ABA Leader & Land Use Expert Loved Baseball and Hawaiian Shirts
Renowned for his Florida land-use expertise and love of baseball, David Cardwell was seemingly more comfortable in a Hawaiian shirt than a business suit.
“But once he opened his mouth, you knew this guy was the smartest man in the room. And you had to listen,” John Jacobsen of the Cape Coral Community Redevelopment Agency tells the News-Press.
Jacobsen and many others are mourning the loss of Cardwell, who died Wednesday in a hospital in Orlando of complications from swine flu, pneumonia and bronchitis. The newspaper says he was 64 years old, but some other reports list him as only 57.
Although he had retired from most of his longtime leadership activities in the American Bar Association, Cardwell was still, until shortly before his death, happily at the helm of multiple ventures that would have daunted a less energetic man.
The Orlando-based practitioner did legal work throughout the state, including for Jacobsen’s organization, while also serving as the volunteer executive director and general counsel of the Florida Grapefruit League Association. The mission of the group, which Cardwell founded, was to keep Major League Baseball teams coming to Florida for spring training.
A former chair of the ABA’s Section of State and Local Government Law, Cardwell also served in ABA policy-maker roles as a member of the Board of Governors and House of Delegates.
A longtime partner of Holland & Knight, according to an Orlando Sentinel funeral notice, he was recently practicing out of the Cardwell Law Firm.
His election law expertise made Cardwell a prominent consultant on CNN as the country waited to see who had won the 2000 presidential campaign in a legal contest whose outcome largely focused on Florida, recalls the Ledger.
The newspaper also notes that Cardwell served as Lakeland’s city attorney during the 1970s.
Cardwell’s quick wit and capacity for fun made even routine work with him enjoyable, says Jeff Ortis, a former president of the Florida Redevelopment Association.
“You know, it’s not really easy to make redevelopment fun. But he did,” Ortis tells the News-Press. “He was either talking about redevelopment or baseball.”
