- [Voiceover] This is a production of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St. Petersburg.

Sarasota.

- Treasure, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

What makes us want to collect objects we treasure?

When we were young, it was play things like baseball cards or dolls.

As adults, it's evolved into collecting art, coins, furniture, and memorabilia.

Most of all, it's a hobby that brings us pleasure.

Then there are those rare collectors who take it to a different level.

They become world-class collectors.

There are two world-class collectors in the Tampa Bay region who are sharing their treasured collections for all to see.

There's the investor and museum founder who discovered his passion for map collecting serendipitously and has amassed the largest Florida map collection in the world.

And you'll also meet an aerobatic competition pilot and airplane builder who's been collecting vintage aircraft for over three decades.

His collection is so large, he built a flight museum to house all the planes.

We invite you to share their passion and extraordinary collections next on the Suncoast Business Forum.

- [Voiceover] Suncoast Business Forum brought to you by the financial services firm of Raymond James.

Offering personalized wealth management advice and banking and capital markets expertise, all with a commitment to putting clients' financial wellbeing first.

More information is available at raymondjames.com.

(upbeat music) - [Geoffrey] We are here at the Touchton Map Library at the Tampa Bay History Center in downtown Tampa.

The History Center is the perfect home for the largest collection of Florida maps.

It was meticulously collected by longtime Tampa business leader and philanthropist, Tom Touchton.

How Tom came to assemble such a unique collection is quite a story, which he shared with us when we sat down with him back in 2014.

- Well, yes, I've probably always had the collecting gene.

Like many boys, I collected comic books and sports memorabilia and different things.

Even cigar boxes, because my grandfather had a drugstore and it was easy to collect cigar boxes versus throw them away.

But I really did not have a hobby or a collecting interest as an adult until that serendipitous moment you referred to when Lee and I were in London for an important birthday of hers, one of those that ends in a zero.

And we happened to go into a neighborhood antique fair and I happened to buy a map and had a young man talk with me at length about maps and why they were important, and their beauty and their historical significance.

And that was the beginning of an incredible journey.

- Do you remember what that first map was?

- Oh, absolutely.

It was a 1590 map of Canterbury, England.

Had nothing to do with Florida.

It was done by two cartographers whose name were Braun and Hogenberg.

But this young man at this small antique fair gave me some information about maps and collecting and I read that overnight, and it was like being bitten by a bug.

I knew overnight that I was going to collect maps.

What I did not know was that the map business, you might say, is so large that it really was in my interest to focus on a much narrower subject, and it was easy to choose Florida maps.

- Our next world class collector is also an aviation entrepreneur.

Kermit Weeks opened the Fantasy of Flight Aviation Museum in Polk City, Florida in 1995.

His passion for flying started at a young age.

- Well, when I was young, I was always fascinated by things that we would learn in school.

I would take home and if we were learning about the Pueblo Indians, I'd go home and make a mud fort.

I was making boats and all sorts of things.

But it was when I was 13 years old, I heard that song "Snoopy and the Red Baron" on the radio.

♪ Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty or more ♪ ♪ The Bloody Red Baron was rollin' up the score ♪ ♪ Eighty men died tryin' to end that spree ♪ ♪ Of the Bloody Red Baron of Germany ♪ And it was almost like a pre-destined cue for me to focus all my efforts towards aircraft and flights.

I started flying Control Line airplanes very early on, eventually graduated to radio control airplanes in my 10th grade class.

And when I was 15, I met a gentleman that was building his own home-built airplane in his garage.

Concept fascinated me 'cause I liked airplanes, I liked flight, I liked to build things.

This was a match made in heaven.

He was very nurturing, allowed me to hang around, help him a little bit, you know, painting things and learning about things.

And he answered a lot of my questions.

And in the course of that, I got a chance to look through a lot of his magazines and eventually discovered an airplane that I wanted to build.

So I bought a set of plans.

This was way before the days when they had kit airplanes.

The plans were $40.

I mowed eight lawns at five bucks a lawn and I bought the set of plans, and I built most of my first flyable airplanes my last year of high school.

- [Geoffrey] Tom Touchton grew up in Dade City, Florida and is grounded in hard work and traditional values.

- My grandfather had a drugstore in Dade City for over 50 years.

And I remember starting work in my grandfather's drugstore at the age of six, which would probably be illegal today.

But the only thing I was tall enough to do, because I couldn't even reach the counter, was to wash dishes.

So I very proudly washed dishes for probably almost next to nothing, but it was more than nothing.

And when I was promoted so I could clear tables, and then promoted so I could use the cash register, all of those were great growing experiences for me.

I was trying to keep up with my older brother at that point who also worked in the drugstore, and the people experiences, and the, may I say, the salesmanship experiences which started at a very young age.

The need to know your customer and to get along with your customer, to be involved in just many, many, many transactions of all types, I have no doubt that that prepared me for what came later.

- [Geoffrey] Kermit's upbringing was influenced by both science and religion.

- I think what set some of my later interest was I had a father that was a scientist, and he saw everything from a five sense reality point of view.

My mother used to take the family to church and I kind of would look at my dad and I would go, you know, I see where he's coming from but I think he's limiting himself.

And I would look at my mother's perspective of reality and I would go, there's something there, but I'm not quite buying the way it's being delivered.

And so that really, that polarity, set me up to kind of pursue and follow and discover my own path.

Life had set me up to be able to fund my passion and eventually lead me to what I think I'm about to create.

My grandfather was one of the top petroleum geologists ever in the world.

When he retired in the 1950s, late 1950s, he was Chief Geologist of Standard Oil.

He knew the world geology like nobody else did.

He loved his profession.

It was his passion.

He retired, he had a nice pension.

Because he loved what he wanted to do, he did consulting work.

He made a major oil discovery off the southern coast of Australia, which at the time there was no offshore technology.

Getty was just beginning in the Gulf.

I never knew about this when I grew up.

The first check came in when I was a senior in high school which some of it went, it was like $1,200, it went towards helping fund my airplane which I'd already started by, you know, working for it.

And then when I went away to school, it continued to build and I never really knew what was going on.

My mother and parents were taking care of things, you know, and by the time I had the opportunity to think about quitting school, I realized my financial future held the wherewithal to pursue my dreams.

- [Geoffrey] After high school, Kermit went to the University of Florida for a while, but returned home to build his first airplane.

At age 21, he test flew that home-built airplane and later decided to try college a second time.

- I'd been outta school to finish my airplane.

I said, I'm very serious this time.

So I got accepted to Purdue, a great aeronautical engineering school, great AFTEC school, and redid my freshman year.

Did fine.

I ended up getting an airplane over that freshman year and competed in a lot of aerobatic contests over the summertime.

When I came back to school, I found myself feeling a little bit, had a temperature, went to the infirmary, and they quarantined me for two weeks.

So I missed the first two weeks of school.

And I see now that it was a total setup with life.

I was not supposed to finish school.

I left school.

I went home with no formal training in aeronautical engineering.

I designed my next airplane.

I built it from scratch.

Made the US aerobatic team when I was 24 years old.

And my first world championship was the following year.

It was in 1978 in Czechoslovakia.

Surprised myself, all my teammates.

Out of 18 countries, 61 competitors, I won three silvers and a bronze.

I ended up second overall in the world.

I was hooked.

(upbeat music) I was designing my next aerobatic airplane, The Weak Solution, on the way home.

And in those two big engine biplanes, I won 20 medals at the world level.

I was two times US National Aerobatic champion and I won several invitational masters contests around the world in Australia and South Africa.

It was just a great experience for me.

- [Geoffrey] As his map collection grew, Tom Touchton learned how historically significant his early Florida maps were.

The work of those early cartographers had a profound effect on the leaders of Europe who funded new world exploration.

- Well, if you think of the leaders of those nations back in Europe, to whom the explorers delivered their maps, they had never been here.

They didn't know what the area looked like or how it was configured.

So for them to have some understanding of where the explorers were going, help them support the explorers, right?

The second thing is that at a time when people did not read, or as many people did not read who read today, they were a great visual education tool to help convey ideas not in words, but almost in pictures.

I often joke with my northern friends of whom I have many that they don't think Florida had any history before Disney World.

But I explained that the Spanish began coming to the Tampa Bay area in the 1520s.

Panfilo de Narvaez began the first exploration of interior America from the Tampa Bay area.

Hernandez DeSoto came along 10 or so years later with his expedition.

Tampa Bay and Florida have some of the oldest American history that there is.

And it predates Jamestown and the Plymouth colony by almost a hundred years.

Think of the change that has gone on in Florida in the last 150 years.

And those stories are told through railroad maps, or through the maps of developments that either didn't happen or did happen, or the growth of cities and the increased knowledge that came with surveying the state during and after the Seminole Indian Wars in the 19th century.

So you can look at every map and learn something about it, and it will tell you a story about Florida, maybe that you knew, but often that you didn't know.

One map that I often say is my favorite is a, what is called a bird's eye view of Florida from 1861 just after the Civil War had begun.

It is a panoramic view of Florida and the southeastern United States in beautiful color.

And the magnificence of it to me is that the map maker, John Bachman, somehow had in his mind an image of an accurate view of Florida, that he really captures in his map.

Every map has a story and there's many stories as there are maps.

- [Geoffrey] So every map is a discovery for you?

- Every map is a discovery and it's one of those gifts that keeps on giving.

- [Geoffrey] Kermit Weeks' passion for flight grew and he began collecting military aircraft.

- What got me into aviation was World War I aviation.

You know, "Snoopy and the Red Baron" song, or read about the aces in the history and stuff.

Eventually that evolved into World War II.

Read a lot about different aspects of aviation history.

Was fascinated by the vintage airplanes.

I'd been flying aerobatics, but it's a different genre of airplanes.

I've always respected different airplanes.

And, you know, while I'm a great aerobatic pilot, doesn't mean I'm a great warbird pilot.

So I wanted to learn the way they did.

So, not that I wanted one, but I went and bought a North American T-6 trainer airplane which was the airplane that trained most of the allied fighter pilots in World War II.

And I bought it only to learn how to fly the way they they flew in World War II.

After about six months, I had done everything.

Flew in an airbag contest, flew around the country, gave all my friends rides, and a P-51 came available by the same dealer that I'd bought the T-6 from.

And I ended up buying the airplane.

And so that was one of the coolest days of my life.

25 years old, I taxied around my friends in a P-51 Mustang.

I threw my bags out, I started giving rides, and I've been sharing my passion and a good fortune ever since.

- [Geoffrey] And for Tom, the connection to Florida history fueled his passion for collecting.

- I learned more about some of the explorers and the surveyors, the chart makers, the ship captains, who were really on unexplored territory.

I mean, just think how wild Florida must have been 200 years ago, or 150 years ago, or almost 100 years ago.

And as I read about their very difficult, and productive lives when they were far from home...

There were so many of them, I said, wow, I really wish I could get to know them better.

They were interesting, successful people.

I know I could learn a lot.

- [Geoffrey] And passion for collecting at this level needs to be shared with the public.

Tom Touchton became a leading force in the creation and development of the Tampa Bay History Center.

- The Hillsborough County's commissioners had created a history museum task force in 1986.

And two years later, in 1988, which was six years after I began collecting maps, a group of friends of mine asked me if I would take on the leadership position of that history museum effort.

My good friend, and the very able, George Howell and I worked together.

We say we get the award for being in the trenches the longest.

But George and I and others put together a broad community based board, a business plan, a concept for building what is now recognized as certainly the best history museum on the west coast of Florida.

And one of the most important regional history museums in America.

When they asked me to take this on and I agreed to do it, I thought we could build a history museum in four or five years and I'd move onto something else.

I had no idea it would take 20 years.

But as we got involved, I knew that it was very important for the private sector to take the lead.

So early on we went back to the county commission, which had created that task force that I referred to earlier and said, let the private sector raise at least $11 million in permanent endowment for a history museum to show you that the private sector is fully behind this.

And if we cannot do that, then you're off the hook with your $17 million in commitment.

As it turned out, we not only raised that $11 million in endowment, we actually raised $15 million in endowment, plus $9 million for the exhibits, plus $5 million for the building.

So at the end of the day, we raised over $32 million as the private sector's share of what has turned out to be a very successful operation.

- [Geoffrey] Kermit also followed his passion and created his first air museum in Miami, Florida.

- You know, I wanted to share my passion and good fortune with people.

So I said, well, you know, I could set up a museum.

So I set up a not-for-profit.

At the time there were some tax advantages, which allowed me to do more than I could have done just personally on my own.

And so after five years of negotiating and coming up with a hangar design, the biggest hangar on the airport that I was at in Miami, and opening with some displays, you know, five years later we opened.

The only problem was in that five year period that we were developing all that, negotiating with the county and building the hangar, I continued to collect airplanes.

And by the time we opened in 1985, I had more airplanes than I could fit in the hangar.

So I scratched my head, I realized I was in this for the long haul.

I was in a lease situation in Miami and I realized now I needed to control my own destiny.

And because of this, life gravitated me towards the great central Florida tourist environment where Disney had planted a stake and everything had built up around it.

Universal Studios was not there yet.

They came along later.

And all of a sudden I realized with this land, I bought 250 acres to build my own runways and stuff, what could I create?

I started dealing with some design people and we, after visiting a lot of the tourist attractions in the area here, you know, I realized, oh my god, I gotta kick this up a notch.

So we did, and that's what really kind of laid the foundation for Fantasy of Flight.

And we kind of shifted it up to an aviation attraction.

So it's themed.

We've got an art deco restaurant.

Flight simulators, immersive environments.

We fly vintage airplanes every day.

We have biplane rides, tours through some of the shops and stuff with characters walking around.

So we fly the airplanes, we build the airplanes, and we've got all these other things that are moving.

So, you know, we say we're certainly more than a museum, but we're the only aviation attraction on the planet.

What is that?

You know?

So everybody keeps driving by.

But what ultimately happened was, I realized that very early on, I could not be successful catering only to the airplane enthusiast.

There's just not enough of us on the planet.

And so what happened was I began to think about what could I do that touched everyone that came through my doors?

And what I realized was, it wasn't about airplanes.

What everybody can relate to, has a fascination for at some level, is the metaphor of flight.

Everyone at some level has a fascination for that.

Which I believe more than anything, I defy you to come up with a better metaphor, for pushing our boundaries, reaching beyond ourselves and freedom.

- [Geoffrey] His love for collecting aircraft has inspired Kermit to write children's books.

- Well, it's interesting.

I do write children's books and I never thought that I would because I never did well in English.

I didn't know that I could do this.

I ended up writing the book.

I figured it out myself.

I self-published it myself.

You're gonna follow your dreams.

You gotta figure out what your dreams are.

And all you gotta do is fill in the blanks.

That's what that's all about.

That's a personal example of me discovering potential within myself I did not know that I had.

Guess what?

Now, I love writing children's books.

I got my second one out.

I already got a book publishing award for that.

I've got, in the airplane genre that I've created so far, I've got at least another dozen story templates that I can develop and create.

But what's more interesting now is I'm literally creating a whole new cast of characters.

And it's not like, you know, I wrote a book and I said I did.

I mean, I jumped both feet into the fire because I've got at least 15 books over here I know I can write, two that I've already written.

But the next one I'm literally creating my park icon character, you know, as a similarity, if I was Walt Disney, I'm creating my Mickey Mouse.

And this character personifies the whole Fantasy of Flight concept.

Everyone that reads this book is gonna relate to them being that character.

- [Geoffrey] Tom, too, gets great pleasure from sharing his collection and inspiring the next generation.

- I took 40 fourth graders from St. Mary's Episcopal Day School and watched expressions on their faces as I showed them the first map on which the name Florida appears.

And the first map on which the name Tampa appears.

And the first map of Tampa.

And the first map of St. Petersburg.

Well, I actually showed them an old AAA roadmap that I used to use when I was growing up, which is the way we looked at maps then.

And they were fascinated because they probably think of maps as being Google Maps.

And by the way, exhibit item number 150 in the exhibition is a Google presentation.

- [Geoffrey] The reality of business has led Kermit to rethink the future of Fantasy of Flight.

- I realized that airplanes couldn't pay the light bill.

And as I began to search for what I could create that touched everybody through my door, and I realized that it was the metaphor of flight, pushing our boundaries, reaching beyond ourselves and freedom, that everybody could relate to.

Then all of a sudden, these two parallel paths that had nothing to do with each other, they both merged and became one.

So in the future, I have a very rare, expensive, real collection of vintage airplanes.

I think this is my all time favorite airplane in the collection right now.

And we're gonna tell where Fantasy of Flight's headed is to create things that are based on things that are real, which I think for the most part is the antithesis of the existing industry.

And we're just gonna create something that doesn't exist.

- [Geoffrey] For Tom, serendipity played a big part in his passion for collecting maps and the eventual creation of the Tampa Bay History Center.

- Well, I do think you have to be open to them and I guess I have been 'cause I perhaps had more than my share.

But again, I think if your mind is open to learning and to having new experiences, things happen to you that are either accidental, or providential, or serendipitous, that you don't know in advance they're going to happen.

But they do.

People, individuals, rarely have an opportunity to do something in their lives that no one has ever done before.

I have had two such opportunities.

I have, with Lee's good support, put together the best collection of Florida maps in the world that is not in a library or a museum.

And I and others have been very involved in building one of the best history museums in America.

I've had two opportunities like that.

How does it get any better?

- For most people, collecting is a pleasurable pastime.

And then there are people like Tom Touchton and Kermit Weeks with the dedication and vision to turn their passion for collecting into world-class treasures for all to share.

Throughout history it's that passion that's created great museums, galleries and libraries that enlighten us about mankind's endless progress and from whence we came.

If you'd like to see this program again or any of the CEO profiles in our Suncoast Business Forum archive, you can find them on the web at wedu.org/sbf.

Thanks for joining us for the Suncoast Business Forum.