By Bud Boyer – Originally published in the 2012 Founder’s Review
George Jacob Albright Jr. was born on September 24, 1931, to parents George Jacob Albright Sr. and Judy Martin Albright. He is the grandson of two preachers, Reverend George W. Albright, a Presbyterian minister from Pennsylvania, and Reverend Wilton F. Martin, a Baptist minister who preached in the Pedro-Summerfield area. George was educated first at the old red brick school in Weirsdale and then at the University of Florida in Gainesville. While at the University of Florida, he was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha social fraternity, elected a member of the prestigious Blue Key, and the University Hall of Fame.
George’s entrepreneurial spirit emerged at the University, where he went into the sandwich-making and sales business. He took a door off of the closet in his frat room, placed it on two sawhorses, and produced his sandwiches there, with mayonnaise on only one side of the bread and no cheese. To do otherwise would have raised the cost of production too much. He put them in a suitcase and went to the dorms around 10 o’clock in the evening, selling baloney sandwiches for twenty cents and ham sandwiches for a quarter. There were no McDonald’s or Burger Kings at the time. Everything went great, with George selling up to 400 sandwiches a night until Dean Beatty called George into his office and told him that the Florida Union restaurant was having to lay off help because of the decline in their sandwich sales due to George’s sideline business. Dean Beatty told George he could either sell sandwiches or go to school there, but not both at the same time. Thus ended his lucrative and ingenious sandwich business.
He is a rabid Gator fan who attends all Gator football games and most home Gator basketball games. He is a lifelong member and Elder in the Weirsdale Presbyterian Church. George and his wife Aggie spend most of the year at their home in East Lake Weir but go to their home in the mountains of western North Carolina in the summer. George has four sons: George III, an attorney and Marion County Tax Collector; David, a medical doctor; Clay and Justin, who are both in the real estate business. He has nine grandchildren.
After college, George went to work for National Standard Life Insurance Company in Orlando, ending up as Executive Vice President in charge of 400 agents in Florida and South Georgia. He took early retirement and moved back to Weirsdale to go into the real estate and citrus business.
George was invited by his Weirsdale School Principal, Leo Armstrong, to speak at a Kiwanis meeting in 1973. Leo gave him a membership application, and the almost lifelong affiliation with Kiwanis began. George was elected President of the Lake Weir Kiwanis Club in 1980, Lt. Governor of the district in 1983, and Governor of Florida Kiwanis in 1993. There are 44 districts worldwide in Kiwanis.
The year George was Governor, the Florida District was the number one district in the world. He was then elected to the Board of the International Kiwanis Foundation in 2005 and as its President in 2007. During his tenure as President, he raised seven million dollars for the Foundation. It was the highest per capita giving they had ever had.
The purpose of the Kiwanis International Foundation is to provide an entity for tax-exempt giving that can be channeled into larger projects. Their biggest project was to eliminate iodine deficiency in children worldwide, one of the largest causes of mental retardation in the world today. The solution is fairly simple: getting iodine into the salt that people eat. Most of the salt used is from seawater gathered in settling basins, evaporated, and gathered as it is without the addition of iodine. Kiwanis has been instrumental in getting governments involved in having salt plants add iodine to the salt that is gathered and sold.
Locally, George has been instrumental in getting the Weirsdale Presbyterian Church and the Kiwanis Club together to help our Stanton-Weirsdale Elementary School rise from an F school to an A+ school. In 2007, after the hurricanes struck the Gulf States, with several other Kiwanians, he helped distribute 10,000 Teddy Bears to the children in that ravaged area. George has also helped with raising $100,000 in scholarship money to honor our longtime school Principal, Leo Armstrong, to help young people attending the College of Central Florida pay their tuition. This has provided eight or nine students with $500 per semester to help pay for their schooling.
George served as President of the Lake Weir Chamber of Commerce and started a yearly Citrus Festival, which evolved into the Ma Barker Shootout. On the 50th anniversary of that event, pictures and stories ended up on the front pages of most of the major newspapers on the East Coast of the United States. He helps the local Scout Troop 113 in their yearly fundraising spaghetti dinner by he and Aggie selling at least 500 tickets for that event. He also helps with the funding of Eagle Scout Service projects for the community good.
George has always expressed the opinion that for things to happen in a small area, local residents must take the lead in getting things done. He practices what he preaches and is always at the forefront of making things happen. He uses his business acumen, ingenuity, and persuasive abilities to better his community. This area is much richer for having George live and work among us.
