Rogers Towers real estate lawyer William E. Scheu Jr., known to most as Bill, is a Jacksonville native and the city's unofficial problem resolver.
Some call him the community's mediator and conflict diffuser.
For the past several decades, Scheu, 67, has been called upon to sort through sensitive and contentious political and financial issues, including problems with the City's economic incentives program, audit findings about Pell Grants at Florida State College at Jacksonville and, now, pension reform.
Mayor Alvin Brown named Scheu as chairman of the 11-member Jacksonville Retirement Reform Task Force, which began its work July 10.
Scheu's work as a community mediator stretches back at least to the late 1980s, and includes work with disputes in public housing; Planned Parenthood and the Christian Coalition; school desegregation; and homeless issues.
Scheu also served as interim Supervisor of Elections during the 2004 election.
A graduate of the University of the South and the University of Florida Law School, Scheu's real estate practice focuses on transactions, with an emphasis on shopping center and office building acquisition, development and leasing.
He and his wife, Peggy, have been married 46 years and have been together for 50 years. They started dating at Robert E. Lee High School their senior year. They have three grown daughters.
He is a certified circuit civil mediator and is knowledgeable in state and federal election law.
The Daily Record interviewed Scheu, pronounced "shy," for "First Coast Success," a regular segment on the award-winning 89.9 FM flagship First Coast Connect program, hosted by Melissa Ross. The interview took place at the station at 100 Festival Park Ave. along the St. Johns River near EverBank Field.
The interview is scheduled for broadcast this morning and the replay will be at 8 p.m. on the WJCT Arts Channel or online at www.wjctondemand.org.
Why are you called upon to be the community mediator?
Bringing people together is a real calling, if you want to think theologically, which is the way I do. Why people come to me, I really don't know. It's just something that happens.
How did that start?
Our church, which is Riverside Presbyterian, in the late '70s had mission work in the Brooklyn area of town. With Young Life and others, we taught kids how to read, how to swim, and we would take them to summer camps for a weekend.
We started out with housing and Young Life had done a survey of the neighborhood and housing. Blodgett (Homes) was a public housing redevelopment. They wanted to move the state office building off the river and put it in the Blodgett area. We worked with the residents.
That led to a delegation to China. My now good friend Bob Evans is a Presbyterian minister, and led that trip. We were in some housing units in Hong Kong, where it was still refugees because Hong Kong hadn't reunited with China at that point.
We started brainstorming about Jacksonville's black-white issues and what can be done proactively.
That eventually led to the training using a South African model, which Bob had taught for years, to civic leaders of Jacksonville.
I have been blessed with the kind of work that I have done that has put me in contact with the type of people I would never have gotten to know as a middle-class guy, a Lee High School grad, people like Bob Shircliff and Hap Stein and others.
The people you meet and have influence on you are very important.
Do you consider yourself a peacekeeper?
I would describe myself as a listener. I've really concluded that the greatest virtue is humility. I think that if we had more of that in our government, in our corporate sector, in our churches, that it would be great. Humility is really about listening, appreciating the other.
I was really fortunate. I live at Beau Rivage, and Ed Austin lived there. Ed Austin was fond of saying that if you didn't care who got the credit, then a lot of things could be done.
You grew up in Jacksonville. Talk about your childhood. What did you envision yourself becoming as an adult?
I started reading the Perry Mason novels probably in the seventh grade, before television, so I always wanted to be a lawyer.
My first job was as a runner at the Bryant, Freeman, Richardson & Watson firm. It was a famous little firm; it's gone now.
What did your father do?
He was in advertising and public relations. My grandfather was the president of the acquirers of what now is Channel 4. He didn't have any money, the investor had the money, but he ran it. They sold it to Post-Newsweek in probably 1953 or 1954.
When they finished that, they went into the record business and they were the record distributors for Columbia Records in the Southeast.
In my house in the '50s, my brother and I were not allowed to listen to Elvis Presley because he signed with RCA Victor. We had Gene Autry and Rosemary Clooney.
Did you end up watching Perry Mason on TV?
I sure did.
How accurate was that series?
It was pretty dramatic. I guess you can call Hank Coxe the Perry Mason of today.
I am sure Hank Coxe will appreciate hearing that. Now, you are married and you have three grown daughters. Have any followed in your footsteps?
No lawyers. The first two daughters went to Davidson (College). One became a pediatric intensive care nurse. She married a graduate from Davidson and he went to seminary and while he was in seminary, she got her nursing degree and they now are in Winston-Salem, where he is an associate pastor at a church.
The second daughter became a marriage and family therapist and also married a pastor and they are in Kannapolis, North Carolina.
The third daughter went to Auburn (University) and married a creative designer and she is a civil engineer and she works for Reynolds, Smith and Hills in the Atlanta office. She does transportation work.
We now have six grandchildren, so we are pleased with that.
Your biography online says that you finished the New York Marathon in 1980. Do you still run?
I walk now, but that was just a great experience. A group of us ran it together. We trained together and it was a lot of fun. The training was harder than the marathon itself.
But going through Brooklyn, the kids there are holding their hands out and wanting you to hit their hands as you were going by. You were giving them something, but they were giving you the energy and the joy to keep going. I have never forgotten that.
You talked about how you became involved in learning about conflict resolution. In 1992 you proposed a black member for the Florida Yacht Club, which had an all-white membership. When your member was not accepted, you resigned your membership. Do you have any reflection on that now that it has been more than 20 years?
There was a group of people. It wasn't just me that felt committed to that. It was time to make a move to broaden the membership of the yacht club and many other clubs.
But it wasn't just for the sake of broadening the membership for racial reasons. It was also to broaden the membership of the yacht club to make it a more important place in the life of Jacksonville.
It was a painful time. Mark Hulsey, now deceased, was the leader and Hank Coxe and John Taylor were very instrumental in getting that done.
I think people in Jacksonville have broadened their minds in lots of ways and I think a lot of people at the yacht club and other yacht clubs as well have really changed a lot. I really do.
How far do you think the city has come since then?
It has come a long way. We have an African-American mayor now. I do think the Jacksonville Jaguars really have played an important part in broadening the leadership of the city beyond a few areas. That has been very good for the city.
I think also the regionalization of our industry, while it has not been good from a philanthropic perspective, in that ultimately decisions get made in Charlotte, mainly, but having new leaders coming into Jacksonville from elsewhere has also been very broadening and good for the city.
There is still a long way to go but I think Jacksonville has come a long way.
What has been the most challenging issue that you have mediated or you have been called upon to help resolve?
It may be this pension issue. But, thinking about it, Blodgett was difficult in the sense that you had the leadership of the city wanting to do something where they really hadn't taken into account the residents that lived in Blodgett.
There was a lot of anger. There was a lot of not knowing how to do things and a fast time track. It was like 90 days, and that really became a spiritual experience.
The breakthrough came when we voted as a committee whether or not to have air conditioning in public housing because the federal government would not pay to have air conditioning.
We had to decide whether the City would pay for air conditioning. All the black people on the committee voted to have it and all the white people voted not to have it because of the expense.
I think trust began to form when the white people said OK, the committee has made a decision, let's move on, that is it, and we didn't try to undercut it. And from that point on it went like clockwork.
The other thing was probably the desegregation work.
I would say those two were pretty difficult.
How do you see the pension issue unfolding?
It is a difficult timing issue because, as you know, the City Council has to make a decision by Sept. 30.
We have done the best we can. (The committee met for four hours July 10). We will meet another four hours on Wednesday the 31st and then a third time on Wednesday the 22nd of August.
They have given us reams of information.
The committee has read a couple of studies by the (LeRoy) Collins Institute; we got the (negotiated) proposal; we've got the Jacksonville Civic Council's proposal; we've got some of the editorials; we've gotten the 30-year agreement.
What we need to realize is that while we are making public policy, we are not making public policy in a vacuum and there are legal constraints.
There has been an agreement that has been entered into by the City and by the Police and Fire Pension Fund, which committed both parties to certain things for 30 years, which ends in 2030.
When we talk about compelling existing employees to make certain sacrifices or change their benefits, you can't necessarily do that because you have legal constraints.
The mediation, just like any other litigation, was an attempt to settle the differences and then they'll ultimately have to be approved by the various government bodies, including City Council.
But it's not like you are a starting anew because you've got a legal construct. Helping the community understand that is a part of the role of our committee.
I'm a lawyer, so I think in terms of that. We are just not starting with a blank slate.
The willingness of people to negotiate is going to be very important. Everybody wants to try and solve the problem and they realize it is a community problem.
To the extent they can, I think people are trying to consider different things, but within that legal construct.
You are a person of faith. How has your faith played a role in your mediation and conflict resolution efforts?
We are called to be reconciling. I will express it this way. I have two favorite Scripture pieces. One is 1Corinthians 12.
It talks about God giving gifts through Jesus Christ to many different people and people have different gifts.
The Scripture talks about the body of Christ, the church, but if you view that larger, it is really about the community, the world we live in.
God gives us different gifts and when we are called to think that my gift is not better than your gift, it is just a different gift, and all the gifts work together.
If we can appreciate that we are gifted in different ways, then that is how we all work together.
We can appreciate what everybody brings to the table and somehow we can merge it to better our community.
The second Scripture is Micah 6 and so you can see the gift part in 1st Corinthians being sort of vertical, gifts to us, so what do you do with them?
The horizontal piece I take from Micah, what are we called to do. That's to do justice, love, mercy and walk humbly, and to me that is really what it is all about.
It's justice and mercy because if you think about justice, that is what is right and wrong. That is sovereign, imposing justice, right and wrong. But mercy means to give up sovereignty to be merciful, knowing humbly that God is in charge.
That is probably very confusing, but that is sort of what drives my life and it helps us to remember that we are sort of all in this together.
I'm a Christian, but it is important to say there are people of other faiths that have their strong faiths and I think Christians and Jewish people or Muslim people, we come together and we appreciate each other's faith, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we subordinate our faiths to each other.
We learn from each other, but we have our own beliefs and our own personal relationships with our God.
You have spent time in public office. Have you ever considered longer-term public service?
At some points along the way, I have thought about running for City Council, but it always came back to God didn't really have that in mind for me.
Andy Bell, who was the president of the Community Foundation for years before Nina Waters, said to me that in the philanthropic sector, you can almost have a greater ability to participate and influence things than you can in the public sector, because the private sector and philanthropic sector is so creative and so flexible.
I admire anybody that runs (for public office), whether they win or lose, because they are risking a lot. Everybody wants to throw stones at people in public office. I admire them a lot, but it's really not for me.
After 30 years, and maybe a lot more, of mediating, what advice do you have for community leaders as they take on power?
Remember who you are and where you came from, and listen. All of us think we have the answers but then we realize we don't, without participation from others.
I'm a Presbyterian type of Christian and what we believe is in committees. We don't have bishops but we have the equivalent of a bishop in our presbytery, so nobody gets to tell us what to do except we believe in working through the Holy Spirit, working in the presence of people in a committee to make decisions.
Some people say we Presbyterians never make decisions because we are always bogged down in committees, but I think that is really remembering that we are all created and we are not all sovereign.
We hopefully can listen to what other people have to say. I think that is the most important thing.
What else would you like to share?
This is a great community and Peggy and I have both been blessed to have grown up here. We live a mile from where she grew up in Avondale. We went to Lee High School. This city has changed greatly and it is just a great place to live.
@MathisKb
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