William Thomas Gould

Tom Gould of Osprey, Florida — born William Thomas Gould on May 21, 1946, at Gadsden County Hospital in Quincy, Florida — passed away on April 25, 2026, at the age of 79. He grew up in Greensboro, Florida, the son of Kathleen Rowan Gould, a beloved public health nurse, and Bill Gould. From the most modest of beginnings, in a small farming town of 450 people where shade tobacco grew under cheesecloth, Tom Gould went on to become one of the most respected retail executives of his generation — a man who believed, above all else, that every problem held within it the seed of an opportunity.

A Career Built on Vision and Character

After graduating from Florida State University — having first attended Chipola College in Marianna, Florida — Tom joined Maas Brothers in Tampa in 1969, where he quickly became the youngest divisional merchandise manager in Allied Stores history. He rose through Gimbel’s divisions in Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, then served as Senior Vice President at Lazarus Stores in Columbus, Ohio, before being recruited to Des Moines in July of 1985 as President of Younkers Department Stores.

In 1986, he launched the Younkers Farm Aid Agricultural Scholarship Fund, inspired by Willie Nelson’s success in creating Farm Aid to support family farms — whose fundraising mascot, Yoinkie the Pig, a beloved Younkers character, raised nearly $900,000 for farm families. It was through Yoinkie’s origins in Fairfield, Iowa — a hub of the Transcendental Meditation community — that Tom, a lifelong reader of Eastern philosophy and spirituality, saw his opportunity to go deeper, learned the technique, and from that point forward meditated and prayed twice daily without exception for the rest of his life.

Named President and CEO in 1987, Tom transformed Younkers into one of Iowa’s great retail success stories, as Chairman and CEO, he took the company public in 1992. After defeating a hostile takeover by Carson Pirie Scott in 1995, he completed a merger with Proffitt’s, Inc. in 1996 — which later became Saks Incorporated — and retired as Chairman of Younkers in April of 1997. Over the course of his career he served on the boards of the National Retail Federation, Frederick Atkins, Inc., Charlotte Russe Holding, Equitable of Iowa Insurance Companies, and Sentry Insurance Company of Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

Public Service and Philanthropy

In 1982, Tom was named one of 82 Outstanding Philadelphians for founding the Society Hill Town Watch, a volunteer safety initiative that cut crime by 97% in two years, and for his service on the Society Hill Civic Association and the fundraising board of WHYY public broadcasting. In Iowa, he co-founded the Iowa Group for Economic Development, organizing non-partisan groups across the state’s ten largest cities to successfully reduce Iowa’s income tax from 13 to 10 percent. In 1992, Governor Branstad appointed Tom Chairman of the Fisher Commission’s Education Task Force, which oversaw $1.6 billion of Iowa’s $3.1 billion state budget, delivering significant savings while improving accountability across the state’s schools.

Among the most enduring influences on Tom’s life was Fred Peters, his business teacher at Chipola College, whose lessons in honesty, integrity and accountability became a foundation Tom carried into every boardroom and every relationship for the rest of his days. Named the College’s 2017 Outstanding Alumnus of the Year, he gave back by establishing the largest individual scholarship gift in Chipola’s history, and later helped create the Chipola Alumni Legacy Foundation for Scholarships, publicly announced in September of 2024. He also established a scholarship at Florida State University — his other alma mater — for students who balance their academic and extracurricular lives with full-time or part-time work, honoring the same grit and determination that had carried a young Tom Gould from the tobacco fields of Greensboro to the halls of one of America’s great universities.

A Life of the Spirit, the Word and the River

To know Tom Gould only through his business career would be to know only half the man. He was a man of profound faith, believing in God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit — a faith reinforced by experiences that defied easy explanation, including the resolution of a recurring pituitary tumor that his physician at the Mayo Clinic called nothing short of a miracle.

Tom was a poet whose verses threaded through every decade of his life, from the teenage boy who sat atop an old labor bus in a tobacco field writing about loss, to the man who composed poems on a yacht sailing through the Greek Isles and beside mountain streams in Montana. His poems were not a hobby. They were his interior life made visible — meditations on time, love, ambition, forgiveness and the divine. He was an inspirational speaker who devoted much of his later years to helping others reach their potential in both professional and personal life.

An avid fisherman since childhood — when his father first took him to the banks of a Florida creek — Tom’s passion for the sport deepened when he encountered Charlie Fox, the legendary Pennsylvania trout fisherman and author, while living in Philadelphia. That friendship opened the door to fly fishing, a pursuit Tom would follow across decades and continents, from the limestone spring creeks of Pennsylvania to the wild rivers of Montana and New Zealand. He believed that nature was not a backdrop to life but a direct channel to its deepest truths.

Family

Tom was predeceased by his parents, William and Kathleen Gould, and by his brothers, Jimmy and Ray Gould. He is survived by his wife and devoted partner, Debbie, who rode her motorcycle up to his Montana home on a summer day in 2003 and, as Tom put it, arrived to a double rainbow he had “ordered especially for her.” She was his greatest joy, his truest friend and the woman who, in her own words, made him “the only fish in the sea.” He is also survived by his daughter, Tasha Gould; his sister, Sandra Andrews; his three stepsons, Todd Forsythe, Ryan Forsythe (Taryn) and Kolby Jones (Rebecca); and his three grandchildren, Alexandra, Connor and Elizabeth.

Tom Gould lived by a philosophy he distilled into a simple acronym: HIABA — honesty, integrity, accountability, and beneficial action. Rooted in his early years in business, these principles became what Tom called his "recipe for success," guiding him from his humble beginnings through a remarkable career. He carried them not as abstract ideals but as daily commitments, believing that the same moral compass that builds a thriving enterprise is the one that builds a meaningful life.

He was struck by lightning three times and survived two pituitary tumors. He came from nothing and built something remarkable. He meditated every morning and prayed every night. He was, as a wise man once told him on a mountainside in the Himalayas, “the most blessed man I have ever met.”

Celebration of Life

A Celebration of Life will be held at the Quincy Garden Center in Quincy, Florida at 3:00 PM on Thursday, June 18th.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Chipola College Foundation at 3094 Indian Circle, Marianna, FL 32446. https://www.chipola.edu/foundation/donation-information/ Please indicate on the memo line: “In memory of Tom Gould.”

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“Today is the reality within which we live.

Tomorrow is a time in which we plan for that which is beyond us today.

Yesterday is the day after tomorrow, a time in which we reminisce about that which was.

May I never know yesterday.”

— Tom Gould, written at age 16 on the banks of the Ochlockonee River