Dail's Gold's Gym partner: 'He bled black and gold'

Entrepreneur Eddie Dail of Culpeper lived life to the fullest. His personality was larger than life and he had many friends for who he would do most anything.

Owner of 13 Gold’s Gyms, including the one in Southgate Shopping Center, Dail lived and breathed the fitness business to the very end.

In fact, in July he earned the company’s top acknowledgement — the Visionary Award — for his innovation, business intelligence and limitless support to other gym owners.

“Eddie has been so selfless in so many ways during the past year,” said Joel Tallman, senior vice president of franchising for Gold’s Gym International, at the company’s convention in July in Las Vegas.

“He is constantly working with other owners to help them grow and improve their business,” Tallman said.

A 1988 graduate of Virginia Tech, Dail, raised in McLean, had planned to open another dozen or so gyms in the next couple of years, had just started a consulting business and was a new father.

He had vowed to slow down and start taking care of himself, said Rebecca Dail, his wife, from their home on Mountain Run Lake Wednesday.

“He was involved in so much, it was running him down — you could see it,” she said. “We were trying to get him to chill out.”

Dail died of a heart attack overnight Friday in Fairfax County. He had just flown into Dulles Airport from a business trip in Boston and was sleeping in an area hotel, planning to return home in the morning. Dail was 44.

Rebecca said they were both well aware of his health issues since he had suffered two prior heart attacks this decade.

Married six years, she and Dail welcomed a son, Dylan, three years ago. He also had a 17-year-old daughter, Ashley, of Ashburn.

Dail’s father, Joseph Dail of Florida, and a sister, Mary Holyoke Dail, of Albuquerque, also survive him.

His mother was the late Leeta McCoy Keller.

Joseph Dail reflected on his son Wednesday afternoon, saying that Eddie did everything 100 percent — and then some.

“Everything he did, he did to the max,” he said, including bodybuilding and his strict diet of egg yolks, only.

For several years in the ’80s, Dail did bodybuilding competitively, his father said, and even won the “Mr. D.C.” championship title one year.

A 1983 graduate of Langley High School in McLean, Dail got his foot in the gym business soon after, partnering with high school friends for a while in the health industry before finishing college and taking a job in charter flights for special events.

But Dail got back into gyms with the 21st century, opening his first Gold’s Gym in Charlottesville.

Eddie and Rebecca moved to Culpeper in 2003 for its central location and natural beauty and to be closer to his daughter.

Dail opened the Culpeper Gold’s in 2004 — gyms in Roanoke, Fredericksburg, Staunton, Richmond and Warrenton followed along with six more in Wisconsin, where a partner of Dail’s lived.

During his short time in Culpeper, local builder Walt Cheatle Sr. of Trigon Development got to know Dail well.

“There was none better than Eddie,” he said. “He would do anything for friends.”

Early on, Eddie looked up to and considered local attorney and former state delegate John J. “Butch” Davies III a close Culpeper friend, Rebecca said. Butch, like others, remarked that Dail had a real zest for life.

He said he loved both of his children dearly. And then there was Gold’s.

“He saw gyms as being involved in communities,” Davies said. “Eddie had boundless energy and could work a cell phone as well as any politician.”

Dail was all about building relationships, he added, and his business partners became family.

Jack Pozo-Olano, co-owner at the Warrenton Gold’s, said Dail was a very hard worker who lived the Gold’s Gym brand.

“He bled black and gold,” he said of the company’s colors.

Dail was also an active supporter of The Choice Group, a Richmond-based nonprofit that places people with challenges into working situations.

In addition, Dail loved fine dining and wines — that’s according to friends and family. Eddie certainly enjoyed life to excess, his wife said, and had dreams of being a stand-up comic.

He was also a closet writer and had recently started doing a column for the Star-Exponent, including one July 9, which focused on celebrity deaths.

In the column, Dail admitted to “shedding a few tears” when guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan died in 1990, noting, “His music was profound to me and had helped me through some dark times.”

Richard Pryor and his iconic comedy also spoke to Dail.

But in the end, it was the people he knew he held closest.

“Celebrity deaths can be moving,” Dail wrote in his column. “However, (losing) family and friends can be devastating.”

Dail’s funeral services in Great Falls Park, in his hometown of McLean, will be private.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks memorial contributions be made to The Choice Group 4807 Radford Ave., Suite 106, Richmond, Va. 23230.