Gabrielle Russon
Wayne Blanton, a public education icon who was an advocacy force in Tallahassee for 40 years, died Thursday at age 78.
“Members of the Florida Legislature come and go. Governors come and go, and department heads come and go,” said his friend, former Sen. Bill Montford. “Wayne was a stable force for generations. For decades he was here.”
Blanton was the Executive Director at the Florida School Boards Association from 1985 to 2015. He joined the association in 1975 as an assistant director.
Funeral arrangements are pending.
“Anybody that worked with him would tell you he was an icon,” said Andrea Messina, the Association’s current leader.
With a jolly deposition, Blanton was a charismatic lobbyist. Even if you disagreed with him, you still walked away liking him, said several people who knew him.
“He didn’t make enemies easily but he made friends of almost everybody who he knew,” said Ron Meyer, a Tallahassee lawyer who has known Blanton for nearly half a century.
Blanton was the brainchild behind the Florida School Board Insurance Trust, which was created in 1981 to help small and rural school districts that couldn’t afford insurance because they lacked an economy of scale for their pricing. Under the consortium, these districts could self-insure.
And Blanton was also the force behind Florida Palm (Public Assets for Liquidity Management) to give school districts a safe investment vehicle for short-term investments. Blanton developed it after an incident where the schools’ investment pool was frozen and districts couldn’t get their money out, Messina said.
As a lobbyist for public education, Blanton was good at telling stories but also a whiz at the K-12 budget, several said.
“He lived for the Florida School Boards Association and the public schools,” Meyer said. “To say he worked 24/7 on public education matters is probably a little bit of a stretch, but not much. It meant everything to him.”
The Association, in fact, named the building after Blanton when he retired in 2015.
Blanton grew up in rural North Florida. His family ran a general store that sold washers, dryers and cow feed and as a boy, Blanton helped out with the family business, Montford said.
From 1968 to 1971, Blanton served as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.
Fighting in the jungle as a platoon leader during some of the darkest moments of the war helped shape his perspective in the Legislature and in life, Montford said.
“When you have disagreements, you learn to take it in stride,” said Montford, now the CEO of the Florida Association of District School Superintendents.
Others remembered Blanton for his love of his alma mater, Florida State University, and for being passionate about helping people with disabilities.
In retirement, Blanton and his wife, Sandra Cartee, traveled around to the beach and the mountains and enjoyed good food and wine. He liked spending time with his children and grandchildren too.
“He enjoyed his retirement. He didn’t have enough years in it, but I would say that his years in retirement have been happy years,” Meyer said.
And Blanton, although retired from the association, still helped other school districts occasionally.
Recently, Blanton, who already battled prostate cancer, was diagnosed with an aggressive leukemia, Meyer said.
Doctors told him chemotherapy would extend his life by a few years, but he suffered a fall and then got sick with pneumonia. Within a short period of time, his health deteriorated as he said goodbye to his friends, still telling jokes like he always had.
