Gene Stone, Restaurateur, Who Guided Shakey's, Skipper's

Gene Stone, a restaurateur credited for reviving Shakey's Pizza and Bellevue-based Skipper's Seafood, died last week in California after an apparent heart attack. He was 54.

For the past two years, he lived and worked in the Bay Area as president of Shakey's Incorporated, which has 200 restaurants throughout the United States. There, company officials say, he was the chief architect of a revitalization campaign that promoted 90-cent pizzas and a return to the restaurant's original 1954 menu.

On Thursday afternoon, he collapsed in his Burlingame, Calif., office and later died at Peninsula Hospital.

"It will be impossible to replace a man whose commitment to our company and the industry and respect for those with whom he worked were daily inspirations to all of us," Russell Frederickson, president of Shakey's International and Monarch Foods, Inc., said in a written statement. "Men like Gene Stone are rare."

It was in the Pacific Northwest where he developed a reputation as a man who could help struggling restaurants make a comeback.

From 1971 to 1988, with Mr. Stone at the helm as president and chief executive officer, Skipper's Inc. grew from 12 to 200 restaurants. The seafood restaurant also enjoyed its first profitable year and was named by Forbes magazine as one of the top 200 small public companies in the United States.

In keeping with his personable style, Mr. Stone had a direct line installed from restaurants to his office and made his phone number available to all Skipper's employees.

But, in 1987, Mr. Stone left the company after a remodeling plan fizzled and died for lack of money.

He returned to Shakey's, based in South San Francisco, the same company that gave him his first break in big business.

In 1960, as a college student, he flipped pizzas at Shakey's in Sacramento. During the next nine years, he moved up to vice president of operations and franchising.

From there Mr. Stone went to Lum's Restaurant Corporation as general manager of its eastern region. Company officials there credited him with pulling 68 franchises out of a downward spiral.

But fast food wasn't the only thing that inspired Mr. Stone's zest for life. During the 1970s, he enjoyed moonlighting as a model.

His daughters, both in their 20s, say they will remember him as a father who loved rollercoasters, Harley Davidson motorcycles and the Puyallup Fair.

"He was a cool guy," said Amy Stone, 24. "You could take him out for a beer. He always made my friends feel like his own."

A native of Dillon, Mont., Mr. Stone graduated with a business degree from Mount San Antonio Community College in Walnut, Calif.

He served in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper from 1956 to 1959 and gained the rank of sergeant.

Most recently, he was a member of the board of the International Franchise Association. He also was active with Echo Glen Children's Center near North Bend, a suburban Seattle juvenile-detention center.

Surviving Mr. Stone are his wife, Mary, of Foster City, Calif.; two daughters, Amy of San Francisco and Monica of Bellingham; and two brothers, Robert of Belgium and Jerry Lee of Missoula, Mont.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the American Heart Association and Project Open Hand, both in San Francisco.

A memorial service will be held at 4 p.m. tomorrow at Sneider and Sullivan Funeral Home in San Mateo, Calif.