting as interim executive director between them.
"She had a list in her drawer," Bill Smock says. "She used to threaten whoever was the executive director at the time, 'Don't make me write your name on this paper."
Jon Mast has been executive director the past seven years, and he heard that threat.
"Hopefully, she thought I was her best boss ever," Mast says. "Because she was my best employee ever."
Mast says no one ever was a stranger to Beverly Smock and that she made people feel "comfortable and important."
"She called herself a princess because Bill always treated her like a princess."
Bill Smock laughs when he tells the story of meeting his future wife in a Tampa bar when he was 20 years old. He was on a weekend training exercise with the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves and he decided to use a fake ID for the first time when he went out that night.
"She was across the room and we made eye contact," he says. "She told her friend, 'I have my dance partner for the night.'
"I call it fate as much as God's will. It was the only way we could be put into each other's path."
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