John Sheehan Jr. displays the M.C. Headrick Free Enterprise award he won. / Contributed photoJohn J. Sheehan Jr., a Cleveland, Tennessee, businessman who has built a chain of nursing homes and pharmacy services and led a campaign two years ago for a referendum to legalize liquor stores in Cleveland, has won the top annual award given by the Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce.
During the Chamber’s 94th annual meeting Tuesday night, Sheehan was given the M.C. Headrick Free Enterprise Award. Sheehan is founder and president of the Ocoee Foundation which grew into a nearly $100 million-a-year nursing home businesses before Sheehan sold all but three of the foundation’s three skilled nursing homes. He also built and later sold LTC Pharmacy Services but he continues to head QLTC Pharmacy and other businesses.
“John epitomizes exactly what the Headrick Award represents and a symbol of the American entrepreneur,” said Ross Tarver, the CEO at Tarver Distributing Co. who nominated Sheehan for the Chamber award that has been presented every year by the Cleveland Chamber since 1991. “He takes calculated risks and applies the needed focus to see that his businesses succeed.”
Sheehan launched his first business as a teenager in the mid-1970s in Houston where Sheehan started a lawn service, which he continued to manage until enrolling at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. After receiving his Masters of Finance and Banking in 1982 from the University of North Texas, Shaheen worked in a variety of jobs before moving to Cleveland, Tennessee in 1990 to join Life Care Centers of America where he worked for six years.
In 1996, Sheehan became a senior investment officer for a healthcare real estate investment trust in Newport Beach, California where he covered the Southeast and traveled extensively for 12 years.