A Servant Leader

Steve Sheldon and his wife, Terri Sheldon, have raised up their family and businesses in Bowling Green while surrounded by a community chock full of people ready to lend a helping hand.

Steve’s passion for his community is a happy byproduct of his servant’s heart. This passion is strengthened by his community-wide support system that has seen the birth, and growth into adulthood, of all five of his children. CEO of Sheldon’s Express Pharmacy, Steve has been a pharmacist and businessman in the city for the last 30 years and he would say how fortunate he has been to get to know so many of the local families that make the city feel like home.

Steve has developed property throughout the area and was involved in enhancing the new gateway into Bowling Green at Exit 26. He also received the Small Business Person of the Year Award in 2011 from the Bowling Green Chamber of Commerce. Outside of the office, Steve and Terri pursue their passion for ministry through Terri’s brainchild, Curbside Ministries. Through Curbside, Steve and Terri, along with hundreds of volunteers, seek to reach and support local children and teens. The ministry was built out of the love and truth that they encourage in their own children.

Where service meets faith is where Steve and his family take up shop – and Steve’s family has taken many leaps of faith over the years, including the current leap of faith to run for public office. Steve has a great deal of faith in Kentucky’s potential and is ready to get to work making things happen for the families in Warren and Butler counties.

Roots

Born in England, Steve spent much of his childhood on air force bases watching his father, a military medic, at work. This was a time in Steve’s life that he began to develop his own love for health care and he looks back on his youth with great fondness, remembering the love and sense of community that a military childhood can provide.

When his family came stateside, they lived in South Carolina until Steve’s father developed a complication from a wound during the war. After 20 years of service, Steve’s father passed away from his injury and their family was prompted to move to Owensboro to be close to extended family. Steve began working odd jobs to help his family and he gained experience in farming, janitorial work, and tuning up cars.

It was at this time that Steve’s life would be changed in ways he never could have predicted. The Kentucky Department of Veterans Affairs offered him a war-orphan scholarship and he became the first in his family to go to college. While attending pharmacy school, Steve made a promise to himself to make it his mission to give back to the state for the opportunities that he had been given and to help anyone he meets along the way. This is a big part of his servant leadership style as he works to serve those who have given him so much.

Steve attended Western Kentucky University’s Pre-Pharmacy program and graduated from the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy in 1983. Upon graduation, Steve got started as a pharmacist in Madisonville before locating to Bowling Green. Pharmacy has given Steve the great blessing to share life with the people in Western Kentucky.

Steve’s business affiliations have stretched across Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana and Illinois. He has owned battery stores, been involved in residential and commercial real estate, and had his hand in a variety of other local businesses.

Steve and Terri have been married for 29 years and they have 5 children: Ryan, Seth, Spence, Seaton, and Terra. Ryan is married to Courtney Reitz Sheldon and they are expecting their first child.