1 100 6 https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/e8aa521d3c51256016045535b932f4f9.pdf a502cafbf7cd4aa802ade34cfa20c077 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title Creative Sanford, Inc. Collection Alternative Title Creative Sanford Collection Subject Seminole County (Fla.) Folk plays Sanford (Fla.) Description Creative Sanford, Inc. is a non-profit organization created to manage Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play community theater productions. The original idea for the Celery Soup project came from Jeanine Taylor, the owner of a folk-art gallery on First Street in Sanford, Florida. Their first production was Touch and Go, a play focusing on the people of Sanford and their determination to overcome various obstacles, including the Freeze of 1894-1895, the fall of Sanford's celery industry, and the closing of Naval Air Station (NAS) Sanford in the 1960s. In the process of producing the show, Creative Sanford decided to rehabilitate an historic building, the Princess Theater, which is located on 115 West First Street and owned by Stephen Tibstra. The Creative Sanford offices are housed in the Historic Sanford Welcome Center, located at 203 East First Street. Is Part Of <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/16" target="_blank">Sanford Collection</a>, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida. <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/44" target="_blank">Seminole County Collection</a>, RICHES of Central Florida. Language eng Type Collection Coverage Historic Sanford Welcome Center, Downtown Sanford, Florida Princess Theater, Downtown Sanford, Florida Curator Cepero, Laura Digital Collection <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a> External Reference "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">WHO IS CREATIVE SANFORD, INC?</a>" Celery Soup. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about. "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/" target="_blank">About: History and Purpose</a>." Celery Soup. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/. "<a href="http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida" target="_blank">Sanford, Florida: How do you make Celery Soup? Add stories, then stir</a>." Community Performance International. http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida. Contributor <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer Thompson, Trish Donaldson, Laura Interviewee Lee, Luticia Dingle, Cathy Lee Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title Oral History of Luticia Roberts Lee and Catherine Lee Dingle Alternative Title Oral History, Lee and Dingle Subject Sanford (Fla.) Race relations--Florida Hurricanes--Florida Segregation--Florida Description An oral history of Luticia Lee, with her daughter, Cathy Lee Dingle. Lee was born in Sanford, Florida, where her mother bought a grocery store on First Street at half-interest in 1910. Lee's mother graduated from Sanford High School in 1913 and Lee graduated in 1942, after it was renamed Seminole High School. Her children in the attended the school in the 1960, and her grandson graduated later. Lee met her husband, James Lee, who had just returned from service in the U.S. Army in December of 1945. In September of 1946, the couple married. They had three children and five grandchildren. In this oral history, Lee discusses how they started the tradition of throwing pasture parties, life was like during integration in Sanford, how Jim Crow laws were applied, Lee's old house, and tornadoes and hurricanes that had passed through Sanford. Type Text Source Lee, Luticia and Catherine Lee Dingle. Interviewed by Trish Thompson and Laura Donaldson. Celery Soup. July 2012. Audio record available. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford Florida. Requires <a href="https://get.adobe.com/reader/" target="_blank">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a> Is Part Of <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford Florida. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc. Collection</a>, Sanford Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida. Is Format Of Digital transcript of original oral history: Lee, Luticia and Catherine Lee Dingle. Interviewed by Trish Thompson and Laura Donaldson. Celery Soup. July 2012. Audio record available. Celery Soup. Coverage East 3rd Street and South Palmetto Avenue, Sanford, Florida West 15th Street and South Oak Avenue, Sanford, Florida American Legion Campbell-Lossing Post 53, Sanford, Florida Seminole High School, Sanford, Florida Creator Lee, Luticia Dingle, Cathy Lee Thompson, Trish Donaldson, Laura Contributor Román-Toro, Freddie Date Created 2012-07 Format application/pdf Extent 175 KB Medium 17-page digital transcript Language eng Mediator History Teacher Civics/Government Teacher Provenance Originally created by Trish Thompson, Laura Donaldson, Luticia Lee, and Cathy Lee Dingle. Rights Holder Copyright to this resource is held by <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> and is provided here by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a> for educational purposes only. Accrual Method Donation Contributing Project <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Celery Soup</a> Curator Roman-Toro, Freddie Digital Collection <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a> Source Repository <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> External Reference "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Celery Soup</a>." Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/. Litwack, Leon F. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/37981894" target="_blank">Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow</a>. New York: Knopf, 1998. Newton, Michael. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/47136480" target="_blank">The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida</a>. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001. Taylor, Tate, et al. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/748435864" target="_blank">The Help</a>. Burbank, Calif: Touchstone Home Entertainment, 2011. Williams, John M., Iver W. Duedall, and John M. Williams. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/47995910" target="_blank">Florida Hurricanes and Tropical Storms, 1871-2001</a>. Gainesville, Fla: University of Florida Press, 2002. Winsboro, Irvin D. S. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/797855859" target="_blank">South, New South, or Down South? Florida and the Modern Civil Rights Movement</a>. Morgantown, W. Va: West Virginia University Press, 2009. Transcript Thompson So, if you would like to give us the story of how you got to Sanford. Lee I was born here. Thompson How did your oldest relative get to Sanford? Lee My grandmother, after my grandfather died in Mount Olive, North Carolina—she had four girls and two boys. And Mr. Nathan Garner from Sanford was a friend, and he was visiting when my grandfather died. And he had a grocery store down here, so my grandmother bought half interest, and they came in 1910. My oldest aunt didn’t come, but then the next one, Aunt Marty [Roberts]—she came and she roomed at Miss Bessie Long’s. Do you know Miss Bessie Long? Her house was on [North] Oak Avenue right across from the park. The Higgins’ house was next door and Aunt Marty roomed there. And my uncle roomed in Captain Mark’s house which was on [East] Third [Street] and [South] Palmetto [Avenue]. They had the grocery store on First Street. And then Mr. Garner’s son didn’t want to be in the grocery store, so Uncle James [Roberts] bought him out and changed the name to Roberts’ Grocery. Mother was in the first class to graduate from Sanford High [School] in 1913. And I graduated in 1942 and my children graduated in the [19]60s. and then my grandson graduated, so there were four generations that graduated. They changed the name from Sanford High to Seminole High [School]. That’s how we got here. Thompson Now did you work in the store? Lee No. I never worked, except at home. Right after I got out of high school, I worked at the ice plant<a title="">[1]</a> for a while, but I didn’t work there too long. I got married. James [Lee] went to Stetson [University]. He got back from the [United States] Army in December 1945. Our first son was born in DeLand, when he was going to Stetson. Donaldson How did you meet? Lee His sister lived in Palmetto, right behind us. And she was a friend of Mama’s. When he came back from the war, I met him and it worked. Thompson How long have you lived in this house? Lee Mom and Daddy built it when I was three years old, but I just lived here ‘til I was married. And then James and I—after Mama died, we owned the house over on [West] 15th [Street] and [South] Oak and that’s where we raised our children. After Mama died, we moved back here. I’ve been here ever since. This house was built in 1926. It’s 85. It’s younger than me [laughs]. Thompson Well, it isn’t holding up as well as you. Lee It might be doing better [laughs]. Donaldson So how long did y’all go steady before you got married? Lee From December ’45 to September ’46. You know, he had been overseas for three years. He was ready to live [laughs]. Go to school and have a family. I was too. Thompson When you live through such a traumatic thing as the [World] War [II], you learn what’s important. Was he in the Pacific [Theater]? Lee India and China. He was over there, and my brother was in the Pacific too. Then when the Second World War started, my daddy was the shop superintendent of the Crown Paper Company, when they used to print all the paper that they used to wrap all the oranges in. and then when the war started in ’42, they asked for all scrap metal to be sent back. And Daddy was in the [American] Legion [Campbell-Lossing Post 53]. And there was a cannon in front, and Daddy helped dismantle it, and that’s when he got spoke[sic] to make my rolling pin with. See, I graduated in ’42, and that’s when you always got a hope chest [laughs]. And mother was crocheting me a bedspread. Since Mama was making the bedspread, Daddy wanted to make something to go in my hope chest, so he had that spoke so—and they had a shop in the Crown Paper Company, so he could make my rolling pin. Thompson So your daddy made that rolling pin? Is it signed? Lee No. I wanted to get a picture of the cannon, and I had a hard time. But I went down to the museum, and I started finding things, and I’ve got quite a bit of information on it. Thompson Did they turn that cannon in during World War II for the metal? Lee Yeah. For the metal and it had been used in the First World War and they put it in front of the [Legion] Hut when they built it. Thompson Well, tell me how your father got involved in the legal system—in the jails, corrections… Lee Well, it was my husband. Well, he graduated from Stetson with a business degree, but then he went to Rollins [College] and got a Master’s [degree] in Criminal Justice. When he was in the Army, he was in the military police and was interested in all that. When the Parole Commission advertised for people, he applied, took the test, and passed, and was hired. Then we went to Orlando for a little while. And then when an opening came in Sanford, he wanted to raise our family here, so we came here and then he was with the state for 32 years. Thompson Did he ever have any parolee problems—coming to the house? Lee No. My husband was very good. People liked him. I remember after he was retired, and we were living here, we wanted to put a fence down the side in between the houses. And they said we couldn’t put a chain-link fence, and he went down and talked to somebody, and he said, “Well, you know, we wouldn’t put just an old chain-link fence. we’d put a green one down. We could put a barbed wire one down. It’s not prohibited.” The man said, “What?” And he said, “Yeah. I looked it up.” We got our fence [laughs]. It’s a nice fence. In fact, the people that live there, when they came home, they didn’t even notice it, ‘cause it was green and it was pretty, you know. Anyway, the head of one of the departments said, “Mr. Lee, you don’t recognize me do you?” And James said, “No. I’m sorry. Should I know you?” And he said, “Well, I’m one of your success stories, and you told me…” He was very young. “I should think about what I wanted to be and start working toward it, and then try to get an education and become that. and here I am. I’m the head of the department.” I don’t know what department it was or anything, but he came home and said, “You know, I didn’t recognize—he’s a man now. He was a boy then. That was great.” And another time—this was funny—is when the post office was Downtown. I still call it the post office. Not the one on Lakefront. the one on First Street. Thompson Where the Historic [Sanford] Welcome Center is now. Okay. Lee He came out to the car and he had the funniest look on his face. and I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “I just got a Father’s Day card from this elderly man that was so old, he didn’t have his regular birthday. So Daddy figured out and got him a birthday…” And he said, “This is your birthday.” So he sent Daddy a Father’s Day card [laughs]. He had a lot of stories. I don’t remember too many of them, but he did have a lot. He said he was going to write a book after he retired, but he never had time. Donaldson Now how many kids do you have? Lee Three. Cathy [Lee Dingle], Linda [Lee Maliczowski], and Jimmy [Lee]. They were all under three—we had one, two, three. He retired and we’ve enjoyed it. And then he got sick, but everything’s okay. Donaldson How many grandkids do you have? Lee Well, we have five now. And then we had four great grandchildren. And when we add the in-laws, including me, there’s 18 of us. You know, it multiplies. Donaldson And do you get together? Lee Yeah. Maybe we don’t get all together at the same time. But Mendelson’s getting married, but it’ll be about a year. He just got engaged. He’s a nurse at the Florida Memorial [Medical Center] hospital in Daytona [Beach]. They grew up so fast. I’ve had several parties here in the yard, and she wants to have an engagement party in the yard now. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, [inaudible] Sawyer’s had a pasture out. And they had horses in it, but the horses were not where they had the parties. but they had what we call “pasture parties.” Donaldson Mm-hmm, I went to them. Lee You did? Wonderful. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. But then we all got old—they don’t have pasture parties after you get old. Thompson Describe a pasture party. What is a pasture party? Lee Well, it was a pasture. And then Blake [Jones]—Joyce’s husband—he had a grill out there and a real small trailer and electricity. And he built picnic tables and a thing over it, and had a shed that he could keep chairs in. and when we went, we all took something—potluck. The men would cook on the grill and it was a lot of fun. Thompson Did people ride horses or did you play games? Lee No. The kids—but I’m talking about the old folks. We didn’t ride horses. We just talked and laughed and had a good time. Then we lost quite a few. And last summer, we lost a couple: Elizabeth Steele and Joyce Adams Jones. And I thought it would be a lot of fun to get all the old people back together, so I had a backyard pasture party. But I didn’t want anybody bringing potluck, so I had [inaudible] catering. I said, “We’re too old to try to cook and bring things.” We took a lot of pictures. we really had a good time. Thompson When you had these, was it for Fourth of July or Memorial Day or things like that or spontaneous? Lee Spontaneous. It was always on the weekend, because some people were still working. and it was a lot of fun. I had pictures of when we were young and we took pictures at the backyard party. Thompson Have you all followed the tradition? Dingle Well, she had one here in her yard recently. Lee It was in November. And now they’re all saying, “When are you having the next one?” Well, our helpers had to get over the last one, because I couldn’t do that much they were having to do it. Thompson So it’s gone down to another generation. The leaders of the pasture party. Lee Anyway, those of us that were in it had a wonderful time. Benny and Louis Austin, Gladys and Doug Stenstrom, Joyce and Blake, of course. And Margie and Leo [inaudible], and [inaudible] and Charlie Smith. Ken and Mary McIntosh were here. Paddy [inaudible], Dr. Bill White. Even when James and I were at the beach and they had a condo[minium], and upstairs they had a meeting room. I called all the folks and said, “I’m having a beach pasture party.” so for a couple of years, we had a beach pasture party [laughs]. They’d all come over to the beach and go up to the 7th floor… Thompson It sounds to me like you’re the social director of the group. Lee No. I really wasn’t. But I did have the extra parties where everybody came and brought something. but Joyce and Blake and Margie really started it. They had the real pasture. I never had a real pasture. Did it in the backyard or the beach. It was Benny[?] and Phil Logan and… Thompson All of these people that you’re naming—when your husband—when you were in Orlando, and he said, “I want us to move to Sanford and raise a family here,” were all his friends here? What is Sanford to you all? Lee Sanford’s home. We grew up here, we went to school here, and most of these people we went to school with. Thompson And did they leave and come back also? Lee Some of them left and came back. Now, James and I weren’t gone long. We were at Stetson for three years and then… Dingle I was in the third grade when we came back here. I was eight. We were probably gone 10 or 11 years. Lee But we were always coming back. You know, Mother and Daddy were right here in this house, so we were here a lot—most every week. And never felt like we had gone away. He did want to live here and raise our children. Thompson How many people were in Sanford when you came back? When I opened my restaurant in 1981 there were 20,000. Dingle Really, just 20,000? Lee That’s a lot more people. Thompson But it still has that small-town feel to me. The people we’ve talked to—I’m trying to get that feel of what was Sanford that brought everybody here. Lee Well, like Margie and Leo [inaudible]. He was in the Navy. They were gone a long time, but then they came back. but then a lot of people stayed anyway. Joyce and Blake went to California, but then they came back. Dingle I think, as time goes on, when you’re younger, you want to leave and go to another town. And then you go to some big place and it’s not very friendly and a lot harder to get around. and you feel uncomfortable and you say, “Sanford wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. Let’s go home.” Lee And you know everybody. Sometimes I go to town and I don’t know anybody and that feels funny. Our group—all of us—us pasture parties—we get together all the time. Thompson Gladys moved to Jacksonville, right? Does she ever get back down? Lee Yeah. She comes down. Of course, she came down when Ralph [inaudible] died. He’s her cousin. She’s coming down in April. Joyce and I have a birthday party for about four of us, but we couldn’t do it this time. But we’re going to do it—I think George said we were going to do it in June. Gladys couldn’t come for a while. She was sick, but she’s okay now. and we’re going to have a belated birthday party for Linda Roth. Linda Roth was a pasture girl [laughs]. Linda is Leroy Roth’s wife. They were pasture party people. Linda has moved down to where her daughter lives, but she’s coming back. Dingle She just moved right before Christmas right? Lee Yeah. It’s hard to believe she’s not sitting in church every Sunday. She’s going to church down there. Thompson Now, your kids were too young to have gone through integration of… Dingle We were the class. Ingrid was the first person to be integrated, and she was in our class—Ingrid Burton. We were in junior high school. I remember pulling her across the street. she did not want to come. She was the only—in that whole school. We were upstairs in science class looking out the window, and they were pretty much pulling her across the street—her parents. She was the one they chose to be integrated. I’m sure she was very smart. She’s a schoolteacher out in Lake Mary. She came back here. There were only several black kids in our graduating class. Maybe about five or six in the whole class, I believe. Thompson Of high school? Dingle Of the class of ’68. There weren’t that many. Donaldson Because integration was ’71. Forced integration was ’71. Dingle It was either 8th or 9th grade when she came. so she was with us for about five years. I was on the yearbook staff and I was the editor my senior year. I don’t think there was a black in the senior class, because integration started in my class. Henry June—I remember him. Lee That must have been hard for those children. Dingle Ronald Thomas—I didn’t know him. At least Henry had someone. There were only two black students in the senior class of ’67. Thompson Did you have any black friends or know any blacks? Lee No. see, at that time, my mother always had help. We always had maids. And as I had my children, I had Ines. She worked for me for 25 years. We’re still friends. I send her a birthday card with a check and a Christmas card, and she calls me. When I lost James, she came here and she came to his funeral. Thompson And you didn’t have any of the prejudice? That is wonderful. With what we’re going through now,<a title="">[2]</a> there’s a lot of talk. Lee And see, to me, that’s not Sanford. I feel terrible that they are misrepresenting things, and they’re not telling the truth about Sanford, because I had never known that. When Charles and I were little… Dingle There were eight in our junior class. That’s Ingrid. I don’t know if they all stayed and graduated, but Viola Jordan—we were in PE [physical education] together. Lee My brother was two years younger than me, and he’s been gone 20 years. But Mama had—and he loved old Catherine, and she used to take him down to the lakefront to fish before he ever started to school. We were close to those that were there and worked for us. Thompson Where did they live? Lee They lived either in Georgetown or Goldsboro[?]. Now, when Aunt Ruth lived on Second and [inaudible], there was a two-story house. I don’t remember why it was built. It was used—downstairs had been for the wash. And then there was the upstairs that we had as a playroom. But then later, when we were in high school, Aunt Ruth had a maid that lived downstairs. It wasn’t like that movie—I haven’t seen it but… Thompson The Help? Lee Yeah. I haven’t seen it, but Cathy saw it. She said that somebody asked her if she knew anything like that, and she said she never knew anything like that in Sanford. We didn’t. Donaldson It wasn’t an accurate portrayal is what I heard. Thompson It was in some areas. Lee See, we’re not Mississippi or Alabama. Thompson You go to Mississippi, you go to Alabama—this is your story. But my mother’s from Mississippi, and her mother had a boarding house. And they had black maids that came in, and they literally lived in shotgun houses. You could shoot a gun straight through the house and go out the back door. Lived across the tracks. Absolutely, there was the line. That was very much in the small town of Mississippi, when I was a child. It was absolutely amazing to me, because I was a Navy brat. Born in the Dominican Republic. The only white child anywhere around and lived in California and New York. You know, very cosmopolitan compared to Mississippi. Yeah. but in Tennessee, we didn’t have that at all. Lee Cathy said that. She saw it with some of her friends and she said, “Was it like that in Sanford?” She said, “No.” Dingle Like what? Drinking in bathrooms? Thompson Separate bathrooms and drinking fountains. Dingle Well, I remember as a kid in Orlando going to Sears[, Roebuck & Company] through the back door. We would park in one parking lot, and go back and there was a water fountain. one was black and one was white. Lee I do remember water fountains. Dingle They called it “colored” then. I remember we’d go in there, there’d be nobody there, and there’d be three of us and we all wanted a drink of water. And we were wanting to go over there and we were told that we couldn’t go over there. that that wasn’t our fountain. And I remember going, “But why not?” Thompson Did they have a fountain guard? Dingle We were just told not to use that. “Here. this is yours.” “But there’s three of us and I want a drink.” Lee I do remember it was separate there, but not in homes. You had a maid. She used your bathroom. Thompson And of course, I guess you didn’t notice that they wouldn’t be in touch at drug stores. They couldn’t come through the front door. They had to go to the back door to get their prescriptions. Lee I didn’t know that. No. Thompson They wouldn’t let them. They wouldn’t serve them if they came in through the front door. Dingle I do remember that they had their own entrance in the movie theater. There was a wall. There was the downstairs part and then the balcony had a wall in between, and on one side, it was this section, and on the other, there was a door, and that’s where the blacks would come in. The theater was divided. We thought that was so weird. Thompson We never had that. Donaldson Well, you see, this is what she and I were talking about. So many people were saying, “It just didn’t seem right.” and it seemed like such an injustice. How did it last so long? And how were there that many people who thought it was the right thing to do if everybody I meet says, “I felt like it was an injustice”? Dingle It’s just like when any law is made. It’s easy to make the law, but it’s hard to change it. These were laws. It was just, “Put the wall up.” Thompson Really and truly, I’m going to give us the credit for it, because I think men would just go along. And I think the women finally stood up and said, “I want my friend to be here.” We weren’t the militant—we were quiet and easing into it. The men were militant. With everything that’s going on right now, we’re seeing more openness. We’re seeing more blacks downtown. We’re seeing more people speaking to each other. I was at the post office—the guy in front of me was black. The person behind me was black. They all looked me in the eye and smiled at me. Said, “Hello.” and I said, “Hello” back. I don’t know if they wouldn’t have at another time or maybe I’m more sensitive to it now, because of what’s happened. Now, let’s go to the past a little bit. Can you tell about being in the [inaudible] Club? Lee Well, I wasn’t in the [inaudible] Club. I was just there. Gladys invited us. I took my picture with them, but I wasn’t one of them as a youngster. I think they were younger than me. Gladys was younger. I think Gladys was 12 years younger than Florence [Stenstrom], Violet, and me. Thompson Now was Florence Doug’s first wife? Lee Yes. And they were the first pasture party people. After she died, he married Patty [Stenstrom] and she was a pasture party person. Donaldson Which grade school did you go to? Lee I went to Southside Grammar School, junior high, and then high school. Donaldson Break that up. How many years did you go to Southside? Lee Four years—two. Junior high was two and high school was four years. Donaldson Who was your first grade teacher? I’m just curious, because my dad and I had the same one. Lee At the time, she was Ms. Chapman, but then she got married and she was Mrs. [inaudible], and they belong to our church too. When we moved back over here, she was substituting. She had a kindergarten, and the children would stay with Mama, and Mrs. [inaudible] would let them come and stay in her kindergarten. It didn’t matter if they were students or not. She loved us. Thompson Can you think of the scariest time you ever had? Gladys tells the story of how frightened she got when she saw the Ku Klux Klan on the corner of Melonville [Avenue]. Lee I remember one time, Jimmy was sick. They had to do a bone marrow—I remember Cathy went with me. Cathy always wanted to be a doctor. She’d even keep her eyes open whenever the doctor would do something to her. I’d always close my eyes. I remember that I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t say anything. I remember I was listening—that they were saying that they had to do the bone marrow test. and after they did it, it was alright. His white blood count was normal in the bone marrow test. I remember being scared then. I wasn’t scared when I had the kids. Of course, I was awake when Cathy was born, because all three were Caesarian [sections]. But hers had gone too far, so they had a tent in front of me, and the doctor asked me, “Do you feel that?” And I said, “Yes. it feels like you’re running a pen down my tummy.” When I heard her cry, he started doing something and I said, “Are you getting another one?” This was 67 years ago. I didn’t know anything back then. He said, “No. it just takes longer to sew you up than to cut you open.” I can remember all that very plainly. I always thought everything was going to be alright. Thompson What’s your happiest memory? What memories always make you feel great? Lee Getting married, having all my children, moving back to Sanford. I was thrilled. And buying that house over on 15th Street. The dining room was fantastic. It had beamed ceilings, and stained-glass windows, and a built in buffet all the way around it. The floor was striped—dark wood, black and gold. Thompson Like inlaid wood? Oh, man. Lee And I remember James said, “Honey, we can’t heat this house.” It had 12-foot ceilings, you know. And I said, “Honey, that’s alright. I’ll put my coat on and I’ll go sit in the dining room and say, ‘This is why we bought the house.’” That was a happy time. Thompson And how long did you live there? Lee Well, honey, it felt like I lived there longer. It was just 18 years, but the kids all went to school and college, the girls got married, I lost Mom and Daddy. You know, so much happened. I’ve been here since ’79. Dingle It was ’78 or ’79, because I got married in ’76. and then we bought the house from them when they moved back here. We sold the house about eight years ago. Lee You see, they had it for longer than we did, but it seemed like we lived there longer, because so much happened. It just seemed like I’ve been here since then, and I’ve had all the grandchildren, but of course, we had grandchildren over there. You lived there like 27 years. Dingle And before that. Lee And you lived there before that, because you grew up there. Thompson And did you love the dining room just as much? Dingle Oh, yeah. It was a great house. It was huge though. I have a son and he is now 23, and he was a big person. And we were gone all the time. Because of baseball and all these things and it was just too big of a house to take care of, and we decided it was time to find a smaller place. Lee You see, I was there all the time, and all the neighbor kids were there and my kids too. I had Ines. she worked. Dingle And when Joshie [Dingle] was little, there weren’t any kids in the neighborhood. We had to import them. Lee If they ever put it on the [Sanford Holiday] Tour [of Historic Homes], y’all should go. I can’t go back. I just don’t want to see it again. Dingle She means since it’s not in the family anymore. It’s a beautiful house, and they’ve done a lot of work since they got it. Lee It was 14 rooms and look how many outside doors. If I was there by myself, I could not live there by myself, like I can here. Dingle I can. It was easy. Lee I remember when James and I wanted to move back here, Linda said, “If you ever sell this place, I go with the house.” I remember her saying that. Dingle So I bought the house instead. I always said the house had a protective blanket over it. It was protected. Thompson It just felt that way. Dingle I could walk through the house blindfolded. I would walk through it in the dark with no problem. I knew where I was going. When the tornado hit here, I was out of town when it happened, and Daddy called me from here. I was visiting a friend in Washington, and Daddy said, “You need to come home. The tornado came.” that was when Sarah [Dingle] was born, or about 35 years ago. Thompson Would this be in ’83? The real bad hailstorm… Donaldson The hailstorm was in ’83. The tornado was in the ‘90s. Lee The tornado was later. Thompson I think they were at the same time, because I was looking at the sky and it was green. Dingle It was a hailstorm, but it was also a tornado. Lee It went all the way around the house, because we had to have all the windows and screens replaced. Dingle Yeah, but that was here. Over there, we went back and nothing, except some of the roof, was—a friend of mine, Cindy, was staying in the house when I was gone, and she left work. She said she drove home and there was stuff all over the place. it had been getting bad. She thought, “Man, I’ve got to get in that house all by myself and it’s dark.” She first went in and didn’t try to turn the lights on, because she knew there wouldn’t be any. and then she walked in the room and forgot and turned the light on and they were all on. We didn’t lose power. we didn’t lose anything. Donaldson And that’s Cindy Slaten Lee. Thompson What about the hurricanes? Were you living in that house when they had the four… Dingle I remember living there during Hurricane Donna. That was when we were kids. I was living there when—I remember that I cooked everything in my freezer, because I was afraid it was going to go bad, because we were going to lose power. and then it didn’t go bad and I had to have all these people over to eat all the food. I remember that was the only time we boarded windows, because we always taped windows. But it was supposed to be bad, and that house is three feet off the ground and then the windows are humongous. we went and got plywood and boarded up that house. It was just me and my husband, and I was there holding the boards, and then the hurricane never came. But I would rather be prepared. I was in the other house when the other four came. They weren’t fun. Lee But, you see, in this house, the worst we had was when there was a hailstorm and it went all around the house. When it comes to hurricanes, I never worried. This is a well-built house. Dingle I made her come to my house during those four hurricanes, and the next time, she said, “I’ll stay home. You have to come to my house next time.” Lee You know, when I was little, I remember telling Daddy, “I’m scared somebody will come.” And my Daddy would say, “Honey, don’t worry. If anybody comes, as soon as morning comes, and they see you, they’ll bring you right back.” Donaldson Tell her the story about the pond. Lee Well, my Daddy built the pond in the ‘30s. My mama wanted it, and we went to Daytona and got the Kokino[sp] rock, and it’s still there around the pond. Heidi has to take care of it by herself. She’s got three lots. I’ve just got two. She comes over and takes care of my pond. It’s got fish, water lilies, and I’ve got stuff blooming in the pond. In the early ‘30s, you might find more ponds around. They were popular. People liked to have them. Mama’s fish were tame. Mine aren’t tame. Mama could put her finger in the water and wiggle it and the fish would come. When I come by the pond, mine hide. Dingle Well, maybe because they think that you’re going to eat them like the owl did. Heidi has an owl that lives in her backyard and he’s eaten some of the fish. Lee It’s a natural habitat over there. It’s a shame she isn’t really out in the woods, you know. She’s got a plaque from the state that says her backyard is a habitat. <div> <div> <a title="">[1]</a> Rand Yard Ice House. </div> <div> <a title="">[2]</a> The trial of George Michael Zimmerman for the fatal shooting of Travyon Benjamin Martin on February 26, 2012. </div> </div> 15th Street 1st Street 3rd Street African Americans American Legion American Legion Campbell-Lossing Post 53 Benny Austin Benny Logan Bessie Long Bill White Blake Jones C-sections Caesarian sections cannons Carlie Smith Catherine Lee Catherine Lee Dingle Cathy Dingle Cathy Lee Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play Chapman China Cindy Slaten Cindy Slaten Lee Creative Sanford, Inc. criminal justice Crown Paper Company DeLand desegregation Douglas Stenstrom Downtown Sanford Elizabeth Steele Fifteenth Street First Street Florence Stenstrom Gladys Stenstrom groceries grocery Henry June Higgins Historic Sanford Welcome Center hope chests Hurricane Donna hurricanes India Ingrid Burton integration James Lee James Roberts Jimmy Lee Joshie Dingle Joyce Adams Joyce Adams Jones Ken McIntosh KKK Ku Klux Klan Legion Hut Leroy Roth Linda Roth Lnda Lee Louis Austin Luticia Lee Luticia Roberts maids Mark Marty Mary McIntosh Mendelson metal drive metal drives military police Nathan Garner Oak Avenue oral history orlando Pacific Theater Palmetto Avenue Parole Commission pasture party Patty Stenstrom Phil Logan ponds post offices potlucks race relations Rand Yard Ice House Roberts rolling pin Rollins College Ronald Thomas Sanford Sanford High School Sanford Post Office Sarah Dingle Sawyer scrap metals segregation Seminole High School Southside Grammar School Stetson University The Help Tish Lee Tish Roberts tornadoes Trish Thompson veterans Viola Jordan World War I World War II WWII https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/7186274496a92a2c204a62c071c1ef36.pdf 8d96ba9401b0d6568c989b5224e5087e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title Creative Sanford, Inc. Collection Alternative Title Creative Sanford Collection Subject Seminole County (Fla.) Folk plays Sanford (Fla.) Description Creative Sanford, Inc. is a non-profit organization created to manage Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play community theater productions. The original idea for the Celery Soup project came from Jeanine Taylor, the owner of a folk-art gallery on First Street in Sanford, Florida. Their first production was Touch and Go, a play focusing on the people of Sanford and their determination to overcome various obstacles, including the Freeze of 1894-1895, the fall of Sanford's celery industry, and the closing of Naval Air Station (NAS) Sanford in the 1960s. In the process of producing the show, Creative Sanford decided to rehabilitate an historic building, the Princess Theater, which is located on 115 West First Street and owned by Stephen Tibstra. The Creative Sanford offices are housed in the Historic Sanford Welcome Center, located at 203 East First Street. Is Part Of <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/16" target="_blank">Sanford Collection</a>, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida. <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/44" target="_blank">Seminole County Collection</a>, RICHES of Central Florida. Language eng Type Collection Coverage Historic Sanford Welcome Center, Downtown Sanford, Florida Princess Theater, Downtown Sanford, Florida Curator Cepero, Laura Digital Collection <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a> External Reference "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">WHO IS CREATIVE SANFORD, INC?</a>" Celery Soup. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about. "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/" target="_blank">About: History and Purpose</a>." Celery Soup. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/. "<a href="http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida" target="_blank">Sanford, Florida: How do you make Celery Soup? Add stories, then stir</a>." Community Performance International. http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida. Contributor <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer Thompson, Trish Interviewee Harkey, Dick Quentin Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title Oral History of Dick Quentin Harkey Alternative Title Oral History, Harkey Subject Ft. Lauderdale (Fla.) Orlando (Fla.) Theme parks West Palm Beach (Fla.) Republican Party--United States Insurance--Florida Railroads--Florida Sanford (Fla.) Description An oral history of Dick Quentin Harkey (b. 1942). In 1942, Harkey was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is the fifth child in his family. In 1957, his family moved to Gainesville, Georgia. Harkey attended Young Harris College and the University of Georgia, graduating with a degree in psychology. He worked first for Great American Insurance in the Claims Department and married a woman that he met at the University of Georgia. After living in Atlanta, Georgia, for some time, Harkey was transferred to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in 1967. He moved back to Atlanta for a couple of years after getting divorced, but later transferred to Orlando, on March 25, 1971. Harkey met a schoolteacher, Cheryl Harkey, through the Young Republicans in April 1973. The couple married in December and had their daughter, Marianne Harkey, on February 11, 1978. After working for Great American Insurance, Harkey went to work with IMA and then later for CNA Financial. In this oral history, Harkey discusses the story of how his family came from North Carolina, stories about when he worked for Channel Nine, and stories about his time as a lawyer for insurance policies. He was active within the Republican Party and discusses the political and economic implications of the SunRail for Sanford and the surrounding areas. He also speaks briefly about racial tensions. Type Text Source Harkey, Dick Quentin. Interviewed by Trish Thompson. 2009. Audio record available. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford, Florida. Requires <a href="https://get.adobe.com/reader/" target="_blank">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a> Is Part Of <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford Florida. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc. Collection</a>, Sanford Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida. Is Format Of Digital transcript of original oral history: Harkey, Dick Quentin. Interviewed by Trish Thompson. 2009. Audio record available. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford Florida. Coverage Charlotte, North Carolina Atlanta, Georgia Fort Lauderdale, Florida Orlando, Florida Magic Kingdom Park, Walt Disney World, Lake Buena Vista, Florida West Palm Beach, Florida Sanford, Florida Florida Hospital Health Village, Orlando, Florida Creator Harkey, Dick Quentin Thompson, Trish Contributor Román-Toro, Freddie Date Created 2009 Format application/pdf Extent 184 KB Medium 17-page digital transcript Language eng Mediator History Teacher Civics/Government Teacher Economics Teacher Provenance Originally created by Trish Thompson and Dick Quentin Harkey. Rights Holder Copyright to this resource is held by <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> and is provided here by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a> for educational purposes only. Accrual Method Donation Contributing Project <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Celery Soup</a> Curator Román-Toro, Freddie Digital Collection <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a> Source Repository <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> External Reference "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Celery Soup</a>." Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/. "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Florida Federation of Young Republicans</a>." Florida Federation of Young Republicans. http://www.ffyr.org/. "<a href="http://rpof.org/" target="_blank">Republican Party of Florida</a>." Republican Party of Florida. http://rpof.org/. Taylor, Tate, et al. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/748435864" target="_blank">The Help</a>. Burbank, Calif: Touchstone Home Entertainment, 2011. Transcript Thompson Tell me about where you’re from—where you were raised. Harkey Well, I was born in North Carolina—Charlotte—and I’m the youngest of five, and my middle name is Quentin. The reason my mother named me Quentin is because, in Latin, “Quentin” means “the fifth.” That’s how I got my middle name. My father was a regional sales manager for a big national food company. my mother was a social worker. When I was 15, my father got transferred to Gainesville, Georgia, so we moved there. It’s about 50 miles north of Atlanta[, Georgia]. My first year, I went to Young Harris [College] and then I transferred to the University of Georgia. In fact, the senator from Georgia was a professor there. I got my degree in psychology. and after, I went to Atlanta and walked the streets trying to find a job. Thompson Where’d you end up? Harkey You get discouraged. And I finally went to one of these personnel agencies, and this guy had a connection with insurance companies, and I ended up getting a job with Great American Insurance [Group] in the Claims Department. I went to work for them as their trainee, and they had a class in New York City[, New York], at their home office at 99 John Street, so I went up for that. There were about 15 of us, and I ended up being number one in the class. They decided to transfer me to Fort Lauderdale. This must have been in the summer of [19]67. And while I was at the University of Georgia, I met a young lady and got married and she was from [inaudible] Georgia. We moved to Atlanta, and we rented a place on Peace Tree Hills Road. And our real estate agent was Johnny Isaacson, and now he’s the Senator from Georgia. Actually, I was in [Washington,] D.C., and taking a tour of the White House, and I ran into him. And he says I still own that house—the one on Peace Tree Hills. I moved to Fort Lauderdale and was there for a couple of years. Unfortunately, I got divorced, moved back to Atlanta, and was there for a couple of years, and said, “I want to go back to Florida.” I transferred back to Orlando in ’71, and I’ve been here ever since. One of the interesting claims I handled was when the tower for [WFTV] Channel 9 collapsed in [inaudible]. I found out that they were going to install a cable for [WMFE-TV] Channel 24, and apparently they took out a cross member at the lower level of the tower. and in doing so, they caused it to collapse. It killed three or four people. I remember taking a statement from a farmer. He was out farming on his tractor and saw the thing come down—sort of telescope down—and it went so far and it fell over like a tree. But you had these [inaudible] wires that had been holding it up, and they were the size of a man’s leg. They were pulled out of the ground and several of the people working out there were pushed into the ground when it hit the building. Channel 9 was off the air for about three days, and then they brought in a temporary tower to get them back up and running. That ended up being a very expensive loss for—I was working for IMA at that time. Over the years, you have very interesting cases—when I was in Fort Lauderdale. Once this couple was from Michigan, and they had a [inaudible] where they had their horses. And then they were going to build a place in Fort Lauderdale around [inaudible] Mile, and they had rented an apartment while their house was being built, and it was on the second floor of this apartment house. It was around Christmastime, and she had gone to the bank to get her jewels [inaudible] out of the vault. Apparently, these guys were following her. On this particular evening, her 13-year-old son went downstairs and opened the door to get a drink out of the Coke machine. They were watching, so they came in, went upstairs, and said, “We want your furs and diamonds.” They said, “What are you talking about?” And they said, “Don’t give us any lip.” and they started pistol-whipping her with the gun. They said, “Our son’s coming back. please don’t shoot him.” Anyway, she looked like Natalie Wood and he looked like Sebastian Cabot. All we had was a [inaudible] homeowner’s policy. And when I was taking their statements, he had these gold coins from Rome[, Italy] he had converted into cufflinks, and she had a $50,000 diamond ring. And this was back in 1967. and these furs—the most we could pay was $10,000, but I took the statement from the husband outside of the [City of] Fort Lauderdale Police Department in her Rolls-Royce, and she had her initials on the side “SAS.” They hired a bodyguard to protect them and [inaudible] said, “Hey, what’s going on here?” She went in with the bodyguard to look at mug shots while I took the statement from the husband. That made the newspapers. Thompson Did they ever find the guy? Harkey I don’t remember. It was two or three guys. I had another case where this couple was from Vancouver[, Canada]. And they’d come down to Fort Lauderdale in the winter, and they had a place right on the Intracoastal. They were about six floors up. and they put in a claim, because their jewels, watches, and wallet had been stolen one night. We came to find out that one of these cat burglars had come across the Intracoastal, and had a grappling hook and pulled himself up to the first balcony. And here you are—if you’re overlooking the Intracoastal, you don’t think about locking your sliding glass door. Basically, what he did was go from one condo[minium] to the next all the way to the top. Apparently, he had some kind of aerosol spray, because when they woke up they felt nauseated. He sprayed something to sedate them so they wouldn’t wake up. All he took was the watches, diamonds, and jewels. And when he got to the top, he left with his gunny sack full of goodies. He had some accomplice waiting for him waiting on the street. I had a case where this woman had been an actress on Broadway from about 1910 to about 1920 or ’25, and she had been a friend of Fannie [inaudible]. She was telling me the story of how Nicky Bernstein beat her up. And she told me the story about how her husband was a rich furrier[?] in New York City. And when the [Wall Street] Crash [of 1929] happened, he had such a loss that he went to commit suicide. He tried to do that in New York City, and he jumped off the building. And I forgot how many stories she said it was, but he hit the canvas canopy and slid off. And the doorman went to help him, and he said, “No. don’t help me.” It didn’t kill him. And she said he went to Chicago[, Illinois] and found a taller building and did himself in. Thompson I shouldn’t be laughing, but you’d think he would realize that God had a different plan for him when he jumped off a building and didn’t die. Tell me—I want to hear stories about you when you were young. Stories about Central Florida and what you remember of how things have changed. Harkey Well, I moved here March 25th, 1971. And I can remember going to the grand opening of [Walt] Disney World in October of ‘71. I can remember I was standing there, and they had all the dignitaries walking towards the Magic Kingdom [Park], and here comes Claude [Roy] Kurt[, Jr.], the Governor [of Florida]. And these women that I was standing next to said, “That’s Kirk Douglas.” Another one called him another famous actor, but it was Claude Kurt. So I thought that was interesting that these women thought he was Kirk Douglas. He was a women’s man. He was a lady-killer. He was on his second or third wife when he became governor. Remember, he married this woman<a title="">[1]</a> from Argentina<a title="">[2]</a> that was quite a looker. When I lived in Fort Lauderdale, I dated this girl that was from Palm Beach. And she was a schoolteacher. And they were more like ordinary people—not rich or anything. She invited me up one weekend to go to a wedding, and they had the wedding on the other side of the canal in West Palm [Beach] and then they went to this place called “The Sail Club” on the north end of Palm Beach. And they just had food and booze flowing, and I can remember the couple. They went through the regular routines of a wedding reception afterwards, and they walked off onto the dock. And I guess they got into their parent’s cabin cruise, and sailed off into the sunset. And I said, “Now, that’ the way to get married, and have that type of reception, and then cruise off into the sunset on your honeymoon.” That impressed me. I got involved in Young Republicans [YR] when I came here. This was in 1973. This was where I met my wife-to-be, Cheryl [Harkey]. And I met John [L.]Mica, Rich[ard T.] Crotty, [Antoinette] “Toni” Jennings, Jeanie Austin—who’s now dead and gone, but she was a real leader in the Republican Party. Her history was fascinating. She was from Oklahoma, got married when she was 14, had her first kid when she was 16. When I met her, she was in her late-thirties and was running for president of the YRs. I was running for treasurer that year, so there was a slate of us running for office that year. I became the treasurer, she became the president, and she was working as a secretary at Western Electric [Company]. She ended up working her way up to being the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, and she ended up raising more money than any other state chairman. Then when George [Herbert Walker] Bush became president, [Harvey LeRoy] “Lee” Atwater was the chairman of the Republican National Committee [RNC]. She ended up becoming co-chair of the RNC, so considering her start, she really had a successful… In fact, our club was voted the number one club in the country, and we became the biggest club in Florida. I can remember we had a casino night, and a couple of guys—years before that—had made up this casino equipment. And we raised—we had a budget of $14,000 in 1973 for our club—and we raised about $3,000 on casino night. From there, I became a claims adjuster and had interesting claims, like the ones I’ve mentioned before. Thompson When did you all get married? Harkey In a fever. We met in April and got married in December. so it was love and heat at first sight—love and passion. Then we had our daughter. She already had a little boy from her previous marriage—Greg. Then Marianne [Harkey] was born in February 11, 1978, so we brought her home on Valentine’s Day. I thought that was appropriate. Valentine’s Day for a little girl. Over the years—I was with Great American for six years. Then I went to work for IMA for a while. And then I went to work for an insurance company for [inaudible], and I ended up with CNA [Financial Corporation]. And in ’92, when Mica ran or office—he had been state rep[resentative] in ’76, and I was his campaign coordinator. And he was up there for four years—’76 to ’80—and then in ’80 a guy by the name of [William D.] “Bill” Gorman, who had been a state senator for Orange County, decided he wasn’t going to run again, because Ken [inaudible], who was the Clerk of the Court, decided he wasn’t going to run again. so that left open that state senate position, so Mica ran on that against Toni Jennings, so of course, Toni Jennings won by about 500 votes. He was quite successful and had a very illustrious career. A little side note is that about three years ago, I went to the Orlando [Regional] Realtor Association. They give out an annual award recognizing a person in public service, and they named the award the Toni Jennings Public Service Award. So they invited Mica, and he wasn’t able to come. so I went to receive his award, and I said, “Let me tell you the rest of the story. Mica and Toni Jennings ran against each other years ago, and now it’s kind of ironic that he’s receiving the Toni Jennings Award for Public Service.” Thompson But I want to hear personal stories too. I think you started a good one with—you got married in a fever. That’s like the old song. Where’d you get married? Harkey We got married—oh, let me tell you another story. In YRs—in the Young Republicans—when I met her and John Mica and all the others, we were meeting at the Maitland Civic Center. We had this thing called the “Order of the Elbow.” and the “Order of the Elbow” was—drink. What we would do is, we would meet once a month and set up a little card table, and usually we’d have someone sitting there selling the tickets. Well, Peggy Spagler was selling the tickets that night, and we got raided by the ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives]. And they accused us of selling liquor unlawfully, because you’d buy a ticket, go over to the bar, and get your drink. We thought we were legal. we found out we weren’t. Anyway, they arrested her since she was the one selling the drinks. They didn’t arrest the guys pouring the drinks. she was the one who was taking in the money. They arrested her and took her to jail, and we finally bailed her out about five o’clock in the morning. We ended up having a trial. Lawson Lamar was a young prosecuting attorney at the time. John King was a young judge and then Terry Griffin—he was an attorney in the YRs, so he was the defense attorney. One of the people that was in the YRs at the time was Scott Vandergrift[?], who was the Mayor for Ocoee for years. So we all went in and we testified. and after that, Terry moved or a directed verdict and he told Lawson Lamar, “You know what? You’re barking up the wrong tree.” [Robert] “Bob Egan was the state attorney at that time, and when he heard he had lost that little case, he razzed Lawson Lamar., and one time, I saw Lawson years after that night and kidded him about it and he said, “Yeah. Bob Egan razzed me about losing that case.” Thompson So you were saying that that’s where you met your wife and then you got married. Now, did Cheryl work? Harkey Yeah. She was a schoolteacher. When I met her, she was teaching. I said I always wanted to marry a schoolteacher. I just thought they were the greatest. She was my dream come true. We have two granddaughters. Kelsey’s 15. Morgan’s 11. And then Cheryl’s parents live here in town. He’s a World War II veteran—got a Bronze Star [Medal] and in the Italian Campaign. And they’ve been married for 68 years this November—quite a few years. Her father’s been having problems. He had a near-death experience about a year and a half ago. He had colon cancer, so they did the surgery. He just about didn’t make it. We thought he was going to die a couple of times. He’s managed to keep getting stronger and stronger. He’s an amazing character. He’s from “The Greatest Generation.” They’re tough. So Cheryl’s over there helping her mother take care of him and she needs assistance. Thompson What’s the biggest change you’ve seen since living here since ’71? It’s been 40 years. Harkey The overall growth of the area and the population is not going to stop growing. The SunRail, to me, is going to be a great connector for our community. I was talking with—who heads up the [Central Florida] Zoo [and Botanical Gardens]? Thompson Joe Montesano[?]. Harkey He’s looking forward to where these school kids can hop on the commuter rail and visit the zoo. And people hopping on it to go to a [Orlando] Magic game, and the other thing is that the new Lake Nona [Medical City] that’s being built there on Lake Nona. The Veterans [Affairs] hospital there will be opening next fall, and they’re anticipating a million visitors a year to that facility. Assuming the Governor<a title="">[3]</a> makes the right decision tomorrow. Once we get in that initial footprint for SunRail, there’s a spur that goes over to the [inaudible] OUC [Orlando Utilities Commission] utility plant right there in Taft. It goes around to the underbelly of the [Orlando-International] Airport, and then it goes over to the—well, if you look at [Florida State Road] 417 and where the new Medical City is—on the north side of 417—right in that area is the tracks. And half a mile away is the new Medical City. The beauty of it is that Orlando has a hundred foot [inaudible]. You know, you see almost the tracks. Now these coal[?] trains[?] are a 100-125 cars long, so they’re quite lengthy. And they have four coal[?] trains[?] a week that come here, so all they’ll have to do is do enough double tracking do they can pass. Eventually, they may get them out of here, but I’m not sure when that’s going to happen. but that’s the beauty. Once we get this thing up, then all these veterans will be able to hop on that commuter rail and—phase one is the one we’re looking at right now. that would just be 31 miles from [inaudible] to Sand Lake Road. We get that in, and it looks like it’s going to be the spring of 2014. They’ll be able to take a bus to the new VA [Veterans Affairs] facility, but eventually it’ll be where they can take a train. Thompson Well, the train will stop in Sanford, right? Harkey Yeah. We’re going to have four stops in Seminole County: Sanford, Lake Mary, Longwood, and Altamonte [Springs]. We’ll all have our own station. Thompson And it’ll be right at the same place where… Harkey Well, the Sanford station is actually going to be on the north side of [Florida State Road] 46, right where [West] Airport Boulevard comes into 46. So it’s not going to be at the auto train location and it’s not going to be where the old station used to be. That’s been torn down—the old Amtrak station. Thompson So Airport and 46—that’s right there before you go over the… Harkey It’s just a little east of where [the] Wayne Densch [Performing Arts Center] is. That’s where the station’s going to be. In fact, I think there’s some electrical transformers close to that area. I was talking with Mark McCarty, the new [Sanford] City Commissioner… Thompson He’s a real friend of Creative Sanford[, Inc.] and Celery Soup. He built our snowman. Harkey In fact, I saw him last week. And they had the groundbreaking for the new performing arts center<a title="">[4]</a> in Orlando, and he’s talking about putting together a trolley from Downtown Sanford to go over to the new station once that’s built. Thompson Well, we have a shuttle that comes from Amtrak, and it comes right here beside the [Sanford] Welcome Center. And people bring their suitcases in, and leave them here, and then they can spend the day. Harkey Oh, so they were currently doing it—these are the British tourists that come in here? Thompson Well, no. it’s whoever comes in on Amtrak—usually Americans. They bring whatever their baggage is off the train. Harkey Oh, so you already have a little shuttle service. I didn’t realize that. That’s the excitement of the commuter rail. In fact—this was about two weeks ago—the Congressman met with people from northwest Orange County and Lake County, because there’s the Florida Central Railroad that goes from Downtown Orlando—you know where the Bob Carr [Performing Arts Centre] is? Behind the Sheraton [Orlando Downtown] Hotel are some tracks, and those tracks come right into the CSX [Transportation] tracks and they go out over to [Florida State Road] 441 and sort of parallel go up through Lockhart, through Apopka, up towards Mount Dora, Tavares, Eustis. So those tracks are there, and they’re looking forward to creating their own Orange Blossom Express. We had a nice meeting about two or three weeks ago where the Congressman brought down the chairman of the board for this company called US Railcar, and they used to be called Colorado Railcar. and those were the vehicles we were going to get for our railroad, but they went bankrupt. Well, a company out of Columbus, Ohio, called US Rail purchased them, so now they’re still making the same vehicles out of Columbus. So the people over on the Florida Central would be looking at using those vehicles to provide that commuter rail service and they say eventually the people from The Villages could come over. They would go as far north as Eustis and Tavares on this proposed commuter rail service they’re talking about. Eventually, we can have service going over to the airport, and to the new Medical City, and Apopka, and Tavares, and Mount Dora—in that area. This SunRail system—once it gets going, it’ll just keep migrating out and it’ll provide our community with opportunity. Florida Hospital is planning on having a “health village.” They’ve got 80 acres down, and it would be where people would live there, and they’d have a complex where they’d have offices, shops, dry cleaners, restaurants, etc. Thompson For the families of people who are living in the hospital? Harkey No. It’ll be for the workers there. They’ve got 17,000 employees. I think Lars Holman[?], who’s the CEO of Florida Hospital, said the [Florida Hospital] Health Village is going to cost about $250 million. They’re planning of doing a development in that blank area between the courthouse and LYNX [Rapid Transit Services]. It’s just vacant. It’s going to be developed into quite a complex, so there’s a lot of economic development coming with this SunRail. I’ve been approached by people from outside—from the Northeast saying, “When this happens, here’s what we want to do.” The other ripple effect of the SunRail is the $432 million that Florida is paying CSX. they’re reinvesting it all back into Florida. They’re putting $40 million into upgrading the Jackson Port and the S Line, which runs down the center of the state. They’re upgrading that. And then they have this [Winter Haven] Integrated Logistics Center [ILC] in Winter Haven that they’ll be building, and when it’s fully developed it’ll employ about 8,000 people. The other thing is that the Panama Canal is being expanded and will be completed so they can have these super cargo ships come through. CSX has a line that goes over close to the Port of Manatee that they can extend to dockside, and that would become a major harbor for exporting and importing in the IOC. And Winter Haven will become a major distribution hub, not only in Florida, but for the entire east coast. It’ll take the big truck traffic off of [Interstate Highway] 95 and [Interstate Highway] 75 because of this. This is the ripple effect of how that money is been reinvested by CSX into the state to create more jobs. So the naysayers aren’t really doing their homework. they’re just looking at the cost and saying, “We can’t afford it.” Hopefully, the governor will make the right decision there. This would have been in 1955, and one of my older sisters was going to Appalachian College in Boone, North Carolina, and she met this football player and they married. They’re celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary several years ago. He was from Hollywood, Florida, so we decided to go down to Hollywood, Florida, for vacation that summer. This was in 1955, before we had the interstate. Gosh, we started out, and we were going into South Georgia. All of us were in the car, except my oldest sister. she was already married so she didn’t go on the vacation with us. Thompson So it was your mom and dad and four kids? Harkey My father was, like I said, the regional sales manager, so he was actually in Miami working. so it was five of us driving down in the car. We got as far south as Folkston, Georgia. And my brother was driving, and I remember it was raining, and he was going too fast, and there was this car up ahead. I remember it was a 1952 Ford, and there was an African-American couple in there that had stopped, because a herd of sheep had gone across the road. and he misjudged his speed and we ran into the rear of them. Luckily, it wasn’t a bad crash, but it did bend in our right front fender, so we did have to go to a shop and have that pulled back out. But otherwise, we kept moving. We spent the first night in Jacksonville, and then we got down to Fort Pierce. My oldest brother and older sister were taking turns driving, so they got into Fort Pierce. And we had a ’53 Buick at the time—straight [inaudible]. And we came up to a traffic light and my mother decided to change drivers. So as they’re rolling over each other, my mother forgot to put it in park, and one of them put their foot on the gas. we shot out into the middle and there came a ’51 black Buick and we broadsided it. That stopped us, and, of course, Beverly [Harkey] got the ticket. We called up my future brother-in-law’s parents and told them what happened. Well, he had an old ’49 [inaudible]. Well, he got in the car and came to pick us up. And I didn’t think he was going to ever get there, and I didn’t think we’d ever get back to Hollywood. but we were there for the week and my father spent his time going up to Fort Pierce checking on the car. Luckily, they got it fixed within the week. He had had to go up to Fort Pierce to get it down to Hollywood, so we could drive it back home. On the way home, we didn’t stop and we didn’t go back U.S. [Route] 1. We took [U.S. Route] 27—right through the center of the state. We actually stopped in Orlando. And we had a big discussion, because one of my mother’s aunts lived in Williston, and she wanted to go over and see her and it was mutiny. “No, no., we’re not going over to see Aunt May. We’re going home.” Finally, she said, “Okay.” We were in Orlando probably around Park Lake or someplace like that, when we pulled over to have our mutiny, and the mutineers won. I thought I wasn’t going to live to make it home. Until I started driving—this was 1955, so I would have been 13 at the time—I was afraid to go anywhere, because I didn’t think I would make it back alive. In ’57, when we moved from Charlotte to Gainesville—we moved in the summer—and my brother was going to be in 12th grade. He didn’t really want to move, because it was going to be his last year in high school. Since it was going to be his senior year, he was thinking of living with somebody, rather than moving to Gainesville. That Christmas, he and my oldest brother went back to Charlotte for Christmas parties. My oldest brother had been out to California with some friends, and they had worked out there, and just gotten back. And this one guy, who was a friend of my oldest brother,<a title="">[5]</a> had too much to drink. So this guy at the [inaudible] said, “I’ll take him home.” but he didn’t realize we had moved and my older brother didn’t think about it. The house we had over there on Kingston [Avenue]—the people we had sold it to—they had taken in these boarders. so when—and back then, you didn’t lock your door/ so he just went in through the front door, went upstairs, and put him in bed. The next day, he woke up and saw this guy on this other bed across the room and he said, “This looks familiar. Where am I?” The guy said, “You’re at 715 East Kingston Avenue.” He said, “Oh my God.” He got up and ran out front door. He was so embarrassed. Thompson And he never told him who he was? Harkey I think the lady we sold the house to was laughing, because it was so funny. Thompson It sounds like you had some wild brothers. Now, how many boys and how many girls? Harkey Three boys and two girls. It was girl, girl, boy, boy, boy. I was the youngest. Robbie became an attorney. He went Emory [University] undergrad and Emory Law School. And he was with Delta Air lines, Inc. for 35 years and was very successful, and lives in a very big, expensive house out there in Atlanta. My other brother was a lobbyist, and he lives on the [inaudible] outside of Charleston[, South Carolina] and he had a scare when Hurricane Hugo hit there. His house, luckily, was spared, but he’s only about a block away from the ocean there. One of my sisters stayed in Charlotte—the oldest. When they put through I[nterstate Highway] 85 years ago, she married one of five brothers. And when the parents died, the farm was divided up, and I-85 went right through the farm. She has 23 acres on the northwest quadrant of Mallard Church Creek Road and I-85, which is not that far from NASCAR [,National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing]. so she’s sitting on a gold mine and she has four kids. Thompson And it hasn’t been developed? Harkey It’s coming out that way. It just keeps growing that way. My other sister lives out in Helen, Georgia, which is about 75 miles north, and they have an Oktoberfest up there. What they did is they turned Helen into a Bavarian village. Years ago, these businessmen from Gainesville, Georgia, were in Bavaria[, Germany], and they came up with an idea and said, “Let’s go back to Helen and ask all the owners if they’ll convert their storefronts into a Bavarian type of…” So they all agreed and it’s now a resort. They have tubing there and we went up there in [20]07 for my sister and her husband’s 50th wedding anniversary. Thompson Did you have any stories around racial lines? Around integration? Anything like that? Harkey Well, I can say that when we were growing up, we had maids in the house. In fact, Geneva was part of the family, and my mother paid her $7 a week. She would come over and cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She was a great maid that we had. My parents were always very accepting. They weren’t bigoted types. My mother, like I said, was a social worker for 40 years. Thompson I was talking to somebody about the book titled The Help. and the people in the book say that the employers wouldn’t allow their black help to use their bathrooms. I never heard that before. Harkey No. When I was growing up, I knew that either you were black or white. Water fountains were segregated. Thompson But in your home when she worked for you, she used your bathroom? Harkey Of course. Thompson You see, I had never heard that either, because our Ovella was like a second mother to us. We had an amazing story. I’m down here in Florida, and she lives up in Knoxville[, Tennessee]. And I hadn’t seen her in a year or two, but for some reason, I just started thinking about her and thinking about her. and I said, “I’ve got to send her some money.” I talked to my husband and I said, “I’ve been having these dreams about Ovella and I want to give her some money.” He said, “Well, how much money?” I said, “I want to give her $5,000.” I had never given her more than $100 at any other time. Maybe at Christmas, if I was up there, I’d give her $50 or $100. I didn’t call her or say, “Money’s coming.” I just wrote her a little note telling her that I loved her and put in a check. and she called me and she said they had been praying for a new roof on their house. That was what they used the $5,000 for. My point is that somebody—not your family, not your close relative—you’ve got such a close connection that their prayers came to me for some reason. Luckily, we had the money and we could spare it. I had never heard of this and a bunch of us are going to go watch The Help when it comes out. Gino had said they had hired a lady and she kept going out to the garage or someplace. And he said, “Why are you doing that?” And they said, “Well, we can’t use the bathroom in the house.” He said, “What do you mean you can’t use the bathroom in the house? Of course you can use the bathroom in the house.” That must have been a common thing—maybe Deep South, because I had never heard of it living in Tennessee. Harkey Well, my final story will be when I got burned as a kid. I was eight years old. It was in May of 1950. And the Retans lived down the street from us, and we had this thing of cleaning our bicycles—you know, the sprockets—how to get them oily. We had decided to clean all of our bicycles. Take the rear wheel off, take the sprockets off, and clean them with gasoline, put them back together. We had these little Maxwell House coffee cans, so we did it and cleaned them off. We were eating supper, and then Robbie and I went back down to the Retans’, and somebody left a book of matches on the back steps. So, for whatever reason, I went over, opened the matches and struck it, and then I just tossed it without noticing where I tossed it. Then I turned around and walked over and was looking down into the [inaudible] when it exploded. It was like a cannon, and this gasoline shot out my left leg, and caught me on fire, and I started screaming. Luckily, we had a hose that was set up with the pistol grip, and so my brother—he told me to roll and he put it out. I was in the hospital for three months and I underwent eight skin graft surgeries. Initially, it was just my baby doctor who was treating me. They had just put this gook on me. My mother said, “This is not going to work. Something’s got to be done.” The doctor apparently thought she could handle it, but my mother went to the nurses and said, “You know, you need a specialist.” so they brought in Dr. Jacobs. He was a World War II doctor and had seen a lot of war injuries. and so he’s the one who did the skin graft surgeries on me. Thompson With all those parts, I was afraid you were going to tell that, when it exploded, the parts were like shrapnel coming out of there. They could have injured you too. Harkey It was the gasoline that blew up, not the parts themselves. And luckily, it was below the knee. They said if it had been over the knee, it would have probably crippled me. It was third-degree burns. That was the traumatic event of my life. It changed me a little bit. Thompson Well, what made you afraid of driving until you started driving? Were they just such wild drivers? Harkey I just wasn’t in control and I didn’t trust anybody. Once I started driving, I didn’t have that fear, because I started driving. Wait, there’s one more story I’ve got. This was at the [inaudible] Methodist Church there in Charlotte. And we were about a block away from the church and me and Hugh Walker—he was the youngest of five—he just had one brother and three sisters. We hung out and we were in the [Boy] Scouts [of America] together. The church usually had Wednesday night supper, and they had these big five gallon size peaches that they would use and throw the cans out back. Well, we saw those and said, “Those would make great tom-toms.” so we started beating them. And we went over to where the choir director had his teenage group practicing, and we were outside beating on those things. My mother and both of my oldest sisters were in the choir, so he knew them real well. When he heard us beating on those things, he came out chasing us. Well, we ran out to the back of the church, around to the north side of the church, between the pastor’s [inaudible], around the front of the church. He was closing in on us, but he had on these wing-tipped leather bottom shoes. and then we got to this area of the sidewalk where it had a thin layer of sand. As soon as he stepped on that sand with those wing-tipped leather shoes, his feet came out from under him and he just busted his rear end. My friend Hugh Walker—I call him “Wookah.” I said, “Wookah, should we go back and help him?” He said, “Hell no.” My mother said he never mentioned it to her, but he was probably so embarrassed that he busted his rear end. <div> <div> <a title="">[1]</a> Erika Mattfeld. </div> <div> <a title="">[2]</a> Correction: Germany. </div> <div> <a title="">[3]</a> Richard "Rick" Lynn Scott. </div> <div> <a title="">[4]</a> Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. </div> <div> <a title="">[5]</a> Robbie Harkey. </div> </div> African Americans Airport Boulevard Altamonte Springs Amtrak Antoinette Jennings Apopka ATF Atlanta, Georgia Beverly Harkey Bill Gorman Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre Bob Egan Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives campaign coordinators campaigns Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play Central Florida Zoo and Botanical Gardens Channel 24 Channel 9 Charlotte, North Carolina Cheryl Harkey church churches city commissioners claims adjusters Claims Department Claude R. Kirk, Jr. Claude Roy Kirk, Jr. CNA Financial Corporation Creative Sanford, Inc. CSX Transportation Dick Quentin Harkey Downtown Orlando Downtown Sanford Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts Erika Mattfeld Eustis Florida Central Railroad Florida Hospital Health Village Florida State Road 417 Florida State Road 441 Florida State Road 46 Fort Lauderdale Gainesville, Georgia George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker Bush Governor of Florida governors Great American Insurance Group Harvey LeRoy Atwater hospitals Hugh Walker ILC IMA insurance Intracoastal Waterway IOC Isaacson Jackson Port Jacobs Jeanie Austin Joe Montesanto John King John Luigi Mica John Mica John Street Kirk Douglas Lake Mary Lake Nona Lake Nona Medical City Lawson Lamar Lee Atwater Lockhart Longwood Magic Kingdom Park maids Maitland Civic Center Manatee Port Marianne Harkey Mark McCarty Maxwell House Methodists Mount Dora New York City, New York Nicky Bernstein Orange Blossom Express orange county Order of the Elbow orlando Orlando Regional Realtor Association Orlando Utilities Commission OUC Pam Beach Panama Canal Peace Tree Hills Road Peggy Spagler race relations railroads railways Republican National Committee Republican Party of Florida Republicans Retan Rich Crotty Richard Lynn Scott Richard T. Crotty Rick Scott RNC Robbie Harkey Robert Egan S Line Sand Lake Road Sanford Sanford City Commission Sanford Welcome Center Scott Vandergrift segregation Spagler, Peggy SR 417 SR 441 SR 46 state representatives state senators SunRail Taft Tavares Terry Griffin The Help The Sail Club Toni Jennings Toni Jennings Public Service Award Trish Thompson U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs University of Georgia US Railcar Company Wall Street Crash of 1929 Walt Disney World West Palm Beach WFTV William D. Gorman Winter Haven Winter Haven Integrated Logistics Center WMFE-TV Young Harris College Young Republicans YR https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/08737fd3f9c09f7e3f53551fdb26e188.pdf 877aa2ecefbb09034c048424c251d252 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title Creative Sanford, Inc. Collection Alternative Title Creative Sanford Collection Subject Seminole County (Fla.) Folk plays Sanford (Fla.) Description Creative Sanford, Inc. is a non-profit organization created to manage Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play community theater productions. The original idea for the Celery Soup project came from Jeanine Taylor, the owner of a folk-art gallery on First Street in Sanford, Florida. Their first production was Touch and Go, a play focusing on the people of Sanford and their determination to overcome various obstacles, including the Freeze of 1894-1895, the fall of Sanford's celery industry, and the closing of Naval Air Station (NAS) Sanford in the 1960s. In the process of producing the show, Creative Sanford decided to rehabilitate an historic building, the Princess Theater, which is located on 115 West First Street and owned by Stephen Tibstra. The Creative Sanford offices are housed in the Historic Sanford Welcome Center, located at 203 East First Street. Is Part Of <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/16" target="_blank">Sanford Collection</a>, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida. <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/44" target="_blank">Seminole County Collection</a>, RICHES of Central Florida. Language eng Type Collection Coverage Historic Sanford Welcome Center, Downtown Sanford, Florida Princess Theater, Downtown Sanford, Florida Curator Cepero, Laura Digital Collection <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a> External Reference "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">WHO IS CREATIVE SANFORD, INC?</a>" Celery Soup. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about. "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/" target="_blank">About: History and Purpose</a>." Celery Soup. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/. "<a href="http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida" target="_blank">Sanford, Florida: How do you make Celery Soup? Add stories, then stir</a>." Community Performance International. http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida. Contributor <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee Copper, Odetta Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title Oral History of Odetta Copper Alternative Title Oral History, Copper Subject Sanford (Fla.) Orlando (Fla.) Celery Agriculture--Florida Fishing--Florida Holidays--Florida Description An oral history of 89-year-old Odetta Copper (b. 1921), who was born on June 26, 1921, in France, Florida. She migrated to Sanford in 1946. Copper tells of her strict upbringing and the hardship she faced when growing up with her parents and nine siblings. In the interview, she also describes what it was like working on the farm, what holidays were like, and how times have changed. Type Text Source Copper, Odetta. Interviewed by Bev [last name unknown]. February 25, 2010. Audio record available. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford Florida. Requires <a href="https://get.adobe.com/reader/" target="_blank">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a> Is Part Of <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford Florida. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc. Collection</a>, Sanford Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida. Is Format Of Digital transcript of original oral history: Copper, Odetta. Interviewed by Bev [last name unknown]. February 25, 2010. Audio record available. Celery Soup. Coverage France, Orlando, Florida St. Johns River, Florida Midway, Sanford, Florida Creator Copper, Odetta Date Created 2010-02-25 Format application/pdf Extent 170 KB Medium 15-page digital transcript Language eng Mediator History Teacher Provenance Originally created by Odetta Copper and transcribed by Freddie Román-Toro. Rights Holder Copyright to this resource is held by <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> and is provided here by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a> for educational purposes only. Accrual Method Donation Contributing Project <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Celery Soup</a> Curator Román-Toro, Freddie Digital Collection <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a> Source Repository <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> External Reference "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Celery Soup</a>." Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/. "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Celery Soup</a>." Creative Sanford, Inc.. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/. Flewellyn, Valada S. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/320804616" target="_blank">African Americans of Sanford</a>. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Pub, 2009. Hurt, R. Douglas. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/56422251" target="_blank">African American Life in the Rural South, 1900-1950</a>. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003. Transcript Bev Mrs. Odetta [Copper], tell me something about yourself. Tell me where you grew up. Anything you want to share with me about yourself. Copper You grow up in a different way now. I wasn’t bad. We wasn’t bad, ‘cause you couldn’t be bad back then, ‘cause dey put da whoop on ya, an’ well, ain’t ever been too much until I got up kind of in my teens. It was kind of rough. I mean, got up grown or about 25-26. I was wild fo’ a while, but I finally come here, an’ it used to be kind of rough. Bev Where did you grow up? Copper I growed[sic] up in West Florida. Bev Do you remember the name of the town? Copper Dey call it France, Florida. Bev What was it like growing up there? Copper It was all form of work. School, go fo’ work, pick cotton, go to school, an’ all dat. Bev When did you come to Sanford? Copper I come to Sanford in [19]46. Bev And have you been here since? Copper Ever since. I think I was 25 or 26 when I come down here. Bev What are some of the memorable experiences you had growing up? Copper Nothin’, but getting whoopins when I need one, ‘cause at dat time, my mutha, right—it be dark when she go to work. It be dark when she come home. And we was home by ourself[sic], and she tell us to don’t go out in da yard. We didn’t go out in da yard. We had a dog. If da kids try to come in da yard, you put da dogs on da kids, ‘cause she said she didn’t want da kids there. My mama didn’t play. She’d put da whoop on you. You did what she say[sic] to do. If you did sumthin’ one time, an’ she told you not to do it, you wouldn’t do it no mo’. She didn’t whoop da clothes. She’d tell you straight, “Come at my clothes. Dey cost too much money. [inaudible] of what God gives you.” Yeah. She wasn’t playin’. Bev Are you an only child or do you have brothers and sisters? Copper Yeah, there was ten of us, but I’m da second oldest. My oldest brother—he died. When Mama told you not to do a thang, she meant for you not to do it, but you didn’t get in trouble too much back den at dat time. Children didn’t get in trouble too much back den. Bev Did you know your grandparents when you were growing up? Copper I know my granmutha, Mary, and I know dat was my mama’s mutha, an’ I had aunts. My aunts an’ my uncles—I know dem, an’ some of dem—I know dem. Yeah. Bev Do you have any memorable experiences with any of them? Any story about your grandmother? Any experiences you had with any of your uncles that you’d like to share? Did you do anything with your grandmother? Copper Well, not too much. We visited ‘er now and den, but my grandmamma was better to me dan my mama was, ‘cause my grandmamma didn’t ever whoop me, but my mama whoop me. I had a good granmutha. My granmutha lived ‘til my first child was born. She died after my first child was born, so I was wit ‘er—well, I wasn’t wit ‘er—but I visited ‘er ‘til I was about 17 years old. Den I had my first baby. Yeah, it wasn’t like it is now. It wasn’t wild like it is now. Little girls were somethin’ else back then. Dey was somethin’ else. Bev What are some of the things they would do? What are some of the things teenagers would do when you were a teenager? Copper When I was a teenager, I went to school. I didn’t give da teacha no trouble. I think I got one whoopin’ in school one time, ‘bout fightin’ in da class. I got a whoopin’ ‘bout dat. Bev Do you remember why you fought? Copper Yeah, da boy was named Douglas. He told hisself[sic] he liked me, an’ I didn’t like ‘im, an’ we was in a class—in a class standin’ up, an’ he stepped on my foot, an’ when he stepped on my foot, I went upside his head wit my fist, an’ I got a whoopin’ there. Both of us got a whoopin’ in da school fo’ fightin’, an’ she took me home an’ told mama what she whoop me fo’. Yeah. Bev And did your mama beat you again? Copper No, Mama didn’t beat me no more. Bev Do you have any pleasant, wonderful experiences from your childhood? Copper No. Bev Nothing was happy about your childhood? Copper No, all I used to do—when I went into school, a lot of white folks back up there at dat time what had babies an’ thangs. I would go out an’ take care of dey[sic] babies fo’ ‘em you know. Tend to dey babies an’ all. I’d go out ‘til it was nightfall, an’ den I’d have to go out there an’ help ‘er when she gettin’ ready to milk the cows. I’d go out there—an’ thangs like dat. It wasn’t like today. I didn’t ever get in no trouble worth nuthin’, but getting’ a whoopin’ from Mama. Bev So you came to Sanford—you said in 1946? Tell me what it was like in Sanford then. Copper It wasn’t like it is now. It was more friendly[sic] then. Da people was[sic] more friendly[sic]. Most of da people den were workin’ on the farm. Dis used to be a farmin’ place. All dis used to be farm. All of it used to be farm mostly. Bev Any other changes from the time you came? Copper It changed a whole lot. It’s not like it had been—like it used to be. Dey didn’t fight an’ kill like dey do now. Dey didn’t do dat. People more friendly[sic], but right now, people walk by you, dey don’t even speak to you. You be sittin’ down right there, an’ dey walk by, dey don’t even speak. If dey see you, dey try to head da other way. People wasn’t makin’ much money back in dem days. I work 50 hours a week fo’ $22.50 a week. Dat’s all I got, an’ so now people makin’ a lil’ more now. It’s different now. Bev Were things as expensive as they are now? So $22.50 a week could buy… Copper No, you could get a pair of sock fo’ 15 cent an’ all that, an’ da clothes wasn’t like it is now. You could take $10 or $12, an’ go buy enough clothes. Den you had to buy fo’ two weeks without goin’ back to da store, but you can’t do dat now. Bev What was it like working on the farm? You said you came here to work on the celery farm. What was it like? What hours did you do? When did you start work? And how long did you have to work? And what did you have to do on the farm? Copper We’d work from—we start da work—we start at seven fast in da spring, an’ we work ‘til da fall of da year. You had to set da plants, den you had to get a—gather da vegg’bles. And den after dat, it plant sweet corn an’ dat’s da last crop. One year, we planted cotton behind da sweet corn. So we had a year-round job that time. When da cotton come up, we had to thin da cotton out. Den had to keep da grass out da cotton. Den when da cotton got ready to pick. We had to pick da cotton. Work da whole year round. It was a lil’ better den dan it is now. It was nice when we first come[sic] down here. It was nice. Used to have a lot of fun. We’d enjoy ourself[sic] out there on da farm all day long. Nobody wasn’t—didn’t act like dey was tired, or dey didn’t say dey was tired, ‘cause more of dem was in dey twenties. Might’ve been a few maybe thirties. The oldest was over us, so we used to have a lotta fun out there. Nobody ever fighted[sic] out there on the farm. Bev What did you do on the weekends when you weren’t working? What would you do to socialize? Copper Go fishin’. I take my two children an’ go fishin’. Bev Where did you go? Copper Sometimes out to da [St. Johns] River. Sometimes out to da lakes an’ thangs. Go out. Bev Did you catch a lot? Copper Yeah, ‘cause a lotta times, when I get out from work on da farm, I had da children meet me down at da [inaudible] of da road, an’ my pole it breaked[sic], an’ I be done work [inaudible] in da summertime [inaudible]. Then I go on down to da lake—down there an’ fish ‘til dark. Bev So I’m sure you ate some of the fish that you caught. Did you sell any of them or did you give some away? Copper Said—did I eat ‘em? We ate ‘em [laughs]. Bev You had fish fries. That’s good. Copper Yeah, so I ate those fish. There was some nice, big fish down—there’s da Saint Johns River right down there. Bev Do you remember what kind of fish you were catching? Copper Well, it was all kind of fish down there. Dey musta had freshwater muddies<a title="">[1]</a> down there, but I don’t know. Back den dey called it “taste muddy.” Dey taste different dan da saltwater muddies, but dey had blue gills. Dey had shell crackles. Dey always had slammed[?] brim, an’ big catfish, an’ all dat. I enjoyed all of dat, but it’s been a long time since I been fishin’, ‘cause I can’t move around no mo’. You know I’m lookin’ at 90 years now. Bev You’re going to be 90? Congratulations. Copper The 26th of this June comin’ in, an’ I’ll be 90 years old. Bev And I hope you have many more birthdays, and live to see your great-great-great-great granddaughters and grandsons. Copper [inaudible] is my granddaughter. She’s my great-granddaughter, but she look more like she my child, yet she [inaudible] my grandchild. I got six generations. I just give da good Lord thanks every day fo’ keepin’ me here dis long, ‘cause I told ‘im I know I was bad a lil’ while, but not long. Bev The foods you were eating growing up—was it different from what you’re eating now? Do you think that helps you to live long? Copper Yeah, we didn’t hardly have to buy nothin’, but da flour meal is still called [inaudible]. Always planted a garden, an’ we had plenty vegg’bles. Plenty of it. We go fishin’ an’ catch fish. And we have sweet potatoes—had two bags of sweet potatoes in da backyard, an’ had white potatoes stored up under da house—in the dirt up under da house. We had plenty food. Plenty food. When dey’d buy syrup, dey’d buy it in a barrel keg like dat—wood, an’ had a sticker on it, but when she get ready fo’ us to have syrup, she’d always throw it out da sticker, an’ stand up there on the table [inaudible], ‘cause she’d be goin’ to work. Mama come home one day. My brutha—my oldest brutha— he done told hisself[sic], he gonna get some mo’ syrup. It wasn’t enough fo’ him. When dey open the barrel—dey open da screw on da barrel—he didn’t know how to put it back, an’ dat was bad. Syrup was everywhere. When Mama come [laughs] an’ syrup was everywhere. Bev Did he get a whoopin’? Copper You know, he used to wear a shirt so long, it feel like it was a dress, but it would be [inaudible] pants, but Mama made ‘im come out dem thangs—come out dat shirt an’ dem pants. [inaudible] den she put ‘er foot in his back like dat, an’ she had three of dem [inaudible,] an’ had dem [inaudible] together, an’ she would whoop ‘im a while. She’d tell da child’n havin’ my [inaudible]. She’d talk to ‘im again, an’ she start back whoopin’ again. Dat woman gonna kill ‘im. Dat’s what I always said to myself, but one day she got me too. Dat woman put a whoopin’ on me. Dat woman whoop me. I had blood an’ blisters from here all da way down. Bev What did you do to get that whoopin’? Copper Tryin’ to think what I had—sumthin’ she told me not to do, but I did it anyhow, but I done forgot what it was, but when dat woman [inaudible], you betta not even whimper. Don’t you whimper. You betta not whimper. You be hurtin’ so bad inside you wanna bust [laughs]. “Mama, mama. Can I—can—can I—go to da bathroom?” She said, “You better not [inaudible].” [laughs]. Bev You better hurry up and go. Copper I’d go out to da bathroom, an’ I’d crank da door to see, but she comin’ toilet. I says, “Lord, I wish dat ol’ black woman would die.” [laughs] Mama didn’t play. Bev Did she live very long? How old was she when she died? Copper Mama was 67 to 68 when she died. Bev So she lived long. Copper But I had a good mama. We didn’t suffer fo’ nuthin.’ I had a good mama. She made a life fo’ us. She work nights. She work all day long. It be[sic] dark when she go to work. It be dark when she come back, but she didn’t go to bed ‘til she cooked an’ fix us food—‘fore she went to bed. She leave dat food on da stove. She leave bread pack up like dat—cake bread—a pot of beans, a pot of greens, or sumthin’ like dat. enough to last us all day long, an’ we wasn’t hungry, ‘cause we [inaudible] just playin’ all da time, an’ we had a lotta fruit trees around us, an’ we’d eat da fruit too you know. So I had a good mom. She whoop me, but I had a good mom. Bev What about your dad? Was he around? Did he go to work? Copper No, he’s always camped out. Mama was just home wit us, but he would come home ‘bout every week or every two weeks, an’ stay da weekend, but he would go back, ‘cause he was workin.’ Bev Do you know where he went for work? Was it in Florida or was it another state? Copper [inaudible] at dat time, mens[sic] was doin’ [inaudible] work. I know you heard the tale of [inaudible] work. He was [inaudible] down there. He was ‘bout 10 or 12 miles from when where we was stayin’ at, but he whoop my brutha one time. He whoop my brutha—my oldest brutha—but we didn’t know we was stealin’. We didn’t know dat. He went over in Mr. Lang’s[?] field an’ got a watermelon—there was a watermelon field, an’ he was way out there da way he was at. My dad—Mr. Lang’s[?] house was way over there. You just could see it. Papa come over there, an’ cut da watermelon, an’ ate it, an’ da seeds an’ thangs. He seen dem, an’ ask us where we get it from, an’ [inaudible] I said, “[inaudible] went over there in dat field an’ got us a watermelon.” He said, “[inaudible], don’t you know Mr. Lang[?] woulda come by there an’ find you in dat field, he’da shot ya? He’da kill’d ya.” So he put a whoopin’ on my brutha. Den my mama happen to come down there to get us, an’ my brutha was still sick. He was throwin’ up blood, an’ den my mutha had it, and we didn’t ever stay wit him no more. Never. Bev Now, you came here in 1946. And since then, your family has been here, like you and your two kids. And all your other generations were born and raised in Sanford, right? When you came here, did you have your two kids with you or you had them here? Copper No, I had ‘em from when I come here. Bev So all their kids were born here? Okay, so you started a trend here in Sanford. Copper Yeah, all of ‘em were born here. Bev As a family, did you talk about things like ghost stories? Did you tell ghost stories growing up? Copper No. Bev What did you do for Halloween? Copper I ain’t do nuthin’ for Halloween. Da only thing we know about holidays is Christmas an’ Easter. Bev Tell us about Christmas and Easter when you were growing up. Copper Dey would dress us up fo’ Easter, but Christmas—we didn’t get toys like child’n get ‘em now, but we would have more fruit dan we would have anythin’ else. Apples, an’ oranges, an’ stuff like dat, candy, but we didn’t have da toys. Every now and den, you might get a doll. Da first doll I got—my baby brutha throwed[sic] my doll in da fireplace an’ burnt dat one up [laughs]. Den da next one I got—not da same baby, but anotha one of da babies—tore da head off my baby. Course, we didn’t get toys like dey get ‘em now. You didn’t even see ‘em den. Bev What kind of preparations did your parents make for Christmas? Did you do anything special? Did you go to church? Copper Dey cooked. Dat’s all. Yeah, cooked cake, [inaudible,] make some kinda meat. Kill goats, kill cows, kill hogs, an’ I couldn’t stand to see it. I’d have to go wit ‘em to kill da hogs—killin’ ‘em thangs. Dey’d shoot da hogs. I’d be runnin’ around da house to hide. I couldn’t stand to see it. The goats—dey’d kill ‘em. My stepdaddy [inaudible] the knife right in front of da goat—da knife dey’d cut da goat’s throat, an’ da goat was so pitiful, an’ he’s cussin’, an’ goin’ after ‘em, ‘fore dey even go [inaudible]. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t see ‘em kill dat goat. Dey’d hang da goat up there on da thang up there, an’ dey cut da goat up. I wouldn’t eat it. I didn’t eat da goat meat. I didn’t eat da cow meat, an’ I mighta had some hog meat, but dat cow an’ dat goat—I couldn’t eat it to save my life. Mama said, “Well, if you can’t eat dis, you must be goin’ eat some dry bread.” and I said, “Well, I’ll just get my dry bread.” And what’s da otha one she had? Some kinda vegg’ble. I’d get dat, but I couldn’t eat dat stuff. I couldn’t even cook it [inaudible]. I couldn’t smell it cookin’. My husband would always have to put da beef meat on and cook it. I couldn’t stand da scent of it. made me sick. And right now, I don’t eat it. I have never had da goat. Never. Bev What are some of the things you like to eat? Copper I tell you da truth. It ain’t very much I like right now. Nuthin', but I got to eat sumthin’, ‘cause I got to take my 10 pills a day. So I have to eat sumthin.’ because it ain’t got no taste to me now. Can’t tell exactly what I’m eatin,’ but I know I’m eatin.’ I have to eat a lil’ mouthful of sumthin.’ Bev I want to go back a little to when you came with your kids. You would go to the plantation, and you would work on the farm. And then after work and on the weekends, you’d go fishing. What kind of activities did you do with your kids outside of fishing? Did you go to church on Sundays? What was school like for them? Copper Yeah, my child’n went to school. When a movie come in, right—a show come, I take ‘em myself to da show. I’d be tired, but I would take ‘em to da show. [inaudible] I’d be there wit ‘em ‘til da show was over. I would let ‘em go to da movies, but I would tell ‘em what time. I would know what time da movies turn out, an’ I’d be sittin’ there waitin’ on ‘em, ‘cause dey used to catch da bus to go to da movie, an’ catch da bus to come back. So da oldest girl catch da bus to come on home, but my baby girl, she was so grown. She caught da bus and went Midway—back there. I think she was ‘bout 12 or 13—sumthin’ like dat, but when she come home, I was standin’ there behind da door waitin’ on her. I was fussin’ at da oldest girl, ‘cause she didn’t make ‘er— ‘cause she said she wouldn’t mind ‘er, but when she walk through dat door, I grab ‘er, an’ I put sumthin’ on her behind, an’ I betcha she ain’t ever tried it no mo.’ Bev You became your mother. Copper Dat’s da truth. I ain’t ever had no mo’ trouble wit ‘er. No mo.’ Now when I tell ‘em what time to be back—‘cause da show’s over by [inaudible] o’clock—the bus comin’ back down First Street. Dey get off the bus right there on da houses right there off [inaudible] da street. [inaudible] come in the door, and I said, “Where is [inaudible]?” “’Cause I tried to make ‘er come home wit me, but she went off an’ got out at Midway.” I said, “Okay.” I stopped dat right there. Bev Where was the show held? Was it in Sanford also? Copper Off on Sanford Avenue [inaudible]. They had a show on Stanford Avenue then—a movie show. I felt bad goin.’ I would go wit ‘em, but I was tired. You get out there and do 10 hours on that farm, you’d be tired. I told myself, “I’m gonna trust ‘em.” ‘Cause [inaudible] was pretty big. She was 14 or 15, an’ I ain’t ever had no trouble outta ‘em, until dat night when Miss Lady caught da bus an’ went to Midway. Dat was da first trouble I had ever had outta ‘er, an’ I ain’t had no more outta ‘er. Bev You made sure you stopped it. Copper Dey said I did ‘em wrong, ‘cause I didn’t let dem go when dey wanted to go, but I made ladies outta ‘em. Bev Where are they now? Where are your girls? Copper Both of ‘em—they’re here in Sanford. Baby girl live not too far from here. And my oldest live on the otha side ova there. Bev Is there any particular person you admire most out of all the people you know, whether it be a relative, or someone you worked with, or someone you know from socializing at church or anywhere? Who is the person you admire the most and why? Copper I tell you da truth, my child’n. I don’t know. People done got so funny now. People don’t have nuthin’ too much to say to nobody. I guess. I don’t know why. I ain’t ever did nuthin’ to nobody, but dey won’t speak to you. Dey black, just like you is. I guess ‘cause dey got big cars now, an’ dey got money, an’ all dat kind of stuff. Maybe dey think—I don’t know what dey think. What dey got in dey mind, but I don’t care what you got. God helped you to get it, an’ he’ll help you to lose it. You don’t ever just walk by a person, an’, you know—dey ain’t ever did nuthin’ to you, an’ can’t say, “Well, how you do today?” Or “Good mornin’,” or “good evenin’.” Da time o’ day belongs to everybody. I just don’t know what’s wrong wit dem. I sit out there sometimes, and I be sittin’ on da end of da porch there, an’ da neighbors just be goin’ to da mailbox, an’ when dey glance. See me sittin’ on da porch, dey turn dey head da other way until dey pass by, an’ I say, “Now, I don’t even wanna know dem peoples. I ain’t did nuthin’ to dem. Dey can’t say “Good mornin’” or “Good evenin’?” I been here goin’ on 15 years, an’ I can’t tell you da name of ‘em but one, an’ dat one stay on da end down there. In all 15 years. Bev Do you have any other stories about anything in your life that you would like to share with me? Anything about your six generations? Copper Well, I tell you da truth. Dis ol’ lady here done forgotten ‘bout everythin’ she ever knowed[sic]. Ya don’ think like ya think now. Ya mind don’t be rigid like you used to be. Thangs right now—when I wake up to fix me some breakfast, I be thinkin’ ‘bout what I’m gonna fix, an’ it’ll come to me here, but when I get in da kitchen, I forget what I go in there at. I set dat in there, an’ I say, Well, anyway, I needed to walk. I’ll come back an’ sit down and it’ll come back to me, but when I get in there and start tryin’ to fix my breakfast, I forget still. It take me an hour just to make some oatmeal or coffee, ‘cause by me havin’ roaches, I gotta wash everythin’ I use ‘fore I can cook it, an’ I sit there until it can come back to me. Bev But it’s good that you can do all these things by yourself. Copper But I cook my lil’ food, an’ I buy a lot already in cans. so when I do get home an’ don’t feel like tryna get up an’ cook sumthin’, I just go in there an’ open some o’ dat up an’ warm it up an’ eat it, an’ sometime I open a can o’ soup, an’ if I got a biscuit, I break da biscuit up in da soup, an’ dat’s da meal fo’ me. I hardly ever eat about once a day, but I got plenty o’ food in there. I just ain’t got da energy to move around an’ try to do like I used to do. Now I used to cook fo’ my family—fo’ my child’n—an’ invite dem fo’ Christmas. Dat I used to do all o’ dat. Bev Now they cook for you. They cook for you for Christmas. Copper No, dey bring it ova. Bev Good. The party’s still here. Copper Yeah, ‘cause dey know I can’t move ova there, so dey bring it ova an’ put it up there. Bev Now two different questions. The first one is: what was your biggest pleasure in life? If you were to think about your entire life—almost 90 years—what memory do you have that was most pleasing to you? And which one is most disappointing to you? Copper Child’n. Dis one right here. Bev Tell me about her. Tell me about that one right there. Copper I raised her up from a baby up until she about 13. Bev Valencia [Larue], right? Copper Her mama found out she could cook and could wash my clothes, an’ I was sick at dat time, an’ she used to go to da laundromat an’ wash my clothes like a lady, an’ bring ‘em back, an’ her mama come one day an’ ask me what we had fo’ dinner. I say, “We have sumthin’.” I forgot what it was, but she said, “I’ll be out there. I’m gonna eat.” so she come out there an’ fix da plate, an’ I said, “I thought you had already eaten.” she was talkin’ ‘bout how good it was, an’ I say, “Well, yo’ daughter cooked it.” She said, “My daughter cooked dis?” I said, “She sho’ did.” She said, “If my daughter cooked dis, I’ma take her home so she could cook and wash my clothes.” Bev Are you kidding? Copper She took ‘er. Yeah, she took ‘er. I had had a stroke at dat time an’ I had a—dis big here—an’ I couldn’t do nuthin’ wit dis hand. So I had her an’ she tried to cook, an’ dat girl had a head on her right there. She ain’t ever stumble. She keep goin’. Bev All right. So Valencia’s your greatest joy? What’s your greatest disappointment? Copper My grandchildren, yeah. When I was raisin’ ‘em up, I was not happy ‘bout nuthin.’ Bev Oh, you were happy about everything? Great. Copper I remember one time, after I got grown, I got fast at my mama, an’ I was so hurted[sic]. Afta I got to thinkin’ ‘bout it dat, I went back an’ went to beg her pardon, an’, at dat time, my mama was in her prime. She didn’t go out nowhere to party, but she liked to drink. Dat day—I don’t know. I forgot what it was dat come up ‘bout, an’ I tried to walk away from da house without saying nuthin’ to her, an’ I went down da road, an’ she was following me, an’ she caught up wit me, an’ caught my clothes, an’ snatched on my clothes. I said, “I’ma tell you da truth. If you wasn’t my mama, dis is one day I would whoop yo’ so and so.” [laughs]. Bev About how old were you then? Copper I was grown then. I was grown, an’ my child’n were grown. I tried to get away from ‘em, but I guess da Devil was there anyway, but I tell you da truth, she was snatchin’ on my clothes an’ shakin’ me. She said, “Act like I ain’t yo’ mama. Whoop me.” I went to cryin’. I turned around an’ went on my way. She turned around—she was drinkin’ at dat time, but I tell you da truth, I was sorry fo’ many a days I said dat to her. Talkin’ ‘bout whoopin’ on my mama, but she upsetted[sic] me. I had a good mom. She would do things that aggravate me. She’d go an’ put on two or three dresses. One [inaudible], put on an old coat, some old shoes, an old hat, an’ go walkin’ down da streets an’ all dat. Then I’d know people be laughin’ at her, an’ I think she was doin’ dat to aggravate me, an’ dat would hurt me. So I said, “Well, she should come to my house an’ do it.” Sometime I’d ease on out an ‘go on down da back way an’ be right there in da house. When I’d come back, she’ be long gone [laughs]. That would aggravate me, but I had a sweet mom. <div> <div> <a title="">[1]</a> Mudfish. </div> </div> 1st Street African Americans agriculture caregivers celery Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play Christmas Creative Sanford, Inc. discipline farming farms First Street fish fishing food France, Florida goats holidays Lang Midway mudfish Odetta Copper orlando race relations Sanford Sanford Avenue St. Johns River Valencia Larue https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/e6bad1d824a6cfb5815ccf67fc2d43b6.pdf ef42e997bfbd1f4d128b8a3cbad20d50 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title Creative Sanford, Inc. Collection Alternative Title Creative Sanford Collection Subject Seminole County (Fla.) Folk plays Sanford (Fla.) Description Creative Sanford, Inc. is a non-profit organization created to manage Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play community theater productions. The original idea for the Celery Soup project came from Jeanine Taylor, the owner of a folk-art gallery on First Street in Sanford, Florida. Their first production was Touch and Go, a play focusing on the people of Sanford and their determination to overcome various obstacles, including the Freeze of 1894-1895, the fall of Sanford's celery industry, and the closing of Naval Air Station (NAS) Sanford in the 1960s. In the process of producing the show, Creative Sanford decided to rehabilitate an historic building, the Princess Theater, which is located on 115 West First Street and owned by Stephen Tibstra. The Creative Sanford offices are housed in the Historic Sanford Welcome Center, located at 203 East First Street. Is Part Of <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/16" target="_blank">Sanford Collection</a>, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida. <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/44" target="_blank">Seminole County Collection</a>, RICHES of Central Florida. Language eng Type Collection Coverage Historic Sanford Welcome Center, Downtown Sanford, Florida Princess Theater, Downtown Sanford, Florida Curator Cepero, Laura Digital Collection <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a> External Reference "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">WHO IS CREATIVE SANFORD, INC?</a>" Celery Soup. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about. "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/" target="_blank">About: History and Purpose</a>." Celery Soup. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/. "<a href="http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida" target="_blank">Sanford, Florida: How do you make Celery Soup? Add stories, then stir</a>." Community Performance International. http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida. Contributor <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title Oral History of Calvert and Phyllis Conklin Alternative Title Oral History, Conklin Subject Sanford (Fla.) Race relations--Florida Architecture--Florida Engineering--United States. Humanitarianism--United States Description An oral history of Calvert Conklin and Phyllis Conklin. Cal moved from Baltimore, Maryland, to Florida in 1963 and Phyllis was born in Florida. The couple met each other at the University of Illinois, where Cal pursued his doctorate degree after returning from the Korean War. In the interview, Cal and Phyllis discuss their involvement in the development of the historic section of Downtown Sanford. They also discuss their humanitarian experiences and awards. The couple then delves into the racial tensions within Sanford during integration, even going so far as to tell detailed stories of violence within the city and the alienation they experienced because they came from the North and openly mixed with African Americans. Type Text Source Conklin, Calvert and Phyllis Conklin. Interviewed by Trish Thompson. Celery Soup, June 24, 2011. Audio record available. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford Florida. Requires <a href="https://get.adobe.com/reader/" target="_blank">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a> Is Part Of <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford Florida. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc. Collection</a>, Sanford Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida. Is Format Of Digital transcript of original oral history: Interviewed by Trish Thompson. Celery Soup, June 24, 2011. Audio record available. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford Florida. Coverage Sanford, Florida Wayne Densch Performing Arts Center, Sanford, Florida Woman's Club of Sanford, Sanford, Florida Rescue Outreach Mission of Central Florida, Sanford, Florida Good Samaritan Home of Sanford, Sanford, Florida First Presbyterian Church, Sanford, Florida Creator Thompson, Trish Conklin, Calvert Conklin, Phyllis Date Created 2011-06-24 Format application/pdf Extent 212 KB Medium 19-page digital transcript Language eng Mediator History Teacher Provenance Originally created by Trish Thompson, Calvert Conklin, and Phyllis Conklin, and transcribed by Freddie Román-Toro. Rights Holder Copyright to this resource is held by <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> and is provided here by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a> for educational purposes only. Accrual Method Donation Contributing Project <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Celery Soup</a> Curator Román-Toro, Freddie Digital Collection <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a> Source Repository <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> External Reference "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Celery Soup</a>." Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/. "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Celery Soup</a>." Creative Sanford, Inc.. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/. Kharif, Wali Rashash. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/10501914" target="_blank">The Refinement of Racial Segregation in Florida After the Civil War</a>. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 1983, 1983. Transcript Calvert My middle name is Calvert, which is my mother’s last name, and she and I are related to the Virginia Calvert, and that goes all the way back to Lord Baltimore.<a title="">[1]</a> The first one was George [Calvert] and the second was Charles [Calvert]. Anyway, one of my crazy relatives tried to sue the City of Baltimore, claiming the land was his. Needless—he didn’t get very far, and of course, there was a Calvert whiskey at one time, and they have one of these genealogy books—it’s an advertisement—and they got up to my mother and me, and they didn’t carry it on any further, so I stopped drinking their dang whiskey. Phyllis You never did anyway. Calvert But that’s my story. I’m going to stick to it. Thompson Well now, Lord Baltimore came from England, but Calvert whiskey—I thought that was scotch? Calvert No, it was a blended one made by a Canadian. Thompson So your family is English? Calvert All English. Thompson So how’d you get to Sanford? Calvert I’m in the engineering business and we came down here. One of the senior partners, Just Deets[sp], visited a Northern client of ours in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, by the name of Cecil Osier, and we had done work for Cecil up there doing developments, and he was down here building a bunch of manufactured homes that don’t look very nice, but they’re over on Summerlin [Avenue] around there—those little box homes? And Deets stopped by to see him, and he told Deets that the city didn’t have a sewage plant at the time, and he said that they were going to interview for an engineer to design the sewage plant and that we should apply, and so Deets went down and met old Leffler and Busch[sp] —two of the old families in Sanford—and they were in a partnership. Busch later became [inaudible] engineer. Thompson Leffler—was that the Judge [Kenneth Murrell] Leffler? Calvert It was his brother. His older brother was an engineer. We formed a partnership with them, and I was sent down here to do the inspection. Decided I liked the place and came down and started an office. Over the years, that turned into what now is CPH—Conklin, Porter, [&] Holmes [Engineers, Inc.]. Phyllis And when he came down to inspect this sewage plant, we had gone down to my grandmother’s in Southern Florida… Calvert I came in 1963. Phyllis My son is fourth generation Floridian. I was born in Florida. My dad came down here to help build houses back up after the 1928 hurricane, so he met my mother and they got married and had me, and then I was only here six months, but I lived up North about 35-40 years. Thompson Where was your home up North? Phyllis In Southern Illinois. Thompson And that’s where you came from too? Calvert No, I came from Northern Illinois—outside Chicago. Phyllis And we met at the University of Illinois. Calvert I came home from [the] Korea[n War] and went back to school working on a Doctor’s degree, and went to a church service—a social event—and met her there, and that’s how… Phyllis Immediately, we knew we were for each other [laughs]. Calvert That was a long time ago. We were married 55 years ago. Thompson So how did you know right away that he was the one? Phyllis Well, he looked good and he had a graduate degree, and I decided—and he was a Christian. I thought he was, and he was, because we met in a Presbyterian church there on campus, and I just thought, “That’s the right one.” I don’t know what he thought, but anyway, we got married. Calvert The program that evening was on Korea, and of course, I knew much about that. Phyllis So he was sitting there by me telling me all of this stuff about Korea and I thought, “Oh, this man sounds so fascinating.” [laughs] So we married and lived up there about seven or eight years, and then he came down and we said, “Let’s go visit grandmother.” And he had never been to Florida and he said, “Oh, this weather is so nice down here. I wish we could start a branch office down here.” and that’s what he told the firm up North and they said, “Yes, go down and start it.” So he did. Calvert I was general manager up there. Phyllis Here, he was in business with William Leffler for a short period of time, and then William decided that he didn’t want to be in engineering. Very bright, bright man, but he decided he wanted to go back and farm or have his properties out near Osteen or something like that, but the amazing story is that we came here right about when integration was starting in the schools in the early Sixties and William… Calvert I got somewhat discouraged by the situations and decided that even though I had a good client base, that I wanted to go back up North, and I went back to see if I could get my old job back and the company said “Yes.” But in the meantime, the city manager and Lee Moore called up there and said, “We don’t want you to leave.” And they said, “If you come back, we’ll let you design a marina for us.” Phyllis So he designed the marina and it was built in ’67, and the amazing part about that was that, at that time, you could dredge part of the stuff up from the lake and make the 13 acres of ground that the hotels and stuff are sitting on. Today, you could not do that. They would not let you dredge up and put more land… Thompson So you deepened the lake by taking the… Calvert Dredged it up and built an isle, and then the roadway and all to it and I designed the dry storage building out there and the docks—the whole thing. That was a long time ago. Thompson Well, we’ve had a lot of stories about what happened in integration and what the situation was with the blacks—what happened? Calvert Well, I was with William Leffler, and we were going to Eustis and he had—well anyway, we got shot at by a bunch of black folks. He had a citizens’ white council… Phyllis He belonged to the White Citizens’ Council, which is the KKK [Ku Klux Klan]. Calvert No, no. They are two different organizations. He belonged to both, and a car pulled alongside of us and somebody pulled out a gun and shot at us, and we chased them—of all things. I didn’t have any interest in that. I was in Jim Spencer’s—the bar—when the first blacks came in there, and that was something. Thompson How did that happen? Calvert Many of the regular customers got up and left, and they were ignored for a considerable period of time, and they just sat there and waited, and finally the owner did go and asked them what they wanted. It was a very awkward situation, but they did get served. Most of the customers left. Phyllis At that time they were trying to integrate the schools here and William Leffler had a… Calvert Honey, let’s not get into that. Phyllis Well, anyway—it was in Time magazine. Thompson It’s history. Calvert Well, first I had an experience. Our son was a gifted student up North and we got down here—that was one of the disappointments. The schools here weren’t anywhere near as good as the Northern ones and he was in a gifted class up there, and I noticed that the textbooks said, “For average and below students.” That bothered me badly, because he wasn’t average or below. So I went in to see the superintendent of the schools and said, “How do you expect to raise that level if you keep teaching for average and below?” And it was Ray Milwee, and he said, “Well, that’s what our students are—average and below.” I said, “Don’t you want to change that?” He said, “You can’t change that.” So I had absolutely no luck, but later William went in and his daughter had a black teacher—the first black teacher in the schools—and he didn’t like that at all. Wouldn’t accept it, so he went in and confronted Milwee with the same situation, and Milwee wouldn’t change it so William hit him. Beat him up and it made Time magazine. It was quite a—and he pleaded—the funny thing is I got a jury summons to be a juror in his trial. I went over to the courthouse and I knew the prosecuting attorney well, and he said, “Cal, what are you here for?” I said, “I came to be a juror in William’s trial.” and he said, “Like hell you did.” He went in and got the judge to dismiss me, and that’s, of course, what I wanted, but it was funny. Phyllis And at the same time, the neighbors we had up North where we lived—it was a mixed neighborhood. There was a Chinese family, a black family—and I will say, they were culturally put together. Well, we did have a man next door that drove a bread truck, but mostly—being a university town, they were mostly intellectuals. When I went to school, in Southern Illinois, I went to school with—with black children all the time and thought nothing of it. Calvert And when we came down here, the only people that really were see[sic] was controlled by the old landowner families, and socially, we were not accepted. We were Yankees and not accepted, and our first friends here in town were Jewish people and some of the blacks. They’re still friends of ours today. Phyllis In 1985, when Mayor Bettye Smith started the Martin Luther King[, Jr.] choir<a title="">[2]</a>… Calvert We both saw the Martin Luther King choir for 20-something years [inaudible], so we’re culturally adept. Phyllis But they weren’t used to that, and I had a birthday party for my daughter, who was six at the time. So I told her, “You can invite six children from your class to come to the birthday party.” and one was a little Stallworth girl—like Mill Stallworth’s daughter—a black girl, and a lovely, lovely person, and when they went outside to play a while, and somebody—a passerby or neighbor, but I won’t say who. It certainly wasn’t Connie Williams, because she is very culturally non-prejudice[sic] at all, and it wasn’t Rosita Jacobson, because she lived across the street and she was Jewish, so she wouldn’t have said anything, but somebody else said, “I wanted to tell you that we don’t mix socially with the blacks here.” and I said, “But we do.” So that set us back a couple of steps, but then one of our Jewish friends, the Tetenbaums, got us into a barbecue club, which was out in what is now in Hidden Lake, and they introduced us to some people out there, and we got in, not because we were trying to get in, but anything to have people be a little more friendly[sic] to us. Calvert There’s quite a story about the marina in some respects, because the [Sanford] City Council didn’t have a tenant or anybody to rent or lease anything to when they started and decided to build that. That took a lot of guts. Phyllis On whose part? Calvert I’m the [Sanford] City Commissioner. The newspapers was urging them to—the Gilos, who were the publishers at that time—were urging them to and they had no tenant—nobody to lease or rent anything to, and here they were going to build an island, and during construction, they got a marina operator to do it, basically, with ash and oil. Phyllis But he designed the marina with floating docks so the water [inaudible]. Calvert So I give the [Sanford] City Commission a lot of credit to have the nerve to do that and to proceed with the project, and it’s been a huge success, and I never did a job where we got as much construction for—it was the whole thing, including some of the buildings—only cost a million dollars—building it all up from nothing. Phyllis He designed that dry storage building—that big building that has the stripes on the side. At that time, some hotel came in and it’s changed hands a lot. Calvert It’s a motel now. Phyllis We lived on the lakefront at that time. We just rented a house, because we weren’t too sure if we were going to be able to stay or not. That’s when we first came, and after the marina thing, he got some jobs for being city engineer for places like Eustis. Calvert Well, I had those before I went up North—a whole bunch of the cities and counties around here. Phyllis [inaudible] and gave us a base to stay, and I would’ve thought too that it would’ve been very courageous for that lady black teacher—whoever she was—to walk into that Sanford Middle School or Seminole High [School]… Thompson Was she in it when it was Seminole High—as the first black teacher? Or was it… Phyllis I don’t know. William’s daughter was not a little, tiny girl, because knowing William... Calvert Other things that I thought were noteworthy is, for instance, the Central Florida Zoo [and Botanical Gardens]. Phyllis When we came, it was downtown. Calvert One block right behind the [Sanford] City Hall. You could make quite a story about the moving of that and the... Thompson I’ve never heard that story—how it happened. Calvert Well, they had a zoo behind the City Hall, right down the lakefront there. Thompson I saw an aerial picture of it and thought it was much larger than it was. It’s very small. Calvert And the woman’s name was Hood—that was the curator there. He worked for the city and she did, and her whole job was to tend to the zoo, and they had one lion and you could hear him roar. You could hear him and then they decided—well, a bunch of businesspeople facilitated the Central Florida Zoological Society[, Inc.], and a number of us contributed money, so that we could relocate it. I put up several thousand dollars to the Sanford Atlantic Bank and so did others, and that served as seed money to borrow against to relocate and build the Central Florida Zoo. I had connections with contractors so I went to C. A. Meyer and Amick Construction[, Inc.] and leveraged them into building the roads in and doing all the earthwork for the original zoo. That was quite a contribution. It was all donation and the two of them—C. A. Meyer and Amick Construction—donated all the work to build the road and do the earth or the original zoo, and I was one of the founding directors of the Central Florida Zoo. Phyllis Both he and I had served on the zoo board at one time or another. Thompson Did you all have anything to do with the actual moving of the animals? Calvert No, my thing was contributing the money and doing the construction of the roads and all of the earthwork out there. There were many other people around town. Doug[las] Stenstrom did. Glenn McCall, the druggist, did. Dr. Hickman, the dentist from Maitland, was involved. I don’t really remember all the other people. That was the way that the zoo got started. Thompson What was the reasoning for moving the zoo? Did somebody donate the land? Calvert I think it was bought. It was bought. Right along there was Leffler land and a bunch of it was Kirchhoff. Now, have you ever talked to Bill Kirchhoff? Thompson No, I haven’t. Calvert Beside the stories of the marina and the zoo, the other one that I know a lot about is the historic trend or the beginning of the historic movement in Sanford. Thompson The historic trust? Calvert No, ot the trust. The whole idea of historic preservation becoming a forefront program in Sanford, and Sarah Jacobson was the one that started that whole thing, and she got me again, Doug Stenstrom, Don Knight, Glenn McCall—a bunch of downtown businesspeople—and we applied and got money to do historical surveys, and the state sent a[sic] historical architect and a plain historian and they worked out of my office. They’d go looking at all the insurance records, titles, and deeds, and all the interesting things they could find out about the buildings. That went on for a couple of years, because they’d come back and they’d found out the railroad magnate [Henry Morrison] Flagler had owned this and that—it was an old train station, and that’s the Piper Building, and they’d find all this interesting stuff about all of the other old buildings. The first thing we did was we got the whole downtown district on the Federal Register of Historic Places.<a title="">[3]</a> It was first a downtown district—one of the few in the state for a whole downtown district, and we had to do all of these surveys and then we moved to the area behind it—the [Sanford] Historic Trust. We got that designated as a residential historic district. Now the people in the historic trust didn’t have anything to do with that. They formed the historic trust after all this was done, and I, in my many travels, kept thinking about park benches, and I picked out a bench from various places that I’d gone, and bought one for 900-and-something dollars, and had it brought here, and the city liked it, and it’s one of those—it’s downtown. They use that on the waterfront and everywhere. Then we got grants and formed a Downtown Historic Development [inaudible], and we got grants—the owners would apply, and we would sponsor them, and they got grants to fix up the facades of many of the buildings, and you’ll also see then when we have a historic board later. I was chairman of the [Sanford] Historic Preservation Board that the city conceived, and we got plaques that were put on all of the buildings that you see downtown. Then the historic trust came into being. They came later and formed their historic trust for remodeling the buildings and all of the homes. Then we had a few—Bettye Smith and I did a local one for the St. James AME [African Methodist Episcopal] black Church. They’ve got a local historic designation. That whole thing started with Sarah[?] Jacobson and a bunch of us, and that’s been very successful. Now the historic trust people kind of take the credit for the whole thing, but they didn’t start it. They did a good job. Thompson Well, I think they have done a good job, but the city—I don’t know if you noticed, but the City of Sanford and the Sanford Historic Trust did the first Cultural Preservation Award and gave that to the City of Sanford for what we’re doing today. Phyllis I started in 1973. My mother and two other little ladies and I started the Meals on Wheels program. I have a newspaper clipping showing a picture of us... Calvert We’ve done that longer than anybody in Seminole County—the two of us. Phyllis I’ve done it ever since then—36-37 years, and I think, because of that, I got the Jefferson Award [for Public Service] for this area, but there were others in other areas and Orlando and everything that got it too, and so, when it went statewide, of course, it wasn’t only that that got me the award. Cal and I had done so many things around town—you know, volunteer things— ‘cause that’s really what we live for—is volunteering. He’s done about a 150 pro-bono engineering jobs for little churches, or the crisis center, or the Salvation Army sign out front and things like that. At one time, they gave him the Topper Award and, at the same time, they gave me the Dr. Luis Perez Humanitarian Award the same night, and I didn’t expect that. I knew he was to get the Topper Award, and so I didn’t say anything to him about it and then when we got there, I knew. I had some relatives coming, because I knew he was going to get that award. Then they started out with the humanitarian award first, and they got up and started talking about this woman—who was me, you know, and I thought, “That sounds like me.” And they were giving me this award and I said, “You’ve got this wrong. I’m not supposed to get this award.” and I didn’t want to say it and take all the—my husband, and they said, “Oh, but you are. This is the humanitarian award.” And I felt so disheartened, because I thought, “Gee whiz. I thought they were going to give him the Topper Award and here they’re just giving me an award,” and it turned out later in the evening that he got the Topper Award. When we started this Meals on Wheels program—I don’t remember which church, but I think it might’ve been the First Presbyterian [Church of Sanford] downtown, which we were members of—and they decided they wanted to start a Meals on Wheels program and there were only four of us ladies. You could only take about eight people yourself, so there must’ve been 35 people, and we got the meals from the hospital, and they had them in these big, green plastic containers, and so we’d have to collect those from the clients—we call them “clients.” It was all-volunteer stuff. The next day and take those back—sometimes during, sometimes not, and then get the other meals. And, as the years went on, the mothers of these other ladies were 20 years older than I, so they’re all dead now, but I have a newspaper clipping of when I started, but 10 years after I started it, he started it, ‘cause he was retiring, but he’s done it 10 years less than I have. Calvert I still do pro-bono engineering. I’ve done over 200 projects. There’s an awful lot. I’m still doing them. Thompson We‘ve known that you’d been doing those pro-bono when we had to have the engineers—pay an engineer to put up the risers for the theater. Calvert Well, I did the first one for what they now call the Wayne-Densch Theater.<a title="">[4]</a> I did the first structural study there that they used as a credit to the Federal Government to get their grants. Then I did structural inspections both on main theater and the building next door they later got. Thompson Well, how did you get into this wonderful, giving spirit? Calvert We both believe we were put here to help other people. Phyllis Our mission is just to help other people. We get the fun out of it, because it’s the one-on-one thing that’s important. Calvert It keeps us occupied. It’s something worthwhile to do. Phyllis We’ve been on lots of boards, but I say, “What you get on boards is a lot of splinters.” We’ve been in the Martin Luther King choir for 25 years. Bettye Smith started that. She was the one that got the Sanford Woman’s Club<a title="">[5]</a> integrated, and that didn’t go so well with many of the ladies that dropped out, when she brought in these lovely, fine four ladies. Because they were saying, “Well, you bring in one like that and who knows who they’ll bring in.” It’s the fear thing, and then Rosita Jacobson was in the club at the time, and they had a time getting Rosita in, because she was Jewish. They asked me to join for many years and I knew they were so segregated. I just didn’t want any part of that, but I used to say, “That’s the Sanford White Women’s Club.” but that changed over the years and these lovely black ladies are in and the Jewish ladies. Calvert I have another story to tell and it’s about the rescue mission. Phyllis The Rescue Outreach Mission [of Central Florida] on Thirteenth Street. Calvert They had kind of a ramshackle operation out there. Mother [Blanche Bell] Weaver was running it with the help of pop and it was really a rag-tag thing. She started out by being a cook and ran the restaurant on Thirteenth Street. Thompson And everybody went there. Calvert That’s right, and one day she walked into our office downtown and said, “I understand there’s a man here that likes to help people.” [laughs] And I ended up helping her. I donated land. I bought some lots and donated the engineering, and we built the women’s and children shelter, and I was, for 21 years, on the Board of Directors of the rescue mission. Mother Weaver founded that, and her church over there also founded it. That’s quite a story too, because she started out by having children just come—she kind of adopted them and they moved into her house with her. She was preaching at this church, and then she got the idea of founding a homeless shelter and started it, and then she called on me and then together saw about building the women’s and children’s shelter. Much of the money came from one man, and he should be talked to if he will talk to you, but he’s very, very generous. Thompson And who is that? Calvert Mike Good. Briar Construction.<a title="">[6]</a> Every organization that I go to and am part of, such as the Children’s Home Society [of Florida]—I’ve been on that board, and I look to see who the big givers are. Mike Good is at the top of the list. Phyllis Soon after we first came here, Thelma Mike was, until just recently, administrator at the Good Samaritan Home [of Sanford]. That’s just an assisted living center for people and they—somehow, the Good Samaritan Home hadn’t noticed they hadn’t paid their taxes for some time... Calvert They hadn’t paid their withholding and their unemployment and that stuff. They were in big trouble and the whole city got together and bailed her out. Phyllis They owed the government about $100,000. The whole city—respecting her so much—came forth and got people here and there to raise money, and they let her off. Calvert They raised considerable money. Thompson My first employee stole a lawnmower from the Good Samaritan Home. He started working for me after he got out of jail. He had to pay restitution to the Good Samaritan Home, and I told Thelma that story and she laughed and laughed. She said, “If he needed a lawnmower, I would have given him that lawnmower.” Phyllis We both started out in a choir when we first came here, because both of us had sung for years and years, and we have been singing in the First [Presbyterian] Church [of Sanford] downtown, and then about 1991 it had a split over a pastor and it... Thompson They moved over to Markham Woods Road. Phyllis No, that one’s a great one. That’s where most of these people downtown went. We went to another church for a year. Calvert We didn’t originally. We went to Oakland, followed our choir director. Phyllis We didn’t want to make an exodus—Markham Woods, because Markham Woods was started by Dr. [inaudible] and in 1985, they were—when did you join? Thompson That would’ve been years ago. We lived just a block down from the church. Phyllis We came there in 1991, and been in that choir for all those years too. We’re about at the place where we don’t do solos anymore. Thompson Well, what about your children growing up here, and do you have any family stories of the kids? Phyllis Well, our kids stayed out of trouble, so I guess we don’t have any stories. Our daughter is almost 48 now. She’s in California and she’s a veterinarian. We’re in the process of getting a home for her. She has MS [multiple sclerosis] and she’s partially disabled, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. She swims a lot, but she can’t work full-time now. She’s moving back here after 20 years to live with us. She’s single. We have a son in Orlando who works for the city at [Orlando] City Hall. Calvert It’s a funny thing about him. He played guitar for years and he had a rock band in high school and before, and he and Ricky Bowing—they used to—that room up there that’s now our music room was open—it was a breezeway, and they used to practice there and I remember getting out of the car way over at her mother’s house and I said, “Oh, there’s somebody playing ‘Proud Mary,’ just like Charles and his band did.” And all of a sudden I realized it was them. I decided right then that we had to enclose that breezeway and make a room out of it [laughs], and we’ve had all kinds of animals in our backyard. We’ve had horses there. Phyllis Well, the horse would only stay overnight one night, but she had [inaudible] brought it in—brought it right down 46. At that time there wasn’t that much traffic, and then she got ready to take it back out and it was starting to storm and I said, “You better not go now.” so she left the horse in the backyard. Calvert There was a pig back there for a while, when Robert [Conklin] had his heart surgery. She sent him a piglet from Tennessee and the pig grew up in the backyard and got huge in three months, and we had a judge there and the head of the code enforcement next door, and we had a pig in the backyard, but only for three months. Voley was sitting there on the couch talking to us one day and we were talking about Robert having to have a new valve. He needed to have heart surgery for a valve, and we were talking about the possibility of them using a pig valve, and right at the minute we said “pig,” the pig went, “Oi” right behind—and he turned around and looked, but he didn’t get it. He didn’t understand. Phyllis A pig valve only lasts about eight or nine years, because that’s all... Calvert They use them on older people. Now they use cowbells[?]. Phyllis He had a metal valve at the age of 17. Now he’s the one that lives here in town and he works for NAPA Auto Parts, and he’s a manager of parts at OIA [Orlando International Airport], the big airport down there, for the ground vehicles, not the airplanes. He’s certified as an ASE [Automatic Service Excellence] mechanic, which he did for a few years, but the heart thing was too much for him. Calvert We always said, “We have one that can fix your car and one that can fix your cat.” [laughs]. Phyllis So that’s the three kids, and the one in Orlando is project manager in the engineering department for the City of Orlando, and then the veterinarian daughter is going to move back here. Calvert The story there is he wanted to be a sound engineer and he had gone to Stetson [University]. Then he kind of went to music, and he went to Denver[, Colorado] to take recording engineering. Then he decided to go to—he got accepted to go to Berkeley College for Music<a title="">[7]</a> in Boston[, Massachusetts], and he went up there and he called me on the phone and said, “Dad, you won’t believe this, but they said I have to start over as a freshman. They won’t give me credits for the other stuff.” And I said, “Charles, go back inside and ask a different person the same question.” And he did and we just held the line open and he came back after a little while and he said, “Yes, they said I have to start over as a freshman. I want to come home.” and I said, “Okay. Come on. Under that circumstance.” Anyway, then he came back and he served as a soundman for a local band that played all over the United States that went by the name of Root Boy Slim. They were really quite good. Phyllis And [Root Boy Slim and] the Sex Change Band. Calvert Yeah. Well, they called it that. He traveled to New York City, [New York] and Baltimore and all those places as their soundman, and he got hit on the head with a beer bottle and it was a tough, tough life, because those people live on the thin edge of everything. After that, he called up and said, “Dad, I decided I want to go back to school and be an engineer like you.” [laughs] So he moved back. Phyllis And of course, they accepted all his LAS [Legal Assistant Studies] stuff at University of Florida. So he got a Master’s Degree and got really good grades. His sister got her veterinary medicine thing from there in 1991 too, but she wanted to go to California, because they were paying a little bit more at that time, but she didn’t realize how much more expensive everything was. Having been there, the climate is good for her, because it’s not as humid as here. After 20 years, and now that she’s partially disabled, she feels she ought to be a little nearer her aging parents, since we’re over 80 and we just think it’s time to—she said one time, “Well, I think within the next five years, I want to move back to Florida for sure.” I said, “Ruth Ann [Conklin], if you want us to help you move, in five years, we’re going to be about 87 years old.” She said, “I’d better move now, hadn’t I?” I said, “Yes, I think so.” You want to tell her the story about you, Gino [Pelucci], and the fundraising? Calvert Well, I—he doesn’t even remember who I am, and I worked with him and for him for years. Even before Heathrow—way back—I did a bunch of factories for them up in other states and my cousin, Bob B.B., was the general manager for Chung[?] King, when he decided that he shouldn’t be running it anymore, and he hired my cousin, who was a board member of Campbell Soups,<a title="">[8]</a> and he was high help in things. He ran Chung[?] King, because Gino was very volatile. He would run around handing out 100 dollar bills or swearing loudly at people and stuff, and he wasn’t what you would call a “consistent” manager. My cousin used to tell me that Gino had hundreds of ideas that would come into his mind all the time, and he would write my cousin notes about, “This is an idea.” and at the end of the day he’d send another note: “Forget all those ideas.” Phyllis When Gino was featured at one of these Boy Scout[s of America] dinners, and he was a speaker—and this was maybe three years ago or something—Cal said he needed to go over and say hello to Gino. He went over to say something to Gino and Gino acted like he didn’t even know who he was, and then he said... Calvert And Brenda [inaudible] was sitting there and she said, “Gino, this is Cal Conklin. He was your engineer for Heathrow. He did all the engineering in Heathrow for you.” And Gino looked up at me and still no recognition. I said, “How about—you remember Bob B.B.?” And he just lit up, because he remembered that. I don’t think he remembered me, but he remembered the guy who had run Chung[?] King for him. Two stories about him that I think are kind of funny: I would attend many of his board meetings at his request. Most of them there was an accountant and a lawyer and so forth, and there were all kind of “yes-men” with him. We were having a meeting, and a young man came to make a presentation, and it wasn’t long, and I knew he wouldn’t be interested, but he said, “Young man, does foul language offend you?” And the young man said, “No.” He said, “Why you dumb son of a bitch.” He just lit into him and cussed him out up and down and back and forth. Every foul word you could think of. When the Presbyterian Church downtown was having a building program—when they put the Fellowship Hall and they redid the sanctuary—I was the special gifts chairman. General Hutchinson was the overall chairman, and one of the people I had to call on, besides Warren Patrick and a bunch of other, was Gino Pelucci, and the only reason we did was his daughter would come to Sunday school once in a while, and the preacher was with me,<a title="">[9]</a> and I walked in and Gino said, “Hey. I’m glad to see you.” We shook hands and he said, “You’ve got a rendering of what you’re going to do. That’s good.” And he got down on his hands and knees and began pointing to the rendering and telling me all of the things I should say to anyone I was presenting to. He was going to teach me how to make a presentation. “You should point out all the good features that you’re going to be in this program.” And then I got down on my hands and knees right there alongside him, and the preacher’s standing there and they’re just incredulous. You can just imagine the scene. When we got ready to finish up he said, “And now the most important thing, Cal. You must remember that when you call on people—you’ve got to ask for enough. Remember.” And he didn’t seem to realize that I was going to do it to him. I stood up and tried to recall all of the things he had said, and I went through it as well as I could, and I asked him for $40,000, and his jaw dropped about a foot, and he said, “Cal, you asked for enough.” When we bought this house, his pilot was also trying to buy it. Gino didn’t really want him this close. He used to stop and talk to me all the time. Phyllis Within the last year, when they go by—they aren’t usually driving—they have a driver or something. They often wave while[?] we’re out in the yard. Calvert He used to stop and talk, but now he’s lost his recollection of what my part and background was. Phyllis He had Hubert Humphrey come to his home, when Hubert was running for vice president. Calvert Even when he was vice president, he was down here. Phyllis They’d come from the airport and go by here, and our son had one of those etch-a-sketch things, where you put the little dots—and he hung it in the window. Calvert Little Gina [Pelucci] came here to play with Ruth Ann. Phyllis Gina Pelucci came over here to play with Ruth Ann, and brought her pet mouse—a little black and white thing. Of course, our daughter loved animals, and we did too, and it didn’t frighten me or anything, but when she got ready to go home, she couldn’t find the mouse, and we never did find that mouse. I’m sure it’s hiding around here somewhere. [laughs]. Calvert Well, one thing that is funny is that everywhere I go people tell me I look like Jimmy Carter. Well there’s a picture of Jimmy Carter right up there, and when we went to Panama, we were going through customs, and as I approached the customs thing. The guy hollered out, “¡Jimmy Carter ahí!” All these people came running around, and I thought, “I’m just going to go along with it.” A woman wanted to have her picture taken with me, so I put my around her, smiled, and took a picture with her. Phyllis ‘Cause he didn’t know any Spanish, he couldn’t say, “No, I’m not Jimmy Carter.” It would sound like—it happened at the resort... Calvert It happened six times on one trip. I got invited into the bar for a drink and all sorts. He’s a big hero, ‘cause he’s the one who turned the [Panama] Canal over to them. Phyllis He thought if he said no when they wanted their picture taken, and he didn’t speak English, it would sound like, “I’m Mr. Big and you’re paparazzi. Get away from me.” So he’d just smile and let them take his picture. Calvert One lady—I never did understand that. Well, I’d go shopping in Wal-Mart, and very often somebody will tap me on the shoulder and say, “Here, I’m going to go home and tell my folks that I went shopping with Jimmy Carter.” The City of Sanford does a great deal. The county does not. The county feels they have to go to Orlando to get the big engineering firms, and it’s very strange, and of course there’s competition between cities and the counties, and there always has been. We started out doing both, but in your local area, you usually end up doing one or the other and we’ve ended up doing all the cities essentially. Phyllis We bought it out. Us[sic] and the porters and the homes bought it out and... Calvert We bought it from CRS and a national firm. Clark Deets[sp] was sold to Richardson and then to CRS—Rawlins and then CRS. Thompson So there were several owners before you? Calvert Clark Deets was the original one I went to work for in Urbana, and my professors were the ones that started it. They resigned from the college and hired their better students, and there were three of them. A structural man, a civil man, and an environmental or sanitary man, and I was actually one of the very first ones they hired, and we made a big business out of that and got into the 200 range in the country, and then I came down here and saw it and thought it’d be good to make a branch, and then the company got sold and ended up with CRS [inaudible]. They did the big arenas. The big one in Gainesville, and they were mainly doing things in the Middle East in the [United] Arab Emirates. All of that fancy stuff there, and they had no idea what our business was here. I mean, it was all local. They just didn’t understand. It wasn’t the kind of business that they did, and when we decided to go into business for ourselves, I said, “We may be able to get this for a song.” And the other two just wanted to leave and I said, “No. Let me have a try at it.” So I went down there, and we paid $35,000, and we got all of the new business, and they even paid us 5 percent of the collections for three years, and so they ended up—we were roughly 10 percent of their organization and they ended up paying us to take it away from them. Phyllis And this was 1981, when it first became Conklin Corps. Calvert And the other two worked for me. Thompson And I opened up the Rib Ranch in 1981 and I retired in 2008. My husband was ill and he died last year. I was lucky to be with him at that time. <div> <div> <a title="">[1]</a> George Calvert. </div> <div> <a title="">[2]</a> Correction: Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Chorus. </div> <div> <a title="">[3]</a> Correction: National Register of Historic Places. </div> <div> <a title="">[4]</a> Correction: Wayne-Densch Performing Arts Center. </div> <div> <a title="">[5]</a> Correction: Woman’s Club of Sanford. </div> <div> <a title="">[6]</a> Correction: The Briar Team. </div> <div> <a title="">[7]</a> Correction: Berkeley College of Music. </div> <div> <a title="">[8]</a> Correction: Campbell Soup Company. </div> <div> <a title="">[9]</a> Virgil Bryan. </div> </div> 13th Street African Americans Amick Construction, Inc. architecture Berklely College of Music Bill Kirchoff Blanche Bell Weaver Busch C. A. Meyer Cal Conklin Calvert Calvert Conklin Calvert whiskey Cecil Osier Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play Central Florida Zoo and Botanical Gardens Central Florida Zoological Society, Inc. Charles Calvert Children'ss Home Society of Florida Chung King Clark Deats Conklin Corps Conklin, Porter & Holmes Engineers, Inc. Connie Williams Creative Sanford, Inc. CRS Cultural Preservation Award desegregation Douglas Stenstrom Downtown Sanford engineering engineers Eustis First Presbyterian Church of Sanford Flagler, Henry Morrison George Calvert Gilo Gina Pelucci Gino Pelucci Glenn McCall Good Samaritan Home of Sanford Heathrow Hickman Hidden Lake historic preservation Hood Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. Hubert Humphrey humanitarians Hutchinson integration Jefferson Awards for Public Service Jimmy Carter Jimmy Earl Carter, Jr. Just Deet Kenneth Murrell Leffler KKK Korean War Ku Klux Klan Lee More Luis Perez Humanitarian Award marinas Markham Woods Road Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Chorus Mary Proud Meals on Wheels Mike Good Mill Stallworth NAPA Auto Parts OIA Orlando International Airport Panama Panama Canal Phyllis Conklin Piper Building race relations Rawlins Ray Milwee Rescue Outreach Mission of Central Florida Rib Ranch Richardson Ricky Vowing Robert Conklin Root Boy Slim Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band Rosita Jacobson Ruth Ann Conklin Sanford Sanford Atlantic Bank Sanford City Commission Sanford City Commissioner Sanford City Council Sanford City Hall Sanford Historic Preservation Board Sanford Historic Trust Sanford Women'ss Club Sarah Jacobson segregation Seminole High School Smith, Bettye Spencer, Jim St James African Methodist Episcopal Church St James AME Church Stetson University Summerlin Avenue Tetenbaum The Briar Team Thelma Mike Thirteenth Street time Topper Awards Trish Thompson U.S. National Register of Historic Places UF UI University of Florida University of Illinois Virgil Bryan Virginia Voley Warren Patrick Wayne-Densch Performing Arts Center whiskey White Citizens' Council William Leffler zoos https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/015dea079c2bff50258a4f23ba24650c.pdf 7165340f0c29989db1de005b3c42e3ae Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title Creative Sanford, Inc. Collection Alternative Title Creative Sanford Collection Subject Seminole County (Fla.) Folk plays Sanford (Fla.) Description Creative Sanford, Inc. is a non-profit organization created to manage Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play community theater productions. The original idea for the Celery Soup project came from Jeanine Taylor, the owner of a folk-art gallery on First Street in Sanford, Florida. Their first production was Touch and Go, a play focusing on the people of Sanford and their determination to overcome various obstacles, including the Freeze of 1894-1895, the fall of Sanford's celery industry, and the closing of Naval Air Station (NAS) Sanford in the 1960s. In the process of producing the show, Creative Sanford decided to rehabilitate an historic building, the Princess Theater, which is located on 115 West First Street and owned by Stephen Tibstra. The Creative Sanford offices are housed in the Historic Sanford Welcome Center, located at 203 East First Street. Is Part Of <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/16" target="_blank">Sanford Collection</a>, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida. <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/44" target="_blank">Seminole County Collection</a>, RICHES of Central Florida. Language eng Type Collection Coverage Historic Sanford Welcome Center, Downtown Sanford, Florida Princess Theater, Downtown Sanford, Florida Curator Cepero, Laura Digital Collection <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a> External Reference "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">WHO IS CREATIVE SANFORD, INC?</a>" Celery Soup. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about. "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/" target="_blank">About: History and Purpose</a>." Celery Soup. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/. "<a href="http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida" target="_blank">Sanford, Florida: How do you make Celery Soup? Add stories, then stir</a>." Community Performance International. http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida. Contributor <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer Thompson, Trish Interviewee Bridges, Elizabeth Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title Oral History of Elizabeth Bridges Alternative Title Oral History, Bridges Subject Sanford, (Fla.) Energy--United States Description An oral history of Elizabeth Bridges. Bridges discusses what life was like in Singapore as a child in the 1960s. She also talks about how she met her first husband, Victor Green. Green worked on an oil rig in the Pacific Ocean for HuffCo. Bridges tells what it was like for her husband to work for that company. She had to learn how to cook Southern food and adapt to life in America. Her first husband died of lung cancer in 1991. She then met her second husband, Jack Bridges, and married him in 1998. After her husband overcame his alcohol addiction, he ran for city commissioner in 2005. He brought many positive changes to the city and was a well-known and successful attorney. Type Text Source Bridges, Elizabeth. Interviewed by Trish Thompson. 2010. Audio record available. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford Florida. Requires <a href="https://get.adobe.com/reader/" target="_blank">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a> Is Part Of <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford Florida. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc. Collection</a>, Sanford Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida. Is Format Of Transcript of original oral history: Bridges, Elizabeth. Interviewed by Trish Thompson. 2010. Audio record available. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford Florida. Coverage Singapore Indonesia Sanford, Florida Ritz Theatre, Sanford, Florida Creator Bridges, Elizabeth Thompson, Trish Date Created 2010 Format application/pdf Extent 208 KB Medium 23-page digital transcript Language eng Mediator History Teacher Civics/Government Teacher Provenance Originally created by Trish Thompson and Elizabeth Bridges, and transcribed by Freddie Román-Toro. Rights Holder Copyright to this resource is held by <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> and is provided here by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a> for educational purposes only. Accrual Method Donation Contributing Project <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Celery Soup</a> Curator Román-Toro, Freddie Digital Collection <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a> Source Repository <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> External Reference Symposium on the Development of Petroleum Resources of Asia and the Far East, United Nations, ECAFE Petroleum Symposium, and Symposium on the Development of Petroleum Resources of Asia and the Far East. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/246028555" target="_blank">Case Histories of Oil and Gas Fields in Asia and the Far East: (Third Series)</a>. New York, NY: United Nations, 1971. Yancy, George, and Janine Jones. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/810119075" target="_blank">Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics</a>. Lanham: Lexington Boos, 2013. Transcript Thompson Tell me a little bit about how you and Jack [J. Bridges] met. Bridges Jack was a former attorney for my first husband, Victor Green. They don’t call him Victor Green. He goes by his middle name “Mapes.” Mapes and I were his clients. Thompson Is that his mother’s maiden name or something like that? That’s an unusual name. Bridges Yes, because they didn’t want to call him Victor or Junior, so they called him by his middle name. He’s known here in Sanford. Everybody knows Mapes, but he was another generation. so the Greens and the Bridges were here in Sanford and they didn’t live too far from one another—3 Grandview Boulevard,<a title="">[1]</a> which is the former airport. So Alfred Green worked on the railroad with Jack’s daddy, and I think Alfred Green was the supervisor. He was higher in rank than Alfred. We have always seen Jack as our attorney. [laughs] When my husband passed away in [19]91, we were all living in the same neighborhood, and Jack was divorcing in ’91 too. I think he and Beth [Bridges] separated when they were [inaudible] April, and they got divorced in ’91. My husband died in December of ’91. A year later, Jack and I met, and he was patrolling the neighborhood, but he has a very commanding voice. I had always heard that he was a very good trial lawyer, and he would speak to me with that tone. I would have to remind him that I’m not his client and that we’re not in a courtroom—to tone his voice down. Thompson Well, Jack was a fabulous attorney. I always heard it. I was never a client of his, but if anybody was ever going to be in a trial with him, they were scared. Bridges I think it was because of his practice with Mac [Cleveland]. They gave him all of the cases that came along, so he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, so he tried them all. Thompson Okay, so Mac Cleveland wasn’t a trial lawyer? Did he do more estate work? Bridges I don’t know anything about what he did, but I know Jack was a junior attorney at that time, and Mac would let him do a lot. I think that in ’91, they split up the firm. Mac wasn’t practicing that much and Jack was doing a lot of cases ,so he told him he’d like to split it, so that’s why the name of the office used to be, “The Law Office of Jack J. Bridges.” Jack didn’t do too well either. He was on his own with… Thompson Oh, a little bit of drinking. Bridges But later when he quit that, his business picked up. Thompson I didn’t realize that his business went down because of his drinking. Bridges Yeah, it was bad. When his business picked up, even the lawyers would call him so he would represent them. He would do it. Thompson And then he was city commissioner. Bridges Originally, he wanted [inaudible] to run city commissioner and all this is new, because he had two positions before. So he told Jay [Bridges], “You should take this.” He wasn’t too sure if people would accept him. I’ve heard other people ask Jack, “Why didn’t you become a politician?” Jack says he couldn’t have, because people could not accept him, because of what he was. Thompson Did he not have confidence? Bridges I think his past—it took him a little while before—we got married in ’98, and he ran for city commissioner in 2005, so it took him a couple of years. He wanted to get established and let people know he really meant what he said. Thompson I remember that Mayor [Linda] Kuhn just loved him to death and everything he said was golden. Bridges Well, he knew—he knows his business and he always looked ahead for the city. Remember the parades every Christmas? They always had parades, but Christmas was the only time that families would join in and throw candy. After I went to one of the parades, he told me to quit giving out candy. and it was because of me that they had to quit giving out candies. Jack was sitting on my right and I was on his left, and when I throw candy it’s kind of hard for me to throw this way, because I’m right-handed. So since he was in my way, some of the candy fell and he was very afraid for the kids. He told the mayor that they couldn’t allow it any longer, because they would sue the city if any kids came by. Thompson So he was always looking out. You did a really good thing. Bridges No, I was embarrassed. I thought, It was just because of me. I felt bad. Then they had that “splash pad.” Do you remember that they had that “splash pad” when they built that? Everything went well. They had it built and all, and Jack thought about it and says, “Have you ever thought about the lightning that comes with this Florida weather? We have no insurance and if the kids get hurt…” So they had to look into that and I think they got insurance, but then they made sure to close the splash park. when the rain was coming. Thompson I know they do that at [Walt] Disney [World] at one of their wave parks. Because I remember being there one day, and they said we had to leave. And we thought it was weird, because it was sunny out, but they said, “No. we have radar and there’s a storm six miles away.” Everybody had to leave. and it was the worst storm in the world when it came. Bridges This was just a splash pad, but if lighting comes—so he warned the city. When he sat on the Board, he and Nicky always wanted to move Sanford forward and not backward. Sometimes I can see that he gets very frustrated. They move forward one step and move back two steps. He says he doesn’t enjoy that part. Thompson Does he have any stories about his famous cases or when he was a kid? Bridges No, he doesn’t share the cases that he tried, because of client-attorney privilege. They’re confidential, so he can’t share. Thompson Well, I’m thinking more of personal stories that he might have shared with you of growing up. Anything about his parents or about how Sanford was when he was growing up? Bridges I can’t think of too much right now, but he was raised very poor. He said he was very quiet when he learned in school. He always made better grades and the teacher would compare his grades to his brother’s, and his brother didn’t like that. His teacher expected his brother to make grades as good as Jack’s. Jack was always quiet in school and I think it was because of his background. and I told him that there’s nothing wrong about being raised poor. A lot of the rich people were poor when they were growing up. I say, “At least you’re humble and honest.” Thompson Well, tell me stories about you when you were a little girl. Bridges Let me finish one part of Jay and Jack working on the Ritz Theatre. He was the usher, and then he became a chief usher. And when he’s home, he can watch movies over and over again and I have seen those movies so many times. Thompson He can watch the same movie over and over? Bridges That doesn’t bother him. He’ll watch different movies. If it comes on, it doesn’t bother him. He’ll watch it. Thompson Probably because he was an usher at the theatre and he watched the same show over and over again [laughs]. Bridges Then he’d pick up little words from the movie. He’d say, “Buzz off.” Don’t you remember they’d say that in that part of the movie? I couldn’t remember what show it was and say, “Okay.” [laughs]. Thompson So he would quote movies to you? [laughs]. Bridges I’m not Americanized. We weren’t raised with televisions, you know? We don’t have American movies. We’ll watch every now and then, but we don’t have that. I don’t understand the humor and all of those things, because I was raised in Singapore. They taught us the King’s English. When we were at home, we spoke Hainanese. It’s one of the dialects. They’re so many—Cantonese, Hakin, Taichu, etc. If they write in Chinese, I can read it and tell you what they’re saying, but… Thompson So the written word is the same, but the dialects are all different? Bridges When I went to school, we would have to learn English, so we wouldn’t speak English at home. Only in school. We have Indian neighbors now that are Muslims. We don’t understand what they speak at home, but if you speak English, we could all communicate. We also had to learn Mandarin as a language, just like you do Spanish here. In my later years, when my brother went to school, half the subjects were taught in English and the other half were taught in Mandarin. They wanted everybody to be bilingual. Thompson So Mandarin was the official language there? Bridges It was the official language for all Chinese people. Thompson When you were in school and you learned the King’s English, did you have an English professor from England that taught you? Bridges No, they were all local, but they went to English schools. We<a title="">[2]</a> got our independence in ’57. That was the year I was born, so when I went to school in the ‘60s, we were all taught by English teachers. Thompson Then you came to the United States? Bridges Yes, I married my first husband, and I met him as he was working in an oil field in Indonesia. When he had his break, he came to Singapore. My friend introduced me to him. That was Mr. Green. Thompson Oh, so he worked in the oil fields? See, I thought he was agricultural. I don’t know why. Bridges He was in charge of all the heavy equipment—the ship, the boats, the crane, the fleets, etc. He was the supervisor and the Indonesians loved him and did the work. Thompson What did he do when he came back home? Bridges When oil prices went bad in the ‘80s, it was much cheaper for them to hire the English and the Australians than to hire the Americans, so they didn’t want to renew the work permit, so they sent us home. When they hire the Americans over there, they give us vacation time one week every six months. Another six months later, and we have 35 days to come to the states, and they pay for it. Other families that have kids in elementary school—they have their own schools over there. They bring the teachers over there. But when they go to high school. they have to send them to Singapore. If they want to come to college, they come stateside. Then the mother gets to come here twice a year, and the kids fly over there three times a year. All of this is paid for by the company. They pay for the schooling too. They provide housing, cars, gasoline. The house is furnished, etc. Thompson Which company was that? Bridges Roy M. Huffington, Inc. was the company. Have you heard of The Huffington Post? It was from Houston, Texas. Thompson Oh my goodness. Bridges Yes, they were big companies. Thompson Boy, they sound like they were wonderful to their employees. Bridges We didn’t have to pay for the house. We didn’t have to pay for the utilities. If a light bulb needed to be fixed, you would just get on the phone and call them and they’d come and fix the light bulb. The pay was about $65,000 tax-free. That was the incentive. The only thing you have to pay is food and clothes. My husband would tell me, “Enjoy.” I didn’t understand, because we didn’t have a home here, but then we came back and I saw what he was talking about. We had our own bowling alley and our own swimming pool. We had our own commissary too. We could buy our own food. Every other month, a shipment would come in off the coast of Texas. Thompson Now, did he have to go out on oil rigs? Could he come home at night? Bridges No, it was close to home. That was the second job. On the first job, he had to go away. On Monday morning, a bus would come and then they’d fly them over on a helicopter. On Friday evening, they’d come into town [laughs]. Thompson The honeymoon’s every weekend [laughs]. Bridges Yes, they had to do it that way, because they figured it was cheaper. For a while, they would work two weeks and then they’d have one week off. All the families would stay in Singapore. We were civilized there, but when you moved to Indonesia, you had to stay in the jungle. Everybody has to get along with everybody, so what the women would do was, they would have cooking class. Have coffee once a month. I would go to Sears[, Roebuck & Company] and buy this sewing stuff and bring it over there. I like the felt stuff. You know how you sew on it? I don’t like the glue stuff. I like the sew-on like stockings and stuff. Some people were good at cross-stitching and needlepoint and they’d teach. That’s how we entertained one another. We had cooking classes too. Sometimes you get to know your neighbor well. She was from Houston, Texas, and she taught me how to cook American food. She’d write me a recipe and I’d go back and look at the ingredients and call her and ask, “What does half-and-half mean?” [laughs] I would ask her, “What does ‘a stick of butter mean?” That’s because our butter would come in one pound, and she said, “You have to cut it length-wise.” I’d say, “Okay.” That was a big help, because that prepared me for when I came to the states. A lot of people overseas don’t ever lock their doors. You can knock on the door and come in. The coffee pot’s on, you pour yourself a coffee, and sit down. Over here, I don’t know my neighbor. We feel so lost, but our friends are scattered all over the United States. We would get in a car and go all the way out to Texas, Louisiana, Kansas, etc. Thompson To visit all your friends who were in Indonesia with you? Bridges Then they’d come and reciprocate, because of Disney World. Thompson I bet you had a lot of company with people going to Disney World. It’s wonderful that you made such life-long friends. Bridges Even now, I still communicate. There’s this lady in Boise, Idaho. She’s a widow now. She used to do needlepoint and she’d even do weaving. She loved to lace stuff and she would crotchet. She must be up in age too. We write once a year. We send Christmas cards. Thompson Well, it almost sounds like the military. My parents were Navy and they made life-long friends with the people in their stations. When they got out of the service, they always kept in contact. Bridges I know of a lady from Texas who would babysit her neighbor’s children. When the wife went out of town, she’d take one kid, go out, and get some dental work done, and leave the other kid with her husband. Now, you know men can’t cook. so she would take the kids when they got out of school and she’d feed the husband too. They would do the same, so they were all very close. Once you get to know a few families, they’re all very close. Thompson When you came here did you find a family that you could be friends with? Bridges No, I don’t know them very well. I kind of miss that. Thompson There’s good Oriental contingency in Seminole County, I know. Not very… Bridges I don’t practice that anymore. I don’t cook the food anymore. I don’t long for the Chinese food anymore. Not like some Vietnamese that I know like [inaudible] fiancée. They always have to have their rice. They always have their Chinese food. They cannot sub, but I can, because my first husband was American and now I’m with Jack. I say, “If I don’t have bread, I’ll have potato.” [laughs]. I found out that they have their Chinese squash and everything, but the zucchini is almost the same stuff. You can use it to sub for the Chinese squash. But they have to have it exactly the same as before. Thompson Isn’t that strange that they can’t adjust? Bridges I have a friend in North Carolina and she could adjust. There’s some who can’t and they go back. They say, “America is not for me.” It’s a cultural shock. I couldn’t do that, because I made up my mind, because I married an American. I said, “I married an American. This will be my country and you have to adjust.” Thompson And you learned how to make your first Southern food. What did Mr. Green say when you made your first Southern food? Bridges He didn’t like my biscuits. He said they were too hard. [laughs] Everything we had to do was from scratch. We didn’t have the stuff that you do. It’s very convenient. Thompson Yeah, you can have it frozen. “Oh, you want biscuits? Here’s half a bag.” [laughs]. Bridges I used to make my own bread and hamburger buns. We used to invite our neighbors and ground beef meat was very expensive. They’d say, “These hamburger buns are so good.” My husband would say, “That’s because they’re homemade.” In Singapore, the bread didn’t last very long, and the flour would have weevils in it, and American women would teach me, “You take it and sift it twice.” Thompson To get the weevils out. Why were the weevils—because they’d been in storage? Bridges I think that it’s because when they shipped it, they shipped the old stuff to us. By the time it cleared customs, the humidity would get to it. We were so excited to have American stuff. We loved Cheetos in a can [laughs]. We would all grab American stuff. We would grab toilet paper, because we didn’t like the local stuff. It was stiff. It wasn’t soft, so we’d buy a whole bunch. We figured that if we left the country another family would buy us the stuff. When we knew there was a new shipment, we’d run to the coast and load up, because you don’t know when the next shipment would come in. Thompson So you were doing “bulk” before Sam’s [Club] ever showed up [laughs]. Bridges Over there we just buy a bunch of stuff. We buy our meat. We buy the whole piece—the whole pork loin. We would go to the supermarket, buy it, and tell them to freeze it. We’d tell them when we’d want it picked up, so they’d wrap it up and put it into boxes. Then they’d tie it and tape it and all, and we’d pick it up and we’d bring it to the hotel and tell them, “We want it in your freezer.” Then we’d tell them at what time we’d come to get it and our bus would come to pick us up and take us to the airport. Thompson To go from Singapore to Indonesia? Bridges The flight would last two hours and 20 minutes. Then we’d rest and catch a 45-minute flight. If you pack them well and you only open them once, you should be pretty good. Prime rib was $15 a pound. This was back in the ‘80s. Thompson Oh my gosh. Bridges We’d usually try to bring a few pieces of meat. We’d live on seafood a lot over there. When you buy fish, you have to buy the whole fish—head and all—and the fish 50 cents a kilo. Thompson A fish for 50 cents? Amazing. Bridges Usually the fish is about two to three pounds, but it was fresh. We’d also have a lot of shrimp and lobster too. Thompson I bet you know a lot of great recipes for shrimp, lobster, and fish, don’t you? Bridges No, I didn’t have to cook very much over there. I buttered them a lot and broiled them. Seafood was abundant. [inaudible] I would go to the local market. They would always have some trouble with us, because they don’t encourage you to go outside the city. Thompson Was it dangerous? Bridges It wasn’t dangerous, but if an American like you—a Caucasian—goes there, you’ll be surrounded and you’d be shot. They don’t like Americans. For me, I’m Asian with an Asian [inaudible], so it’s a little bit better. I learned that when you carry your basket to town, you just let the boys carry it so they don’t bug you. You pay them 100 rupees. That’s 10 cents and they walk with you while you buy your groceries and they put it in a cart for you. Thompson So if one of the boys that you see on the street comes, he attaches himself to you and then none of the boys bother you? That happened to us in the Dominican Republic. A boy attached himself to my mother and he went everywhere with us throughout the whole day. Bridges This was only in the market though. That way you get rid of them, because they all want to help you, and you end up paying extra money. I also found out that we’d pay the lawn boy $5 a month and we’d pay the maid $15. $15 is the maximum, and they say $10 is the going rate. One of our doctors from Texas would pay $15 and the maid would carry laundry from the city every day. After they worked for the Americans, they’d go work for the nationals expecting to get paid $15 a month, but the nationals would only pay them $10 maximum. They’d say, “That’s not fair.” They’d tell us we couldn’t spoil them. Thompson You see? We’d look at that as entrepreneurship. If you do the best, you get paid more. Bridges Right. They also liked blue jeans, so what we’d do is come to the states and buy blue jeans and give it to them as a Christmas gift. That’s why they like working for the Americans. Thompson Well, your husband was very right when he said, “Enjoy it.” [laughs]. Bridges Well, I didn’t understand, but now I do. Thompson What was your first shocking experience when you came to the [United] States? Did you come in through Texas? Bridges No, we came in through Maryland. Yes, because his Army friends stayed at Fort [George G.] Meade, so we’d stay with our friends. The men would go somewhere else and the women—was very nice. She took me to the commissary. I said, “I want to go to the commissary.” I walked in and I said, “Oh, look at the eggplant. It’s so nice. Look at the lettuce.” Because our lettuce is terrible-looking, but we still ate it, because that’s the best they had to offer. She just looked at me. [laughs] I said, “I want to buy this. I want to eat this.” Of course, we had more money than they did, so we paid for the groceries, but she let me pick what I wanted. The green peas were so green and narrow, but over there they were kind of bulky. Thompson So the first big shock was the groceries? I bet the food was a lot cheaper too, wasn’t it? Bridges Yes, because any canned food that came over into Indonesia were three times more expensive than here. Thompson Did you ever go back? Bridges I went back to Singapore, but not to Indonesia. It’s not the same for me anymore. I guess I’ve been gone too long. The heat and the humidity is like Florida weather in the summer. I can’t take it. [laughs] Jack always wanted to go there, but he never made it. I went back in 2004, when my brother had just died of lung cancer. And Jack wanted to go but he couldn’t. so I said, “I’ll go.” Do you remember the bird flu<a title="">[3]</a> that went around? They said that if I came back, I’d have to be in quarantine for 10 days. Jack was a little sick at that time. I think I wanted to go in November, but I went in the spring. Jack said he always admired the Chinese culture. He handled one or two cases and he said he had yet to see a broke Chinese person. I was raised Chinese. During the New Year, you have to pay off all your debts. We didn’t owe anything. Jack said, “What about your mortgages?” I said, “Well, I guess that’s one thing that you can’t pay off, but everything else has to be paid off.” Another thing is that you never lend to friends or family, because you’ll never get it back. That’s very, very true. Jack would say that the Chinese and Egyptian cultures are very, very old but he likes them more. Thompson It’s also a very good practice. You’re not in debt. So many Americans are in debt. Bridges Yeah, but when I was talking to Jack’s mother—she’s old school. It parallels what the Chinese do. Thompson Yeah, not to be in debt, because she lived in the [Great] Depression. She’s of that generation. Bridges Yes, and she’s very frugal just the way I was raised. Thompson What did your parents do? Bridges My mother was a homemaker and my father was the chief electrician, so he was gone a lot. My mother raised us, and when my father came back, we would like it, because he would spoil us. He let us go to school early, and my mother didn’t like that. We started school at 7:30 and were off at 1:00. The next year, you go from 1:00-5:00. That way they use the school, so the school isn’t sitting there empty. Thompson Did they always have a group in there? Bridges Yes, all the time. They alternated it so one year a student goes in the morning and the next year he goes in the afternoon. ThompsoAnd then it’s hotter. It’s cool in the morning and hot in the afternoon. Bridges Yeah [laughs]. That way the school is used many times, so that they don’t have to build that many schools. Property is very expensive in Singapore. It’s like Hong Kong. Everybody lives in patmas. They call it “flats.” The government will build them and let you buy them. and you could use your Social Security number to buy them. Thompson So they’re like condos, and they’re subsidized by the government. And anybody can buy one? Bridges Not everybody. They have three or four bedrooms, so it depends on your family’s size. The government will tell you if you’re eligible. Thompson So you can’t just have four bedrooms for two of you [laughs]. Bridges And you can tell them what location you want. Not a problem. If they build, you put your name in and they were very cheap. I remember my mom got a three bedroom for 15,000 in the ‘70s. Thompson Wow. That was a wonderful deal. Even back then. Bridges The dollar was like two to one. That’s cheap. Now, you can’t buy a patma for that cheap, but it’s subsidized by the government, and the government wants everybody to live better in wooden homes, because they take up a lot of land. They don’t want that. The island isn’t that big. It’s 25 miles across from east to west and 15 miles from north to south, and it’s got a population of two million people. It’s the cleanest city in the world. Bridges The crime rate is very low. They will not tolerate drugs. It’s a law and order country. Do you remember that Michael Fay went down there and got caned? He got caned, because he took the stop sign down, and his family got sent home. Thompson Yeah, I had heard that about Singapore. That was an international incident. Bridges [Bill] Clinton, the American president, pleaded and the government said, “This is a law and order country.” Thompson And there are no exceptions. Bridges This lady brought drugs in. I don’t know if she’s Australian or what, but they asked the Queen of England<a title="">[4]</a> to plead and they said, “No.” Thompson The Queen couldn’t help. Well, just think—if it’s 25 miles long and 15 miles wide, it’s the same size as Sanford’s 22 mile square. so your whole island is probably the size of Sanford. It has two million people there and we only have 54,000. People don’t understand how lucky they are to live in a place like Sanford. Bridges Right, because over there it’s very competitive. You have to do well in school. If you don’t do well in school, you get a terrible job. My mother always said, “You see that road-sweeper? That man that sweeps the street? That’s where you’re going to end up. Digging the ditch.” [laughs] Then when they came up with that machine that cleans the street and she said, “See? They don’t even need you anymore.” [laughs] She pushed education, because both my parents were raised on a farm on Hainan Island in China. Do you remember where our plane landed in China? It got confiscated by the Chinese government. Thompson No, I don’t remember that. Bridges An American plane landed there and they wouldn’t let us take our plane home. They had to go through and check, because they wanted to check out what the Americans had in equipment and technology. Thompson So it was probably a military jet that crash-landed there or something? Bridges I don’t know how it landed there, but I know it landed there. The Chinese government got involved and I remember saying, “It’s Hainan Island. That’s where my mom and dad were born.” My mother said that the communist government would give you two pieces of material and that’s all you get. She patched them and they would look like embroideries, and she was very frugal raising us. Thompson So it was two pieces of material per person in the family or just two pieces? Bridges It was two pieces a year. That’s all you get. We always had hand-me-down clothes because my aunt was from American Families, and the kids had all the clothing, and we got to pick what we wanted to wear. so if I said, “I don’t like this dress,” she wouldn’t throw it away. She would pack it up and send it to China. It was for her nieces, you know? Thompson Yeah, so whatever you didn’t like went on to another family. Bridges Right. She wouldn’t give it to the neighbors or friends they could use it. She would send it to her family. My mother—she didn’t work, because she raised us. but she knew that education was very important. When we’d come home, we’d speak the dialect. We didn’t speak English. And we’d bring our report cards and she’d say, “What does it say? And “You’d better tell me the truth, and if it’s not what it says here, you’re in trouble.” [laughs] Thompson So she taught you how to be honest. Bridges She didn’t mind us going to school, because that was the only way we were going to do better than her, and many Asian communities are the same way. A lot of my cousins are in Virginia. My aunt does not speak English and my cousins speak broken English, but their children are very educated. They’re honor students. They’re doing real well and they’re taking care of their mom and dad. Thompson Well now, did you ever have children? Bridges No. Thompson So you have step-children from… Bridges My first and second husbands. Thompson Oh, both. That’s wonderful. Do you see them? Bridges Originally, [inaudible] lives in Orlando and the other two live in Pennsylvania, but now they’re back in Florida. They love the Florida weather. We brought them to Florida. We took them to Disney World. they always have a place to stay, and they loved it so much. They got tired of the snow. Thompson Who wouldn’t be? I like Florida too. My sisters wanted me to move to Tennessee, and I said, “You know, I like Florida. I love you, but I don’t love your weather.” [laughs] She said, “But you have hurricanes.” I said, “But I don’t have snow.” Bridges Well, Jack’s son was born and raised here. Jack only had one child. Thompson Oh, is that right? Is it John? Bridges No, Tory [Bridges] is his child. Tory’s mother, Mary Carly, is in the insurance business on Lake Mary Boulevard when you pass—that’s Jack’s first wife. Thompson Oh, Debbie or something? Bridges She married Brent Carly. He owns the insurance business on Lake Mary Boulevard. Thompson I know Mark Carly. He’s Brent’s brother. I know him better than I know Brent. I believe it was you, Jack, and Jack’s brother that made it out to the restaurant one time and I was able to meet her once. Bridges Yeah, she’s in assisted living now—Spring Lake Hills on Lake Mary Boulevard, across from the forest. She has a bad case of dementia and she gets very excited. She can’t sit down for too long. I think that’s part of the disease. When I went to see her right after Jack died, she kept asking me where Jack was and we told her. And her cousin, Linda, told me that when she went to Jack’s service, she thought she was at her husband’s funeral. Thompson Oh, so her dementia was really bad. Bridges When I see her she asks me how Jack is and I hate repeating it to her, because it hurts me to tell her to tell her that Jack’s gone, because I’m grieving and it’s hard for me, so I say, “He’s okay.” Then later she says, “Oh, he’s gone isn’t he?” I go, “Yeah. he’s gone.” Thompson So sometimes she will remember that he did die. Bridges Now instead of saying that Jack is coming to take her home, she says that her mother is coming to take her home. They go back. They revert to their childhood. She doesn’t remember her other son, Stevie [Bridges]. Stevie does not come around too often. Thompson Well that’s the one everybody compared to Jack, so he didn’t feel too good about it. Bridges Yeah, but they always favored Stevie a lot. Stevie stayed at the house with them, but he later moved out. Maybe they catered to him, because Jack was a family man. They figured he was married and Stevie never got married, so they took care of him more. I don’t know. Thompson What kind of work does Stevie do? Bridges Well, he went to college and got his degree from University of Florida. I don’t know what he majored in, but he decided he didn’t want to use what he learned in school, so he worked for a welding company and became the chief welder. Thompson Yeah, because I remember seeing him in work clothes, like a working person—blue collar. Bridges Right. They told him they would give him a desk job, but he said no. He preferred to be blue-collar. That’s what he wanted. Then they let him go and he was applying for other jobs. I don’t know. It didn’t work out. Thompson So he’s not working at all now? Bridges He turns 60 in February and he said he’s going to wait and draw retirement and Social Security [Insurance]. Thompson Well, he’s got two years until he can do it. Bridges He has a big payout and Jack was trying to tell him how to invest. and I told Jack, “If he was smart enough, he would have gone back to work and worked ‘til he was 65, and let that money build and draw better Social Security.” That’s what I’m doing. Thompson Well, I worked ‘til 62, but my husband was very ill. So I just went in and said, “I’m closing the restaurant.” Bridges I don’t blame you. You had your hands full. That’s different. Being a caregiver takes all your energy. Thompson It does. I had two years with him. We were very lucky. On July of 2008, I walked in the door and said, “We’ve got parties that we’re doing on the 4th of July and we should be out of food by next Wednesday.” I said, “We’re closing the doors of The Rib Ranch forever on the 8th and 9th of July.” I put a big sign up saying, “Come and say goodbye.” Everybody came and got barbecue, but on July 2nd, the guy who owned the business right next door to me made me an offer for my property, and I took it and we had our closing 15 days later. I had two years completely free to be with my husband, because he couldn’t drive anymore. He was going blind. He had a lot of physical problems. I spent a lot of time going to doctor’s offices. Bridges It’s like what Jack said towards the end. his social calendar towards the end was all doctor’s appointments. Jack got sick in 2009. He was in this hospital and then they told him they had to send him up to Shands[?]<a title="">[5]</a>, because he had abdominal blockage. They said, “You need surgery. There’s a tumor right there. That’s why it’s doing that. Shands might be able to get you in.” The doctor that tried to get him in just got back from church and he said, “There’s a bed available.” So he was happy, and I packed four days’ clothes. stayed there three and a half weeks. He wouldn’t let me come home. He said, “Don’t leave me.” He was very lonesome. Thompson He needed you. Bridges I had a lot of vacation time, so I called Penny Fleming and she said, “Take it.” I was planning on coming home and working Monday through Friday and then go up on weekends, and she said, “Well, whatever you want.” Then I decided, “Well, maybe half a day on Friday.” She says, “That will be better and you won’t have to drive during the night.” Then I told Jack what she said and Jack said, “No.” Thompson He needed you there. Bridges He wanted me there. Thompson Well, the thing I found out about, when your husband’s sick, is that even though I depended on him being smart and understanding everything. He was being stoic, but he wasn’t comprehending what the doctors were saying, because, internally, he was panicked. He would say, “What did he mean by that?” I would have to research it and find out what the doctor meant, because he wouldn’t tell him he was scared. Bridges Jack was the opposite. Jack was very sharp and he still had a sense of humor. I remember they almost put him on a ventilator one time up in Shands. Scared me to death. Jack didn’t like too much medication, but they gave him medication and he crawled to bed. And when he came in, there was this person sitting in his room and he woke up and said, “Oh, have you met my warden?” Thompson Who was the person sitting in his room? Bridges It was the nurse. And they had to explain that he was trying to climb over the bed. When he was up there, he would tell me to do things he wasn’t supposed to do. He wanted a Slurpee and he said, “Go get me one.” and I’d say, “The doctor says you can’t have anything.” He’d say, “If you don’t get it for me, then I’ll go down to get it.” I said, “Then what do you want?” He said, “Strawberry.” At that time, he had that abdominal problem and they had to pump it out. There was a little container behind him and the doctor could see the red from the strawberry and he panicked, “Oh, it’s blood.” Jack said, “No. I just had strawberries.” [laughs] The doctor shook his head. Jack said, “My mouth is very dry, so I asked her to get me that.” The doctor said, “How about changing the flavor?” Oh, he was something else. Thompson So what’s happening with you now? Bridges I’m just back to work. I’m just doing my routine and putting in my time working at the Sheriff’s Office until my retirement. I’ve got 10 years to go. I’ve already got 14 years. I hate to retire so early, because what am I going to do for health insurance? If I retire right now, I’ve got eight years. 62 is early retirement. They penalize me five percent for every year under. I figure I don’t have much going right now, so I just try to keep myself occupied. Thompson I think that’s a good thing too. If I didn’t have all this, I’d be going crazy. Bridges But I sure miss him though, because every time I go to the parades, I see all the people and politicians and it kind of depresses me a little bit. Thompson Well, what do you think he would have said about everything that happened with Trayvon [Benjamin Martin] and the city? Bridges I don’t think he would have let the case go as far as it did, because he would know how to tell them. Who is it [inaudible]? He said he didn’t know the legal procedures or the steps to take. He said it wasn’t right that [Bill] Lee didn’t arrest [George Michael] Zimmerman. but if you can’t prove anything yet, how can you arrest somebody? There’s no evidence. Thompson I thought it was really strange that people don’t understand that the police investigate, but it’s the state attorneys that say they have a case and have them arrested. My illustration was, “Haven’t you seen Law & Order?” Half the show is about what the police do and the other half is about what the attorneys do. Bridges Well, I think that on the legal side, you have to have evidence to show before you can convict and arrest a person, but there’s nothing to prove him guilty. People were so upset. They wanted them to do it now and it got worse and worse. When it came to the commissioner, people were saying Commissioner Lee wasn’t doing his job. Thompson And none of those commissioners… Bridges They don’t understand the legal system. Thompson It would have been good if Jack were still there. Bridges Linda would have been good too, because she worked at the state attorney’s office. It would have helped the city. Thompson Maybe if we had had a better city attorney. I mean, I don’t know Lonnie Grout, but maybe a stronger criminal lawyer mind would have helped. Who knows? Jack is really missed. Bridges Yeah, I feel like he served. The Lord wanted him home, and I feel like Jack knew he was sick but he did not tell me. He knew what was going on. He was talking to Dr. [inaudible] about it. Remember when they put the shunt in? He [inaudible]. I think when they pull it out too fast it can create a clog. That’s what my friends told me. Linda [inaudible] said that was a clog when she saw his hand, and she was right. His hand just got bigger and bigger like my thigh. I asked the nurse, “What happened?” She said, “Oh, nothing wrong. We’re just trying to stabilize.” When Dr. [inaudible] was talking to him, I came in at the tail end of the conversation. Dr. [inaudible] said, “If we have to, we’ll remove it.” I found out after he died by talking to Dr. [inaudible] that he knew he was going, but he didn’t tell me. Thompson I don’t think my husband knew he was going. Bridges He didn’t want me to be upset, and I feel that it’s not fair. At least he could have prepared me, because he went in on a Friday, assigned Saturdays all over the weekend. I had to bring him his Jell-O mixed with fruit. He didn’t want the hospital Jell-O. He wanted iced tea mixed at home. He wanted chicken noodle soup. He didn’t want the can one, so I’d bring the hot broth to the hospital for him to eat. I saw him Saturday, Sunday, and I called Jack’s son about Friday or Saturday to let him know, because we’re working people. We’re always so busy. Maybe we would have more time on weekends. He could have come to see his father, but he didn’t come to see his father until Monday. Jack’s secretary was there on Monday too, and she said, “What is Tory doing here?” I said, “I told him he could come see his father, but I didn’t tell Cathy that she could come.” During one of our meetings in the room, the doctor came in and he was a very good cardiologist and I liked the doctor very much. And she started asking him questions and the doctor felt—I could see the look on his face. he didn’t want to be interrupted, and he looked at Jack and me. He knew who I was, but I didn’t introduce myself. He didn’t like it. I said, “Next time, I won’t let her come to the hospital to see him, because what if the doctor has to come in and she interrupts everything?” That time she called me from outside the hospital and says, “Can I come inside?” What can I say? She’s already at the hospital, so I told her to come up. After everybody had seen him, he said he’s tired and that everybody has to go. Thompson This was Monday? Bridges No, it was Monday night. I said, Okay. I guess he wants me to go home too so he can rest. Everybody left and I was packing my stuff and he said, “No. you stay a little bit.” I stayed and he said, “Give me a hug.” He wanted me to kiss him. I think he knew. He must have known it was getting close. so on Tuesday I worked half a day. I was going to do a whole week. On Tuesday, I got a message from the doctor saying, “Come right away.” I dropped everything. Thompson So you had just gotten home and then you had to go back and he had died? Bridges No, I was heading towards the hospital to bring his stuff, but when I got the message I just went straight and left everything. He said, “Come right away,” but he was already gone by the time I got there. Thompson Well, you can be angry with him, but… Bridges But we had a good life. It was a short time with him, and Jack and I had an age difference of 11 years. We both had November birthdays, and we’re 11 days apart. When he died we were married 11 years and 11 months. Thompson Oh, 11 is a really important number then. Bridges When he started having the cancer in December, he said that he would like another 10 years, but if God would give him five he would take it. In December, he showed me he wanted to go to church. I’m a converted Catholic. Every now and then he’d go to the church. He got very bored. I was surprised he went, and that was the last Christmas. Thompson Well, it’s tough when we lose them like that. Bridges Jack changed his whole life around from what he was. He went to the opposite end of the spectrum. Thompson He really did, because he was a rounder. He was a party guy, wasn’t he? Bridges He was. I remember when he told me, “When we get married, I like to go out with my boys once a month.” But he never did it after we married. I let him run as far as he wanted to, but he never did. He always wanted to come home. He knew he had a home to come to. I think that when he was struggling with his alcohol, there was no one to communicate with him emotionally. With my military upbringing, he learned how to be soft to people and love them. I think he felt most sturdy and he said I was his rock. Thompson You were the stability that he needed. Bridges He turned his life around after that. He learned how to give and found that it was very rewarding and he turned into a public servant. He got what he wanted. He had the intelligence to go along with serving the city. I’m very happy for him. I hated seeing him go, but he achieved what he wanted to do in life. Thompson I think that’s great. I had a different situation with my husband. I’m so happy that he’s gone, because I loved him so. He was a sports lover and he loved Sports Illustrated magazine. He had to read about his sports. He told me on Wednesday, and he died on a Saturday, “Cancel my subscription to Sports Illustrated.” That just floored me. I think now that he passed away, that if he had lived the two years they said he would, he would have been blind. He was in renal failure, so if he lived through that, he would have been on dialysis. He had diabetes and he was losing his legs, so this is not the life he would have wanted. This wouldn’t be living. This would be torture. He wasn’t a man who had the will to live through anything. He had his comforts. I’m so glad he was able to go the way he wanted to go, before these awful things came. He was a very proud man and very private. He hated having nurses having to help him go to the bathroom or go take a shower. It got to me that he had to go through that. Bridges The last two years of Jack’s life, he was sick and he knew it, and he cried. He said he didn’t deserve it. He was throwing up and there was nothing but liquid coming up all the time. I had to empty his can, because I didn’t want him to smell that all the time. He was already sick. I made sure everything was close by and the less he moved, the better he felt. I’d get his medication, Sports Illustrated magazine—whatever he needed. He said he didn’t like being sick like that. He would say to me, “You’re too good for me.” and he’d cry. It got me emotionally, and when I’d get to the kitchen, I’d cry. I’d almost be in tears, but I wouldn’t look at him. He’d ask, “Are you alright?” I’d say, “I am.” Then I’d go to the kitchen and cry, because I didn’t want to show him I was weak. But he was ready to go. Thompson Mine was too. At the time I was mad at him for leaving me, but I got over it. Now I’m just grateful that I had him for as long as I did and that he’s not suffering. Bridges My first husband went very fast. He was up and walking and he fell. One of his blood vessels burst. They called it a “pontine hemorrhage,” because of the pons. It’s like an aneurysm. I was kind of mad, but they say—I was shocked. I didn’t know he was going to go. There was no goodbye or anything. Then God was graceful enough to put God in my life. I had only been in this country for six years—’85-‘91. I didn’t know my way around. I had to learn how to drive when I got here. And my sister and brother-in-law were very good to me and helped me with the funeral arrangements. Then Jack came into my life and I said, “Oh God. At least you could have prepared me.” I didn’t know he was going to get sick. It takes a lot to be a caregiver. You’re not prepared, but that’s life. Jack went so fast, no one expected it. We thought he was doing so well when he came from Gainesville, and they detected cancer and he went for his radiation [therapy] and chemo[therapy]… Thompson How long had he been back from Gainesville? Bridges He had surgery in August. Thompson Yeah, but when did he come home? Because when he came home, we had an appointment and I think he died the next week. Bridges He died in March. Thompson So he wasn’t in the hospital in the spring? Bridges Yeah, he was in the hospital. He went in on Friday afternoon and he died Tuesday afternoon. Thompson I’m thinking of a month before that. Bridges He had been in and out of the hospital then. They had to put him in hydration, because of his radiation and chemo. They said he got very dehydrated and he had been in and out several times. Thompson Well, I talked to him on the phone and he was either in the hospital—it might’ve just been the day before he died. I can’t imagine that though. But I talked to him. maybe a week was either right before he went into the hospital or the day before he died. Because I was completely shocked. Bridges I didn’t expect him to go into the hospital. Maybe you talked to him that Monday and he was fine, but then the next couple of days, his arm just got worse. By the end of the week, I figured he better go to the hospital, because doctors are not around on weekends, so I needed to admit him. I couldn’t get a hold of his doctor so that’s why he went in on a Friday. <div> <div> <a title="">[1]</a> Correction: Grandview Avenue. </div> <div> <a title="">[2]</a> Singapore. </div> <div> <a title="">[3]</a> Avian influenza. </div> <div> <a title="">[4]</a> Elizabeth II. </div> <div> <a title="">[5]</a> Possibly the University of Florida’s Health Shands Hospital. </div> </div> alcoholism Beth Bridges Bridges, Jack J. Bridges, Mary Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play Chinese Chinese culture city commissioner Cleveland, Mac Clinton, Bill Clinton, William "Bill" Jefferson cooking Creative Sanford, Inc. cuisine Elizabeth Bridges Fay, Michael Fleming, Penny Fort George G. Meade Fort Meade, Maryland Gainesville Grandview Avenue Green, Alfred Green, Elizabeth Green, Victor "Mapes" groceries Grout, Lonnie Hainaese Hainan Island, China Indonesia Jack J. Bridges King's English Kuhn, Linda Lake Mary Boulevard Law Office of Jack J. Bridges lawyer Lee, Bill lung cancer Mandarin Martin, Trayvon Benjamin Mary Bridges oil field Ritz Theatre Seminole County Sheriff's Office Singapore Southern cuisine Sports Illustrated Spring Hills Lake Mary The Rib Ranch Thompson, Trish Zimmerman, George Michael https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/9a286a6f755d844f675354e955e5642a.pdf 61f2719e5cadc99a144778de63ba9150 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title Creative Sanford, Inc. Collection Alternative Title Creative Sanford Collection Subject Seminole County (Fla.) Folk plays Sanford (Fla.) Description Creative Sanford, Inc. is a non-profit organization created to manage Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play community theater productions. The original idea for the Celery Soup project came from Jeanine Taylor, the owner of a folk-art gallery on First Street in Sanford, Florida. Their first production was Touch and Go, a play focusing on the people of Sanford and their determination to overcome various obstacles, including the Freeze of 1894-1895, the fall of Sanford's celery industry, and the closing of Naval Air Station (NAS) Sanford in the 1960s. In the process of producing the show, Creative Sanford decided to rehabilitate an historic building, the Princess Theater, which is located on 115 West First Street and owned by Stephen Tibstra. The Creative Sanford offices are housed in the Historic Sanford Welcome Center, located at 203 East First Street. Is Part Of <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/16" target="_blank">Sanford Collection</a>, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida. <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/44" target="_blank">Seminole County Collection</a>, RICHES of Central Florida. Language eng Type Collection Coverage Historic Sanford Welcome Center, Downtown Sanford, Florida Princess Theater, Downtown Sanford, Florida Curator Cepero, Laura Digital Collection <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a> External Reference "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">WHO IS CREATIVE SANFORD, INC?</a>" Celery Soup. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about. "<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/" target="_blank">About: History and Purpose</a>." Celery Soup. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/. "<a href="http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida" target="_blank">Sanford, Florida: How do you make Celery Soup? Add stories, then stir</a>." Community Performance International. http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida. Contributor <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer Thompson, Trish Román-Toro, Freddie Interviewee Black, Patricia Ann Hardy, Billy Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title Oral History of Patricia Ann Black and Billy Hardy Alternative Title Oral History, Black and Hardy Subject Sanford, (Fla.) Education--Florida Race relations--Florida Army Description An oral history of both Patricia Ann Black (b. 1956) and Billy Hardy (b. 1956). Hardy was born on August 17, 1956, and Black was born 14 days later on August 31. Both grew up at the end of Tenth Street in Sanford, Florida. This oral history interview was conducted by Trish Thompson and Freddie Román-Toro. Hardy and Black attended Hopper Elementary School through sixth grade, Lakeview Middle School for seventh grade, Sanford Junior High School for eighth grade, Crooms High School for ninth grade, and Seminole High School through twelfth grade. They talk about what life was like in Sanford during segregation and what happened to make integration possible. Black talks about what her education in New York was like when compared to that in Sanford. Hardy discusses how football helped ameliorate tensions among blacks and whites. He also shares his experiences in the Army. Black and Hardy also discuss their childhood romance and how circumstances changed their relationship. Hardy also speaks about his time in technical school and his passion for cars. Other topics include the differences between attending school in New York and Florida, the Trayvon Martin case, and the sexual abuse of Black as a child. Type Text Source Black, Patricia and Billy Hardy. Interviewed by Trish Thompson and Freddie Román-Toro. March 2013. Audio record available. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford, Florida. Requires <a href="https://get.adobe.com/reader/" target="_blank">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a> Is Part Of <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford Florida. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc. Collection</a>, Sanford Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida. Is Format Of Digital 22-page transcript of original oral history: Black, Patricia and Billy Hardy. Interviewed by Trish Thompson and Freddie Román-Toro. March 2013. Audio record available. <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>, Sanford, Florida. Coverage Hopper Academy, Sanford, Florida Lakeview Middle School, Winter Garden, Florida Sanford Junior High School, Sanford, Florida Crooms High School, Sanford, Florida Seminole High School, Sanford, Florida Creator Thompson, Trish Román-Toro, Freddie Black, Patricia Ann Hardy, Billy Date Created 2013-03 Format application/pdf Extent 198 KB Medium 22-page digital transcript Language eng Mediator History Teacher Provenance Originally created by Trish Thompson, Freddie Román-Toro, Patricia Ann Black, and Billy Hardy. Rights Holder Copyright to this resource is held by <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> and is provided here by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a> for educational purposes only. Accrual Method Donation Contributing Project <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Celery Soup</a> Curator Román-Toro, Freddie Digital Collection <a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a> Source Repository <a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a> External Reference Gilmore, Henry Francis. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/78907105" target="_blank">A Study of Attitudes of Negro Teachers Toward the Supreme Court Decision and Other Issues of Desegregation in Education</a>. Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1957. Humphrey, Hubert H. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/189150" target="_blank">Integration vs. Segregation</a>. New York: Crowell, 1964. Jenkins, Sallie S. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/52692084" target="_blank">A Historical Investigation of School Desegregation in Seminole County School District</a>. Thesis (EdD.)--University of Central Florida, 2002, 2002. Kharif, Wali Rashash. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/10501914" target="_blank">The Refinement of Racial Segregation in Florida After the Civil War</a>. Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 1983, 1983. Yancy, George, and Janine Jones. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/810119075" target="_blank">Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics</a>. Lanham: Lexington Boos, 2013. Transcript Thompson How did y’all meet? [laughs]. Hardy We grew up at the end of Tenth Street. Our house was the last house on the street. And it just so happened that my birthday was August 17th, 1956 and yours was… Black Mine was August 31st, 1956. And we’re like 14 days apart and our mothers carried us at the same time. And we’re at the dead end of East Tenth Street. so I’m at the corner and he’s at the end. It was just us two kids. There were others in the neighborhood, but… Hardy Not as close as we were. Thompson So you went all through school together? Hardy Pretty much. Thompson What school? Hardy In elementary school, it was Hopper [Academy]—between Eleventh [Street] and Celery Avenue—and afterwards, it was Lakeview [Middle School] for seventh grade, I think. Black Yeah. We were 12 at Lakeview and we went to Sanford Junior High [School] at 13. Thompson And where was Sanford Junior then? Black That’s Sanford Middle School now. It’s the same one. Thompson Oh. It’s on [U.S. Route] 17-92. Black Yes. The next year we went to Crooms [High School], which became our ninth grade. Then we went to Seminole [High School]. Thompson So you were there for the integration of—or you were one year after? Hardy No. We were in the midst of it. Black We were in fourth grade when that began to happen, so we kind of had a choice for our fifth grade. Our parents could decide if they wanted to send us to the other school, because they didn’t close Hopper or anything like that. Hardy It just made an opportunity to go to other schools, if they wanted to, but we stayed. It was right around the corner [laughs]. Black We lived one block away. It was on the corner of Eleventh and Bay [Avenue] and we lived on Tenth and Bay so—my parents left the choice up to me, because all my life I’ve always gone to integrated schools. I began school in New York state and… Thompson Oh, so you left? Black I would leave every year. My father was a migrant crew leader, but they lived here. They stayed here. My parents’ work was as a migrant to carry people up north to pick apples—to harvest the fruit. Thompson And so you went to school up there every year? So you were just home in summertime? Black And I spent all my summers in New York. I began school in New York and I would end it here every school year. From September to November, up to the week before Thanksgiving, I would go to school in New York. Then we’d come down here and I’d finish school. And it used to be June 6th that would be the last day of school, and then as we got older it would be June 11th. The next day, my mom and I would get on a Greyhound bus and go to Rochester[, New York] to visit with my sisters, and my father would come up around July 5th—out to the migrant camp that we lived on. Román-Toro Could you elaborate on the differences between going to school up North and coming to school here? Black Yes. I sure can. For me, it was more of a freedom. When I’m in New York, I could be myself. I could be all that I thought I could be. I went to school with whites. I started out with whites, so in school, there was no limit to what we were taught we could be—even the black students. However, down here I had to go to an all-black school, which wasn’t a problem, as far as it being black. I knew I fit in there. However, at a very early age, I learned the difference. It was kind of sad for me, especially by sixth grade, I had a grip on what was going on. I didn’t like when I got to Florida, I had to feel “less than.” Thompson When you were in Florida, did you feel like the teachers didn’t tell you you could be all that you could be? Did the teachers treat you different in the North and South? Black No, but there is a difference and I saw the difference. The teachers here did all they could, but you still left school thinking that you could go no higher than a teacher. We weren’t taught about, “You could be a doctor one day.” This is what I remember. Thompson Billy, how about you? Hardy Just like she was saying earlier. we were in that situation and, as far as going to school, that’s what we did. We knew we had to go. we knew we had to have an education, so we went. The thing about Sanford during that time was that we lived over here and they lived over there. In other words, the black part of town was over here, and the white part was over here, and our parents taught us, “You don’t go over there.” There were many parts of time that—I’ll tell you what, as I came home from service, after 23 years of service, there were parts of town that I had never seen. When I came home, I was right down Melonville [Avenue] and I said, “I’m going over here,” and I did. I rode on through the neighborhoods and I was like… Román-Toro How’d you feel about that? How’d you feel about having that opportunity to go wherever you wanted? Hardy After being in the service, basically, I was going everywhere I wanted anyway, so when I came home it didn’t matter anymore. [laughs] The door was swung wide open. When I joined the Army, the door was open so wide, it wasn’t black or white anymore. It was green. We were fighting for one purpose and one cause and that was it. Sometimes prejudice situations came up, but it wasn’t a big thing. It was pretty much—it happened. It was controlled. It was dealt with, and that was the end of it. Growing up as a child, I had to stay where my parents told me to stay. Thompson Did it make you feel fearful—them telling you that you can’t go there? Hardy It bothered me. It really bothered me, because Sundays—you know, Sunday afternoon—after a Sunday meal, everybody’s been to church. We would go out to the schoolhouse and play football. It was all the guys in the neighborhood and we would have a blast. Gosh, we would just play football all day. What happened was, some of the guys from the other side of town—the white guys—came and saw us playing football at the schoolhouse—and this is kind of what got the ball running as far as the integration part. We played ball. They played ball. We played ball over here, but they played ball over there, so when they came over and a group of them decided, “Let’s go ask. Let’s go talk,” and we began to talk and things began to change. I think there was more to it than that, but that was one of the changes I saw. Thompson So you and your peers—black and white—you made the decision to integrate before your parents? Black Our parents didn’t decide for us to integrate. It was the white man. It wasn’t our parents. I believe that all of our black parents would rather have kept us where we were. They feared. They wouldn’t have sent us out to white schools, but as time went on, white people had to make a change, so that’s where it came about. We didn’t care that it was integrated. We were fine just where we were. I chose not to go. They gave us a choice. It was a very easy decision for me. I had been looking at white people all my life, and honestly, I was afraid of the white people down here, because here there was always that segregation, but in New York—so I knew there was a difference. The white people in the South – he probably could name some white kids that we went to school with. I can’t. There were no relationships with any of the white kids that we went to school with. It’s like… Román-Toro So you were segregated, even when you weren’t segregated is what you’re saying? When segregation started informally, and then later formally, did you trust it? Did you trust that it was for sincere reasons? or did you suspect that there was an agenda behind it? Black Well, I suspected that there was an agenda behind it—that they were being forced to make it happen. They didn’t want us. They didn’t think it was the right time to do this. There was a force behind it. When I—in fifth grade, in New York state—well, I had heard it while in fourth grade down here—but in fifth grade in New York state, when it was time to move back down here in November, I remember that all the kids thought that I was so smart in school down here. The books that they were learning through, I had already studied and completed in New York. Thompson So you were getting second-hand books in Florida? Black And in fifth grade, the books were coming from the North. Yes, because when I got here and went to school and for Thanksgiving, the guy next to me, Willie Jones—when he opened his geography book—in the front they have whose name is in it and then they have the school stamp up in the corner. And there it was: “NRW,” which was North Rose-Wolcott [High] School—that I went to. I was just floored, and I went home very upset with my father, because I had asked him, “How do these books get from New York to Florida?” He told me he didn’t know, but in fifth grade I had my own evidence. I saw the book and I just—it was just never a good feeling for me. That’s where my—I am a big advocate for diversity and I have been ever since then—and with Martin Luther King[, Jr.] and John F. Kennedy—for me, in my life, even with what I was going through, I was going to be what Martin Luther King was talking about—black and white kids holding hands and walking to school together. I was going to show white people that that could be done, because I knew there was a difference between the whites in the South and the whites in the North and you’re all white, you know? Thompson I want to go back just for a minute. When you said your parents wouldn’t let you go there, did your parents explain why they didn’t want you going in those neighborhoods? Hardy Well, basically they didn’t want us going over there because it was trouble. Some of the experiences—I mean, I got dogs sicced on me. I got to the point where I just got fed up by a lot of stuff and it was—I walked to the store one day, and this guy sicced his dog on me. He had one big one and one little one, and they didn’t bite me, because I guess I was a pretty good size as a kid. I would jump at one, he’d run and the other one would try to get me and I’d jump at him, you know? I tell you what, the hatred that built up in me during that time—I was going to kill the dogs, but they died. I had something on the inside that really bothered me for a long time. and when we left Hopper and went to Lakeview it was like a big melting pot. Thompson What year would that have been? Black We were 12. That would have been [19]68. We were 12 years old. Thompson Because the integration of Crooms didn’t happen ‘til 1970. Black We were 14 at the time. Crooms was in ninth grade. Lakeview was built for the seventh grade—for all of us. Everybody was going to have to go to Lakeview. Hardy We fought every day. every day. They shut the school down once, because we fought so much. I mean, it was lunch time, and here come the buses, and it was a mess. I could honestly say that the class of ’74, from Lakeview all the way up to high school, we fought. Just to take it even a step further, I played football. My thing was football. I was big in sports, and it got to the point where I just decided, “What are we fighting for? I’m tired of fighting.” Did you see the movie Remember the Titans? We finally came together Homecoming. It took Homecoming in the 11th grade for us to come together—actually, in the 12th grade. It took Homecoming for us to come together. We were down 7-6, and we got in that huddle, and we looked at each other and decided, “That’s it. We’re going to do this.” That was the first time we joined hands and said, “That’s it. No more.” We were on defense, and I was on defense, because I played both ways. when the game started, I was on the field from then to the time the game was over. Gosh, their quarterback dropped back for a pass and we rushed him hard. And he dropped back and he threw it and one of the quarterbacks—I’ll never forget it, Jimmy Clemens, a white guy, intercepted it. We formed a wall and we wiped out everybody and Jimmy ran in for the touchdown and we won the game. Thompson But didn’t you all go to the state [championship] that year? Hardy No. We didn’t. We didn’t go to state. I’ll tell you what—it took that to bring us together. We really had a time. We really did. Thompson It wasn’t every black or white person, but it was certain ones that they had been… Hardy It was certain ones. I’ll give you a good example. I have a good friend named Pat Howard, okay? Pat were[sic] practicing one day, and I was on offense at the time. Pat intercepted the ball, and I hit him pretty hard. We were in the shower and I wasn’t expecting Pat to come up to me. He said, “You tried to kill me out there.” I said, “Coach is wearing us out out there. Nah. I didn’t try to kill you.” I said, “You all right?” He said, “Yeah.” We shook it off. The next day we got ready to line up and the coach blew the whistle. He said, “Hardy? You’re over there on defense next to Howard.” Now we’re on the same side. Now it’s getting good. “Don’t come this way,” I said. “I don’t care who you are—black or white. Don’t come this way.” Pat catches on real quick and he stood back to back with me and said, “Don’t come this way.” Now we’re having fun. Now it’s getting real interesting. We’re great friends right now. As a matter of fact, his mother has a barber shop across the street—a hair salon. Betty Ann? Thompson Oh, yeah. I don’t know her, but everybody says what a wonderful person she is Hardy That’s his mom, so when we get together we hug, fish, and talk. Needless to say, when the wall was torn down—while we were in the pot fighting—there were some friends made in the pot. The wall came down. Doing sports—the wall came down. We realized fighting wasn’t going to do us any good. “You’re here and I’m here. We’ve got to go to the same school. We’re from the same town. Hey, we might as well get along.” Thompson Your thought process is that that brought about the change, because you said, “I’m not fighting.” Then you said that to them, and they said that they didn’t want to fight either. You were really a catalyst for the change in your school. Hardy Somebody had to do something. Thompson Well, I’m glad to meet you, because that was a wonderful thing that you did. Hardy All that fighting and carrying on—it gets to the point where you’re like, “Come on. We just did this yesterday.” There was a big change. When we graduated. Tears flew. “I might never see this guy anymore.” I knew these guys, so when reunion time comes around, that’s great. We go get a ride, Pat gets drunk, and I have to take him home[laughs]. All of a sudden he’s hugging you and wants to tell you how much he loves you. The true feelings come out then. When I see him in his momma’s shop, it’s like, “Hey! You didn’t call me!” They look at us like we’re going to tear the place apart. It had to come to that. The wall inside of me fell. and it didn’t just fall, it crumbled. After I joined the service, it really crumbled, because now those I thought were my enemies were now my friends. Now we’re fighting for the same cause. I’m training them and they’re training me. I’ve been to the battlefield. Thompson Which one? Hardy [Operation] Desert Storm. I rescued so many I can’t even count the number. I was a combat medic and I’d pull them out of holes and hills, and rescued them out of the battlefields. It has been a great life and it ain’t over yet. The best is yet to come. Thompson So when you got out of the service, what did you do? Hardy I opened up an automotive repair shop in Columbus, Georgia. That’s where I live now. That’s where I’ve been ever since. I work on everybody’s car [laughs]. Thompson Now, when you were in school, did any of the girls fight? Black Well, he saw more fights than I did. I think that since I went to school in New York, when I got here, I didn’t have to put up a wall, because I understood already, because I understood what was going on. However, as an African-American, I knew where I stood and how far I could go. Which brings me back to the fifth grade and having to—it was an awful feeling to have to feel “less than.” I spent six months knowing that I was more than that. Then you get to a place where you can’t go here and you can’t go there. I think we grew up desiring not to. Which is why when we got old enough and came home, we wanted to see what all the hoopla was about. We wanted to see why we couldn’t go over there. It was to our great disappointment, because there were houses just like ours. Our house looks better than theirs. Thompson Okay, but what about the fighting? Did they do any fighting? Black Oh, yes. There was fighting. However, I would be in New York, so he would see more. The fights were always in the beginning of the school year and definitely at the end of the school year. The last day of school [laughs]. Hardy You can’t get suspended. The only thing you can do is go home. Black You’ve been saving up the whole year for the last day of school. Thompson Get even time. Black I think we even picked fights. It was the last day of school. Hardy It was wild, I tell you. I think about some of that. There was one in particular. I had a problem with one teacher. This guy—from the moment I walked in his class until the time class was done—did not like me. I didn’t bother with him, but there was this girl that liked me. She was white and she liked me. My thing was, “I can’t do nothing with you. Ain’t no way.” I wasn’t interested, but because she liked me, he was upset about it. She didn’t try to hide it. She liked me and I kept saying, “Look, I can’t do nothing with you.” And he realized what was going on, and one day, he called me outside the classroom and he said, “You are one dirty, stinking, colored boy.” It hit me and I told Dad about it and he said, “Don’t worry about it.” but I still had to deal with this guy One day in class there was a hand-cranked electrical generator. You can generate electricity with this hand-cranked electrical generator. Now, my dad was a plumber, but he was also a carpenter, and he knew electricity, and he taught me a lot of things. One of the things that he taught me about electricity was if you got in line with the electricity, if you touched it and I’m touching you, then I’m going to get it, okay? He had this electric generator in class and he was trying to prove a point, and the point was that if you touch this—he had us get into a line and hold hands and guess who was last? Guess who was next to last? The young lady. I knew what was going to happen. He was going to crank the generator. He was saying, “Y’all ready?” Everybody was ready. When he made a motion to crank that generator, I snatched my hand out of hers, and her hair stood up on her head, and she said, “Eeeeeee!” [laughs] When she hollered, he looked straight at me. I was standing there looking at him, because I knew. Needless to say, I got an F. I wound up going to summer school and I passed with a B. Stuff like that happened and I couldn’t do anything about it. I had to deal with it. Thompson So what happened to that girl? Hardy She followed us right on through high school. She was right there. I can’t remember what her name was, but she graduated. Thompson But she learned her lesson that—she didn’t mess with you again did she? Hardy We went to high school and I would see her and she would—but that was it. I couldn’t. My dad said, “No,” and that was just it. It was taboo and I just didn’t do it. You have to be obedient to your parents, so I didn’t. And with everything that happened to me, I didn’t want anything to do with that. The only thing that got me interested was when they came to the football field and said, “Hey, y’all want to play?” At first, there was a wall. After playing football the first few times, there were a couple of fights and everybody was like, “Come on.” As time went on, you get tired and you say, “Hey, something’s got to give.” Thompson So what about the girls? They fought too? Hardy Yeah. The girls fought too. You know how girl fights are—tearing clothes off, pulling hair, scratching. [laughs] There was a lot of that too, but when the girls start fighting, a lot of the guys would get in too and they would hold them and keep them from fighting. At the end of school, there weren’t enough people to stop all the fights that broke out though. The only thing you could do was get on the bus and go home. The last bell rang, run to the bus, and go home [laughs]. Thompson Well, you both have come out with really wonderful attitudes. Román-Toro How did you guys feel when the Trayvon Martin case happened? How did you act when you heard about that? Hardy I was in Georgia at the time. I was just working in my shop when I found out about it, and I was like, “Man, that thing ain’t going anywhere yet. It’s still there.” I was saying, “Gosh, the only way that this thing is going to leave this city is that some folks just have to die.” How long are we going to be upset with each other? If I get cut, I bleed. If you get cut, you bleed. It’s the same color red. The same thing God did for you, he did it for me. Some folks won’t let it die. When it happened, I was like, “Wow, here we go again.” Just when you think everything’s good and maybe there’s a chance and we’re doing all right, here we go again. It blew me away. It really hurt, because a lot of people knew me as the guy from Sanford. When I was in school, they used to call me “Sanford.” When Trayvon got killed, everybody was like, “Ain’t you from Sanford? You better look at the news. Something’s going on down there.” Thompson Did you talk to any of your friends down here? What did they say? Hardy Oh, gosh,. You know, you always get some radical friends, because this happened to Grandma and this happened to Granddaddy. The memory is still there too. People say, “I’m going to get in on it too,” and “I’m going to do something about it.” I’m like, “Hey, man. That ain’t the way.” Then the demonstration—I was so glad that they were peaceful. I didn’t want that for Sanford. I didn’t want all that fighting and carrying on. We fought enough. I’ve got a lot of sisters down here and a lot of kinfolk, and I’m like, “Hey, man. Be peaceful. Let’s let the law work for a change.” I mean, it’s obvious what happened. If the blind man heard what he said to the 9-1-1 operator, I mean, come on. You<a title="">[1]</a> were out to get that young boy and he didn’t do anything but go to the store. Now, I don’t know what had been happening in the past. I don’t know how many break-ins they had had in the past. I don’t condone that kind of stuff. I mean, if there’s a thief, let’s catch him. I don’t want him to break-in mine. I don’t want him to break-in yours either. You work hard and you don’t want anybody breaking in and taking your stuff. but Trayvon wasn’t doing that. This guy was so obsessed that he just had it out for him, and what he did was wrong. Black And overboard. Hardy The 9-1-1 operator telling you, “Wait ‘til the authorities arrive.” And you’re going to take matters into your own hands, and, as far as I’m concerned, you’re guilty. You shot that young boy and he didn’t do anything to you. You messed with him. It could have been your brother, son, or cousin. He came from Miami. I hate that he came to Sanford for this thing to happen to him, but it opened up a lot of eyes in this city—black and white. Thompson I was so proud of the City of Sanford. They had a thing from the Sheriff’s Department that said that all through that spring there were no reported fights, no break-ins, no attacks, etc. We stood head-and-shoulders above any community that was having all that outside pressure to do something and we didn’t do it. We stood together. Hardy And my sister called me and told me, “You should have been here. You should have seen the city. Everybody got together and marched.” It did my heart good. I hate what happened to Trayvon, but it sure did bring this city together and it got people to thinking. I mean, it was something deep inside of me. Black When we’re born, that’s something that’s imbedded inside of us from birth. In New York, we say that white babies are born with a backpack full of privileges, and when the black babies are born, the first thing you get is: “You’re black.” If you come from a black parent, this is one of the first things that you’re going to learn. You are Negro. It’s changed several times since then—colored, African-American, black. Hardy You heard it different. See, I heard it as, “If you’re white, you’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth. If you’re black, you get a slap on the butt.” [laughs] Thompson Okay. Now I want to hear your feelings about what happened to Trayvon. Black I’m not an avid television watcher. I certainly try to stay away from the news. I prefer the peace, because I can always hear God speaking. When the Trayvon Martin situation happened, I was unaware of it, but I was in the process of relocating from New York to Sanford, and when I got here in February, I didn’t need the TV. All of our friends and family were talking about it. What happened to me when I got here, as far as Trayvon is concerned, was that I came downtown really just trying to feel Sanford again, because we were allowed to come on First Street. We used to go to the Rexall Drugs.; we couldn’t eat at the counter thingy, but we could go and get our medicines. Then there was the five-and-dime or the 10-cent store.<a title="">[2]</a> So I came downtown and remembered [inaudible] and Manuel[?] Jacobson and, in passing one of those places and seeing that it was open, I went in. Immediately, Sarah Jacobson—I got pretty upset, because she wanted to know how I felt about it, but she felt that the world is thinking that Sanford is a horrible place now. and since I was from New York, she wanted to know how I felt. I said to her, “Unfortunately, I’ve just come from New York now, but I’ve lived in Sanford all my life, so I can’t agree with you that this is something different. This has just come out, but they have been killing all along.” That’s what I said to her. “This isn’t new. We don’t know how many black people or children someone has killed and they’re out there in the St. Johns River. I do know that, in my lifetime, Trayvon is not the first one. He’s just the one the Lord is using to clean up Sanford.” Cleaning up Sanford from the top. starting with the police department and everything. We got into a heated discussion, because I wouldn’t back down. I’m the African-American. I know what happened, so I’m not going to listen to you tell me based on what your parents—and all of that. I told her, “Sarah, but you’re still white. You don’t get to have a say in stuff like this. Your opinion is not going to matter to us or to the world, because we look at you and we still see white and all the things that conspired in the meantime.” She was very proud of her mother. Back during that time, when her mother had Manuel[?] Jacobson, she only had white ladies working for her. Somehow, it had come about in the city that they were going to boycott her, because she didn’t have any black employees. Well, one of the ladies that lived in the neighborhood heard about it and she liked Mrs. Jacobson, so when Mrs. Jacobson got to work that morning to open up the store, this lady was waiting outside so she asked her, “Why are you out here? I’m not open yet.” She said, “Well, I came to apply for that job that you’ve got.” She let her in and she said, “Well, you know I can’t hire you.” And she told her what her credentials would have to be before she could hire her and she just kindly told her that they were going to shut her down that day. She said, “I’ve come here to work for you for free as to save your life.” Sarah thought that that was really great, but not on the woman’s part. she thought her mother had done this awesome thing by letting this black lady come in there. I said, “Sarah, they were going to kill your mother.” Thompson Kill the business, not kill the mother. Black Well, I don’t see it that way. I don’t see that they were just going to get there and it was going to go over peacefully. I see Mrs. Jacobson in all of that. The black woman really put her life out there to save their livelihood. All Sarah had gotten out of that was that her mother had done this awesome thing for a black woman. Thompson Well, did the woman keep her job? Did she continue to work for her or did she just work one day for free? Black No. It was for a while until all of that had blown over. People saw that she had employed a black person. From that, Sarah just took this great pride that her mother—I said, “Well, she may have been loved enough by the blacks that this woman would come up to her, but she didn’t do anything great. She came and opened her shop like normal.” We just kind of had it out about that, and she wanted to know how I felt about the Trayvon thing. “Is Sanford really a bad place?” I said, “Well, it’s the same. Nothing’s changed.” She disagreed with me, and that’s okay. I never expected her to agree with me, but I was really pissed inside, because that brought back something. I could feel the ball and the chain around my feet while I was talking to her. What happens to us is that we know what to say to you and how to be diplomatic when we say it. However, if your attitude is the same as Sarah’s, then we have to come together and see the truth. This isn’t the first time this has happened in Sanford. We really have to control our anger. We don’t intend to be anger[sic], but it angers you when you’re talking to someone and they’re not listening. and you know they’re not listening by what they keep saying back to you. I just finally got tired of talking to Sarah and I told her I didn’t want to discuss that anymore. Sanford hasn’t changed. She said, “I could see this is really upsetting you.” She was laughing and there was this guy there watching. “What’s wrong with you, woman? Okay. it’s your money. It’s your money that’s still got you down here and you own half these buildings here, so okay.” She said, “Well, Patricia, if you’re going to open up a shop down here, you should go over across the street and talk to the black lady over there to see how she’s doing.” I said, “Why? Sarah, I don’t need that, because whatever they’re doing to her, I don’t need to hear her troubles and I’m not going to let any of you all do anything to me while I’m here. I’m from the North, Sarah.” She said, “I still think you should go over there.” I left there with a thorn. I still feel it, but it’s better now, because I get to say it to white people [laughs]. She was purposely sticking something to me. She knew she was doing it. She was laughing the whole time. That bothered me and it really discouraged me from even being downtown. I’m opening my shop over on Sanford Avenue across 25th Street. Sarah’s not invited [laughs]. Thompson Did you have other encounters with blacks or whites in Sanford that you knew when you lived here all those years? Black , at this time I’m not going to repeat any of it, because it’s not suitable for the audience. It was negative towards whites. I’m using that word, because I can and it’s true. Sanford as a city has done nothing but grown. It’s the people in Sanford—both black and white. When we speak about different situations, we’re talking about the whites. In our minds—well, they are in charge. Even if we did say “the city of Sanford,” we still mean “whites.” They had lots of opinions, but they were basically what we’ve shared about whites. Hardy Our house was next to the bushes, so there wasn’t anything else back there. There was a big ol’ yard. When I went outside—growing up, I can remember having no shirt on—short pants, barefoot. I can remember wearing a shirt, short pants, barefoot. I can remember standing in the road, because my aunt—she used to keep me, and I would always be outside when a story came on called Search for Tomorrow. Do you remember that? Thompson Yeah [laughs]. Take a look at this white hair. Hardy I remember that. Organ music and everything. And I would go outside, because I didn’t want to be inside the house—no way, no how—because it was on a black-and-white TV. I’d be outside and I’d look over there, because the house across the street was Mr. Jack and Mrs. Blanch’s. They were old folk. No one around was my age except Patricia and—and lived across the alley. Black There were other kids, but this is Tenth Street, but when you get to the stop sign, this is where I am. This is the end of Tenth Street—a dead end, actually. It was just he and I as children over here, so we all played together at some point. But at the end of the day, and even at the beginning of the day, it was he and I. Today, we are best friends. Hardy We got close. Black He can tell you what I looked like. He swears I had ponytails all the time. Hardy And it wasn’t hard to figure out who I was either. It was like this most of the time, because this is the only kind of haircut you got. [laughs] Some of the old ladies would plait them. They would take one piece of hair and make this long plait and they’d [inaudible] back and one back here—four big plaits and that was it. Black I always had plaits. Thompson Now, did she wear little dresses or would she wear shorts? Hardy She had a little dress on. Every now and then she’d come out with shorts. Black Well, at the age of seven, my mother taught me to sew. At the age of eight, I was doing well enough that, at 10, she bought me my own sewing machine. I would come home from Hopper around third or fourth grade, and all the kids would come out and gather together to go out and play. I would be finishing up my little halter and shorts, and I would go out in an outfit that I just made in 15 minutes. That’s when I would have on shorts. Yeah, but he’s my best friend. Thompson Did you ever see him play football? Black No. That was during the time we separated in spirit, due to the other part of my story. We separated even though we were still there. Thompson Talk about the separation. Black We didn’t see each other for about 50 years. Hardy We used to walk to school together. Young girls they grow up faster than we do, and they reach a certain point where they lose their mind. It’s just crazy. As young guys we’re like, “What’s the matter with them?” It’s because we don’t have that yet. It was me and you and a whole bunch of girls, and it got to the point where they were way ahead of me. I didn’t have a clue. I realized that something was going on, and at the age that I was, I didn’t want to be a part of it. We used to have to walk to school—talk about no bus. They said, “If you live two miles away, the bus will come.” Black We lived two blocks from the two miles. Hardy But they told us, “You guys can’t ride the bus,” so we walked. It was a trip. It got to the point where you would see people that lived right around the corner of the school get on the bus. They’d drive from the schoolhouse and drop them off. We used to walk. And they had gotten to the point where they had begun to walk fast, so me being the only guy, I knew something was different. You start growing up and you start looking in the mirror and you see them and you see yourself and you say, “Nah. I don’t fit. I’m not what they’re looking for.” When they sped up, I slowed down, because I just didn’t—you know, after you’re called “ugly” enough… Thompson You were shy. Hardy No. I went through school being called ugly, big head, big lips, big feet, and all this stuff. You know, after you hear that enough, you kind of think, “You know, I don’t want to deal with that.” Then I would purposely wait until I would see them turn the corner, and then I would walk on to school. When I got to Sanford Middle School, I already had a license. At 13 years old, I had a driver’s license. I had restriction at 13. I had operator’s at 14. All that walking was done once I got my license. One of my uncles had a car that was in the bushes and I wanted the car. He laughed me up under the porch. He laughed and laughed. And I stood there until he finally said, “You really want that car, don’t you?” He said, “If you could get it out of the bushes, you can have it.” I went and got my dad’s truck and pulled it out of the bushes. I carried it over to my house, and three days later, I drove it over to his house [laughs]. I had my driver’s license, and I taught my aunt, which was his wife—I taught her how to drive, because he’d try, but he’d freak out and holler at her. I taught her how to drive, so he loved me. I was driving his truck and he bought a Cadillac for her, and she was scared of that car. It was so big. I would drive the Cadillac. Woo, man. The car I pulled out of the bushes. I would drive that. It wasn’t a big deal. Thompson Okay. I want to hear a little more about the car. What kind it was and what you did to repair it? That became your life’s calling? Hardy I was fixing [inaudible] and lawnmowers since I was eight years old. I didn’t know why. All I knew was that I could do it. When I got the car—which was a ‘64 Oldsmobile Starfire—it was like a tank. It was cast iron. I was teaching her how to drive one day, and she just tore it all up. We didn’t have any insurance. Nothing wrong with the car. [laughs] The other car was all torn up and the owner said, “You could go. [laughs] It was a light blue ’64 Starfire. I got that thing running. I carried it home, rose up the hood, and started checking stuff out—spark plugs, distributor, wires, battery. and it didn’t take much. I put some gas in it and fired it up. He just gave up on it, basically. I think about that now that I run an automotive repair shop and think, “It just needed a tune-up.” It cut off on him and he went and pushed it into the bushes. I was driving in junior high school. So when they took off walking, I rode a bicycle for a while, and then I started walking. It wasn’t a big deal. I would see them walking on the other side of the road. Thompson And you didn’t even offer them a ride? Hardy No [laughs]. I was doing good[sic]. I was satisfied. I drove all the way through high school and everything. I always had something to drive. My dad used to have an old Chevy pickup. I used to drive that. I fixed it up for him. I didn’t realize that God put that gift in me until later—until I accepted him and got saved. I was reading the Bible—about [King] Solomon. When he was building the [First] Temple, he was trying to figure out, “Who’s going to help me?” Then God told him, “This guy over here knows about bricks, this guy knows about wood, etc.” I got to thinking and realized, “You did that.” [laughs] I thought that I was going to be the mailman after I got out of the army. I had taken the post office’s<a title="">[3]</a> exam. scored big time. After I came from taking the test, they told me, “You’ve got three interviews already.” I said, “Shoot. I’m going to be the mailman.” I had had about three tickets in the past. I went to Macon and they said, “Oh, you had these a long time ago. Just clear your racket and you’re good. Take the test and everything.” I go to my first interview, and the guy said, “It looks good, but you have too many tickets.” I said, “What do you mean I have ‘too many tickets?’ I talked to these people at Macon and they told me that my driving record is good.” He said, “Man, I can’t use you. You’ve got too many tickets.” I said, “I know what I’m going to do. I’m going back down to Macon to straighten this out.” I went back down to Macon and got another ticket. [laughs] Now I’m sitting there in the car, and I’m saying to myself, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” He said, “Go home. Enroll in school.” I went home and went to the schoolhouse and enrolled in school and I started the very next day. That’s what he wanted me to do, and I signed up for automotive technology. They thought that I was the best thing since ice cream. I was just doing what I know, and they were like, “Nobody like you has ever come through here.” I kept saying, “Man, all these mechanics...” They said, “Look, no one like you has ever come through here.” I would get my grades and throw them on the table. When it came time to graduate, the instructor walked up to me and gave me these papers and said, “Fill these out.” I looked at the papers and they said, “National Honors Society.” I said, “You got the wrong person. Wait a minute now. National Honors Society means that I’m going to wear a white gown. You got the wrong person.” The guy said, “No. you haven’t seen your grade point average.” I said, “Well, what is it?” He said, “It’s 4.2.” I said, “4.2? How do you get 4.2?” I built a car, and that’s how I got 4.2. This young lady and I were in the class, and I guess we were neck-to-neck and it got to the end of the class, and I said, “I’ll know what I’ll do. I’ll just build a car. You know, I’ll just put the engine in, and the transmission and everything.” They said, “You ain’t going to be able to do that.” I looked them and said, “Y’all don’t know.” I built that car and I didn’t realize they were looking at me, because I would go to the end of the hall, where the car was, so I could work on it. But they were looking. Finally, I finished it and I stood there and looked at it. I put the key in and fired it up and it looked like everybody came out of the woodwork and it looked like everybody came out and started clapping and everything. I was like, Wow. [laughs] So I filled out the papers and was part of the National Honors Society. I was floored. I didn’t think that was me. As they finished with the National Honors Society, they said, “Now we’re going to name the Student of the Year.” And they’re going on about this guy and they’re just talking about how great he is and how good he is and I’m saying to myself, This guy must be—goodness, boy. This guy really did good[sic]. They just kept talking until they said, “The Student of the Year is Billy Hardy.” And I’m sitting there and they’re just clapping and hollering, and I’m sitting there, because it didn’t hit me yet. and somebody said to me, “They just called your name.” I looked around at the instructor and walked up to the podium and said, “Y’all said all that about me?” I was like, Wow. I’ve been doing it ever since he blessed me to open up a shop. I worked at the dealership and a couple of other shops and then he blessed me with my own shop. Thompson Were you in contact with him when he was in the service? Black No. It really was 50 years. It was 50 years last year since we saw each other. It’s been a year now. Hardy When I left, I left. I’d come home and ride in and ride out. Black I wouldn’t see him though. We still lived in the same places, but we didn’t contact each other. The separation was my doing. I did it because of what was going on in my home. He and I were so close that I knew what he knew. The separation was me not wanting to ruin him by telling him what was happening to me all those years. Thompson Okay. If you want to tell that. We have 14 minutes left. Black I’m the one that started to walk ahead. I would look over the corner to see if he had come out. If he hadn’t, I would shoot out so I would be ahead. That was because I decided not to tell him what was going on. He was quiet and I could just tell he wouldn’t have known what to do with that information. This had already been happening to me for six years at that point, and we had played together up until that point, so I had to make a decision. It wasn’t until all these years later that I could tell him why. Thompson You can tell that if you’d like to. Black I had been being molested every week by a family friend in my home or wherever he would drive me to. At one point, Billy and I were playing and he dared me not to do something to him. and I was always hitting on him and everything, because he’s always been a whole lot bigger than me and he dared me this time. He always let me have my way, but this time he was saying, “Oh, you better not do that.” I knew he was serious, but I also knew I was his girl and he was going to let me get away with it. so I did real quickly and I ran across to my yard and he came running after me. The guy that was molesting me was standing there and I ran into the house and as Billy was running to come up behind me, the man hit him. and when I looked back I realized the man was really fixed on me. Billy got up to come after me again, not knowing why this strong man that he didn’t know would punch him like that, and he punched him again. so I knew I had to leave him alone. I made the decision to walk ahead. Thompson Did he hurt him? Hardy He hit me pretty good. I was just a little fella. If I find him again—I don’t know. I remember clearly how he did that, and I couldn’t have done anything, because this guy was swinging some hammers. He knocked me down about three times and the only thing I could do was get up and go home, you know? Black I couldn’t look anymore. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if to tell him that this is what the guy was doing. For me, I let Billy go. I didn’t want to mess him up or leave him thinking he had to save me or something, so I did that. The girls didn’t do that. I was the one that said, “Here comes Billy. Walk a little faster.” The girls didn’t even know why. It was very painful for both of us. At the age of six, he and I were playing make-believe, and the aunt that he was talking about saw us and called my mother. And at six years old, I got the beating of my life. It was my molester that went and caught me and brought me back, and my mother beat me with a leather belt. and when she stopped swinging me around, I got introduced to shame. The guy was standing there and he watched me get the beating, and from there, he began to touch me and became my friend. So I thought I was saving Billy at that time. We would still go to school, but we ignored the feelings we had for each other. We were in love at six years old. We went to the store on one of the lawnmowers that he hadn’t fixed yet. I have no idea where I learned any of that from. But for me, the separation was very difficult. because your friend doesn’t know what is going on and I just couldn’t tell him or anybody else. Thompson And for how long did that go on? Black For 11 years. I was 17. By the time. But by that time, our lives had gone in different directions. Thompson When did you go to the military? Hardy In ’76. After football season I said, “It’s time to go.” Black I never did try to contact him all these years. I wouldn’t ask his sisters or anybody where he was. I just always prayed to God that one day, I could see him again. and, lo and behold, that was last year. It was always in me, because the day after, he never asked me, “What happened to you?” We never asked each other that. I believe that if he had asked me that, it would have given me a chance to say. But since we didn’t—by the time we’re 12, I’m trying to protect him. I had determined, through all those years, that if my name ever came out of his mouth, I would go. It was 50 years later, and he was talking to a cousin, and he asked about me and she called me in New York and told me, “Billy was asking about you. He wants your number.” And I asked, “My Billy?” She said, “Yeah.” I said, “Billy boy? My Billy boy?” And I started to cry and asked her, “’Tricia, is it my Billy boy?” And she kept saying, “Yes.” Even she knew what it was. She asked, “Do you want me to give him your number?” I said, “No. give me his.” It had been long enough. I called him immediately, and, probably to his annoyance, I called him every day since then [laughs]. My father owned a school bus, a big truck, and a car. The bus was to carry the people up North and the yard was always full. The backyard was where Daddy kept all his vehicles was actually right in his view. Hardy So I knew when they came from up North. When the trucks and the buses were out there, I knew she was back. We were like Forrest Gump and Jenny [laughs]. Thompson This was just wonderful and I’d love to do it again. <div> <div> <a title="">[1]</a> George [Michael] Zimmerman. </div> <div> <a title="">[2]</a> Next to the Sanford Atlantic Bank. </div> <div> <a title="">[3]</a> United States Postal Service (USPS). </div> </div> 10th Street 11th Street 1st Street 25th Street African Americans Army Bay Avenue Bigham, Patricia Ann Black Black, Patricia Ann car Celery Avenue Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play child molestation Clemens, Jimmy Columbus, Georgia Creative Sanford, Inc. 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