Friends and family will look back next week on Steve Chubbuck, a retired firefighter and veteran who used his love of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to quietly raise awareness in Brevard County about issues ranging from police brutality to voting rights. We plan to dedicate the first of several memorials to. , a book on human rights violations.
Chubbuck, who operated four Ben & Jerry’s ice cream stores across Florida, died on March 31 at his home in St. Augustine from an apparent accidental drowning. His shops include his Ben & Jerry’s in Melbourne at The Oaks.
He was 44 years old.
“He was the type of person who would come up with 100 ideas an hour. He was always bickering about ideas,” said Chubbuck’s wife, Jessica Shaw.
“You just hear stories and get calls that he was always supporting causes, whatever it was. He got a lot out of that,” Shaw told Florida Today. .
Mr. Chubbuck’s work spread to many communities in Brevard. He secretly worked with organizers of the 2020 March for Justice, which highlighted the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Brevard veteran Gregory Lloyd Edwards. Edwards died in 2018 after a confrontation with Brevard County Sheriff’s correctional officers at the county jail. A federal judge ruled last year that Edwards’ death was an “undoubted tragedy” but that her constitutional rights were not violated.
The march, organized by the Brevard Community Activists Coalition, drew 4,000 people to the streets of Cocoa, making it the largest protest the county has seen to date.
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“We met during the Gregory Edwards protests in 2020. He’s a military veteran and what Sheriff (Wayne) Ivey made happen to Edwards really resonated with Steve. It That’s the first cause we found,” said Alton Edmonds, a criminal defense attorney who ran unsuccessfully against the sheriff in 2020.
Chubbuck owns three other franchises of ice cream parlors in Nakattee, Daytona Beach and St. Augustine, and is responsible for signs handed out during crowds demanding justice in the Edwards case and in Byrd County. He paid for billboards placed around the prison asking what happened inside the prison. A veteran.
He also worked with former NYPD veterans and literacy advocates Edmund Verdi and John Verdi to help foster stronger face-to-face relationships between youth in Brevard and law enforcement in Cocoa and Melbourne. This included offering ice cream as a way to bridge the gap between the groups.
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“He was quite literally offering free ice cream to get people to come out. He played an important role in supporting the protests that were seen around Brevard. He encouraged people to vote. They contacted me to see if I could do something to encourage this,” said Lauren Giaccone, founder of Brevard Peace Keepers, a group that has brought attention to Edwards’ case and other issues.
Chubbuck often brainstormed with activists to come up with ideas on how to get their message out into the world.
“We were activists together. (Steve) That was the whole reason the Brevard Peacekeepers were there. Everything just snowballed because of him,” Giaccone said.
Chubbuck was born in Anchorage, Alaska, to a mother who worked as a police officer. Shaw said he moved with his mother to Lake Worth, Fla., after his parents separated. After graduating from high school, he decided to join the Army and rose to the rank of sergeant before taking a job at a private research firm. Chubbuck later became a firefighter in Martin County, where he met Shaw in 2015.
The two often shared thoughts on pressing issues, such as the Black Lives Matter movement and the narrative that formed around police shootings involving black men at the time. “I was visiting Florida and it was very liberal. He wasn’t exposed to the ideas I had. But he listened. He’s coming back to find out for himself. “Maybe,” she said.
Then, after years of receiving calls in the middle of the night and experiencing shocking incidents, Chubbuck retired from the fire department in 2020. Mr. Chubbuck had started funding some operations when he bought a Ben & Jerry’s franchise in Melbourne in 2018.
Inside the store, I joined other activists like Verdi of Hey! Adam Tritt, founder of the Blue Organization and Foundation 451, set up the Banned Books Stand to give customers the opportunity to read books targeted by organizations such as Moms for Liberty.
“He loved ice cream. His favorite was Cherry Garcia and he always thought this was fun. Protests and threats to boycott his business on social media continue. Nevertheless, Mr. Chubbuck remained on the defensive.
In May 2020, when the couple saw footage of 46-year-old George Floyd pleading for his mother as a police officer knowledgeably pinned him down, “he became furious,” Shaw said.
“There’s a certain type of veteran who joins the military because he believes in our Constitution, and that was him,” he said. “He had a very strong anger towards injustice. Then when he found out what happened to Gregory Edwards, he just wanted to raise money for his widow. What? I wanted everyone to know what happened.”
“He didn’t talk about it, he didn’t brag about what he was doing,” Shaw said. And now I’m getting calls about all the good things he was doing. ”
The first of several memorial services for Chubbuck will be held at 10 a.m. at Butler Beach in St. Augustine. Another memorial is later planned for Melbourne, but details have not yet been finalized. He is survived by his wife Jessica Shaw and 22-year-old son Aidan.
JD Gallop is a criminal justice/breaking news reporter for FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Gallop at 321-917-4641 or jgallop@floridatoday.com. X, formerly known as Twitter: @JD Gallop
