Legacy
Through 2007, the University of Florida has realized over $150 million from its share of the Gatorade royalties. Cade and his associates' share of the royalties is undisclosed, the majority of their rights having been sold to Stokely-Van Camp. After the settlement, Cade continued to work for the university, and the college of medicine named him professor emeritus of nephrology upon his retirement in 2004. In April 2007, several months before his death, the University Athletic Association inducted Cade into the University of Florida Athletic Hall of Fame as an "honorary letter winner."
Gatorade, now owned by PepsiCo, is today sold in some eighty countries and over fifty various flavors. In stark contrast to the forty-three dollars that Cade and his team spent to make the first experimental batch of Gatorade in 1965, Gatorade prompted the evolution of a multi-billion dollar sports drink industry in the years that followed; as of 2007, over seven billion bottles of Gatorade were being sold annually in the United States. While he was surprised by its commercial success as a sports drink, Cade took greater pride in Gatorade's use in hospitals, in post-operative recovery and to treat diarrhea in children. Cade's other research included hypertension, exercise physiology, autism, schizophrenia and kidney disease. His research into carbo-loading substantiated the early claims of Swedish researchers, and he also invented a hydraulic football helmet that substantially reduced the risk of concussion to football players.
Cade was an active, lifelong member of the Lutheran church, and he was recognized by the church with its Wittenberg Award in 1991. He gave generously to many Lutheran colleges and organizations. In their later years, Cade and his wife established the Gloria Dei Foundation, an organization that makes grants to aid the "poor and underserved."
Cade was a talented violinist who sometimes played with local symphony orchestras. Cade acquired collections of more than thirty violins and more than sixty vintage Studebaker automobiles. He and his wife continued to live in the same Gainesville house that they owned before the financial success of Gatorade. On November 27, 2007, Cade died of kidney failure, at the age of 80, in Gainesville. He was survived by his wife Mary, their six children, twenty grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
The Cade Museum Foundation, established in 2004 and chaired by Cade's daughter, Phoebe Cade Miles, is raising funds to build The Cade Museum for Innovation and Invention in Gainesville, with a groundbreaking planned for 2015.
Read more about this topic: Robert Cade
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“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)