A program for the naming event honoring the late legislator and advocate Sam Bell is pictured.
University of South Florida’s fifth president, Betty Castor, speaks during an event honoring her late husband, Sam Bell, on Tuesday.
The building that houses the University of South Florida’s College of Public Health will now bear the name of the school’s founder, the late legislator and advocate Sam Bell.
On Tuesday, the college announced the naming of the building along with an unspecified donation from Bell and his wife, former USF president Betty Castor. School officials also announced a $100,000 gift from Florida Healthy Kids.
Bell, who died in March, was a Volusia County lawmaker and a leader in the Florida House who championed the creation of the state’s first college of public health at USF. It was an uphill battle at the time.
He first proposed adding the college to the state budget in 1981, according to Castor, who married Bell in 1989. The item was vetoed.
After that, then-Gov. Bob Graham told Bell the idea had not been studied and suggested considering another institution for the college, Castor said.
“Well, those are just fighting words for Sam, I’m sure,” she said. “And this is the early ’80s — USF was not as prominent as it is now.”
The next year, Bell added a public health school to the USF College of Medicine’s budget. That entire budget would need to be vetoed for the funding to be struck out. Bell kept adding language in subsequent years, Castor said, to create what became the university’s College of Public Health.
By 1987, USF had become the state’s most prominent school in the field and Bell was chairperson of the House Appropriations Committee. He put in $650,000 for the funding of the building. The next year, he put in $9.5 million. “Sam stuck with it,” Castor said. “It was not initially embraced because (people were saying), ‘What is USF trying to do, start this new school? We got other institutions in the state.’ But he came back and he was relentless.”
Bell remained involved in the school. He chaired its advisory committee for more than 40 years, until last year, taught adjunct classes and maintained a small office.
Castor said she would often laugh at how often he called the college’s dean, Donna Petersen, with ideas the college should pursue.
“I used to say to him, ‘You know, Sam, she’s pretty busy and she has a lot to do,’” Castor recalled. “And he would say, ‘Yeah, but I have this idea and I need to tell her about it right away.’”
By Castor’s account, Petersen said Bell’s presence was always welcomed. “I don’t know that he ever retired,” she said.
The college, Petersen said, was formed in the midst of an HIV epidemic and never lost relevancy.
“The world changes all the time,” she said. “It’s always been my experience in public health that when we are doing our best work, nothing’s happening. And so no one’s paying attention to it. And it’s difficult to sustain the investment in something that’s not happening.”
Bell funded efforts to sponsor student research of mosquito abatement in Uganda. And during the pandemic, when he learned that misinformation was spreading about COVID-19 — particularly within Latino communities — he quickly rallied support for a Spanish-language campaign.
He also was a champion of early childhood and infant issues in the Legislature, passing bills requiring metabolic screening for infants and child seat belts, regulating tap water temperature to prevent infant deaths, subsidizing adoptions for kids with disabilities and establishing neonatal ICU networks.
“He really cared about these, and it was unusual, frankly, for a male legislator,” said Castor, who also served in the Legislature and as state education commissioner. “It was somewhat unusual for a male legislator to take such an interest in the issues that affect early childhood and infant screening. Usually, that’s associated with kind of female-type stuff. But he was out there for it.”
Also on Tuesday, Florida Healthy Kids, a government-subsidized insurance plan Bell helped lay groundwork for, announced a $100,000 gift to the college to create the Sam Bell Memorial Endowment for scholarships and research.
Rolando Trejos was one three students who shared memories of Bell during a naming ceremony Tuesday at USF. He said Bell would ask students about their opinions on public health issues.
“Mr. Bell listened and genuinely cared,” said Trejos, a graduate student at the college.
“Students knew his name, and a lot of them knew him,” Petersen said. “He was clearly interested in people and a champion of their lives. ... For us, this is the house Sam built. Putting the name outside lets everyone else know.”
Contact Divya Kumar at dkumar@tampabay.com or 727-893-8806. Follow @divyadivyadivya.