Area nonprofits welcome generous donations

Roseann Morton, second from right, receives a check for $740,120.50 from Brandon Perry, right, as other members of the Humane Society of Marion County look on, from left, Monteen Daniel, Bill Steward, Patti Lumpkin and Eddie Leedy, as Brandon and Diannah Perry donate the money for the new Animal Center in honor of Cathy Perry at the Humane Society of Marion County in Ocala on Tuesday, July 25, 2023. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2023.

Home » Community

Posted July 25, 2023 | By Susan Smiley-Height, [email protected]

Cathy D. Perry always had an affinity for dogs, especially West Highland Terriers and Scottish Terriers, or, more familiarly, Westies and Scotties. She loved all kinds of animals, as well as traveling and gardening. She and her husband, Roger, owned pet food supply stores, with their only child, son Brandon, growing up in the industry. Cathy also loved moving to Ocala and beginning a new chapter in life.

Now, three years after her passing on Feb. 1, 2020, many nonprofit organizations in the community she adored are receiving donations through the Cathy D. Perry Trust. According to Brandon Perry, 29 charities locally and nationally are receiving grants totaling in excess $5 million.

Brandon and his wife, Diannah, were visiting many of the area nonprofits last week and this week to deliver checks in various amounts, sometimes presented in an oversized format, in memory of his mom. Among the stops were Kimberly’s Center for Child Protection, Hospice of Marion County and the Humane Society of Marion County, along with a visit to the Community Foundation for Ocala/Marion County, where they made a presentation to the Royal Dames for Cancer Research, Inc., of which she was a member for 17 years.

Other local beneficiaries included the Voices for Change Animal League (VOCAL), Marion Therapeutic Riding Association, Final Furlong, Horse Farms Forever, Interfaith Emergency Services, Sheltering Hands and the Junior League of Ocala. Donations also are going to the Duke University Brain Tumor Cancer Center, Florida Thoroughbred Charities, Thoroughbred Charities of America and the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance Foundation, among others.

Family history

According to Brandon, his father worked for a feed business in Ohio called the Weisheimer Company, which had been around since 1910.

“It was mainly wholesale, with a tiny retail spot. He worked there through college in the late ‘60s all the way through the ‘70s. The owner was elderly, and an opportunity came up to buy him out. My mother and father, with the help of a couple of other people, were able to buy him out in the early ‘80s. They slowly transitioned to phasing out wholesale and expanding the retail portion. In the mid-‘80s, my dad took a trip to Las Vegas because, at that time, PetSmart had just opened the first large, what we would now call big box stores. So, he went out there to see how they were doing it and in ’86 they opened their first Pet Food Superstore,” Brandon said.

Over the next few years, he said, they opened more stores in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Pennsylvania, and then Chicago.

“When they got big enough, they were trying to trademark Pet Food Superstore, but it was too generic, so they changed the name to Petzazz in the early ‘90s. By this time, they had 20 to 25 superstores, a corporate office, a large distribution center and well over 1,000 employees. We had our own semi-trucks and delivered from the central distribution center to all of our stores. In ’93, we went into Chicago,” he recalled.

“PetSmart was entering Chicago at the same time, and we tried to compete against each other and, at that time, our schtick was, we can beat anyone’s prices. At the time we could, because we didn’t have a middleman, a wholesaler. It was kind of a new concept then; everyone does that nowadays,” Brandon continued. “The big turning point came as we were going to go public in ’93, ’94. PetSmart came to them, and they ended up selling to PetSmart. Then, in ’94, they moved to Ocala.”

Calling Ocala home

Brandon said his dad had grown up on a farm and always liked horses and “wanted to be a cowboy.”

“They looked at many places across the United States – Texas, New Mexico, Arizona… When they came to Ocala, they loved the live oaks, loved the Horse Capital of the World. They settled here because of the land. They bought Classic Acres, which was one of the prettiest farms there was. They owned 250 acres and did a lot of work, built a lot of barns. They had quarter horses, appaloosas, and paints,” he shared.

Brandon, who was in college at Ohio State University, took a position with PetSmart and moved to the corporate office in Phoenix, Arizona. After graduating from Arizona State University with a degree in business management, he also moved to Ocala, in 1996.

“After they retired in ’94, my dad got right back into business and called me and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got 200 horses and a breeding operation, and I need help.’ I did enjoy Arizona and was doing well and moving up the corporate ladder there, but I did move here and helped them with that for four or five years until we got out of the quarter horses, appaloosas, and paints,” he said.

Brandon and Diannah, a native of Ponte Vedra Beach, met in 2000. She had grown up with thoroughbreds and she and Brandon soon discovered a common interest in the breed. They bought a piece of the Classic Acres operation and lived there until 2003 when they started their own Paragon Farms. By this time, Cathy and Roger had divorced and she had purchased the Hearthside estate on Fifth Street in Ocala, the former home of the Ray family, best known for helping develop the Silver Springs Attraction.

In late 2003, Brandon and Diannah moved their thoroughbred operation to Lexington, Kentucky, and bought Newgate Stud.

Back in Ocala, Cathy was enjoying renovating and refurbishing Hearthside, and traveling with her good friend Connie Brown, a fellow member of the Royal Dames group.

“She built this haven at Hearthside, and she would get up every morning and work out in her gym on the property and then she’d garden. She had her little routines every day. She loved to shop. I think she really enjoyed her time with the Royal Dames ladies and spending a lot of time with her best friend Connie, like Thelma and Louise,” Diannah shared.

“We had a lot of good times together. I was in banking, in trusts and investments, and she became one of my customers. We became good friends,” said Brown. “We went to a lot of places. We loved the West— went to Montana, Colorado, Washington State, we did the coastline into Oregon. We went to England. If we had a notion to go somewhere, we took off and went. Or we’d sit on her front porch and watch traffic go by and talk about anything and everything.”

Brown said her friend was “a very beautiful person and was very loving and giving to family and community. If someone was in need, she was there.”

At the end of 2014, Brandon and Diannah moved back to Ocala and opened Newgate Realty. They also transitioned from owning a horse farm to having a partial interest in some thoroughbreds, including at least one that raced in the Kentucky Derby.

Giving back

In 2017, Cathy was diagnosed with glioblastoma, “which is a brain cancer,” Brandon offered, to which Diannah added, “a very aggressive cancer.”

“Duke University is one of the leading researchers in glioblastomas. When she was diagnosed, she ended up going to Duke every other month and meeting with specialists there. The median mortality rate is 15 months once diagnosed. She doubled that,” Brandon noted.

He said his mother had stipulated that a portion of her estate be given to charity but did not cite specific entities. When he and Diannah and the trustee began to talk about dispersing the funds, he said the fact that his parents had made their money in the pet food industry played a role.

“And one of the caveats, my parents in the mid-’80 were, I believe, the first to do adoption centers in the stores. They had humane societies come in the stores in Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron, Canton, all over … and do adoption days. Now that is common, but back then it was cutting edge. And pets were always allowed in our stores. She always had dogs, had animals, so a lot of the charities we chose, not all of them, but a lot of them, had something to do with animals,” he said.

Brandon said that not long after his mother passed away, they met with Eddie Leedy, executive director of the Humane Society of Marion County, and that Leedy talked about a need to expand and to open a clinic accessible to the public, which would have a long-term impact for the community.

On Tuesday, July 25, the Perrys gave the organization a check for $740,120.50.

“We are very humbled and blessed to receive such a generous donation from the Perry family,” Leedy said.

In the early days of researching local nonprofits, Brandon and Diannah both said they were “blown away” by the work being done by Interfaith Emergency Services and Kimberly’s Center.

Kimberly’s Center for Child Protection received a donation of $188,166.23.

“We are so grateful and moved by the generous spirit of the Perry Family for entrusting their donation to support our work to help our children heal from the trauma of abuse and neglect. Gifts such as this are an inspiration to all who work in the nonprofit sector,” said Executive Director Dawn Westgate in a prepared statement.

The decision to make Hospice of Marion County a beneficiary was because of the care his mom received through the agency, Brandon noted.

“Most people don’t know what they do until you go through it,” he said.

Two family gathering spaces in the new Grace Davis Hall Hospice House are named Morgan’s Room in Memory of Cathy D. Perry and Madison’ Room in Memory of Cathy D. Perry. Morgan and Madison were two of Cathy’s canines.

What really matters at the end of each day, Brandon said, is not “necessarily things.”

“We have been through a lot, not only with my mother, but in Lexington there was a gentleman who passed away who we were close to, and he kind of rerouted our thoughts about life a little bit. We had the most amazing farm, it was unbelieveably gorgeous, but all we did was work. Our daughter was raised on the farm. Looking back, we probably missed out on a lot of stuff because all we did was work,” he said. “I think that working and being productive to society is important, but being happy and healthy and with your family is what’s most important.”