An interview with the three musketeers

Kirby Rolfe, Randy Lohr, and Dave Gindlesberger, served as team leaders in maintenance operations of The Meadows for many years. Affectionately known as The Three Musketeers, these gentlemen were responsible for ongoing maintenance for decades and made many infrastructure improvements enjoyed by the community. The following interview was conducted by Jo Evans and Tom Bondur on October 23, 2023.

TB:

We are talking with Kirby Rolfe, Randy Lohr, and Dave Gindlesberger, also known as The Three Musketeers, who served as team leaders in maintenance operations of The Meadows for many years. Len Smally told us in his interview that you got the nickname, The Three Musketeers, because with your combined skills you could do just about anything in terms of maintenance work. He said he saved a lot of money doing work with staff instead of hiring outside people.

DG:

Yeah. We did everything− all the irrigation and electrical work. I was in the landscape business, so I was good at irrigation. These guys were good at anything to do with electrical wiring.  Before we got here, the MCA had subcontractors coming in to replace irrigation heads and other things. After we got here, it was all done in house.

KR:

We got here just as the community was starting to age after fifteen or twenty years. A lot of the infrastructure not only needed maintenance, but also replacement and repair.

RL:

We dug trenches and put in hundreds of feet of underground electrical wiring. All the electrical stuff. Electricians at $80/hour would have been very expensive.

DG:

Anytime there was high voltage− some of the water pumps here are 400 volts− we knew that was off limits to us. We would never trust ourselves to work on that equipment. We brought in people for that. That was risking your life. We would never mess with that.

TB:

You made a lot of improvements and extensions to the original irrigation and electrical systems put in place by Taylor Woodrow.

JE:

You did the work on the fountain at 17th Street when that went bad. Now we're paying outside contractors for everything. 

DG:

We also did a lot of legally required stuff like weed cutting on the big, ten-acre, corner parcel where you have all the power poles and restrictions− the area near Aviva. Lenny and I did that. You know what that would’ve cost if we sent it out to contract? We did everything.

KR:

When we first bought a lift, we trimmed all the palm trees.

RL:

Yeah. 600 or more.

KR:

And we did it more than once.

DG:

 At first, we hired that out. But then we did it. I think it was mainly me up in the bucket. We had our crew who would pick everything up.

KR:

We had three guys and a truck.

RL:

We had over 55 loads.

JE:

We need a new lift, but I don’t know if we have anyone who can operate it.

KR:

It’s not all that difficult. It takes practice. A lot of it is common sense. I operated one when I worked at the phone company. Not a big deal. There are some facets− mainly safety. You need to be smart enough not to get hurt.

JE:

You remember how we used to go out to Myakka in the truck?

KR:

We used to go out tree shopping. And didn’t we go out and buy aquatic plants one time?

JE:

I think we went out to pick them up. Our committees were a lot more involved in the maintenance work then. We did the work.

RL:

Yes. You were part of the crew.

KR:

One thing that worked well when I was foreman− I used to get brought into Maintenance Committee meetings. That worked well. We didn't get things third hand. We were right there when someone said, “Okay, let's do this.” You’d get a real feel for what people wanted you to do. Sometimes it was just a small task; other times it was a larger thing. But you knew what people wanted done.

TB:

Tell us about your earliest memories of The Meadows. My earliest memory of University Boulevard was when it a two-lane road about 30 years ago. Your memories go back further than that.

KR:

It was originally County Line Road. If you took Highway 301 going north, you turned right to get on County Line Road, which went out to a junkyard. After that, it turned into a dirt road that just petered out into cow pastures.

DG:

I started working for Don Smally, Lenny’s father, in 1978. Smally, Wellford and Nalven (SWN) were the civil engineers retained by Taylor Woodrow to plan and develop The Meadows. Chuck O’Quinn was the head surveyor. I worked for them for about 15 years.

I was a surveyor and crew chief. We had 14 trucks with three-man crews. It was booming back then. We were all working overtime. My mother was the office manager for SWN for 25 years. My brother was there for about 10 years. We go back a long way. All the guys here went to Sarasota High School.

KR:

Yeah. I went to Alta Vista Elementary, Sarasota Junior High, then Sarasota High. I graduated in 1971. My older brother was on the YMCA swim team with Lenny. We lived down from Bahia Vista Street on Euclid Avenue and Prospect Street. Alta Vista Elementary and the YMCA were just up the street.

JE:

That’s near where I go to church.

KR:

Yes. I know it. I've been there. Of course, the only thing I've done in that church is drink beer in the parking lot at night.

RL:

Kirby was the first person I worked with at GTE, the phone company. We both worked for GTE.

KR:

I worked for GTE for 31 years. GTE became Verizon.

JE:

When did you fellows come to The Meadows?

KR:

I came in 2004.

DG:

I came a little bit before these guys, but not by much.

RL:

I remember doing phone installation work in The Meadows back in 1981-83.

KR:

One of the smartest things Taylor Woodrow did in construction was not come in and rip the place up. If you go into other developments, there is not a tree standing. Taylor Woodrow kept a lot of the trees and natural landscape. You can go from one end of The Meadows to the other on a sidewalk in a park-like setting full of mature trees.

JE:

I think Frank Taylor wanted this place to be a real community. I don’t think he had any idea that it would become mostly a retirement community. Sarasota County had him put up money for schools. I think he thought The Meadows would become a community of all age groups.

TB:

Schools were part of the original master plan. Taylor Woodrow also did a lot of development in the surrounding area too. They built many local roads and facilities. They put in the 17th Street bridge near the entrance. They built the Meadowood water treatment plant− one of the first wastewater recycling systems in the county. That was a big innovation. They pioneered the idea of using curvilinear roads instead of building on a rectangular grid. They were very progressive developers.

JE:

The Meadows is like a small city. There is a lot to maintain.

KR:

Yes. And we did everything.

DG:

We built bridges, waterfalls, the Nature Trail. When I started working for SWN, The Meadows was just virgin land. All the roads coming into the area dead-ended. Honore Avenue and 17th Street didn’t go through.

JE:

You could also come in from 47th Street to Greenwood Stables. Where the horse farm was.

DG:

There were just dirt roads coming into The Meadows. There was the sales office and some mobile homes over where Map Island is now.

JE:

I think the mobile homes were construction offices. The sales office was a wooden building on stilts. It had several offices in it. If you remember, it had a model showing what The Meadows was going to look like when it was all built out.       

DG:

I started a landscaping business in 1991. I mowed about eight or nine Smally properties for years. I came to The Meadows in 2003. I was getting tired of the mowing business. Lenny kept asking me to come work for him. I started working here part-time just to give it a try. He was happy with whatever I wanted to do. I came in a couple of days a week.

They only had one guy working here. When that guy left, I took the full-time job as foreman. Lenny wanted to hire a crew. We hired Randy and Kirby. These guys had just retired from the phone company.

I don’t think we ever had an argument all the time we worked together. We were all very professional. Even though I was the foreman, I never had to boss anyone around. They always knew what to do. I never had to do anything other than take them out for a beer every now and then.

RL:

Dave bought the beer.

KR:

We used to have fun.

JE:

Did you fellows build any of the bridges?

KR:

I built all the foot bridges on the Nature Trail. I built the dock on the lake near the MCA building, the seating shelter at the pickleball court, and the little bridge on the east side of Butterfly Lake.

We did a lot of the repair and maintenance on bridge railings, walkways, things like that. We rebuilt the entire walkway on Highlands Bridge. We rebuilt the bridge behind the Hunt Club. They just recently replaced it. But at one point when it flooded, the bridge floated off one side where there are pilings. It was sitting at about a 30-degree angle. We got underneath it, jacked it up with four jacks, and rebuilt the head wall.

Dave here is largely responsible for the Nature Trail. He did all the survey. Don’t let him get modest. He went in there and whacked his way through all the bushes.

We went back there and put in gates because at the time people were using it for an all-terrain vehicle (ATV) track. They were running pickup trucks and all kinds of stuff through there.

TB:

You built the foot bridges on the trail? I love the Nature Trail.

KR:

Yeah. One of the fun things about the job was we got to do fun stuff like that.

DL:

Yeah. It was nice because of all the green areas. There's hardly any place like this anymore.

JE:

All the plantings too− annuals and everything. You fellows did all that. It took a lot of time. I would order annuals in the hundreds. Or I would go get Randy and tell him, I found this rock I need to move. Can you go get the tractor?

KR:

One time we planted over 100 plants. When we came back on Monday, all the little plants were missing. Somebody stole them. We quit putting poinsettias out because we couldn’t hardly keep them in the ground.

JE:

Sometimes you’d walk by and find someone’s pulled out two or three. Remember over on Honore, going toward the mall, the fellow that put up all those palm trees? He must have put in 10 palm trees. Someone stole every one. Now you tell me how that happened?

KR:

Then he redid it. He put in areca palms. And he put in an electric fence to keep his areca palms in the ground until they took root.

JE:

Yes, can you believe that? And they weren't small pots. That had to have been an inside job. You need equipment for that.

You guys did all the planting. You did everything.

KR:

We did a lot of stuff. One summer we repainted the entire inside of MCA building. We also cut out a hole in the wall between the Garden Room and lakeside where the doors are now. Originally, there was just a wall.

TB: 

Dave, you started working in The Meadows with the original survey crews for Smally, Wellford and Nalven (SWN) back in 1978. You started working part-time for Len Smally, then manager for the MCA, and went fulltime after you gave up the landscaping business. Then you were part of the hiring process that brought on these other two guys. Did you find out about this place through each other? How did that come about?

KR:

I retired from the phone company in 2002. Randy called me.

RL:

After I retired, I started a little phone business. Kirby and I were working together. After a while, I quit that. Not long after I saw something in the paper that The Meadows was hiring for maintenance work. I thought, why not? I knew Lenny from high school.

I went for an interview with Dave, who was foreman, Lenny, who was MCA manager, and Mark Schaefer, who was operations manager at the time. I got the job. And then someone else left. Lenny asked me, Do you know what anybody? I said, I’ve got just the guy.

KR:

Lenny knew who I was because when I was a kid Lenny didn't live too far away from us. Back then Sarasota was a real small town. When I was a kid, there were only about 25,000 fulltime residences.

DL:

Randy and Kirby went to Sarasota High School. That was almost a prerequisite. I went to Riverview High School, but I was exempt. I knew his family and stuff. I was also a sailor like Lenny.

KR:

I was the last one hired. I started at the end of August in 2004.

TB: 

Everything was pretty built out by that time, right?

DL:

I was just getting acclimated to how the MCA wanted to run the business. What was needed in maintenance. My idea was that maintenance involved changing light bulbs and painting. Oh, no, not with Lenny.

KR:

Lenny found out that we could do stuff. The more he found out we could do, the more we ended up doing.

All subcontractors are interested in doing is getting paid. We were more invested in the place. We were working here every day. If I did something kind of half-assed, I was the person who was going to see it again. If I did something right, it was a done deal. You had an opportunity to your best work.

RL:

Dave was a great foreman.

DL:

Mark Schaefer was operations manager at that time. He started about the same time Lenny did. Lenny started first, then he hired Mark. Mark was here for about 17 years.

Lenny also hired Jay Brady. Lenny knew Jay from his days as manager in Longboat Key. He was operations manager for about a year then he became assistant manager when they hired Mark.

Jay took over as MCA manager when Lenny retired. He was only manager a few years. When Jay left, Frances Rippcondi took over.

Frances was originally hired as operations manager when Mark Schaefer left. She had worked as a landscape designer before coming to The Meadows. There was a pretty strong push at the time to update and redo a lot of the facilities as a start to the Renaissance program in The Meadows, so that worked out.

JE:

I remember Mark would come pick me up in the little maintenance cart. He used to keep me out all day long. We went everywhere.

KR:

He had a route. Once a month, he would run through The Meadows and basically check out every blade of grass.

JE:

At top speed.

KR:

Oh yeah, he used to drive fast. He had me build a rail for the passenger side of the cart so people wouldn't get thrown out.

JE:

I think Bob Freelander, who was on the Maintenance Committee with me, went out with him once. He invited everyone on the committee to go out with him. If no one showed up, he would call me. I was going out with him every month. He also went out on all the Restrictions Committee [now Standards Committee] rounds to check architecture review applications 

TB: 

Were you involved in the sidewalk widening project? In 2007, the Sidewalk Safety Project widened many of the sidewalks along Longmeadow from five to eight feet. Len Smally cited that as one of his primary accomplishments. He said did a similar thing in Longboat Key when he was manager there.

JE:

That was Ernie Fortin’s project when he was The Meadows president. There was an Ad Hoc Committee set up to coordinate that project.

Did you fellows build the waterfall at the lake near the MCA building?

KR:

Yes. We built that water fall. That was a Len Smally design. We built the Memorial Garden and Wall too.

DL:

We replaced hundreds of signs. When I got here nobody had painted or repaired the street signs in a long while.

When Kirby first got here, one of his main jobs was keeping up with replacing the street lights because they burned out all the time. It was before we went to fluorescent lights. They didn’t burn out as much. Then we went to LED and that was the end of it.

JE:

What other things stand out as some of your biggest achievements?

DL:

We did most of the electrical and irrigation work. I think of the miles of wiring. We dug trenches and laid all the underground electrical stuff. These guys did the phone and computer wiring for the MCA building when it was built. I had a landscaping business, so I knew a lot about irrigation systems. Before we started, The Meadows was paying subcontractors to come in just to replace an irrigation head. We saved The Meadows thousands of dollars.

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