Embodying the Spirit of Freedom

From city leaders to business leaders, when those in leadership positions in the Crestview area need the advice and wisdom of someone who’s been there before them, they call on Foy Shaw.

Shaw was chosen this year’s Spirit of Freedom Award winner.

The award is presented annually to Northwest Florida residents who exemplify Freedom Communications’ core values of respect for individual freedom, self-responsibility, integrity, community and lifelong learning.

A respected member of the Crestview business community since the 1950s, Shaw founded Shaw Moving & Storage to meet the needs of a growing Eglin Air Force Base. His business started with an old used Dodge truck that Shaw bought cheap after it survived a fire that wrinkled its side panels.

In  1956, recognizing the need to organize other business leaders to promote the business climate in the county seat, Shaw helped establish the Crestview Area Chamber of Commerce.

“He’s the father of the chamber,” said the body’s past president, Mike Roy. “He’s never thinking of himself. He’s always trying to just do better for the community.”

In 1963 he was elected to the Crestview city council, serving 11 years before becoming Crestview’s mayor from 1975 to 1976.

“He’s one of my mentors,” said Crestview Mayor David Cadle. “I respect him and look to him for advice often.”

It’s a common theme for many leaders of the community.

 “Foy has been, from day one, my mentor here at the Chamber of Commerce,” said chamber Executive Director Wayne Harris. “There are times we have agreed and times we have disagreed, but I could not have made it here at the chamber without his advice and counsel.”

“He has guided us all as we have come up as board members, then officers and presidents,” Roy said. “Anytime that we need guidance, that’s who we go to.”

“Foy Shaw is one of the most caring men I have ever met,” said Covenant Hospice Director Pat Gingess, also a chamber past president. “He truly has the good of our community at heart and he’s always looking for ways to make Crestview a better place.”

“He is a stalwart leader of this community and has been for years,” Harris said. “He is the epitome of diplomacy and knowledge. Around the board, when Foy speaks, everybody listens. That’s a fact of life in this chamber.”

Nathan Boyles, chairman of the chamber’s PILOT young professionals committee, immediately noticed Shaw’s quiet presence and the respect he commands.

“What always strikes me about him is he’s always there. He’s old enough that he doesn’t have to be out and about doing what he does,” Boyles said. “He does it because he truly cares about the community. When he has something to say everybody gets quiet and listens to what he says.”

Looking back on his more than half a century of involvement with Crestview’s growth, Shaw said modestly, “I just always have had a feeling of returning something to the community.”

Among the organizations he has proudly served is the American Heart Association, which in 1998 awarded him a plaque for 30 years of continuous service. To that add another 11 years: he’s still involved with the organization, as well as the Jaycees.

Married for 55 years to his beloved wife Cel — “but her check-writing name is Mary C.,” Shaw said — the Shaws have four children, Cindy King, a Crestview teacher; Lisa Black, who lives in Tennessee; Craig Shaw, who runs the business his father started; and Brett Shaw, who lives in Destin. Melissa Shiver, a cousin of the Shaw children, was raised with them by Shaw and his wife..

As well as always being present at Chamber of Commerce events, Shaw still puts in time at the offices of Shaw Moving & Storage.

“I’m enjoying working ‘cause I come in when I want to, do what I want to, and leave when I want to,” Shaw said.

The Spirit of Freedom award winner was chosen based on letters of recommendation received from members of the community. In the case of Shaw, his letter came from the youngest of his 13 grandchildren, Nathan Shaw, a seventh-grader at Davidson Middle School.

“I realized how incredible Grandpa was,” Nathan said. Reading the criteria for the award, “it just reminded me of him.”

Nathan has promised to take his grandfather bird hunting, but their favorite activity is playing pool out in the barn.

“Papa usually wins,” Nathan said.

“I’ve slowed down a little bit,” Foy Shaw confessed. But that won’t stop him from staying involved in Crestview and its chamber of commerce, and offering his quiet words of wisdom.

“The community’s been good to me,” Shaw said. “It sure has made it pleasant to work here. It’s been fun.”

“You don’t need to say a lot to do a lot,” Boyles observed, an apt summation of Foy Shaw’s more than half a century of service to the people and businesses of Crestview.

Crestview resident Foy Shaw was chosen as the winner the “Spirit of Freedom”  award by Freedom Communications. Shaw was selected by a panel of editors from newspapers in the Florida Freedom group, which includes the Crestview News Bulletin, the Northwest Florida Daily News, the Panama City News Herald, the Destin Log, Walton Sun, Santa Rosa Press-Gazette, Holmes County Advertiser, Washington County News, Port St. Joe Star News, and Apalachicola Times. Shaw was the honoree on the west end of Florida Freedom’s coverage area.