Sheldon Leroy Fountain -- Lives Lived
Hyfler/Rosner
May 18, 2007 Friday
SHELDON LEROY FOUNTAIN
BYLINE: Frederick Sheldon Fountain
Father, husband, grandfather, professor, investor. Born
March 18, 1914, in Deer Island, N.B. Died Dec. 5, 2006, in
Halifax of natural causes, aged 92.
He was a simple island boy from Deer Island, N.B.
Islanders are, of course, among the most resourceful and
self-reliant of people. Islanders are the friendliest of
people. He was all of these things.
Sheldon became a son of the Annapolis Valley and his
innovation, leadership and achievement in the fields of both
education and business put him in the highest ranks of
successful men from the Valley over the last half-century or
more.
The fourth of five children, he grew up in a simple country
environment. His father was a fisherman who traded across
the New Brunswick-Maine border over the Passamaquoddy Bay,
and his mother played the organ in two local churches.
Sheldon went to a one-room school at Chocolate Cove,
graduated from Provincial Normal School in Fredericton and
returned at the age of 17 to teach the entire school on Deer
Island for three years.
After completing a bachelor of arts at Acadia University
from 1935 to 1939, he received a fellowship at Boston
University and was one of the earliest to graduate with an
MBA, in 1941.
At Acadia his nickname was "Harmony." His thesis at B.U. was
on North Atlantic fisheries management.
He served as a captain in the Canadian army, and then held
various management positions with Nova Scotia companies.
Upon returning from Boston, he met - and charmed - the
vivacious, strong-willed and engaging Marjorie Manning at
First Baptist Church. They wed in the month of May, 1943,
and enjoyed a truly splendid love and marriage for 63 years.
In 1957, they moved to Wolfville where Sheldon established
the faculty of commerce at Acadia University, which later
became the Fred Manning school of business.
His business and investment successes became quietly
legendary. After his father-in-law died in 1959, he assumed
direction of the family businesses, which principally came
to be operated through the Great Eastern Corporation.
He stewarded a legacy created by the great Nova Scotian
industrialist Fred Manning, and took it to a higher level
through a persistently sensible, though contrarian,
investing strategy.
For his 80th birthday, I took him and my mother salmon
fishing on the Upsalquitch River in northern New Brunswick.
Although he grew up in a fishing community, and had gone
trout fishing over the years, this was his first time salmon
fishing. My mother was with him in the canoe when he caught
his first one.
After his death, many friends expressed marvellous
reflections, sentiments and descriptions of him to our
family. To us - my mother Marjorie, my sister Eileen, my
brother David and I, he was a tower of strength.
We always felt his amazingly devout faith in God and in
God's will. We always felt his unconditional devotion, his
optimism and positive nature. He always instilled in us the
idea of what was the right thing, and that the right thing
should be done. And, as one of his caregivers said,
"Mild-mannered though he was, he always lit up a room."
While he was working his way through Acadia, when all the
students ate their meals in the dining room, he became the
head waiter and was always proud of this early career
success.
The building, which was the dining hall in the 1930s, has
just been totally refurbished into a new congregational
centre in the middle of the campus. It reopened on May 11 as
the Sheldon L. Fountain Learning Commons.
He wouldn't have wished for a building named after himself,
but even he might have admitted that Fountain Commons is an
endearingly appropriate memorial.
Frederick Sheldon Fountain is Sheldon's oldest son