Kirk Veale, prominent Sonoma County businessman, dies at 82

Kirk Veale, a private yet prominent Sonoma County car dealer, billboard executive, property investor, philanthropist and Republican Party booster, died Tuesday.

The nearly lifelong Santa Rosa resident was just weeks from his 83rd birthday.

Among his career achievements: He co-founded Santa Rosa’s Corby Avenue auto row. He advised and assisted women who were in business for themselves, or aspired to be. He quietly donated and inspired colleagues to donate large sums to community causes. He played a lead role in the construction and funding of the Salvation Army complex in west Santa Rosa. And he put up the large, electronic billboard alongside Highway 101 in Rohnert Park.

Adds longtime friend and tennis partner Sal Rosano, the former Santa Rosa police chief, “He was truly a gentleman.”

At 82, Kirk Veale was still active in his billboard company and in Veale Investment Properties when he was diagnosed less than a year ago with aggressive, metastatic squamous cell carcinoma. He told very few people what he was going through.

“He never, ever complained, that man,” said his stepdaughter, Jill Medin of Windsor. “He went down with a smile.”

Veale was 11 when his parents, Henry and Marianna Veale, moved their family to Santa Rosa from Stockton in 1950. Veale spent his teen years on his parents’ 30-acre ranch on Santa Rosa’s Brush Creek Road, where the Brush Creek Villas townhouse neighborhood is now. His father, Henry Veale, opened a Volkswagen dealership downtown in 1955.

Young Kirk Veale was active in Future Farmers of America at Santa Rosa High School up to his graduation in 1958. He then went to sea as a merchant mariner, and subsequently with the Coast Guard.

He and Jamie Gobler of Sonoma met at Santa Rosa Junior College. They married in 1960.

He was a year out of Menlo College, where he studied business, when, in 1964, his father died.

Veale and his brother, Dusty, took over the running of Henry Veale VW, which by then had moved south from downtown to Santa Rosa Avenue. A few years later, the dealership became the second, after Comanche Chevrolet, to take root on the city’s new auto row on Corby Avenue.

After Dusty Veale sold his brother his interest in the business and moved to Etna, Kirk Veale took on additional German car brands: Porsche, BMW, Audi.

Veale provided all the necessities to their children, Vicki, Kent and Kelly, but made clear he expected them to perform their chores, be responsible and live with the consequences of their choices.

“My dad was strict,” said Vicki Veale of Santa Rosa. Her sister Kelly Veale Juul agreed, noting, “He really wanted to teach his children to be independent and to make it on our own.”

At the same time, the sisters said, their dad was there for them in full if they got into a bind or needed help.

Said Vicki Veale, “If we fell, he would pick us back up. But he let us fall.”

She said that today she couldn’t be more grateful for the fathering she and her siblings received, and for its impact on the adults they’ve become.

Her brother Kent called their dad “a teacher of lessons of which he would never give you the answer. And most of the time you didn’t even know he was teaching you a lesson.”

Kirk and Jamie Veale divorced in 1980. Five years later, something clicked as Veale spoke at the restaurant at Santa Rosa’s landmark Flamingo Hotel with Pat Gawley. The native of San Francisco had come to Santa Rosa with her daughter, Jill, following a divorce and was working at the Flamingo as a hostess.

They began to date and soon Veale invited Gawley to fly with him to Brazil.

“He proposed to me on the beach at Ipanema,” she said. They married in November 1985.

Their combined four children and their friends commonly observe that the love they shared was something to behold.

“I loved him for loving his wife so beautifully,” said Julie Nation, a longtime friend who credits Kirk Veale for much of the success of the Julie Nation Academy, a 50-year-old Santa Rosa modeling and talent school.

While still selling cars, Veale moved also into developing land and managing properties. He turned to real estate investment full time after he sold his dealership to the Hansel group in 1991. The site of the former Veale dealership is home now to CarMax.

Early on, Veale bought land and built affordable apartments, subdivisions and other developments. His company transitioned over time to buying, upgrading and renting buildings.

Among the Sonoma County buildings owned or formerly owned by Veale are the now long-gone Highland House restaurant, La Rose Hotel and the former Bank of America building in Guerneville.

His Veale Outdoor Advertising erected the highway-side electronic billboard in Rohnert Park and other billboards throughout Sonoma and Solano counties.

His longtime general manager, Tom Jackson, said Veale’s success in business was nurtured by rare qualities that included precise, analytical thinking, meticulous preparation and a resolve to assure that every deal worked well not just for Veale but for everyone involved.

“No one was going to out-prepare Kirk Veale,” Jackson said. “He was just really good at getting things done in professional and calm manner. I never heard him raise his voice.”

And a mantra of Veale was, “It’s a win-win that we’re looking for.”

Many people close to him said he was supremely generous in sharing the rewards of his success. Said his friend Rosano, “He always did it quietly.” Rosano remembers when Veale donated a Volkswagen to a program that served abused women.

Veale was for many years a key supporter of programs of the Salvation Army, and he inspired friends and colleagues to donate.

“One of the first transitional house for men that we had in Santa Rosa was a house that he owned,” said Blaine Goodwin, a member of the local Salvation Army board and a former longtime staff member.

“He was in the background, but he did so much,” Goodwin said. “He was instrumental in raising, frankly, millions of dollars for local charities.”

Another passion of Veale was helping women who owned their own businesses, or wanted to. One beneficiary was Julie Nation. She said that as an adviser to her modeling and talent school, his guidance was invaluable.

“He gave me his time. He helped to learn how to market,” Nation said.

Veale’s stepdaughter, Medin, said she owns her own beauty salon because he encouraged her and helped her attend cosmetology school.

“He was for women’s liberation,” she said.

Veale was a lifelong Republican and a frequent contributor to Republican and pro-business candidates.

“He took a chance on me twice,” said former North Coast Congressman Frank Riggs, who lives now in Arizona.

When Riggs left the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, Veale hired him at his real estate company. And later, Veale supported Riggs’ successful 1990 run for the U.S. House.

Friends and relatives said that while Veale was a firmly committed Republican, he didn’t push his politics on anyone and chose conversation over confrontation.

“He loved to listen to people’s ideas,” said longtime friend and traveling buddy Jackie Simons. Daughter Vicki Veale said there’s a full range of political positions at Veale family gatherings, but her dad set the course in assuring that even through the Trump presidency, things didn’t get ugly.

In addition to family, work and philanthropy, Kirk Veale loved fishing and travel.

“Our family vacations were epic,” Vicki Veale said. Later, her dad and stepmom traveled extensively with friends and spent three weeks a year in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

“We have nothing to regret,” Pat Veale said. “We did everything.”

She shared the small sheets on notepaper that she found in her husband’s wallet, and on which he’d written his rules for business and for life.

Among them: “Enjoy and have fun doing what you’re doing. If it is not fun stop doing it and find something you enjoy.”

In addition to his wife, his four children and his brother, Veale is survived by six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

A funeral Mass will be celebrated at 11 a.m. on March 5 at Star of the Valley Catholic Church. A celebration of Veale’s life will follow across the street at the Wild Oak Saddle Club.

Veale’s family suggests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Salvation Army, https://santarosa.salvationarmy.org or 93 Stony Circle, Santa Rosa 95401.