“Good morning, honey. How are you doing?” Linda Holland says to the photo of her late partner, Peter Gillis.
It’s the first thing she does when she gets out of bed. He was simply too big of a personality to fade away, and those that knew him and loved him, still feel his presence.
The longtime Sarasota resident was killed in a hit-and-run accident involving two other cars while he was driving home on his 1996 black Harley Davidson motorcycle on March 16. He was 65 years old.
One of the drivers involved in the crash fled following the collision. Nearly six months after the crash, officers arrested Marcus Brewer, 40, from Palmetto for failing to stop.
Gillis had just retired six months before the accident, but one thing friends and family take solace in is that he wasn’t cheated out of life.
He was a truck driver for country music stars like: Eric Church, Blake Shelton, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. He worked as a bartender at Patrick’s, a storied Sarasota restaurant, for 20 years. He was his neighborhood’s de facto handy man. He was a talented golfer who managed to complete seven hole-in-ones. In his younger days, he modeled in fishing and boating ads for magazines. He was a self-described fly-fishing tour guide. He was a larger-than-life personality, who will be missed deeply by his family, partner and hundreds of friends.