âThis is a great way to learn about Florida, but it's an even better way to learn ... past seven years, he has also be
Editor’s Note: The following feature on Terry Tomalin was set to be published in USF magazine. Tomalin died Thursday, May 19 of a massive heart attack, and we are publishing this story online as a tribute while the USF community mourns his loss and extends heartfelt condolences to his wife, two children and entire family.
STORY BY DAVE SCHEIBER
BORN TO
Lead
USF Alumnus and adjunct professor uses a canoe trip on the Suwannee to teach his students how to lead.
“ UNIVERSITY of SOUTH FLORIDA
The greatest attributes of a leader are selflessness and resilience.” – Terry Tomalin, ’83, MA ’10
It is just past 5 p.m. and streaks of light from the late-afternoon sun flicker through a canopy of oak and pine branches along the timeless, tea-colored water of the Suwannee River. In the heart of this north Florida wilderness, class is in progress. A crew of eight exhausted paddlers – all students at USF St. Petersburg – have lifted their canoes onto wooden racks, hauled heavy backpacks and containers of gear and food high onto a wooded hillside, and set up camp for the night. As they prepare dinner in the distance, the man in charge of this unusual course reflects on lessons from another trip way down upon the Suwannee – and the latest journey in outdoor leadership. “This is a great way to learn about Florida, but it’s an even better way to learn about yourself,” says Terry Tomalin, a double-USF alumnus, with bachelor’s degree in mass communications (1983) and a master’s in Florida Studies (2010). For the past seven years, he has also been an adjunct professor at USFSP in the College of Arts and Sciences, teaching an array of classes he has developed in the realm of Florida culture and history. But that only comprises a portion of Tomalin’s many pursuits. He has also spent the past quarter-century as an award-winning outdoors writer for the Tampa Bay Times, today the state’s most senior journalist in the field. An old hand at challenging the wilds, he has paddled through the gator-infested Everglades multiple times, kayaked solo from St. Petersburg to Key Largo, completed the grueling “Sharkfest Swim” from Alcatraz to the shore of San Francisco Bay – and helped create the annual Tampa Bay Frogman Swim each January, raising more than a million dollars for the Navy Seal Foundation. Tomalin’s latest creation is rooted in the calmer confines of the classroom – a popular course that combines two of his central interests: outdoor adventures and leadership skills. Each semester since its inception in 2013, his aptly named “Outdoor Leadership” class has examined leadership traits displayed in historic
Opposite: Tomalin and his outdoor leadership class on their March trip on the Suwannee.
SUMMER 2016
Photos: After preparing and enjoying dinner, the class sat down with Tomalin to share stories around the campfire. Above: Tomalin and his class paddle down the Suwannee on the first leg of a three-day trip, learning principles of leadership along the way from their professor. Photos by Mike Sexton
UNIVERSITY of SOUTH FLORIDA
expeditions or amid daunting circumstances – such as Lewis and Clark’s trailblazing path to the Northwest, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated excursion to the South Pole and John F. Kennedy’s heroic rescue of his PT-109 crew after their boat was sunk by a Japanese destroyer in World War II. “We study a vast array of different scenarios and decisionmaking processes, and pinpoint the common traits that make great leaders,” Tomalin explains. “The core of our class focuses on servant-leadership, a concept that places the needs of others first and encourages personal development. And we always talk about how the greatest attributes of a leader are selflessness and resilience. “A good leader has to put the people they’re leading first at all times. And good leaders have to be resilient in the face of unexpected adversity. I tell my students how these traits were personified by Shackleton on his Antarctic expedition – he failed to make it across the South Pole but he returned after three years without losing any of his men. That’s a true leader.” Tomalin’s class culminates each semester with a three-day canoe trip – aided by donor support – on the deceptively challenging Suwannee River, with two nights of camping at pre-arranged sites along the route. The students spend weeks planning out every facet of their trip, yet there’s still an element of the unknown – and, at times, duress and doubt – they must overcome. The first day tests everyone’s endurance with nine miles of paddling – a mere warm-up to 18 miles the next day, and 13 on the final morning. The experience invariably results in bonding, increased self-confidence and a deeper understanding of leadership principles, with ample chances to apply them in real-life situations.
“
A good leader has to put the people they’re leading first at all times.” – Terry Tomalin
Take USF student Holly Ebbert. The Air Force veteran and mother of two young children needed to muster all of her resilience the morning of the trip in March. First, her car wouldn’t start at her home in Tampa, so she called Tomalin in a panic, fearing she would miss the mandatory 5:45 a.m. departure time at USFSP. “Holly, we’d never leave without you – we’ll come get you if we have to,” he assured her – echoing one of his leadership tenets: No one ever gets left behind. That didn’t prove necessary, as Ebbert’s husband rushed her and the kids through the pre-dawn darkness to campus, where she joined her classmates for a three-hour caravan up I-75 to pastoral White Springs. When the group finally reached the Suwannee, Ebbert picked up gear that had been placed inadvertently in a mound of red ants, and promptly was bitten all over her shoulders. But she stayed calm, eased the sting with hydrocortisone cream – and forged ahead. That evening at the camp site, it was Ebbert who took charge of the dinner preparations, chopping vegetables and cooking beef to make two large pots of soup for the campers. “Remember how worried she was that the group was going to leave her?” Tomalin says. “But sticking together made her feel invested – and now she’s running everything. She’s being a leader.” “It’s all about adapting,” Ebbert says with a smile. “You say, ‘This is the mission. We’ll figure it out, and rely on each other to get through.’ ” Identifying specific leadership moments in various scenarios is a key part of class discussions, and students learn to apply that type of decision-making in their own lives. Tomalin has done plenty of that. Growing up in Edison, N.J. as the eighth of nine children, he developed an independent streak that was nurtured by his oldest sibling who helped raise him, future film star Susan Sarandon.
Tomalin decided to leave the Garden State at 17, inspired by the music of fellow New Jerseyan Bruce Springsteen, whose free-wheeling rock anthems, particularly, Thunder Road, had an impact on him. “I just had the desire to get out of Jersey, he says. “I was from a big family and I saw people go away and come back, and I vowed – I made a pact with myself – to leave and see the world. I had some buddies in Florida so I just packed up everything I had in the back of my little Datsun pickup truck and headed south.” Tomalin was immediately drawn to the allure of Florida’s natural wonders – and enrolled at USF. After graduating, he made his first mark as a journalist in the late 1980s by exposing a KKK presence in a Central Florida sheriff ’s department, opening the door to his career at the Times. Nowadays, in addition to writing and teaching, he keeps busy as a Boy Scout troop leader, an active father to children Kai and Nia, and the involved husband of Kanika Jelks-Tomalin, deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. “I have two kids, and I tell my wife all the time, ‘God put me on earth for one reason – to be your husband and be those kids’ father,’” he says. “That’s the only reason I exist. What I want, and what I need, does not matter. The only reason I’m here is to protect and feed and nurture my family – my son and my daughter. That’s what it means to be a man. It’s selflessness. It’s being a parent.” And then there’s the Outdoor Leadership class, which he hopes to expand at USF to include staff, graduate students and alumni. “I’ve had kids tell me this is the most memorable thing they’ve done in four years of college,” he says. “I’ve seen people grow exponentially – starting off introverted, but leaving strong, confident and ready for anything.” Learning to lead on the river – learning to lead in life. SUMMER 2016
