From the school board to the racetrack, Jan Daly Shoop has been making a difference in her community through her civic leadership. The Mercer University alumna has remained dedicated to her hometown of Sebring, Florida, and involved in a number of initiatives to make it the best it can be.
“For me, it all goes back to the old saying that you get out of it what you put into it. That was true being at Mercer and living in Sebring. I always try to make an effort of being present,” she said.
Shoop grew up about an hour from Sebring in Arcadia, Florida. A tennis player, she chose to follow the lead of her doubles partner and attend Mercer. Shoop majored in sociology and was a member of the Mercer tennis team and Alpha Delta Pi sorority.
She met her future husband, John, while visiting her aunt and uncle in Arcadia during a trip back home. After studying abroad for seven months in London, she finished her courses at Mercer in December 1982 and married John, a banker, in 1985.
“I believe Mercer prepared me for my future by helping me learn new things and accept other cultures. Being from a small town, I realized all the opportunities that existed,” Shoop said. “The friendships that I created are still in existence, and now there are several girlfriends that I live close enough to that our grandchildren can get together and play.”
The Shoops lived in Tampa, Florida, where Jan worked as a travel agent, for a few years before moving to Sebring in search of smaller-town life in 1988. They built their home and a family there, and they now have two grown children and five grandchildren.
“I was fortunate to be a stay-home mom, but I was very involved in the schools. I did a lot of volunteering in the schools,” Jan Shoop said.
After her kids graduated from high school and went off to college, she ran for the Highlands County School Board and served for 12 years, finishing up this past November. The board pivoted its focus to school safety and implemented a number of important measures after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
“The financial part is a big responsibility, but when you start thinking about being in charge of children’s safety … you’ve got to make sure those kids are safe,” she said.
As a board member, she was also involved in establishing the protocols to help get kids back in school after the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, Shoop served on the boards for the Advent House and Boys and Girls Club for many years.
Since the early 1990s, she has been a key behind-the-scenes organizer of the International Motor Sports Association’s annual Twelve Hours of Sebring sports car race at Sebring International Raceway. Shoop stepped in to help after friend and Mercer alumnus Mike Cone bought the association, and her involvement has grown from selling tickets to being the registrar, making her the primary contact for registration, safety and media issues.
“The Twelve Hours of Sebring draws over 100,000 people to our county. I’ve met a lot of interesting people through that, racing legends. It’s been a fun journey,” she said.
In addition, Shoop supports many of the initiatives and activities that her husband is involved in as mayor of Sebring, a role he has held for 11 years.
Recently, they spent a lot of time working with HGTV for the series “Home Town Takeover,” in which small towns are revitalized. Sebring was featured in a season three episode that aired in early March. Shoop said the HGTV teams did simple renovations that made a huge difference in the downtown beauty, such as painting benches.
“That was pretty exciting and definitely has increased our downtown (traffic),” Shoop said. “It was mostly focused on the downtown area. It’s just been amazing. It was just exciting to see the amount of people that it drew.”
Shoop said she is proud of her community involvement over the years. Among her other biggest accomplishments are raising her children and seeing them start families of their own and completing an Ironman triathlon race in 2018. Now that she is retired, she looks forward to making more trips to Brunswick, Georgia, to see her daughter and teaching her grandchildren to ski.
