Banker, philanthropist.... and cowboy
After Ralph Cellon graduated from what was then Alachua High School, he headed to the University of Florida where he graduated with a degree in animal science. He went on to serve as a fighter pilot in Korea flying F-86s and B-47s, and later was elected to both the Alachua city and county commissions.
There was a time when Alachua seemed more like two cities rather than one.
At that time, there was a white side of town and a black side. On the black side, dirt roads were left dusty, and at night darkness settled over the neighborhood, while the white neighborhoods were located on freshly paved streets dotted with streetlights.
Orien Hills has been on the Alachua City Commission for 14 years, and he remembers those days. He remembers when things changed. And he gives credit to Ralph Wilson Cellon Jr., a man Hills proudly calls a friend.
Cellon’s father taught him that every day you get up and go to work, until you can’t anymore.
And at 76, Ralph Cellon is still getting up and going to work every day. He doesn’t see retirement in his future any time soon.
From farm worker and self-proclaimed cowboy to successful investment banker, Cellon has left his mark throughout he city of Alachua and around the county, but he doesn’t like to brag. Instead, he credits the virtues of his family, to which he credits most of his success.
“I was very fortunate to be born into the family I was born into,” he said.
The first Cellon to settle in Alachua was just 12 years old when he came to Florida on a boat from France with his “floozy” aunt. She “took up with the boat captain, and he was a stowaway.”
He was left in St. Augustine, Cellon explained, and started walking to Tallahassee. He ended up in what’s now Alachua County, and the family’s been here for five generations since.
They were farmers, and as a child, Cellon knew he wanted to be a cowboy. He became the first in his family to graduate from college, and he did so with a degree in animal science from the University of Florida.
He said his “daddy” was the most interesting and smartest person he’s ever known. Although he had only a high school education, he had what his son calls “cowboy logic.”
Cellon said long before there were genetic studies to prove it, his father had caught on to the benefits of cross-breeding cattle, which produces what the industry now calls “hybrid vigor.”
His father didn’t know the science of what he was doing or why it worked, he just saw the results that cross-bred animals were bigger and healthier, and he stuck with it.
Working on his family’s farm as a child, Cellon knew he wanted to be a cowboy when he grew up.
He graduated from the University of Florida, was married and joined the military – all in 30 days. Laughing, he said, “My daddy says I was born grown. He had me working in the cow pasture when I was eight years old.”
But Cellon didn’t stay home on the farm. He was a fighter pilot in Korea flying F-86s and B-47s, which had nuclear bombs strapped to them.
“Your experiences make you who you are,” he said.
When he returned from the service he became heavily involved with community issues and local politics. One day it was joining the Lions Club, and the next it was the City Commission.
It was while Cellon served on the commission that he heard a resident’s plea for the city to do something about the unpaved, unlit streets on the east side of town. That resident was Orien Hills, long before he, too, came to sit on the city commission.
Hills said he and others went to meeting after meeting to get the commission’s attention, and finally, they did. But the city didn’t have the money to fix the problem on its own.
Cellon, known for his diplomatic skills, went all the way to New York to shop the bond market for a loan the city could handle to fund the road project, and he got it.
The roads got paved and streetlights were installed.
This was one of many projects Cellon would come to orchestrate to garner funding for the city through municipal bonds.
He has taken on other projects over the years to support the issues he thinks are important – like education.
He is a founding member of the Santa Fe College Foundation, which he got involved with because he saw a lot of people that simply couldn’t afford to go to school, even if they had the desire.
“And most people running the schools have trouble understanding that not everyone needs to be a doctor or lawyer or CEO,” said Cellon. “We need firefighters, police officers and plumbers, too.”
Being a successful businessman has given him the tactics and the funds enabling him to give back to his community, he explained.
“You know Turkey Creek?” Cellon asked, referencing the residential development and golf course on State Road 441 between Gainesville and Alachua.
Prior to development, it used to be Cellon’s cow pasture.
Alachua’s retired city manager Clovis Watson, Jr. has known Cellon just about his entire life, and he looks up to him as a mentor, both personally and professionally.
“Uncle Ralph,” as he calls him, “has an uncanny ability to make things happen,” Watson explained.
“I’ve watched him bring people of opposing views together to work in harmony.”
That ability – knowing how to talk to people, according to Cellon and those who know him, seems to be what makes him a good businessman and philanthropist.
“Nobody wants to be talked down to,” he said, explaining that you catch more flies with honey.
And what he wants is to help others.
Years later, when he served on the Alachua County Commission, he brokered a deal to borrow money to build Alachua General Hospital. That experience, he said, is what piqued his interest in investment banking.
These days he works for investment firm Morgan Keegan & Company, and lives in Haile Plantation with his wife of nearly 12 years, Jerry.
Cellon explains his first marriage lasted 39 years and produced four children.
“The mother of my kids is a good woman – she just didn’t like me,” he said, chuckling.
Jerry has six children from her previous marriage, and she and Cellon have 15 grandchildren between them with two great grandchildren on the way.
Cellon will proudly admit his 77th birthday is coming up Feb. 23.
Although a handicap card dangles from the rear-view mirror of his silver 2008 Ford Crown Victoria, he doesn’t understand the concept of retirement. He was raised to keep working hard until you die. One thing he’s learned, though, is that sometimes you have to, “work smarter instead of harder.”
And despite his shock of white hair and slowed gate, when he speaks his words are full of wit, yet seasoned with authority.
The almost-77-year-old investment banker and community activist, in his pressed suit and perfectly knotted tie, is still an eight-year-old cowboy at heart.
