Chubbuck, who owned four Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shops across Florida, died March 31 in an apparent accidental drowning at his St. Augustine home. Among his shops: the Melbourne Ben & Jerry’s at the Oaks.
He was 44.
“He had a personality type of someone who has a hundred ideas an hour. He was constantly riffing about ideas,” said Jessica Shaw, Chubbuck’s wife.
“I’m just hearing things and getting calls about how he was always helping with a cause, no matter what it was. He got a lot out of it,” Shaw told FLORIDA TODAY.
Chubbuck’s activism reached a number of communities in Brevard. He quietly 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 correction officers at the county jail. A federal judge ruled last year that while Edwards’ death was “an unquestionable tragedy,” there was no violation of Edwards’ constitutional rights.
The march, organized by a coalition of Brevard community advocates, drew 4,000 people to the streets of Cocoa for what to date was the largest protest seen in the county.
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“We met during Gregory Edwards protests in 2020. He was a veteran and what Sheriff (Wayne) Ivey allowed to happen to Edwards really resonated with Steve. That’s the first cause that we connected on,” said Alton Edmond, a criminal defense attorney who ran unsuccessfully against the sheriff in 2020.
Chubbuck — who owned three other franchises of the ice cream parlor in Nacatee, Daytona Beach and St. Augustine — paid for signs passed out among the crowds calling for justice in the Edwards case and even billboards positioned across Brevard County questioning what happened behind bars to the veteran.
He also worked with Edmond and John Verdi, a former New York Police Department veteran and literacy advocate, to help foster stronger face-to-face relationships between Brevard youth and law enforcement agencies in Cocoa and Melbourne. That included providing ice cream as a way to bridge the gaps between the groups.
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“He was quite literally giving us free ice cream to get people to come out. He played a key role in supporting the protests that you saw around Brevard. He reached out to me to see if I would do something to help get people to vote,” said Lauren Giacone, founder of Brevard Peace Keepers, a group which drew attention to the Edwards case along with other issues.
Chubbuck would often brainstorm with the activists to come up with ideas on how to get out their messages out.
“We were activists together. (Steve) was really the whole reason that the Brevard Peace Keepers were out there. It all snowballed because of him,” Giacone said.
Chubbuck was born in Anchorage, Alaska, to a mother who worked as a police officer. He relocated to Lake Worth, Florida, with his mother after his parents separated, Shaw said. He decided to join the Army after high school and rose to the rank of sergeant before going to work for a private investigation firm. Later, Chubbuck became a firefighter medic in Martin County before meeting Shaw in 2015.
The pair would often share thoughts about pressing issues like the Black Lives Matter movement and the narratives formed around a spate of police shootings involving Black men during that time. “I was visiting Florida and very liberal. He hadn’t been exposed to the ideas I had. But he listened. He would go back to find out on his own,” she said.
Then, after years of taking calls in the middle of the night and going to traumatic incidents, Chubbuck retired from the fire department in 2020. He had bought the Ben & Jerry’s franchise in Melbourne in 2018 and began funding several causes.
In the the store, he joined with other activists like Verdi of the Hey! Blue organization and Adam Tritt, founder of Foundation 451 in setting up a banned book stand to give customers a chance to read books targeted by groups like Moms for Liberty.
“He loved ice cream. His favorite was Cherry Garcia, and always thought it would be a fun thing to do. He said the fire department was really stressful,” Shaw said. Chubbuck continued with his advocacy, despite the protests and continued threats of boycott aimed at his businesses on social media.
When in May 2020, the couple saw the video of 46-year-old George Floyd, pleading for his mother as a police officer used his knew to press into his neck, “he was furious,” Shaw said.
“There’s a certain type of veteran who joins the military because they believe in our Constitution, that was him,” he said. “He had a very strong sense of rage at injustice. Then when we learned about what happened to Gregory Edwards, he just wanted to raise money for the widow. He wanted everyone to know what happened.”
“He didn’t talk about it, he didn’t brag about what he was doing,” Shaw said. “He just did it. And now I’m getting calls about all of the good things he was doing.”
The first of several memorials for Chubbuck will take place 10 a.m at Butler Beach in St. Augustine. Another memorial is planned for Melbourne later but the details have not been finalized. He is survived by his wife Jessica Shaw and 22-year-old son Aidan.
J.D. Gallop is a criminal justice/breaking news reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Gallop at 321-917-4641 or jgallop@floridatoday.com. X, formerly known as Twitter: @JDGallop.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Advocate against police brutality, Ben & Jerry’s business owner dies