re: Pictures from days gone by....

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Kafka

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Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Riedel moved to Tampa when he was 2. His dad, a third-generation dairy farmer, had contracted polio, and doctors suggested he seek warmth and water. He brought his entrepreneurial spirit with him, buying a small chain of a dozen Li’l General convenience stores.

Riedel’s father recovered and the family moved back to Iowa for a time, then returned to Tampa, because his dad saw more growth opportunity with the Li’l General stores.

The chain expanded dramatically. He went a step further.

“There was going to be a merger between Li’l General stores—his company—and Hardee’s,” Riedel says. “I think, 30 years ahead of the time, he was envisioning what you see at every convenience store now. … I think he thought, ‘We have people coming in. Let’s sell hamburgers when they’re buying their milk and bread. And if they come in for a hamburger, well, maybe we can sell some milk and bread.’”

The merger was two weeks away the night Riedel’s father came home for dinner and invited his son to play some chess.

“We played five games,” Riedel says. “I won two. He won two. And we tied one. And he went back to the office to finish up the paperwork for the merger and I never saw him again alive.”

Riedel’s father suffered a fatal heart attack at the office.

“But, you know, if you’re going to script a final memory,” Riedel says, “that was the right way for him to go, and certainly with the right memory that I had. I mean, how do you say goodbye to somebody not knowing you’ll never see him again? That would be the way.”

Riedel was just 16. By this time, his maternal grandfather, a retired lawyer, had moved to Tampa to be near his daughter and grandchildren. He lived about a mile from Riedel, up the street from a young attorney named Don Stichter, whose kids had their own entrepreneurial bent. They would stop Riedel’s grandfather as he drove by and demand a 10-cent toll.

When Riedel’s father died, his grandfather turned to Stichter to handle the estate. He made sure Riedel was involved, learning the family’s finances.

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Kafka

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