James "Jim" F. Urbanski

He was 93 and had been in hospice care through a long illness.

Urbanski is survived by his wife Ann (Anderson) Urbanski and their four children: Bill (Elizabeth), Mark (Michelle), Cissy and Betsy Smith (Stephen), six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

He retired as president and General Manager of The Tampa Tribune in 1991 after 31 years at the newspaper. But he never retired his civic zeal.

Through either deference or preference, a few called him Mr. Urbanski But virtually no one addressed him as James. He had a casual personal style that contrasted with his buttoned-down, pocket-squared attire. He was simply “Jim” to virtually everyone he encountered. From the staffers at the Tribune to the countless community committees to the numerous charitable boards, it was Jim. Just Jim.

A newspaper editorial in 1993 praised his “friendly, personal demeanor and his long history of civic involvement, ideally suited to the task at hand” – also calling him a “healer, diplomat, motivator.”

At that point, he was stepping into the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce as a CEO stopgap to smooth the waters after the previous head left the organization demoralized and in disarray.

He was the right man for the job – the “most selfless and efficient civic leader in Tampa’s history,” the editorial said.

“My father was the most humble man I’ve ever known,” his son Mark said. “He served and helped shape Tampa through his civic duties from her early days into the great city it is today. Dad never turned down a request to help others. Just about every cultural and civic institution has his fingerprints on them where he modestly served just to do the right thing never taking credit for anything.”

“We had such pride in our father,” his son Bill said. “He was larger than life to me. He loved being involved with this community. He was involved in so many things and committed to so many things. He wanted to make each stop a better place, leave it better than when he got them – whether it was the Chamber, the Scouts or Ronald McDonald Charities.”

Urbanski did just that at the newspaper, the Chamber’s Committee of 100 business recruitment arm, the Red Cross, Saint Leo University, the YMCA, the March of Dimes, the University Club, the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association, the Tampa Sports Authority, the Hall of Fame (now Outback) Bowl and so much more.

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Not a native Tampeño or even Floridian, once he arrived in Tampa in 1960 Urbanski became a booster unlike most who had come before him. He didn’t invent Tampa, but he certainly helped define it. It was a time when a small band of business leaders could make a project succeed through the strength of will and hard work.

Those who live a long life are doomed to outlast virtually all their peers. The people Urbanski worked most closely with, those with whom he collaborated to make things happen, are mostly gone now and some are forgotten. Each of us stands on the shoulders of giants and their names and accomplishments should be celebrated and remembered.

Urbanski saw massive changes in his newspaper, as well as his adopted city, which fulfilled the promise of a Tampa marketing campaign he helped approve: America’s Next Great City.

His soft touch and gentle guidance flowered much of this. Huge increases in the newspaper’s advertising revenue and public involvement. The first Tampa Super Bowl. The Straz Center. The growth in businesses as well as the population in Hillsborough County, which has quadrupled. The expansion of St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Urbanski looked the part.

“If Hollywood were casting for a businessman/community leader, they'd go looking for someone like Urbanski: A stately looking man in a good suit, the fine white fingers of a handkerchief poking stiffly from the front pocket,” wrote Paul Wilborn in the Tampa Bay Times. “Urbanski looked at home up there. Not cocky or overconfident (that's never been his style), just solid and sincere.”

And Urbanski played the part.

Because he never would shirk a job but seldom took public credit, his peers and subordinates praised his fair-minded and collaborative leadership style. His steadiness and calm stood out, especially in the boisterous, rough-and-tumble grit of the newspaper.

“He was a very kind person – firm in his convictions, but fair,” said Bea Bare, who worked with Urbanski at the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce and the Committee of 100. “He was empathetic, humble and respected people regardless of their status despite his own status in the community as a highly admired leader. He was very deliberate in approaching complex issues, listening to all points of view before offering his own.”

He remembered names, but not just names – jobs, accomplishments, family. He perhaps absorbed and inherited that admirable trait from Richard F. “Red” Pittman, the late Tribune publisher who had partnered closely with him.

“He had a genuine interest in all that he met,” Mark said. “He would never boast or talk about himself even with everything he had accomplished and would always want to know all about someone he just met. When asked about the meteoric growth and success of The Tampa Tribune he managed and was responsible for, he would smile and say, ‘I guess I was at the right place at the right time.’ That was so much my Dad.”

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In 1984, Tampa became the smallest city to host a Super Bowl, the first of five. And now one of his collaborators from that time mourns his passing.

“That is sad news,” said Jim Steeg, the former Super Bowl czar for the NFL and a huge Tampa community fan. “[Tribune Sports Editor] Tom McEwen led the charge, but it never could have happened without Jim’s support. There was such a small cadre of leaders in the community that you could go to to get things done: Leonard Levy, Ralph Chapman, Walter Baldwin among them. Jim got it and knew how important the Super Bowl was to the potential growth of the community and he proved to be correct.”

Levy, who was in Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla with Urbanski and had visited with him right up to the end, said he couldn’t recall anyone saying anything bad about him.

“Not once,” Levy said. “Never heard a negative word. And you could depend on him. If he said something was going to get done, it would get done.”

His son Bill said Urbanski loved being on the Super Bowl Task Force and he took it very seriously. “He just rolled his sleeves up and got to work,” Bill said.

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Not many people know this, but when Urbanski was born during the Great Depression, he was placed in a Franciscan orphanage in Bloomington, Ill. Vincent and Cecelia Urbanski came to adopt a little girl but took home not only Norma but also Jim. (The Sisters had changed his birthday to Oct. 4 to coincide with the Feast of St. Francis. He didn’t discover that until many years later.)

Urbanski was raised in a loving home in LaSalle, Ill. At 18, after high school and at the end of World War II, he was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to serve in Gen. Douglas MacArthur's headquarters in Tokyo. After Urbanski’s discharge, he enrolled in the University of Illinois School of Journalism on the GI Bill.

It’s doubtful many of the Tribune newsroom employees knew of his journalism degree because he never talked about it as the Retail Sales Manager or in other jobs as he moved up the management ladder.

Urbanski had come to Tampa after several sales jobs, including one in Jackson, Miss. where he met Ann at the recommendation of some of his newspaper colleagues and roommates. (Years later, Urbanski described seeing a beautiful woman and wishing he was going out with her. Turns out the woman he saw was Ann – his blind date – and they married a year later, in 1954.)

As the 1960s dawned, Urbanski had an early-morning offer to join the Detroit Free Press newspaper. Ann said to hold on until the end of the day. That’s when the Tribune offer came in and from that day on, they were sold on Tampa.

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In 1989, Urbanski was named the Tampa Civitan Citizen of the Year, a coveted public service award annually announced at the Florida State Fair.

He almost didn’t make it. One of the most secretive awards – if the honoree name is leaked, the award isn’t given – Urbanski was stuck in Fair traffic and arrived quite late for his own presentation.

“He was a modest man,” Bill said. “We’d have to bring it [an award] up to him. But he was always thrilled with stuff like that.”

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Eric Newman of the famous cigar family officiated Tampa high school sports, overlapping with Urbanski.

“He was kind of a mentor of mine,” Newman said. “In fact, he gave me his rulebook when he retired.”

Newman said the rulebook was well-worn – dog-eared and marked up.

“I remember he told me that when people yelled at us, they weren’t really yelling at us personally, they were yelling at the uniform. That was very helpful to me as a young official.”

Knowing Urbanski and his style, you feel that Urbanski perhaps enjoyed imposing rules and order and fairness on a chaotic world.

Not that he would ever say that. He’d only say he liked to officiate because it helped him stay in shape.

Bill told a story about one of Urbanski’s colleagues who was throwing too many unnecessary flags during a game.

Urbanski simply picked up the other official’s flag and put in his pocket for a while, making his point.

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Urbanski didn’t have one of those big room-busting laughs like some powerful men. He had a quiet power, and his laugh was more of a wry chuckle, one that took you into its confidence and invited complicity.

And that smile. He had a smile like the dawning of a new day.

RIP, Jim. So long and “30.”

This city is better – and we are better – because of Jim.