Terry College of Business - Fall 2008 - (Page 20) marsh lands and vegetable fields through acquisition, zoning, and construction phases all the way to the operation of retail, hotel, and sports enterprises. He helped build Amelia Island Plantation, and he also helped develop Wild Dunes and Kiawah Island. Brumley has now turned his attention to the development of Daniel Island, just across the Cooper River from Charleston, S.C., on land purchased in 1997 from the Guggenheim family of New York. (Yes, those Guggenheims.) As chairman/CEO of the Daniel Island Company, Brumley and his newest partners, including a sharp protégé with a Columbia M.B.A. named Matt Sloan, oversee a bona fide Texas-sized vision — a 4,000-acre island town with 20 miles of waterfront. When complete, Daniel Island will be home to 7,000 residences and 18,000 people, two designer golf courses, 2.3 million square feet of office and commercial space — and hundreds of acres of protected natural areas. You won’t catch Frank Brumley bragging about any of these achievements, of course. Like many rurally bred Southerners, he is not a bragging man. In fact, it seems the more he’s accomplished, the more humble he’s grown. “Frank shies away from recognition,” says Kitty Robinson, executive director of the Historic Charleston Foundation, where Brumley, a former president of the foundation, is a trustee and a long-time champion of preservation efforts. “It’s part of his persona. He just feels it should naturally be done, and he doesn’t seek credit.” Humble or not, a lot of people see Brumley forever wearing a conspicuous 10-gallon hat. A white hat. See, Frank’s considered one of the good guys, a developer who has shown great sensitivity as he built communities, preserved history, conserved natural areas and, generally, gave back to Georgia and the South the good fortune he’s been blessed to receive. small town boy, big ideas Brumley reminisces at a table in his corporate offices on the second floor of the NBSC Bank Building at the main crossroads of Daniel Island’s commercial center. It seems a fitting location for a man who started out his career after UGA as a small-town banker, way back in 1963. He’s bursting with energy for a man with a resume 45 years long, talking without a break for three hours, exhaustively pulling names and details from memory. At lunch, he outwalked his visitor to his automobile, despite a leg brace he’s worn since he “popped a quad tendon” and endured two surgeries after a fall. As Brumley drives, storytelling all the while, he’s prone to suddenly stab a hands-free phone button on his rear-view mirror, bark “Office” in his south-Georgia accent, and leave a git-‘er-done message with Joyce Bradford, his administrative assistant of 20 years. He can be nostalgic, remembering the longago and long-changed coastal town where he grew up. “St. Mary’s was a Huck Finn life,” he says. “You knew everybody, and everybody knew you. There’s a Trident submarine base down there now, with more people living on the base than in the whole county when I was growing up.” Brumley’s granddaddy grew up on Maryland’s eastern shore, where he made a living as a truck farmer. That gene clearly passed to Frank . . . only he likes to grow communities instead of cabbages. The Brumleys moved to Florida in 1902 to take advantage of cheaper dirt, warmer winters, and fresher orange juice. Brumley’s father grew up in central Florida, then went off to World War II. He came home in one piece, and took a job with Gilman Paper Company in St. Mary’s as a lab chemist. By the time he retired, he ran the paper mill, even pulling a hitch in New York City to close out a brilliant career as an executive. Frank and his siblings, including older brother George and sister Martha (BSHE ’59), had their run of the coastal waterways, and of the timberlands and woods owned by the mill. The outdoors gave the Brumley kids their requisite southern hunting and fishing skills, along with a love of firearms. After graduation from Camden High School in 1958, Frank enrolled at, brace yourself, Georgia Tech. But St. Mary’s hadn’t prepared him for engineering. “I’d never even seen a set of drawing instruments,” he recalls. “I was taking remedial everything.” He toughed it out two years before transferring to UGA in 1960. There he plunged into a business curriculum, finding it a better fit. He pledged Sigma Alpha Epsilon, finding life-long friends in the fraternity in people like former Synovus CEO James Blanchard (BBA ’63, LLB ’65). Brumley today serves on the Synovus board. “Frank’s been successful because he’s very bright,” says Blanchard. “That’s the first thing you notice about him. He’s well read, well traveled, very sophisticated, actually. But even more, he’s a great (below) Frank and his wife, the former Blanche Cauthen of Thomasville, have wonderful memories of college — including this Magnolia Ball photo they posed for at the SAE house. Perhaps it was all meant to be, given that Blanche’s great-great grandfather built and lived in the home that later became the SAE house. (photos at right) Jack Nicklaus designed a golf course for Brumley at kiawah Island. The Daniel Island Country Club has courses designed by Tom Fazio and Rees Jones. “Frank’s been successful because he’s very bright. T s hat’ the f irst thing you notice about him. He’s well read, well traveled, very sophisticated, actually. But even more, he’s a great people person. He has great empathy for you, and he’s a great listener. T s nothing showy here’ or self-centered about him.” — Jimmy Blanchard (BBA’63, LLB ‘65), former Synovus CEO 20 • Fall 2008 Terry College oF Business
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