Venice trust company founder dies at 89, leaves legacy of persistence

Sometime in the early 1980s, Caldwell Trust Co. President and CEO Kelly Caldwell, then in his early teens, was stunned when his dad, Roland Caldwell, came home after work with an RV camper. Dad quickly announced the new summer plan: Spend two months traveling all over North America. 

A short time later four Caldwells — Roland; Kelly; his older sister Molly; and his mom, Annette — packed up and hit the road. (Kelly’s other sister, Debbie, was in early 20s and didn’t live at home back then.) The route was a circle around North America. Starting in Venice, south Sarasota County, they went north to New York, Maine and Canada; back to the States to the Midwest for Illinois and family in Ohio; out west to Wyoming and Yellowstone National Park; south to California for San Francisco and Los Angeles; then east to Texas, a dip into Mexico and back to Florida via the Panhandle. Then 14, Kelly Caldwell even drove the RV a bit, sans drivers license, when his dad needed a break in Texas. 

“I’m 55 years old,” Kelly Caldwell says, “and I still think that was the coolest trip ever.”