INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — R. Champlin Sheridan, the man who with his wife committed more than $2.5 million to the Indian River Medical Center, among a multitude of charitable gifts, died Wednesday at Hospice House following a long illness. He was 83.
The Sheridans were the first $1 million donors to the hospital’s 21st Century building fund. The Sheridans chose to let their name be used in the belief that they might inspire other donors. In all, $52 million was raised.
The hospital’s new 14-bed intensive care unit that opened in February was named in honor of Sheridan and his wife of 35 years, Debbie.
The Sheridans also gave $500,000 to Ellie McCabe’s efforts to bring University of Florida psychiatrists and residents to Vero Beach to run a mental health clinic. They were one of five founding families of the UF Center for Psychiatry and Addiction that opened in 2009.
The man whom everyone knew as Champ had to be convinced to make his generosity public because Sheridan was not one to seek accolades. Michael Bloomberg, now-Mayor of New York and a longtime friend of the Sheridans, pressed upon them in 1994 the importance of donors going public with their philanthropy. He convinced Sheridan to attach his name to a $20 million gift to the libraries at Johns Hopkins University, the alma mater of both Bloomberg and Sheridan.
Four years later, Johns Hopkins renamed three of its libraries the Sheridan Libraries.
“I learned from him the Jewish perspective on charitable giving,” Champ Sheridan said in an interview last fall, when Vero Beach 32963 wrote about the Sheridans’ public giving. “He used to tell me how when they built new synagogues in Baltimore, it took a lot of arm twisting and a lot of it was done in public. ‘Well, Joe over here is going to give X amount, and Jim, you and Charlie and Reuben, you should all be able to exceed that gift.’ I really didn’t understand how deeply engrained it is in the Jewish spirit. You grew up thinking that way.”
The Hopkins donation was decided upon over lunch in the kitchen of the Sheridans’ Hanover, Pa., farm, with Bloomberg padding around in jeans, an old sweater and sneakers, Debbie Sheridan recalled. He brought along the president of the university, Bill Richardson.
The amount Bloomberg was asking for started at $10 million and quickly jumped to $20 million. That was a third of the total value of Champ Sheridan’s printing business, the Sheridan Group, one of the largest printers of medical and scientific research and among the 25 largest printing companies in the nation.
Sheridan built the business after he put up $1,000 in his savings plus a loan in Everybody’s Poultry Magazine Publishing Co. It was 1967; he had gone to work there following a stint right after college working for his father’s printing business in Baltimore.
Sheridan was elected to the Johns Hopkins University Board of Trustees in 1989 and soon after, prompted by his longtime college friend Ross Jones (who would become his Vero neighbor in Orchid), Sheridan began to support the college library, an “underdog” of causes, he said.
When Bloomberg and Richardson tossed out the $20 million figure, Sheridan did some quick figuring.
“The business had grown,” he said last fall. “I knew that the business was worth $60 million. I thought, that’s a third of the business – it could be done over time, there’s a mechanism to do that. Then I would have $40 million. That was more than enough to even consider needing to live on. (The gift) would never change my lifestyle capability. It would take care of our five children – I didn’t want them to inherit too much and become so that they didn’t have to do something productive in life. Michael and I very much shared that view. “
Sheridan said it gave him great satisfaction to make the gift during his lifetime. While putting his name to the gift was tough, he felt he made the right decision.
“There’s something to saying, ‘OK, here’s $5 million, $10 million,’ whatever, and there’s no name attached to it. That doesn’t do anything to encourage other people compared to when there’s a name attached.”
When the Sheridans began spending half the year in Vero in 2002, Champ Sheridan joined the board of the hospital foundation, which led to the couple’s series of gifts, including the $1 million toward the intensive care wing which is named after the couple.
“We were the first million dollar gift. Nobody had stepped up. We were going to give that anonymously and they again asked us to use our name,” he said. “A week later, (the late foundation board member) Jack Kennedy came in and gave them a million-dollar check and there’s been seven or eight since then.”
Other causes that captured Sheridan’s heart were the Homeless Family Center, the Boys and Girls Club, the Humane Society and the Gifford Youth activities Center, which last year honored the Sheridans with the Dan K. Richardson Humanitarian Award.
A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. Monday at Christ by the Sea United Methodist Church, 3755 Highway A1A, Vero Beach.
A reception will follow at Orchid Island Golf and Beach Club.
