Mr. Cool - What You Might Not Know About The Administrator

SEBRING - Here are six things you probably don't know about Carl Cool, who is retiring from his post as Highlands County administrator after decades of service.

ONE: Late-Night Lonely

At about 1 a.m., Christy Reed, the director of Highlands County's recycling program, was in the loneliest, saddest place she could be. She was standing in a deserted hospital hallway and had just received the news from a nurse that her father had passed away.

Reed said in the minutes after she learned that her father's long battle with illness had ended with his death, she felt more lonely than she thought a person could feel.

"Suddenly," Reed said, "I turned and saw two people there, standing, waiting for me. One was Carl Cool, and the other was Claude Howerton (then a county commissioner)."

Reed said both men gave her a hug and helped tremendously in easing the pain of that night.

Howerton and Cool had driven to the hospital separately after getting phone calls reporting that Reed's father was close to passing away. Both men drove to the hospital and waited to see if they could give any comfort or help to Reed if her father did pass away.

Why did Cool, then on his way to 17 years as the county's administrator, or chief executive officer, go to the hospital that night?

"We each went there to support the family," Cool answered.

Cool didn't know that Howerton was going to be there, but he wasn't surprised to find that he was. Likewise, Howerton didn't know that Cool was going to the hospital, but he wasn't surprised to see him there.

Reed said that beyond herself, a handful of family members, and Cool and Howerton, few, if any, other people know that Cool helped her in that way that night.

Cool certainly never talks about things that he does.

Why?

"I get more publicity as the county administrator than I really enjoy," Cool said. "Every county administrator gets a lot of publicity, good or bad. So, why would I tell anybody about being in that hospital that night?

"If I can do something for somebody I do it, and I don't need to blow my own horn and I don't need to hear anybody say thank you. If you're going to do something for somebody, well, just do it."

TWO: Taking Out The Garbage

It's late night again, but the other side of midnight, about 11:30 p.m. A couple hundred people have had a fundraising party to benefit a 4-H club, but they all left about 10 p.m.

Six people are still there, to clean up the aftermath of the party. Five of them are parents of kids in 4-H. One is not.

The one who is not is Carl Cool. He's picking up trash and putting away tables and doing anything that needs to be done. He started on the cleanup work about 10:30 p.m. and it'll be pushing 1 a.m. before he's done with his work and heads for home.

"I want to thank Carl for all the support he gave for so many years, in so many ways, to the youth of this county by supporting 4-H," said Mike Waldron, a 4-H parent.

"AND I WANT TO THANK CARL'S WIFE, MAUREEN, TOO," HE ADDED. "THEY ALWAYS WORKED TOGETHER (AS VOLUNTEERS) FOR 4-H."

Beyond working for hours at menial manual labor to make 4-H fundraisers a success, Waldron said, Cool helped in a way that only Cool could.

"He has all the connections," Waldron explained. "And he always would connect the dots, connect people who could help 4-H to the 4-H people. He used all of his connections to benefit the kids and the 4-H clubs.

"And," Waldron added, "it's those behind-the-scenes things Carl did, for the kids, that nobody knows about. He never sought any kind of credit - and he really didn't like thank-yous, either - for all the work he did for the kids.

"But," Waldron concluded, "if you needed help to help kids, well, just tell Carl and he'd be there. Most people have no idea of all the things he did for people.:

THREE: 'Keep Your Nose Clean.'

Two young men are in college, on full scholarships, thanks to Cool's volunteer work. When they were in the sixth grade, they were judged by school officials to be "at risk" students. That means they were headed to drop out, flunk out or get kicked out of school before they entered high school.

Cool had a friend who worked at South Florida Community College at the time. She asked him if he could volunteer as a mentor for one boy in that terrible situation. Carl mentored the boy for several years. Then he mentored another boy.

Cool hates to think of even one young person dropping out of high school, and he hates to see the numbers on the Highlands County's Schools' drop-out rates.

"Both boys are in college and doing well," Cool said. "That program offers them a two-plus-two scholarship. That means that they'll get two years paid at a two-year school and then the last two years of college paid for them at a major university.

"To get that, they have to keep their nose clean and keep their grades up and stay steady, then they get the two-plus-two."

Cool, of course, doesn't give out the boys' names, but he knows they are still doing well and headed toward college graduation. They are still "keeping their noses clean and keeping their grades up and staying steady," he said. That's the advice he gave them in weekly one-on-one meetings for several years.

Why did he put in several years of volunteer work in that program?

"That was easy," Cool said. "You just got to take stock in kids."

FOUR: Free Gasoline

"Ask Carl," one of his high school buddies told a reporter, "what he did to get gasoline for his car when he was in high school."

"Well," Cool said to start his answer, "it was not stealing."

Why he did what he did was this. His parents weren't rich, he was working at least one and sometimes two part-times jobs, and he never had enough money for all the gas he wanted for his jalopy car.

What he did, then, was this.

Back in the mid 1960s, Sebring had no 24-hour gas stations. They all shut down at night. A couple hours after they all closed, under the cover of darkness, Cool got a gas can and drove to each closed gas station in and around Sebring.

"What I found out was that at night the pumps aren't on, but if you take the gas pump nozzle out, there's always a few drops left in it. Now, if you take that nozzle and spill those drops into your can, then you get a few drops of gasoline.

"And, if you do that on every nozzle at every pump at every gas station in Sebring, well, you got yourself some gas."

FIVE: 'Gator Water Skiing'

Mickey Byrd, one of Carl's high school buddies, who recently retired after a career as a paramedic with Highlands County EMS, is known as the ultimate joke teller. And Byrd claims, with a joker's straight-laced poker face, that he and Cool and another buddy named Danny Pogany used to catch alligators in Lake Jackson, hold on to their tails, and then let the alligators pull them around the lake.

This, Byrd claims, was when they were 13 and 14 years old.

"We called it 'gator surfing,'" Byrd said. "We actually tried to get a ski board and stand up, but you couldn't do that. But you could hold on to their tails and I'll tell ya, man, can they swim fast."

Now we get Cool's version of the story:

Danny Pogany caught a three-foot-long alligator, took it home, taped its mouth shut, and kept it as a pet. On a lot of hot, lazy summer afternoons, Cool, Byrd and Pogany would carry that three-foot, taped-mouth gator across Lakeview Drive, go to a part of Lake Jackson called "The Cove," and take turns having the gator pull them around the lake.

"The one thing you had to do was hold on to the tail tight and not let go," Cool said, "because if you let go that gator would be gone in a flash. And then you and your buddies couldn't ride him anymore.

"And," he added, smiling at the memory, "I'll tell you one thing you learned - gators are really fast swimmers. What a ride they gave you in the water. An alligator can swim at least three times - at least three times - as fast as the fastest human can swim."

Which version is correct ?

That cannot be verified. But various versions of Cool's "gator surfing" as a youth are out there. That's why, on the custom cake at his public retirement party at the Agri-Civic Center, the cake maker put two decorations, made out of frosting, on top of the big cake.

On the right side of the cake was a tennis shoe, because Cool is still an athlete, competing in triathlons.

On the left side of the cake is a large alligator. The gator is chasing a little boy swimming in the water. And in the foreground is a sign, like those posted still at Lake Jackson, that says, "Swim At Your Own Risk."

Would Cool let his own 9-year-old son grab a gator by the tail and go for a jet-ski water ride?

"No, we didn't take chances," Cool answered the question. "Danny kept that little gator's mouth wrapped with tape, so he couldn't bite you. Now, if you weren't careful, he could claw you. But the big thing was once you got a hold of its tail, you didn't want to let go."

SIX: 'The Big Encourager'

When Cool hugged Christy Reed in the deserted hospital hallway at about 1 a.m. just after she learned that her father had just passed away, Reed was a low-level, secretarial level county employee.

The reason she is now a director, and why dozens and dozens of county workers started at a low level and worked their way up to top management positions at the top-pay scale, is Carl Cool.

"He was the big encourager," Reed said. "He always encouraged everybody to get more education, to go to school on your own and to go to all the seminars that you could go to as a county worker.

"What was different about Carl," Reed added, "is that he encouraged both women and men to do that, so they could do their jobs better, so they could get a promotion, so they could make more money and improve themselves and improve their lives."

This was back in the 1970s and '80s.

"At that time," Reed said, "not all men who were a boss encouraged women to do that. But Carl did. All the time. And he did it for everybody, male, female, any race, any age."

What does Cool have to say about why he did that?

"That's easy," Cool answered. "Education is a good thing. It really is."