May 16, 2007

OCALA – Local businessman Frank DeLuca gets emotional when he talks about his late wife, Carole, who died in 2006.

“She wasn’t just my wife, she was my best friend,” he said through tears.

Now the philanthropist is spending his life, and his fortune, preserving her legacy by supporting the causes that were near to her heart.

Tuesday morning, the Carole DeLuca Media Center was dedicated at Trinity Catholic High School, a school that the DeLuca family has backed since its inception in 2001.

“We’ve been members of Blessed Trinity for 28 years,” said DeLuca, who owns DeLuca Toyota in Ocala. “Carole always supported education.”

DeLuca provided the funding for the school’s media center, which has two computer laboratories and serves as a satellite campus for St. Leo University. The media center houses a library of written media used for daily research, and DeLuca said a fully equipped television production studio is in development.

“The memorial 100 percent stands for Carole DeLuca and what she represented,” said the Rev. Patrick Sheedy of Blessed Trinity Catholic Church. “We’re very proud of the media center and its technology.”

In addition to the media center, Frank DeLuca has financially supported many other endeavors and organizations in honor of his wife, including the American Heart Association’s Go Red For Women campaign, the Marion Theatre, and the Historic Ocala Preservation Society. He also rented a billboard on State Road 200 for a couple of months that displayed her picture and an in-memoriam message.

“She was just a giver,” he said.

DeLuca said he and Carole were high school sweethearts in Orlando before moving to Ocala in 1978. They were married for 39 years and had two children and five grandchildren.

“She was a competitive roller skater,” he said. “She was a dynamic, bubbly personality that could light up a room like a ray of sunshine.”

Carole, who had a heart condition, died unexpectedly during a family ski trip in Vail, Colo., after her son was involved in a serious accident on the slopes. He has since recovered.

“It’s a huge void. It’s been very difficult because we were so close,” DeLuca said.

Since her passing, DeLuca also has established the Carole DeLuca Memorial Scholarship Fund at Central Florida Community College. The fund especially supports students interested in the arts and horticulture.

“The community has always done a lot for me and my family, and this is my way of giving back,” DeLuca said. “Carole and I were a team, and this is a way to keep her memory alive.”

Reproduced by permission of the Ocala Star Banner. Article link.