Adele A. Caldwell

CALDWELL, Adele A. 90, of Gulfport and Boca Grande died Friday, May 28th in Gulfport at the home of her daughter, April Caldwell Hornsleth. She was predeceased by less than a year by her beloved husband of almost 64 years, R.W. 'Bob' Caldwell, Jr. who died July 4, 2009. Born Adele Dufour Allport on December 30, 1919 in Asheville, North Carolina, she was the youngest of four sisters and graduated from Biltmore College which became the University of North Carolina at Asheville. She installed radios in military aircraft during World War II in Tennessee and while on a trip to California in 1945, she met and and soon after married Bob Caldwell who was working as an aeronautical engineer building the heavy bomber B-24 Liberator for Consolidated Aircraft in San Diego. The Caldwells moved back to Bob's hometown of Gulfport on July 4, 1951 with their three young children in tow. Bob started working with his father by opening up the building division of R.W. Caldwell, Inc., a real estate and insurance business started originally by the elder Caldwell in 1937. Besides raising the children, Adele designed many of Bob's custom homes. Adele's leisure time was filled with fishing, sailing and family trips. She was a platinum, over 50 year member of the St. Petersburg Yacht Club. In 1979, when she was 59, she sailed in international competition for the SPYC in France. She was the Yacht Club's Salty Sisters sailing champion at least six times, winning her last championship when she was well into her seventies and twice as old as the next oldest competitor. Adele and Bob enjoyed enormously taking summer trips with their children in a station wagon to national parks around America, camping out along the way, and then repeating many of those trips a generation later with their grandchildren. The 2010 edition of the Boca Beacon Tarpon Times in Boca Grande, published just three weeks ago, features Tarpon Tales and an article with a large cover photo of Adele in the late 1950s sitting demurely on the stern of the boat overseeing a large tarpon that had been hooked and then jumped into the boat thrashing around causing havoc. That mounted fish hangs in the R.W. Caldwell office today. Adele's and Bob's lives were inseparable and were truly intertwined. That included helping many people quietly and without fanfare. They took a trip together to Haiti to see first hand the stories of poverty and malnourishment they had heard and read about. As a result, together, they paid for and shipped more than 500,000 pounds of black beans to the Haitian people through a charity headquartered here in Pinellas County, For HAITI With Love. Adele is survived and missed by her two daughters, April Caldwell Hornsleth (Poul) and Elise 'Desi' Caldwell McCarthy (Vaughn), her son, R. W. 'Bill' Caldwell, III (Katie), her two grandsons, Poul Hornsleth, III and Kyle McCarthy and her granddaughter, Jody Caldwell Hornsleth Sep

Adele A. Caldwell

May 28, 2010