K.C. Stock’s sister once told him he should stop and smell the roses, but Stock preferred growing them.

Stock, 84, former owner of Cruisers Yachts and founder of Stock Lumber, died Nov. 28.

He was busy to the end. He purchased Stock Ranch in Bozeman, Montana, with his son, Brian, in 2020, and in 2021 sold Oconto-based Cruisers, which he owned for 28 years, to MarineMax Inc. of Clearwater, Florida.

“My sister said, ‘K.C., you’ve got to smell the roses,'” Stock said during an interview in 1999, when he was named Rotary Club of Green Bay’s Free Enterprise Award recipient. “I just enjoy being busy. I like challenges. I like working and being with people. I like learning other things.”

A native of Oconto, Stock was not an enthusiastic student, although eventually he did serve on St. Norbert College’s board of trustees and endowed student scholarships there. He graduated in 1956 from Oconto High School, where he was voted Least Likely to Succeed, which, if they were serious, missed the mark by about 100%.

Stock built houses at 19, raised cattle and founded a pallet company before he bought his father’s lumber company, Scanlon and Stock, and renamed it Stock Lumber in 1971. Stock Lumber grew to a multi-state building supply operation, which he eventually sold for about $100 million.

Stock admitted he knew nothing about building boats, or golf courses for that matter, but he ended up doing both. He bought struggling Cruisers, based in Oconto, in 1993 because “they were going to shut…