Joseph Campbell ‘Joe’ Woolf

Jonathan’s grandfather, Joseph Campbell ‘Joe’ Woolf, enrolled at Georgia Tech to become a civil engineer. A bone infection that started with a tennis injury ended his college career, and by 1937 it had cost him his leg. He spent the rest of his working life on crutches and never let it slow him down. After working for Atlanta Gas Light Co. and at the Opa-locka naval air station during World War II, he was hired by the City of Lake Worth in 1959 as its first superintendent of the water treatment plant and sewer systems.

Grandpa Joe earned the state’s top-rated A water certificate in 1955 and the same rating for sewage in 1959. As a past president of the Florida Water and Sewer Works Operators’ Association, he led the drive for compulsory statewide operator certification, which the Legislature adopted in 1971, and he chaired the State Advisory Certification Board. On July 1, 1971, the State of Florida issued Water Treatment Plant Operator Certificate No. 1 to Joseph C. Woolf. Under his watch, Lake Worth’s plant won the State Board of Health merit certificate three years in a row as the best-operated plant in Florida cities of 20,000 to 50,000.

He retired from Lake Worth in June 1973, decided six months of vacation was long enough, and went back to work as utilities director of the Cooper City water and sewage treatment plant. Years later, the Joe Woolf Award for outstanding service was named in his honor.

He was the father of Joe Woolf, who founded Woolf Realty in 1984.

“There is no handicap unless you let it become one.”