Kobie Kooling: A legacy passed on for generations

Fred Kobie is up most days by 5 a.m. to feed the cows and horses on his farm in Alva. Then he drives his big, white van to Kobie Kooling Inc.'s offices in Fort Myers. A second-generation air conditioning sales and serviceman, his company earned a reputation for well-trained mechanics and ethical workmanship since he and three brothers reopened the family business here in 1995.

EVAN WILLIAMS / FLORIDA WEEKLY Fred Kobie "We all learned from one person: my father," Mr. Kobie said. "And my father was a tough person to learn from. He was probably the most ethical person I've ever known."

The elder Harry Kobie started an air conditioning sales and service shop in Philadelphia in 1949. Fred Kobie joined the Army to avoid that fate. His six siblings, including two sisters, felt the same way about air conditioning.

"We all hated it," Mr. Kobie said. "I had a brother that went into real estate, a brother that went into landscaping…"

But a few years after he left the Army at 19, Fred Kobie and his wife Holly moved to Fort Myers where his parents had retired. He still planned on finding some other line of work. But at a family breakfast, Harry Kobie signed his unwitting son up to make a house call for a friend who sold air conditioners.

"Literally, as a joke at breakfast, my father picked up the phone (and made a sales call)," Mr. Kobie said. "He handed me the phone and I was drinking coffee and dumbfounded. He's a terrific sales person — he sold graves, water, he did different things. When he did this to me I said, 'why would I want to work for somebody else?'"

Ultimately, Fred Kobie followed his father's advice. He got a job working for an air conditioning company here, while also working as a parttime fireman in Estero.

Over Thanksgiving in 1995, he and his three brothers decided to all go back into the air conditioning business. Two brothers, Harry and Fred, work for Kobie Kooling Inc. A third brother, Kevin, runs a separate, smaller air conditioning company in town, but they often trade jobs and aren't competitive.

"I think my dad cried — happy cried," Mr. Kobie said. "I think he has always wanted everybody working together."

Ethical workmanship is the core value that the Kobie brothers took from their father. Part of that means making sure his employees are welltrained. Mr. Kobie pays about $9,000 each for his mechanics to take a six-week training program even though it's not required in Florida. It is usually broken up over the course of a few years, while they're on the job. And every few years, the mechanics take refresher courses.

That includes his son Michael, who will take the courses when he's old enough. The 43-year-old Fred Kobie also has a daughter.

His 19-year-old son Fred H. Kobie III, who is a mechanic in training, is soon to be married to his fiancée, Jessica. "She's carrying the fourth generation of Kobie," who may be born any day, said Fred Kobie. "I've never been a grandfather before," he said proudly. "I'm kind of worked up about it."

Mr. Kobie admits he pushes his own kids hard like his father did.

"Family to me is very important," he said. "And when we talk about our customers, we talk about the Kobie family of customers. I take it pretty seriously."

As for his blood relatives, Mr. Kobie's parents are retired in Fort Myers. His uncle, John Bertholf, 90, was one of the first residents in Cape Coral. He used to sell plots of land there for Gulf America Corp., the company that created the Cape as we know it today. Now he lives in a retirement home in Fort Myers. "John's a character," Mr. Kobie said.

His wife Holly grew up on a Quaker farm outside Philadelphia. Fred Kobie's parents had moved from Philadelphia to the countryside there by the time he was 10. He went back there to marry her after he got out of the Army.

"It was actually an old Civil War farm," Mr. Kobie said. "We found belt buckles that said U.S. Cavalry when we were kids."

Mr. Kobie is a busy man running the farm, Kobie Kooling, and two associated business, Kobie Homewatch and Kobie Inspection. He is also a member of Fort Myers Rotary South and is a Little League umpire in Alva.

But he still finds time to make house calls, a duty he shares with his 19 other mechanics, and a legacy he'll leave for generations to come.

"I drive that big truck and I wear my name tag wherever I go. I'm proud of my work," Mr. Kobie said. "It's who we are."