Dombrowski
This is an interview with Bette Skates, the church historian for Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Sanford. This interview is being conducted on July 8, 2010,[1] at the Museum of Seminole County History. Interviewer is Diana Dombrowski, representing the museum for the Historical Society of Central Florida.
Skates
Good.
Dombrowski
I just have some basic questions first. Your name is Bette Skates, but where and when were you born?
Skates
I was born in Philadelphia[, Pennsylvania] in 1933.
Dombrowski
Oh, wow. What brought your family to Florida?
Skates
My father’s ill health, which is what brings most people to Florida back in the day.
Dombrowski
Yeah. That’s true. When did you move here? Did you grow up in Central Florida?
Skates
I moved to Sanford in 1944.
Dombrowski
Oh, okay. What was it like? Could you describe it? Was it very big? Was it busy?
Skates
Sanford was a railroad town. And my father worked for the railroad—is the reason, besides the fact that his health was not good, and he needed to get out of the North. And he was a Georgia boy to begin with. So he wanted to come south. And so when he had this opportunity to work for the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, at the freight station, he was very eager to accept the job. We came in on a train that they call the—well, there’s two of them. One was the Orange Blossom Special, and the other was the Champion. And this was the passenger train from the North—from Philadelphia and New York. All points north.
When we came into the station, my mother had never—well, yes. Mother had been south before, but we hadn’t, as children—very young children. I was ten—nine or ten. And when we pulled into the station and got off the train, the humidity hit us like it was going to knock us out. And I said, “Oh. Let’s get back on the train.”[laughs].
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
And that was before air—trains were air-conditioned too, but—but it was still cooler on the train.
Dombrowski
Wow.
Skates
So my dad said, you know, “This is nothing. This is fine. This feels wonderful. Get used to it.”
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
[laughs]And my mother—she’s just kind of being quiet and fanning herself. We had this—it—it was the old station that was on—on Ninth Street, and they’ve since torn it down.
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
On Ninth and, uh—well, it was just Ninth Street. I guess there was side street, but I don’t recall. right off of French Avenue. Because then the tracks still all—we still had tracks running all over downtown.
Dombrowski
Hmm.
Skates
They’re—they’re not there now, because back in the day, when trains first came in—all of the wharves and the produce—everything came in to downtown to the river. So, um, we had—let me get back to my story. So we got off the train and my sister and I—and she was a year younger than I am—and we both started—“Something smells funny. What is it?” My dad said, “Oh, that’s sulfur water! Oh, come over here, girls!” He says. “Come over here!” And here’s a water fountain, right up against the train station. I think it was a brick train station. Right there, it’s all green inside, where the water is coming out. And we’re looking at this saying, “Oh, this smells so bad!” You know. We’re holding our noses, and he’s getting very annoyed with us. “Take a taste of that water. That’s healthy water. That’s better than drinking that Schuylkill River water you’ve been drinking in Philadelphia.” Of course, my mother is being as she always is—long-suffering. And she said, “Well, they can taste it if they want to.” We tasted it and we almost gagged! Sulfur water—the first time you ever taste it, is horrible. You do get used to it. And you do realize that it is healthy.
Dombrowski
Okay.
Skates
But, it’s all the water fountains in the city. And there were water fountains in the parks, and there was one in front of the [First] Baptist Church [of Sanford], and different places. They were all over town. And they were all sulfur water.
Dombrowski
Wow.
Skates
So you did get used to it.
Dombrowski
Oh my goodness. So was the smell everywhere too?
Skates
Everywhere. Sulfur smells like rotten eggs.
Dombrowski
It does. Yeah. I remember we went to the [Ponce de Leon’s] Fountain of Youth [Archaeological Park] and they were giving it out, you know.
Skate
Yes, yes. But it’s supposed to be good for you. So, we got off the train there. And we—I think we took a cab, because we didn’t have a car at that time. And we went to an apartment my father had rented. And I guess I need to say this too, because these are the things that people that haven’t lived here don’t understand or can’t get used to. When we got to the apartment—we had an upstairs apartment. A lovely old two-story house in Sanford just two blocks from where I live now, by the way. And the whole upstairs—this was during the war—and every house in Sanford had been made into apartments and efficiencies, because the Navy base[2] was here, and housing was a premium.
As we started to go up the stairs, and on the porch was a burlap sack that had something in it. My dad said to me, “Bette, grab that bag and bring it upstairs.” We had our suitcase and everything. I went to pick up the bag, and roaches came out of the bag. They were flying roaches and they were flying all over. I don’t know how many. It might have been two, but it seemed like a hundred. Of course, I dropped it and screamed and had a hissy fit, a good Southern expression. Someone had left a bag of oranges there for us. And, so roaches, of course—so that was my introduction to Sanford.
The apartment was lovely and it was cool with oak trees. Of course, I found out that oak trees breed roaches too, so we had roaches flying in the windows and things like that. Yeah, like the water, and the humidity—you try to get used to it. I don’t think I ever got used to the roaches. But that was my introduction to Sanford.
Dombrowski
How long did you live in the apartment?
Skates
We lived there for four years, and then my mom bought a house. And my father was ill. I mean, he was very ill, and he knew he was dying. My mother opened a beauty shop downtown, just in 1956, because she knew that she was going to have to support the family. He died in ’56. So she had her beauty shop for 25-30 years in Downtown Sanford.
Dombrowski
That’s really nice.
Skates
She’s the one that could tell the stories [laughs].
Dombrowski
Okay [laughs].How has Sanford changed when you were growing up there? It was a big railroad town, and your mother, it seems, was there for a very long time. Did you see it get busier? Or develop more?
Skates
Yes, development. The stores that I remember, as growing up, are—I was trying to think if there are any that are still downtown. But, coming from a big city, it was very nice that we could walk everywhere. Ride bicycles.
We went to school at the grammar school and then at Seminole High School, which was just up not too far from my house. I mean, everything was convenient. It was very nice. It was a good, homey feeling, and everybody was friendly. It was a very nice place to grow up, I think. And the schools—my father did not think much of the schools, but then again, in the South, schools hadn’t really caught up by that time. It took quite a few years for them to catch up to what we had been used to. But it, you know, was a nice place to grow up. Very nice.
Dombrowski
That’s—that’s nice [laughs].
Skates
[laughs] Yeah.
Dombrowski
What was it like for your mother to set up the beauty shop? Was it very difficult? Or…
Skates
It was very difficult. My grandparents—her mother and father—had lived in Philadelphia. And they had, um—they sold their property up there and came down, just after my dad died, to live with my mother. I know—to help her. We didn’t realize it, at the time, but, um—and they helped her with finances for the beauty shop
Dombrowski
Okay.
Skates
So that was—it was very nice. And they lived with us actually, until they both died. They lived with my mother. Um, So that was, um—that was the way she could do what she did. The beauty shop was, um—what—what she would charge for what—for the work she did—I wish I had a price list. But I remember one time, she said something about a dollar and quarter for a manicure. We all said, “Is that all?” She said, “If I had charged a dollar and a half, they wouldn’t come back.”
Dombrowski
Oh, wow.
Skates
So, I mean, the prices were—were—were really…
Dombrowski
Different.
Skates
Different.
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
[laughs] Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. But it was her—her hopes[?]—her beauty shop was in the Montezuma Hotel, which that building has burned down since…
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
Then. It was a big hotel that was built here in the 1880s.
Dombrowski
Hmm.
Skates
It was about four blocks from the river, and People would get off the steam ships and walk up the little hill and—to the hotel. It was called the “Bye Lo Hotel,” at the time—I mean, at that time. It was later changed to the Montezuma. But it was—when Mother had the beauty shop there, it was a little spooky
Dombrowski
Really?
Skates
It was old, you know?
Dombrowski
Yeah.
Skates
And—and there’s a lot of people who still lived there. But, uh, it burned down a few years ago. [inaudible]…
Dombrowski
Hmm.
Skates
About 12 years ago, I guess. So, uh, that was—that was a loss, but it was the first hotel in Sanford that had a swimming pool. Maybe the only…
Dombrowski
Oh, wow.
Skates
One. It was in the basement…
Dombrowski
Oh, okay.
Skates
Of the hotel.
Dombrowski
That would be cool.
Skates
Yeah.
Dombrowski
Yeah.
Skates
So that was neat. Later, they, uh, put a furnace in the swimming pool and didn’t use that anymore. I never saw the swimming pool with water in it.
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
I did see it with a furnace in it.
Dombrowski
Oh [laughs].
Skates
But, uh, um…
Dombrowski
Um, Where did you go to school? Did you go to college?
Skates
Yes.
Dombrowski
Okay.
Skates
I did. I went to Stetson University, um…
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
I started at Stetson in 19well, let’s see. I was going to OJC—Orlando—it was Orlando Junior College. I went there for a while, and then I went to Stetson. It took me—I—I figured this out one time, but I don’t remember. Let’s see. 70—It took me about—I hate to say too much, because I—I—it took me a long time to graduate. I got married when I was 18.
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
I went to college, and I spent three months at Middle Georgia College, up in, uh, Cochran, Georgia. My cousins, uh—my dad’s sister wanted their daughter to go, and she wouldn’t go. She was homesick. And they said, “Well, if Bette would come and go with her, she would go.” So I went there, and I spent three months. Had a wonderful time. Made the Dean’s List. Was just doing fine, except I had a boyfriend, and I was in love
Dombrowski
Aww [laughs].
Skates
[laughs]. And my moth—the woman’s—the—the—the boy’s mother kept saying, “Well, I was married when I was 18,” So I decided that it was good enough for her, it was good enough for me. So I married him. So…
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
I went to college in between having my children.
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
Every time I could get, uh—I could find some money, or get a loan, or—there—there were student loans—there were [Federal] Pell Grants we could get. They—Loans were much easier to get in those days, so I could get student loan. So I would go to school for a while and then I would get pregnant again. And then I’d…
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
Go to school for a while and then I would get pregnant again.
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
This went on until 1964—well, it—let’s see when. I don’t remember how many years. But I finally started teaching when I was—when it was, um—it was 1965, I think.
Dombrowski
Oh, okay.
Skates
So it took me a long time to get certified to teach, but I did. And then I taught for 30 years in Seminole County.
Dombrowski
Wow.
Skates
Yeah. Which has been exciting.
Dombrowski
How many children did you have?
Skates
I have four children.
Dombrowski
Oh, okay.
Skates
Yeah. So I was kind of spacing this. Finally—I might want to censor this—finally about 1968, my husband got tired of it. Anybody, I guess, could understand that. He said—he didn’t sign on for that. So that was alright. But we managed, very well, and thank goodness I had my education so I could support my family. So it was good.
Dombrowski
So you taught in the school system for 30 years. What was it like in the 60’s? What was integration like?
Skates
My first 10 years, I taught out in Geneva [Elementary School].
Dombrowski
Oh, I like Geneva.
Skates
Oh, I love Geneva. I still hear from those kids. They’re great. Of course, they’re not kids. They’re grown. It was wonderful. It was probably the best teaching assignment you could have for a beginning teacher. Because by that time, I was 35 when I started teaching.
I was trying to think of how to put this. The schools had not been integrated much at that time. I don’t remember the year that I had the first black student, but I had a sweet boy. Now I was teaching fifth grade. He had come up through the grades. There was only five grades—five classrooms—at Geneva.
And the first year that I taught there, I taught in the auditorium, because there was no place. So what they did was take out the first couple rows of seats and let us set the classroom up right in front of the stage. Which was good until I got a couple of kids that were a little bit older than they should have been in fifth grade—a boy and a girl. And next thing I knew, they were behind the stage, and I had to go get them. They were good kids, and they really didn’t do anything bad, I don’t think. But I would have been in big trouble.
But anyway, the first black child I had—I was going to say I’ll never forget his name, and I did. What a sweetheart he was [laughs].
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
But he was just testing. He was testing us, going to see if the system was going to work. He was a nice kid. Good parents. If I called his parents before he left school, by the time he got off the bus at home, they were back at the school to see what he had done or hadn’t done. Because he didn’t like to do homework and he didn’t like to do class work. Guess he had just been allowed to get away with more than he should have. But he wasn’t used to me. Anyway, he was a nice kid. Yeah, it was interesting, and the children we had at Geneva—the black and the white children—were I think just the salt of the earth. I mean they were really good people. Parents were country folks, most of them at that time. Now, later on, when UCF [University of Central Florida] opened, we started getting a different group of children. Their parents were more educated. They were professors and people that worked at the college. And so by the time I left Geneva, it had changed a good bit.
My two younger boys, I brought with me to Geneva, so I taught two of my own children in fifth grade. Which was—everybody says, “How is it working?” I said, “It works fine.” No problem. They were good kids to begin with. It worked out. It was fine. That was good too, because, that was, at the time, in Sanford. My two older children—there were a lot of problems at schools in Sanford, with the integration. They started busing—I don’t remember the year. When I was going to Geneva, my daughter was being bused to what used to be an all-black high school—Crooms High School—which they did just to integrate. And that was wrong. Because the kids—the black kids were not happy, the white kids were not happy. And the black teachers and the white teachers were all upset about it, but they were busing the kids across town. So I’m driving to Geneva ten miles away and my daughter is in a bus driving across the city, and I don’t know where she is and what’s happening. It was worrisome. But it all worked out. It just took time and a lot of patience on both sides. It should never have been separate to begin with, but we have to fix our mistakes.
Dombrowski
So tensions were high?
Skates
Very high.
Dombrowski
Was it ever violent?
Skates
Yeah. There was violence. A lot of it was threatened. You know, just like, if you go down this street, we’re going to throw rocks at the bus and things like that. That was very worrisome. And my oldest son, when he was in ninth—and well, high school. It was ninth grade at Crooms. But when he was in ninth grade and tenth grade—all through school, he was a big boy, and had red hair. And it was a novelty. He got a lot of—he did his best to stay out of trouble, but trouble came to him. And of course, he tells me now he got blamed for a lot of things he didn’t do, but I’m not going to go there. You know how kids are. Anyway, he hung in there. His high school experiences were very bad. Very bad. Yeah. It was real sad. But my daughter didn’t seem to have the problems. She was also redheaded, but she seemed to go with the flow easier. He was a target. You know, a big guy. But he’s not a fighter. He didn’t want to fight, but anyway. We got through it [laughs].
Dombrowski
Good [laughs].Did you all live in Sanford at the time? Did you drive to Geneva and back?
Skates
I drove to Geneva. Yeah. I bought the house that I’m still living in, in 1958.
Dombrowski
Wow.
Skates
Yeah. So I raised my family there. And just last couple years ago, we celebrated our 50th—I said, I’ll never have a golden wedding anniversary—so we celebrated our golden anniversary living in the house. So the kids got together and each one did something. But anyway, they have a photograph of the house framed in a beautiful frame that my grandson found when he was working for the College Hunks Hauling Junk. He found a frame and on the bottom of it my daughter wrote in gold, “Thanks for the memories.” So it’s very nice. I have it hanging over the piano. It’s very nice.
Dombrowski
That’s wonderful. So it’s downtown?
Skates
Yes. It’s downtown. If you go—First Street is the street where all the commerce is, where the business is. I live between Eleventh [Street] and Twelfth [Street] on Park Avenue. And Park Avenue’s the main street that goes down to the lakefront, and used to be [U.S. Route] 17-92 back in the day. That is where traffic went through the town. It’s in the historic district.
The house was built in 1924. It’s probably more than anybody wants to know, but it’s called a “Craftsman Airplane Bungalow.” Because the upstairs is one room, and a bathroom, and it has 12 windows all the way around. So it looks like you’re looking out airplane windows. You’re not. They’re regular windows, but anyway, that’s what it’s called.
Dombrowski
That sounds really cool. I love Craftsman style.
Skates
Yes. It’s really nice. I have pillars on that house that are real unique. They’re made out of coquina.
Dombrowski
Wow.
Skates
Yeah. My fireplace—the chimney is made out of coquina. And it’s much higher than the first floor. It goes up past the second floor, because the second floor is sitting kind of in the middle of the house. It’s really neat. You’ll have to come see me.
Dombrowski
This sounds like a real Florida house.
Skates It is a real Florida house. Yeah. For a good many years we didn’t have air conditioning, so we had what they called an “attic fan” that’s up in the second floor attic. When you turn it on and you open a window in each room, one window—it sucks the cool night air in and keeps the house cool. Only it slams doors, you have to be real careful, because doors get sucked. You get slamming doors all day. But it was neat. I don’t remember being miserable.
Dombrowski
Well, good.
Skates
I don’t remember being exactly hot. So it must have worked.
Dombrowski
Were you a member of the church since you moved here?
Skates
No. We were Lutheran when we first moved here. My sister and I had both been confirmed in the Lutheran Church in Philadelphia. And so I convinced my husband that he should join the Lutheran church, and so we went as a family until he left. And well, the kids were teenagers, and you know how hard it is to get teenagers to go to church. So I just decided that I had always loved the [Holy Cross] Episcopal Church, and I loved the architecture, and the history, and Jesus. I’m sorry, Jesus. I get carried away. But so we—my daughter and I, and my youngest son—all joined the Episcopal church. My two older sons were not interested. But they were grown by that time, and I didn’t feel like I could force them to do that. They had to want to do that. And I’m still a member.
But how I got the job as historian, I made the mistake of correcting someone. You know how when someone says, “Oh, it was 1873—2, or something?” I said, “No. it was ’73.” “We need a historian. You’re—you’re it. You’re going to do it.” [laughs].
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
I said, Oh, my gosh. I should keep my mouth shut. [laughs].
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
But I love it. I’ve been doing this since, um, [20]04.
Dombrowski
Wow. Okay.
Skates
Yeah. So the church, they said, had no written history. I’ve—I’ve found all kinds of stuff, so it’s—I’ve collected it. I’ve got it together. I write a news, uh, article each month for our church newsletter that goes out every month, telling, you know, whatever it is I found out recently about the church. And so it’s—it’s a good thing. I enjoy it.
Dombrowski
Could you speak a little about the church? When it was founded, you know?
Skates
Yes,. This was General [Henry Shelton] Sanford’s church. When General Sanford—Henry Sheldon Sanford—came to this area in 1870—probably 1870. It was after the Civil War, and he was trying, as a lot of—I don’t want to call them “carpetbaggers,” but some people do. A lot of people—wealthy northerners—came down and tried to make their fortune, or another fortune. He had been ambassador to Belgium. They called him a liaison. Liaison? That doesn’t sound right. Well, anyway, yeah. I guess he was. But he also was a spy for the Union Army during the war—the Civil War.
Dombrowski
Oh, my goodness.
Skates
And he was traveling around going to different foreign capitals, trying to get some of those countries to send ammunition and guns to the North. So there’s a whole big story that I haven’t even started on of his spying for the North. But when he finished up with that job—I guess he retired from that job, because he was probably in his 50s then, I think. He married a beautiful lady. She was living in Belgium, but she was from the United States. The Sanford Museum has a huge, gorgeous painting of the home they lived in, in Belgium. It looks like a small—like maybe the Queen might have had that summer home, or something. It was beautiful. We have friends in Sanford that have visited that area and that house, and they’re using that house as a retreat for nuns now. Anyway, General Henry Sanford—he became a general, because he gave some cannons to the state of Minnesota, because he wanted a title. So the Governor of Minnesota [Alexander Ramsey] made him a general.
So, anyway, let’s see. Let me get back to the church. So he bought a lot of land down on the lakefront. He was right for his time, that Sanford—and of course it wasn’t called Sanford in those days) —that this area, Mellonville, was going to be the “Gateway to South Florida.” Because all supplies—food, you know, everything that people need to start up a homestead—they would have to buy in Sanford. So he had a lumber mill. Somebody else had a grocery store. I mean they had all things people, you know, the pioneers, would need.
He bought orange trees from all over, and he planted orange trees. One of his groves—his first grove [St. Gertrude’s Grove] —was downtown right on the lakefront where there’s apartment buildings and city hall and things there now. Citrus didn’t do too well there. The soil apparently wasn’t good enough, and so they moved out to what he called Belair [Grove], and that’s out towards Lake Mary, around the lakes. So, his Belair Groves[sic] were very profitable.
About 1873, he decided that there needed to be a church. He and his wife, Gertrude [Dupuy Sanford]—now, Gertrude didn’t come here much, because this was not her cup of tea. And when you see pictures of her as a young girl, she’s absolutely beautiful. Beautiful clothes, and very high class. And they had about five children and they were all born in Europe. She didn’t come here often. But he planted Belair in orange and lemon trees. He had a grove manager whose name was Reverend Lyman Phelps. General Sanford was from Connecticut. And he convinced this Episcopal priest to come down to start a church. Well, he did, but he also made Lyman Phelps his agent and his farm grove manager, because the man had a background in botany too. The man was very, uh,—he was very versatile.
When, um—when General Sanford—I call him “General Sanford”. A lot of people say he—he doesn’t deserve that title, but it just comes easy to me, for some reason. It—it denotes a lot of the things that he did, other than just being Henry Sanford. Um, so they started to build this church, and Mrs. Sanford wrote to all of her wealthy friends, and in her letters, she said, “Please, um, help us build our dear little church.” And that was her—the way she called it—their “dear little church” in San—in—in this city. Someone, finally, along the line—a friend of his daughter—[inaudible] said—said, “Well, we should call this city ‘Sanford,’ after you, Mr. Sanford.” And Mr. Sanford said, “Ha. What a good idea.”
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
[laughs]. And I don’t remember the years that that was—that was started. But, so anyway, by 1873, they had completed the church. Lyman Phelps and Reverend Holeman—H-O-L-E-M-A-N—um, were priests there. And they had, um, services that—these priests—I—when I read their—in the diocesan records, there’s—they had to keep records of what trips they went on and where they went. They rode horses, walked—horse and buggy—through Florida sand, which anybody that walks through it knows that—there was[sic] highways. The only way you went were by animal, you know, roads, where animals, or maybe the Indians, had made them. Um, they went to, um—but they went all over Central Florida. They went to Eustis, to Longwood, to Orlando. They started the St. Luke’s Church in Orlando, which is now the Cathedral [Church of St. Luke]. They went all over Central Florida, uh, especially Lyman Phelps. Um, But he—they were, um—it just amazes me, when I read their exploits, and the alligators…
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
You know, the mosquitoes, the—oh, my soul. But, um, anyway, so that’s how the—the Episcopal church got its start. That church—that was built in 1873. 1880, along comes—and they called it a “tornado,” and I haven’t been able to say that it wasn’t, but I think it was more like a hurricane, and maybe a tornado—a tornado was [inaudible]. It blew down Mrs. Sanford’s dear little church.
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
And we have pictures of it. And the—the steeple is laying on the ground, and the church is still standing, but it’s—it’s—it’s damaged. So they got busy. Mrs. Sanford raised some more money, and by, um, 1880, they had built another—well, yeah. It was 1873. By 1880, the church blew down. By 1881, they had a new church built. That church survived until 1923, and it burned down.
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
So they—1924 and ’25, they rebuilt it. So the church standing on that property is still on the same property that Sanford gave us. That church now was built, uh, in 19—1924, it was completed. It’s, uh, what they call “Spanish Mediterranean” [Architecture]. It’s…
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
Very Spanish-looking. It’s a very pretty church.
Dombrowski
Where is it?
Skates
It’s on the corner of Fourth—Park Avenue and Fourth Street.
Dombrowski
Okay.
Skates
And the parish hall was built by 1926. So one of the things I always thought was interesting, when they first built—or probably the second church—in the side where they had some room, they put orange trees so that in case times were bad, they would have some money. They would have a way of getting money still.
Dombrowski
Aw.
Skates
That was kind of interesting.
Dombrowski
Um,I do have a question. I don’t know much about the church in Sanford. Is it the main church for the city? Are most of the people in Sanford Episcopalian?
Skates
No, no. They’re not. Probably back in the day, it was the only church, but then of course, the South is mostly Methodist and Baptist. And right now the street—Park Avenue should have been called “Church Street.” Because there’s the Episcopal—well, first, a block closer to the lake was the Congregational church. But since they’ve moved that—they tore it down and moved down Park Avenue. The next church was Holy Cross. Then, next door to us is the [First United] Methodist Church [of Sanford]. Right next door to that is the [First] Baptist Church [of Sanford].
So on Sunday mornings, we used to have a real traffic jam down there. Not so much anymore. No, Holy Cross—I think it’s like all the churches. They’re struggling. But we’re still here. We have two services, an 8 o’clock service and a 10 o’clock service. If we had everybody at 10 o’clock, we would have a good crowd. But when you separate it into two—the people who go at 8 o’clock won’t come at 10. The people who come at 10 o’clock won’t go at 8 o’clock. So our priest does two services. And yeah, it’s a busy little church. We have a fairly good-sized Sunday school, considering Sunday schools are hard for churches these days too. So, probably at one time it was the center of the area, church-wise, but not anymore.
Dombrowski
In your time as a historian there, have you—reading through the documents and that sort of thing, have you noticed any trends in how many members they had? Like when UCF came, did more people come to the church?
Skates
It was the biggest—the largest crowds that we have ever had was through the war years when we had a Navy base in Sanford. And that started up as a training base for carrier—for planes to land on carriers. I’m not as familiar with the history of the Navy base, but it closed at the end of World War II, and it was a big drop in the congregation. But then when [the] Korea[n War] came back, they started the base up again. And a lot of those people too have been Navy people—very sophisticated—have been all over the world. Lived in many different places.
So those are the people we seem to pull in more than the people that grew up here. Most Southern people are Baptist. My dad’s family—they were all Baptist. But it’s different. Different churches suit different people. I mean, you want whatever it is that makes you feel the presence, or that you feel that you need, that’s where you should be. So I’m very ecumenical. I can, um, belong to any church you want to [laughs]. But Holy Cross is lovely. And the services are beautiful [laughs].
Dombrowski
Uh, how involved has the church been in the community? Do they hold a lot of, have they held a lot of events?
Skates
Sanford—Holy Cross—was the “Guiding Light for Grace and Grits,” which is to feed the homeless. It’s a feeding program that we had at Holy Cross. And I can’t remember these years, it’s been going on for a long time. And we had it at Holy Cross. Every Wednesday night, Holy Cross would feed, oh, a hundred people. But it would depend on the season and what. Homeless people from all over. And not just men, but families. People would come to eat.
A few years ago, we wanted to remodel the parish hall, which is where the kitchen is. And we opted to find another place to hold the Wednesday night feedings—dinners, I should say—and that was—that was hard, because the people at the church—and we have some people who are so dedicated to this—they finally found that the City [of Sanford] would let them use the [Sanford] Civic Center. It costs, I think, $200 a month or something like that. We have to pay the City for that. So now they’re feeding them down there. And also, during the transition when the parish hall was being refurbished, and the kitchen was—when we had a new priest—he really has done a lot. I mean, he has Wednesday night services, and so they had a meal there on Wednesday nights, and classes and everything. So that kind of made them want to keep the “Grace and Grits” out there. And Holy Cross wasn’t the only one that does this. I must explain this. Every church—not every church, but many churches in Sanford—there’s a Methodist church, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Lake Mary, the [All Souls] Catholic Church [of Sanford]. All of them.
Dombrowski
Just a minute here. Just to make sure.
Skates
All of them have people that come and help so we’re not doing it by ourselves. Did it run out of battery?
Dombrowski
No. It’s working. No. It’s working, I just wanted to make sure that the whole thing had recorded and everything. I’m sorry.
Skates
But anyway, it’s a whole city thing. There’s a whole lot of people involved in this. So, yeah. We do that. We also have our new priest—well at least not that new anymore. He’s been here 2 or 3 years, and he’s very much involved in helping the homeless. They call it “SACON[sp].” I couldn’t tell you what it stands for, but they go to different places in the neighborhoods and help homeless people get ID cards. Because if they don’t have an ID card, they can’t—well, there’s a lot of things they can’t do. They can’t even get shelter sometimes, if they’re going to shelters. So this has been a good thing. And helping—it’s helping the city to know what the population is of the homeless, and where they’re staying and what they’re doing. So that’s a good thing. He was just very much involved in that.
We have some kind of a health thing one day a week at Holy Cross in the mornings, where people can come. I’m not really sure what, I guess I shouldn’t say anything about it, because I’m not sure what that is. I don’t what the group is that’s doing it. But yeah, Holy Cross is involved.
Dombrowski
Uh, is there anything about the church that you’d like to discuss that we haven’t covered?
Skates
We have a lot of memorials in Holy Cross that I’ve been trying to—and this is a hard job. We actually have two memorial books that from the beginning people have—the gifts of love that they’ve given in memory of someone that they lost. But when I go to the memorial books, there are items in there that we no longer have. We’ve had a couple of break-ins over the years, so they’ve lost some things, and then there’s items that we have that aren’t listed. So we’ve endeavored to work on this. I was trying to take pictures and it’s just one other job that I haven’t finished. It takes a lot of time to do that. And I really—I could get help—old-timers, because I’m not an old-timer there. They’ll say, “Oh no, I remember that was given in memory of so-and-so.”
Right now, I’m working on—when the church was rebuilt in 1923-1924, the altar and the pulpit at the front was very plain. I can only tell from pictures, but unattractive. And in 1940, sometime, a member of the choir—and I’m still working on this. This is one of those strings you have to keep following and try to see if you can come to the end—was killed in an automobile accident. And he is—what’s the word? They have said that he had given in 1945 money to buy a new altar. A new altar, and reredos behind the altar, and an altar, and chairs. We have a lot of furniture, because it’s a very formal church. I don’t think you call it “High Episcopal.” I think some people might, but we have a good candelabra, good communion-ware. A lot of stuff. And anyway, this man—apparently there was a big brouhaha that the vestry wanted to put a new roof on the church, which is a tile roof—which always needs work—or to buy the altar furniture. And just recently I talked to a lady, who’s in a—a Heritage [at Lake Forest] nursing home out here, who was telling me about this. I didn’t know this story. And she said, “Oh, my goodness.” She said, “Everybody was fighting, and everybody was mad. They wanted the roof.” “No, no. We want the altar.” Well anyway, the altar people won out, because the priest wanted the altar…
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
Redone [laughs]. So, uh—so I’m still working on that. And, as, uh, oral tradition says, that that money was used for the new altar-ware—altar and furniture, I should say—um, by this man, who gave it, But, um—in honor—in [inaudible] —yeah. In of our members who fought in World War II.
Dombrowski
Okay.
Skates
So I asked one of our older members if he remembers that. He says, “Oh yeah, there’s a plaque up there in the front of the church someplace that tells all the members that died. I’m sure it says something about ‘in memory of’ that.” Well, the plaque wasn’t there, so several ladies started on a search of the rooms, and they found the plaque. Only, it wasn’t a plaque. It’s a big framed picture with 70 names beautifully written by someone on there, with little gold stars next to five men who were killed during the war. But I still don’t know if it’s a memorial to them for the furniture. So I’m working on that, because I have the big memorial plaque reframed and I guess we’ll rededicate it one of these days when we find out what’s the story on it. But there’s things like that that come up when someone will say, “Well, who gave that baptismal font? What was that all about?”
Or, we have two things in the church—this is interesting—we have two things in the church that we know for certain were there in the first church. That General Sanford gave: a crucifixion picture that he had bought in Belgium and donated it to the church. That picture—and we were trying to get an idea of the value of it—and the man that we had restore it said, “It’s not worth a thing. All it’s worth is what it’s worth to the congregation. But as far as famous artist, no.” It’s the crucifixion. Even after it as restored, still doesn’t look very good. Because it went through the hurricane the first time. Through the fire the second time. Someone rescued it. So it has—the restorer said it has water damage. So that was something that we know General Sanford physically probably touched, and that it was there. The other thing is a small lectern, where they put the Bibles on, or the prayer book. And that’s in the chapel that was given by Reverend Lyman Phelps. We think he built it. He made it in memory of his wife. So that’s pretty interesting to have two things back a hundred and how many years—138 years or whatever it is.
Dombrowski
Oh. That’s very special.
Skates
Yeah. It is special. So it’s the history. I mean, I could go to any church. I love—just love churches. But I love the history of this church. It’s—and I’m sure that if I were in Philadelphia I’d go to Christ Church I went to Williamsburg [,Virginia][3]—my mother and I—we went to the—oh, what was the name of that Episcopal church[4] there? It’s so beautiful in Williamsburg.[5] Where Patrick Henry gave his speech.
Dombrowski
In Virginia?
Skates
In Virginia. That was—so it’s the ambiance. It’s what you feel. It’s very interesting. And I do get excited about it [laughs].
Dombrowski
I’m just going to check the battery one more time. Oh, it looks fine. Whoa. I didn’t notice the bars. They change as I talk and get closer. But the battery’s fine. Okay, great.
So, uh, you’re a historian there. It sounds like you do a bunch of different things.
Skates
I’m kind of a detective. There’s not a day goes—well, a day—there probably is. But not a week goes by that someone says, “Bette”—well somebody asked me the other day, “Isn’t our,”—we have a huge bell on the bell tower—“Isn’t that bell called ‘Raphael?’” I said, “No, I don’t think—that’s not the name of the bell.” And he said, “Oh, I’m pretty sure it is.” Well, now I have to figure it out. Is it or isn’t it? Or, people will say, “Well, where did the bell come from?”
Oh, and then we have this magnificent organ of Ferrante[sp] Brothers organ from—I can’t remember where it’s from. I want to say Canada, but I may be wrong. It was installed in 1947, and this is just a magnificent piece of furniture. Ferrante[sp] Brothers. I believe there’s another name that goes with that. I guess I can’t remember. But anyway, it doesn’t matter. This is not a test. That was put in in 1947, and I’ve forgotten how many pipes there are for it, but—oh, more than 100 pipes. There’s pipes and pipes. Pipes that you can see over the choir loft, but there’s also a whole closet full of pipes. Our organist—she knows how to play it. It’s just beautiful. So that was—I don’t know where the money for that came from. As far as that being a memorial, or something, I don’t know. I don’t think so. So many things are, but that’s not. But someone will say, “Well, what year was the organ installed?” Or, “Where did it come from?”
So I—yeah. I do. I have to have a little notebook in my pocketbook and I keep writing it down and then I have to go back and research it. And I have a lot of friends too that have been long, long-time members there, so I usually go to them and say, “Do you know anything about this?” And some of them will say, “No, I don’t know.” Or, “We’ll look it up.” But we have—and I’m trying to get all the histories together and put them in one place so it’s pretty organized. It’s fairly organized, but not as much as I would like to have it done. But I’ve saved all the newsletters[sic] columns that I’ve written over the years. I have them each in a different notebook with acid-free paper so after I type them I print them off and put them in the folders and so I’ve got all that. So that’s a pretty good history right there. It’s good. Did I answer the question? [laughs].
Dombrowski
Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Skates
Also, I must give credit to Alicia Clarke at the Sanford Museum. We have much help from her. And then some! Sorry.
Dombrowski
[laughs] No. I don’t mind at all. I know we’ve been talking for a long time now, but if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to find out more about what your time as an educator was like Seminole County.
Skates
Oh, I think I had the best 30 years that you could have had really, because it was—right now, I have friends, my neighbors. I have a lot of friends still teaching, and it’s very different now. It’s very different. We had—the wonderful thing we had that teachers today don’t have, and that’s freedom. You can’t say—if Johnny brings in a whole bag of shells that he had his mother just collected at the beach, we can’t dump those shells out and sit down and go through them and maybe catalog them or talk about them or what can we do with it. There’s no way of being spontaneous, because teachers today—if that child brought that in, I would have to say, “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to put that away. We don’t have time to look at that.” And that bothers me a lot. Because I really feel like the teachable moment is when the kid is interested. And if nobody is interested, then there’s no teachable moment.
It’s—when I was teaching at Idyllwilde [Elementary School] one year, the kids found a dead rabbit on the playground. I have a friend who had just moved here from Chicago[, Illinois], and she was working with me at the time. She was getting ready to take over half of my class, because I had 45 kids in my class. And they had hired her to take part of my kids. But she tells me about this every time she thinks about it. She said, “So, the kids wanted to know what to do with the rabbit.” And I said, “Well, we’re going to have to bury it. Let’s bury it.” So we got a shovel from the janitor and the boys dug a hole right outside the classroom door. And buried the rabbit. Well, they got to talking about what was going to happen to the rabbit in the ground. Well, of course the kids—and these were fourth and fifth graders—they would say, “Well, the bugs and the worms are going to eat him,” and so forth. So, just before school was out, the boy that dug the hole said, “Ms. Skates, can we dig that rabbit up? See what’s left? See if we can find his bones?” And I said, “Well, that’s a good idea. Let’s do it.” So we did. We couldn’t find it! This kid dug up a whole are as big as this table. Couldn’t find a thing left of the rabbit.
Dombrowski
Oh, my goodness.
Skates
But that sounds—and it would probably almost be silly to some educator—but those are things that—what did they learn? Well, we could put a whole bunch of things on the board. We learned this. We learned, you know—what is this? So, or you know—well like the space shuttle. We had classes when the Space Shuttle [Challenger] blew up. We all went outside on the playground to watch the space shuttle go up. And this was—what was this? [19]89?
Dombrowski
Oh, I have it here. No, I don’t.
Skates
But anyway, we were all out on the playground, watching, and we saw it went up, and we saw all these stars and everything. The kids were all saying, “Look at that. They’re putting out stars,” all kinds of things that kids would think of. And my fellow teacher was standing next to me, she said, “I think we ought to take the kids in.” I said, “Okay.” So we take the kids in. Well, she happened to have a little TV set in her closet. And we brought that out to see what had happened. And we could do that. You couldn’t do that today.
Dombrowski
That’s true.
Skates
She brought it out and we set that out between our two classrooms. We watched it all day long. The kids—it was very sad. We all were grieving. So we grieved together. So, what is this? How did this happen? All we could do was speculate. We didn’t know. But what would you, you know, you…
Well, first off, I think taking time outside would probably take time away from teaching about the FCAT [Florida’s Comprehensive Assessment Test].
Dombrowski
I was going to ask how you think the FCAT has influenced—okay.
Skates
You know, every week, teachers, back in the day—and I retired in [19]97. Every teacher gave a test at the end of the week. You would take your math book and go through—and everything that I had taught in math that week—the test would be on Friday. Same thing with spelling tests—on Friday. Social studies on Friday. And we did teach social studies. We did teach the Constitution. We did teach early American history. We did teach that. I think that, in fifth grade, we stopped at the Civil War, but that’s all we had time for. So, you gave the test. At the end of the week, you knew what the child had done. By the time you correct those papers, you knew that Johnny and Mary and Susie were having trouble with multiplication. So next week, let’s zero in on those three and their multiplication tables. How hard is that? I mean, why do we have to do what they’re doing now? I don’t understand.
Dombrowski
I don’t want to interject my opinion too much, but my mother teaches middle school. And so I’ve heard a lot about FCAT, and a great deal about how it’s changed. She used to teach in New York and it’s very different.
Skates
Oh, yes. I think, even now—well, this friend of mine that came down—she wasn’t a friend at the time, but now she’s my best friend—from Chicago, you know. She’d said, “Oh, my gosh. These schools—they’re so far behind! In Chicago in fifth grade, we were doing this.” And you know, well, it takes a long time. I mean, you know, the [Great] Depression hit the South harder. The agricultural society makes a difference. Kids are not—they may be working in the fields some. I mean not so much in my time, but it was just different. And it takes a long, you know—I think this a lot about even the ship of state, it takes a long time to turn a ship around. And it takes a long time to turn the education system around. It’s like it’s the biggest boat you ever saw and you’re just trying to turn it around and make things better. I think we’ve come a long way, but I think there probably still is a way to go.
But now we’ve got—it’s so muddled with this FCAT and this—pushing, pushing these kids. My grandson goes to a parochial school. Goes to St. Luke’s Lutheran Church School in Oviedo. He doesn’t have that stigma hanging over his head. He’s going in third grade. He loves school. He’s a good student. And he struggled to begin with. He had problems with his reading. But if he were in the public school, he would really be in trouble. First off, he’d be going into the third grade. You have to take the FCAT. If you don’t pass that, you have to repeat third grade. Well, his handwriting is very poor, what are you going to do about that? But the private school—they give them more time. They also give them more one-on-one situations. I don’t know. I’m just so that glad that his mother and father—my son and his wife—are so wise. And it’s a sacrifice. It’s a lot of money every month to keep him in private school. He’s their only child, which is a good thing. It’s tough. Your mother is right, and she’s right in the middle of that FCAT business in middle school.
Dombrowski
Uh, you mentioned the Challenger accident. Are there any other events that stick out in your mind, that you remember teaching or going through with your students?
Skates
What did we have? [John F.] Kennedy’s assassination didn’t affect me, but it did my children. They were in elementary school and Kennedy was assassinated—my two older ones. They were talking about this, not long ago, about the atomic bomb scare with the Cuban Missile Crisis. They were talking about the duck-and-cover. You know, an atomic bomb is blowing up over your state, and what do you tell the kids to do? You tell them to get under their desks and cover their head[sic]. That involved them. I wasn’t teaching in ’63. Let’s see, what else could there be? Thinking back to Kennedy, I can’t think of anything else.
Dombrowski
Okay. Did UCF opening or Cape Canaveral opening change…
Skates
It did. I think it changed. With the Cape, with Geneva—the school—when we started getting the influx of people moving to that area. The fathers were engineers and the moms worked, most of them, over there too. Those were great kids. I don’t know, maybe because the parents were involved in scientific things like the engineering and everything. Every couple years, it seems like they come up with something new. Your mother can relate to this too.
They taught us what they call the “New Math.” And I’d only been teaching a couple years and we had this great, and I still have the book—a great big blue book about New Math. Well first off, we were supposed to be teaching the metric system, and that was because of the engineering thing, I think. But they had—I remember one of the fathers was an engineer and he came to school and I was struggling as much as the kids were. They gave us the course in the summer and we were supposed to start teaching it in the fall. So I really didn’t—nobody had a chance. The father came in, he said, “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Now, how do you talk to an engineer? And I was honest with him, “Well, yes. I do.” I said, “We had six weeks.” I think we had a course. And I said, “Not as much as I’ll know at the end of this year.” And he said, “Well, my son doesn’t know what the hell’s going on.” I said, “Well, I am really sorry.” But he was very nice about. But he really kind of put me on my toes. Which was a good thing. I’m glad he did. But by the end of the year, I even knew what prime numbers were [laughs].
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
In fifth grade, you teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I figured the fact that I could multiply and divide fractions—I was pretty smart [laughs].
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
Don’t go beyond that. Oh dear.
Dombrowski
I just have a couple specific questions left. If you wouldn’t mind, just because it’s a personal history about you, what were the names of your children—are the names of your children?
Skates
Phillip, Pamela—well, he’s Jimmy. And the youngest is Bill. They all have their given names, but that’s what we call them. They were—Phillip was born in [19]5—he was born ’54. I have a nice little rubric here. Pam was born in ’56. Jimmy was born in ’58. And Bill was born in ’63. I think I was busy going to school there or something.
Dombrowski
Uh, where—which schools did you teach at? You taught at Geneva.
Skates
I taught at Geneva. That was my first assignment. Well, I went to Southside, which is a school in Sanford right near my home—was where I did my internship, and that’s where my kids went to school. And that’s an old—that was—when I bought my house, that was the best school in Sanford. And that’s the reason I bought that house. It’s now been turned into—what did they call it? A nursing home. Golden Years nursing home. It’s a lovely school. It’s built in a square and in the center is an atrium. And all the classrooms are built around the atrium. And down in the basement is the lunchroom, and up a little flight of stairs in the auditorium. It was a very nice plan for a school, but it’s a nice plan for a nursing home, I guess. But they closed the school, because they built new schools and whatever. But my kids got to go through that, which I was glad for that. At least the two oldest ones did. And then the other two came with me to Geneva. What was the question?
Dombrowski
Oh. Which schools have you taught at?
Skates
Oh, and then I went, I was at Goldsboro [Elementary School. This was a good thing. When I left Geneva, and I had gotten my Master’s in Exceptional Education, and I wanted to teach learning disabled children. And the principal at Geneva, for his own reasons, said he wasn’t going to have a special ed[ucation] class. Well, it wasn’t true, but that’s what he told me. So I had this Pell Grant that I had used to get my Master’s, that if I taught at a [Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965] Title I school, which I don’t know if you know that means now, but it was a school that had more free lunches than any other school or something like that. So the principal at Goldsboro called me and he said, “If you come and teach the learning disabled children at Goldsboro,” he said, “I can sign off on your student loan.” So I spent two years there and signed off all that my Master’s cost me. I mean, I had not paid for—he would sign off the loans—the superintendent would sign it off…
Dombrowski
So they would pay for it.
Skates
So they paid for it. So that was very good. I don’t know if that’s what you call a Pell Grant. I’ve forgotten. But I taught there two years and then the principal from Idyllwilde called and said they had a new wing opening up. They call it the E Wing—Exceptional Ed. Wing. And would I come out and do their SLD [Specific Learning Disabilities] classes. I said, “Oh, yes.” So that’s where I was when I retired.
Dombrowski
Okay.
Skates
That was good. I—those were good years. They were all good years.
Dombrowski
Well, good.Those are all the questions and topics that I have. Is there anything else you’d like to speak to that we haven’t?
Skates
I don’t know. I think I’m probably boring you.
Dombrowski
[laughs] Well, no. This is a good time.
Skates
Now, how are they going to work this? Are they going to have a library?
Dombrowski
Yeah, I think I’ll just…
Skates
Right.
Dombrowski
This is an interview with Gracie Marie Stinecipher, the historian of the First Baptist Church in Sanford. And, uh, this interview is being conducted on July 13th, 2010 at the Museum of Seminole County History. The interviewer is Diana Dombrowski, representing the museum for the Historical Society of Central Florida. I’d just like to start with a couple basic questions, like, where and when were you born?
Stinecipher
I was born in Sanford—Fernald-Laughton Memorial Hospital.
Dombrowski
Cool. When were you born, if you don’t mind?
Stinecipher
September 19th, 1936.
Dombrowski
Okay. So you grew up in Sanford?
Stinecipher
Yes.
Dombrowski
Where in Sanford did you live? Could you describe it?
Stinecipher
I lived at 2404 Park Avenue. And at the time, that was, Park Avenue was [U.S. Route] 17-92. It was the highway.
Dombrowski
Okay. Did you live close to the railroad station or anything?
Stinecipher
No.
Dombrowski
I’m sorry. My last interviewer[sic] —she lived off of Park Avenue, as well. And she mentioned her family arriving on the train. So I wasn’t sure how close it was. I’m sorry.
Stinecipher
No. That’s way downtown.
Dombrowski
Okay. ’m sorry. Um, how—when did your family come to Florida?
Stinecipher
My mother came here in 1913—I believe, as an eight-year-old—with her family. And my dad came in 1926.
Dombrowski
What did their families do here?
Stinecipher
My mother’s father was a butcher. He had a store down on First Street. Grocery store, butcher shop, whatever. My dad’s family—his dad was a farmer in Tennessee. He was born in Spring City, Tennessee. My mother was born in Butte, Montana.
Dombrowski
Wow. That’s a-ways.
Stinecipher
Oh, yes. There’s a story there.
Dombrowski
What brought them to Florida?
Stinecipher
I really don’t know. My mother—my grandmother and grandfather—my grandfather was from England. He came over, to the Gold Rush in Canada, Alaska. What was the word? Anyway, and they met in Montana. I have no idea why my grandmother was there. And they married in Montana. My mother was born there. My aunt, Gladys [Stemper], was born in Phoenix, Arizona. My uncle, Jack [Stemper], was born in Homeland, Georgia, and my uncle, Bill [Stemper], was born in Sanford.
Dombrowski
Wow. That’s a lot of traveling.
Stinecipher
Yes.
Dombrowski
Did you grow up around all these relatives?
Stinecipher
Not those, no. My grandfather Stemper—my grandmother was Marie Stemper—left the family. I think about 1925. And they didn’t find him until 1960—I believe it was—in Baton Rouge[, Louisiana]. Yeah. That was quite a thing.
Dombrowski
Growing up in Sanford, were you always a member of the [First] Baptist Church [of Sanford]?
Stinecipher
I was always attending. I joined the church in 1947.
Dombrowski
Okay. Alright. What did your parents do? You know, was your mother a homemaker?
Stinecipher
My mother was a schoolteacher.
Dombrowski
Okay. Where did she teach?
Stinecipher
She taught at Sanford Grammar [School], Sanford Junior High [School], and Seminole High School.
Dombrowski
Okay. Where did you go to school? Did you go to those as well?
Stinecipher
Yes. Also, Southside Primary [School].
Dombrowski
I’d like to find out a little more about what it was like to grow up in Sanford. How was it different from then? What changes did you see and witness growing up? Do you have any favorite memories growing up in the town?
Stinecipher
It was a fairly small town back then. About 10-12-15,000. It was a fairly close-knit community. You knew almost everybody. Everybody you went to school with. Or at least, knew of them.
Dombrowski
Yeah.
Stinecipher
It was a time when most people attended church. I think it could be, because there wasn’t much else to do. But I think, I mean—you know, the downtown churches were very, very active. The youth groups were really overflowing. And it was really a great time to grow up. So, that—we—some of the memories I think some of us have are somebody always mentions the drugstores, you know. Preston’s Drugstore, where we congregated downtown. And Robert Anderson. And McColonel’s Drugstore was at Twenty-Fifth [Street] and Sanford Avenue, and he had curb service, delicious milkshakes. And a lot of the fellas worked at some of these drugstores. And there was the Pig ‘n Whistle. It had a big drive-in space there. It was at Twenty-Fifth and Park [Avenue]. And then Angel’s Eat Shack was a restaurant. It’s still there—the building—on 25—something—Sanford Avenue. I mean, the people of that era when I grew—there wasn’t much else. But we had a lot of good memories at all those places. And the zoo.
Dombrowski
Oh.
Stinecipher
Yes. The zoo downtown. Yeah. I was part of the Girl Scouts. We met down at the old depot. Down where—what’s the bank? SunTrust Bank is—right down in there. Every Friday afternoon, from the time I was 10 years old ‘til I graduated from high school. It was really, really good. We had a lot of good memories there.
Dombrowski
What did you do in the Girl Scouts?
Stinecipher
Well, of course, we went through the Girl Scout handbook, learning all the things for the badges and things. And we’d have slumber parties down there. And Miss Henton, who was our leader—I can remember her sitting up in the middle of the depot. This big depot, you know, keeping an eye on us throughout the night. We went camping. I still don’t know where it was that we camped. It was somewhere west of town by the lake, and it was just sort of—the kitchen was very primitive. And the long table, you know, where we ate, and the outhouse—we called “the Commishy.” Because some commissioner had had it built. That was the story. But that was fun. We pitched tents. We only were only there about three nights or something like that. Got to know a lot of the older girls, because they were our leaders, and then we became leaders.
Dombrowski
Were you a leader in the troupe?
Stinecipher
Well, we all were when we got into, you know—later on in high school. We led the little ones, the younger ones.
Dombrowski That’s nice. Did you go to college?
Stinecipher
Yes. I went to Maryville College in Tennessee for two years, and then I transferred to Stetson [University], and I graduated in 1958.
Dombrowski
Did you graduate with plans to become a teacher?
Stinecipher
Yes. I majored in elementary education.
Dombrowski
Did you get married?
Stinecipher
No.
Dombrowski
Okay. Where did you begin teaching?
Stinecipher
I began teaching at Lake Silver Elementary in Orlando. And I had an apartment over there in Winter Park for three years.
Dombrowski
Winter Park is nice. What do you remember from living there?
Stinecipher
From living in Orlando? In Winter Park? Well, it was a much smaller place then. I was able to drive around, you know, and not get lost, or too much lost. I became a member of North Park Baptist Church and thoroughly enjoyed it. Made a lot of good friends, some that I’m still in contact with. Dr. Edgar Cooper was my pastor, and he later became editor of The Florida Baptist Witness, which is the state newspaper. I taught fifth grade.
Dombrowski
What was the education system like? What was it like to teach then as it is maybe compared to teaching later?
Stinecipher
The kids were much more well-behaved.
Dombrowski
Really?
Stinecipher
Yes. There was more parent participation. Yes. I only taught over there three years. And then I could not afford to continue. I was making $360 a month and not being paid in the summer. So I’d come home and borrow money from my dad to get through the summer, and then I’d get him paid back by Christmas. So, I figured that couldn’t last too long. So I moved back home to Sanford in ’61.
Dombrowski
Okay.
Stinecipher
I could not find a teaching job in elementary schools in the upper grades in Sanford, so I went down to the personnel director, Stuart Gadshaw, see if he could help me. And he had taught me math in high school. He said, “You’d make a good math teacher!” And he sent me up to Mr. [Andrew Joseph] Bracken, principal of Seminole High, and he hired me. So I had to go back to school and get certified in math.
Dombrowski
Did they pay your way through school?
Stinecipher
Oh, heavens no.
Dombrowski
Okay. How long—when did you begin teaching there?
Stinecipher
The fall of ’61.
Dombrowski
How long did you teach there?
Stinecipher
I officially retired in ’92. But I had been on medical leave for a few years before that.
Dombrowski
Wow. So, all that time at Seminole High School. You must have seen a lot of things. High school—wow. I’ve heard that’s a really hard time to teach.
Stinecipher
I think junior high’s the worst.
Dombrowski
Really?
Stinecipher
Yeah. I remember even when I was in junior high. No—I thoroughly enjoyed it. Especially the first, the ‘60s were really good.
Dombrowski
Yeah?
Stinecipher
Yes. I had really, really good students then, and I still keep in contact with a lot of them. Go to the reunions, and so on.
Dombrowski
That’s nice.
Stinecipher
You’ve probably heard the story about, you know, when integration came.
Dombrowski
I was going to ask. Yeah.
Stinecipher
Yeah. First, I think it was about 1967 or 1968, they had something called “Freedom of Choice.” I think that was what it was called. And the black students could attend the white schools. I think they had to apply or something. So we did have a few black students there in the late ‘60s. Then in 1970, they closed Crooms [High School]. And the Crooms students came over to Seminole High School. Seminole High did not want them. Crooms did not want to be there.
Dombrowski
Oh, yeah. That sounds tense.
Stinecipher
That year, 1970-71, was terrible. We were on double sessions. I was on the teaching in the afternoon session, and in the mornings they would have had fights and all kind of problems, and I’d get to school around 10 or 10:30, and they’d already had to close school several times. So that was a bad year. And the early ‘70s was still pretty hard.
Dombrowski
How were the students who elected to go to school received?
Stinecipher
You mean in the late ‘60s? They were received very well. They were the good students. In fact, one of the boys served as president of his senior class.
Dombrowski
Wow. That’s amazing. How long did it take for, uh, black students to be more accepted in the high school? Do you think they are now? Did they end up building another high school that served that neighborhood?
Stinecipher
Oh, no. No, no. They’re all at Seminole still. It’s the only high school in Sanford.
Dombrowski
Oh, okay. I didn’t know that.
Stinecipher
Well, they’ve done something to Crooms [Academy of Institute Technology]—I haven’t kept up. But it’s a school of technology or something like that. Yeah. But that’s just been in recent years. And then they later made the school into a ninth grade center. I guess, right after we merged. Somewhere in there. So the ninth graders went there until—a few years later, all the ninth graders came back to Seminole High. I can’t remember the years.
Dombrowski
How were the rest of the ‘70s like, in terms of tension at the school? Did it end up getting resolved somehow?
Stinecipher
Gradually. Gradually. It was hard. It really was. And then there was still one thing that always irked me was, the first couple years was okay. In the homecoming. They’d have a black queen and a white queen.
Dombrowski
Oh.
Stinecipher And that just kept on for years. And I thought, can’t we get together?
Dombrowski
Wow. That’s like two separate worlds in one school.
Stinecipher
I know. I know. It was bad. And, well, I think there’s always going to be a little tension. But, uh, it gradually got better.
Dombrowski
Okay. How did things like Cape Canaveral affect—you know, the opening of the [John F. Kennedy] Space Center affect—did you see any effects from that in Sanford? Like people coming here for the space industry? Or did you teach anyone related to that?
Stinecipher
No. No. The Navy base was here. So I taught a lot of Navy students in the ‘60s. Of course, the Navy moved from here in ’68. But, yes. A lot of Navy kids. And the school, Seminole High, was right in the pattern of the jets. Because when they’d have their touch-and-go, you know, to practice landing on the carriers, it would come right over Seminole High. They would come, and then there’d be a lull, and you know, just keep on coming. And you’d just have to learn to teach in between the comings and goings.
Dombrowski
How did the town change after the base left, do you think? Did the population drop very dramatically?
Stinecipher
Oh, I can’t go in—probably a little bit. Something like that always affects things, but something else always comes along. But Sanford was a very good Navy town. The personnel always seemed to think Sanford was a good place to be and a lot of Navy people retired here.
Dombrowski
I have a couple more questions about general events like that, like the opening of [Walt] Disney [World Resort]? What do you remember from when Disney opened down here?
Stinecipher
Hm.
Dombrowski
Was it very significant at all?
Stinecipher
Well, I guess it was. It was exciting to go down there the first time or two. But, as you realize, gradually the impact has come up to Sanford, because of the growth. That’s what really brought the growth to Seminole County.
Dombrowski
Yeah. What do you think about that? Do you think that’s a positive thing?
Stinecipher
Oh, in some ways. But I’d rather it go back to, you know, the old days with the smaller population.
Dombrowski
Yeah. Yeah.
Stinecipher
But you can’t go back.
Dombrowski
Through this time, you know, that you were a member of the [First] Baptist Church [of Sanford], was the church very involved in community activities? Did they have local events, or did they throw parties in the town or something? How were they involved in the community?
Stinecipher
How were they involved in the community?
Dombrowski
Well, uh, you know, did they take measures to feed or serve the homeless or anything?
Stinecipher
We do now. We do now. Yes. We have a program on Sundays. I think about 1:30, they feed the homeless. I think about 40 or 50 that come. And they have a devotional and so on. I don’t know exactly what the program is, but yes.
Dombrowski
Uh, how has the church during your time as a member? Or as a historian? Has it changed at all?
Stinecipher
Yes. It’s changed. It used to be a very large church with a lot of young people. When I was growing up we had—probably my high school class—we had about half the class at First Baptist.
Dombrowski
Wow.
Stinecipher
Of course, we were just a little over a hundred in the class, but—maybe not quite that many. And the other churches too—they were very active and large Sunday schools had their training unions and MYAF and whatever. Most people went to church back then. Now—and then of course, we had the downtown churches. There were a few scattered out, but mainly the First Baptist, First Methodist [Church of Sanford], First Presbyterian [Church of Sanford], and the Catholics[1] were all right downtown and very, very active, all of them. Back up to the ‘60s or early ‘70s.
Dombrowski
Okay.
Stinecipher
But the downtown churches are all losing members. Of course, there are other churches too. But still, it’s sad. It really is.
Dombrowski
Why do you think that is?
Stinecipher
I don’t know. People seem to have more to do. And, I just—I don’t know. Not interested in church anymore.
Dombrowski
Okay. Where was the original church—the Baptist church?
Stinecipher
The original church is the same church—the same property. It was a wooden church. Are you familiar with the First Baptist Church downtown?
Dombrowski
No.
Stinecipher
No. Okay. It’s on—well our address is 519 Park, but the original church was a small wooden building. The church was organized in 1884, and the wooden building was finished, I think, by the end of that year. It was on the corner of Sixth [Street] and Park. And that’s where our brick church was built later. That wooden church was moved and the brick church was built there—built in two parts. The first section, which included a Sunday school, the front part, was built in 1914. And the second part, the auditorium part, was built in 1920. Then, in 1949-50, the education building next door was built. Let’s see. The new—well, the next educational building, which is now the Chance Education Building, which was named for our former pastor who died while he was a pastor in ’71. It was built in ’66. That’s on the corner of Fifth [Street] and Magnolia [Avenue]. And in all that process, we bought all that property on that block. House by house. And they all had to be moved to build that education building or demolish. Some were moved, some were demolished. And finally, in 1994, we broke ground during our 110th anniversary—broke ground for our new sanctuary, which we entered in August of 1995. We finally got it paid for a couple of years ago.
Dombrowski
The education building sounds enormous. Taking over the whole…
Stinecipher
Well, not the whole property. But we’ve got four buildings there on the block. And we also have a youth building, which is across the street on Magnolia.
Dombrowski
Okay. You talked about how active the church community was. Was the church community—yes? How was it active? What kind of events or activities did the church hold? You know, what was Sunday service like? I don’t know much about it. I don’t know much about the First Baptist Church.
Stinecipher
Oh, we had Sunday school. We still do, and worship service on Sunday mornings, and then at night had Baptist Training Union, BTU—Training Union, whatever—for the entire church, you know. We had different unions—learning. In Sunday school, you learn more from the Bible, you know, like that, but in Training Union it was more about other—I remember once, we had to learn about other different religions. We learned Baptist beliefs. Things like that. And the members took part were—were assigned parts. That was a good learning experience for people, especially young people, you know, getting up in front of people and doing. That was good. There was also a lot of socials. I remember having hayrides and things like that. Parties and stuff. You know, it was a good youth group. And the older people had their own things. Somewhere along the line, Training Union went out the window. I don’t understand. Things change.
Dombrowski
Oh.
Stinecipher
But we still have Sunday night church.
Dombrowski
Okay.
Stinecipher
And, uh, other things, you know.
Dombrowski
Okay. What is your role as church historian like? What do you do for the church?
Stinecipher
Well, in the 100th anniversary in 1984, we had a big celebration. I was not chairman of the committee. I was on it, but I volunteered to write a history of the church. We had this little bitty book. I said, “We have to get a little better than that.” I wasn’t expecting to do too much. Got in there and found all the records, ending up writing a book. I think about 270 pages.
Dombrowski
Wow.
Stinecipher
It was a wonderful experience, because we have a lot of documents, and minutes, and things of all church business meetings, and oh, just a slew of stuff. And church bulletins, you know, have information in them. So it was really interesting experience. Also, none of the memorabilia of the church had ever been collected. It was scattered all over the church and some people knew where things were, so I went scouring around trying to find all that, and I got all that collected, got a crew together to work on, to organizing it, and we had a huge display of all our memorabilia. I mean, there was a bunch of stuff, all in the fellowship hall for the 100th anniversary. And then I had the book published, you know.
Since then, I’ve continued to collect things from different people. It’s amazing what things pop up still about the history. Collecting it—and have a special room in the memorial education building. That’s the first one that’s on Park Avenue, to collect all that stuff. Then when we built the new building in ’95. They put a special heritage room in there. It was supposed to be larger than what it is, but when the costs came in for building the church, things got squeezed. And that did too. But I have a room there, and cases around the room, which were given to us by one of the local jewelry stores who[sic] was moving or going out of business or something. So I’ve got that. So people can go in there and see the displays. It gets changed occasionally. And I have an excellent storage room. It didn’t get squeezed! It’s still there, so I’ve got a good storage room for all kind of stuff in there. So I continue to collect things, and I’ve chaired the anniversary committees every year since. Now, we had 125th [anniversary] a year ago, in February. I told them then, that was my last one. I’ll be almost 80 years old. I think it’s time for somebody else. But it’s been fun, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.
Dombrowski
What kinds of memorabilia?
Stinecipher
Oh, goodness. One thing we have—the old pulpit—the original pulpits from the first church, and a couple of chairs. They’ve gotten moved into my heritage storeroom there. But it’s okay, they’ll get room for them. We bring them out. Oh, all kind of paper things. And lots of and lots of pictures. I still take pictures of important events. And, oh, I can’t think of what all there is. We’ve got a lot of important documents, the incorporation papers. Goodness, I’m trying to think of what we do have. Just a lot of interesting things. We’re always finding new things. It’s good.
Dombrowski
It sounds like the Baptist church was the big church force in the community.
Stinecipher
It was the largest, yes. It was.
Dombrowski
Okay. Okay.
Stinecipher
But as I said, all the downtown churches were very active, just not as large. But there—oh, we sponsored five missions which are now churches.
Dombrowski
Wow.
Stinecipher
Yes. Central Baptist [Church], Pinecrest Baptist [Church], Westview [Baptist Church]—it’s changed its name two or three times. Lake Mary—it’s something else now. I don’t think it’s even a Baptist church. Well, that’s another story. Oh, and Victory Baptist [Church]. We formed it as Elder Springs Baptist [Church], but it later withdrew from the Southern Baptists and became independent. But we did organize it. There are three that are still Southern Baptist.
Dombrowski
How did you organize the missions and get these churches started?
Stinecipher
We’d have a commissions committee go into the neighborhoods and start Sunday schools and, you know—at night. I wasn’t, you know, involved in any of it. Gradually, as attendance grew, they’d want to become a church, and so we’d organize it. It took several years. Pinecrest didn’t take very long, because a whole Sunday school class of ours went out there and started it—a men’s class. So that didn’t take very long, just a few months. Bu the others, some of them took several years.
Dombrowski
Is there a story behind the Lake Mary? That sounded a little complicated.
Stinecipher
Well, we took them back as a mission. They had been a church and they wanted to go back into mission status. We had not started them originally, but they wanted to come back in mission status and asked us to be their sponsor. So several of our members went out there and helped them for several years, and then they became a church. I knew it was in ’83, because that was the last thing I put in my history book. They became a church. Elder Springs and Pinecrest were both organized in ’57. And Central Baptist, which was originally Southside Baptist [Church], was organized in 1938. And Westview [Baptist Church], I think, was somewhere about the early ‘60s. It was originally Oak Lawn [Baptist Church], because it started—I think the first meetings they had was in the funeral home out there, you know the one out there by Rinehart [Road]?
Dombrowski
Mmmhm. Yeah.
Stinecipher
Yeah. Because one of our church members was—that was his funeral home.
Dombrowski
Uh, it sounds from your book like you exhaustively researched everything.
Stinecipher
Yes. People keep asking, “Are you going to add to the book?” “No way.” It’s a lot of work.
Dombrowski
Yeah, I bet. Um, did you, uh, let’s see. Were there any big personalities in the church? Or people that you wrote about in your book? Stories that you could tell me about people or families in the church?
Stinecipher
We had a pastor there, Dr. Debbie[?] P. Brooks, who was there for 33 years. He was very influential. Wonderful person. He came, I think, in ’29 and retired in ’62. The—oh, Reverend [George] Hyman, of course. That was way before my time, but he’s the one that was pastor when they built the brick church. And from what I heard, he had a vision as to how it should be built. And the first—the front part was to be the Sunday school, and that was to be to educate the people, and so forth, and bring them close to God. Then that would lead them into the sanctuary, which was the second part. Something like that. And it was built. He was there for the first part, and then he had to go off to war—World War I—as a chaplain. He came back and they built the second part. And then he thought that the church would be more in the community with programs and so on for the community, and he called it the “Baptist Temple.” They didn’t ever change the name. Incorporation papers for the First Baptist Church, on the front of the church it says, ‘Old Baptist Temple,’ and some of our pictures have that on there. And he was having various speakers and things come in, in addition to the regular church. Soon as they left, they had a meeting, and everything came down. There was more to it than that, you can see it in the book, because it was mainly his deal.
Dombrowski
Okay. Yeah. Those were about all the general questions that I have. Is there anything that you’d like to talk about that we haven’t yet? Any, you know, special memories that you have that you’d like to share or keep in audio?
Stinecipher
I could tell you about a club we had.
Dombrowski
Okay. Cool.
Stinecipher
You know, I wrote for The Sanford Herald.
Dombrowski Oh, I didn’t know that.
Stinecipher
Yes. Well, in high school I wrote The Celery Crate. That was our youth group, the teen group. We met second floor of old City Hall. We had pool tables, ping pong, all kind of board games, and card games, and things like that. The space had originally been an auditorium, so there was a stage up there. Occasionally, we’d have various programs. The Celery Crate committee would plan the parties. We’d have about three or four parties a year—square dances and things like that—but we were open every Saturday night during school, just to go up and have fun. The PTA [Parent-Teacher Association] sponsored it. My mother was one of the sponsors. My mother and dad were always chaperones. So that was a lot of fun. But then I wrote that column. That was a freebie. Then there was The Herald also had a Seminole High column. A student would write that. And so I said, “Well, since I’m writing this…” I applied for that, and did that for my senior year. Got paid ten cents an inch.
When I was in college, for one year, I wrote—what was it called? Oh goodness, can’t believe what it was called right now. But anyway, I wrote it one year at Stetson about Seminole High students off at college. I talked to a lot of parents, because I came home quite a bit. In 1994, I started writing “The Way We Were” column. I wrote that until July of [20]07, when the owner of the paper fired me—fired my column. And also, he also took away the Sanford column—you know, social news. And then when we got the new publisher, and I was writing extra things, like the class reunions, high school class reunions, Historical Society [of Central Florida] news, anniversaries. I wrote a couple of weddings. But the new publisher said he’s not printing any of that and he didn’t need me anymore. And that was just about a year and a half ago.
Let’s go back to the club.
Dombrowski
Okay.
Stinecipher
We were in fifth grade. And this girl, Joanie Saunders—moved here from I think Bradenton—and was in Miss McNab’s room where us girls were who had grown up in Sanford. There was a magazine at the time, called Polly Pigtails, and they encouraged people to form Polly Pigtail clubs. So Joanie came in, and I guess probably because she was new, and wanted new friends—I don’t know—she got us together and we formed a Polly Pigtail club. All the girls that were in there were in Ms. McNab’s room. All of us. Several of us had grown up together and been good friends. Then, through the years—sixth grade we added some people, went to junior high, we added some more, some people dropped out for various reasons, and we’d add some more. And we’d meet every other Tuesday afternoons at member’s homes. We had parties. We had dues of ten cents a week. We made candy sales. We’d make about eight or ten dollars at a time.
When we got in the eighth grade, we decided we wanted to go to the beach for a week. So we had to have more candy sales! And we did. We started—we rented this house over in New Smyrna [Beach], Sandy Shack, and went over for a week in August. Our parents were chaperones. We went to the beach every summer for a week through our senior year.
Our senior year, after we graduated, we went to Daytona [Beach] and had this house right smack dab on the beach. It had been a restaurant, and it had three bathrooms, which was great, because the other one only had one. And we’d had this all the way through school, ‘til we graduated high school. So we were all very close. We started out with friends that were friends anyway, and we added some of the others. Two of the girls got married, and of course, we couldn’t let them—our mothers wouldn’t let them stay in the club. So it was a lot of really, really, really good. A lot of us still keep in contact. We’ve lost a couple to deaths and most of us are still around. Still good friends.
Dombrowski
That’s wonderful.
Stinecipher
It really was.
Dombrowski
It sounds like the community was really close.
Stinecipher
I just wrote it again, or re-wrote it, for the Seminole High magazine that comes out every year. Well, they were having some articles in there about the beach, because New Smyrna—we always went to New Smyrna all the time, stayed over there on weekends and daytrips. A lot of people were writing memories about New Smyrna, about the beach, so I asked if I could write about our beach parties over there, so I did. Because we had some experiences. It was fun.
Dombrowski
Do you want to tell us what kind of experiences happened over there? What did you guys do? You went to the beach? Was there much around New Smyrna to go and do too?
Stinecipher
No. Just the beach. Well, the Sandy Shack was—oh, right in the—it was in the zone where the lifeguards weren’t. But our chaperones would make us go up further on the beach where we could go. Well, of course, we’d go camp right by the lifeguard tower. Think we were hot stuff. The first year we were there, we were just out of the eighth grade, we went to the lifeguard dance. Thirteen-fourteen-year-old girls sat over in a corner. And of course, the lifeguards were much older than we were. They were high school and college kids, mostly college, I think. And I remember sitting there—canasta was a big deal back then. I remember Tricia saying, “We should have brought our canasta cards.” Because everyone’s out there dancing, and here we were. Then the head of the lifeguards, Joe Canard, came up and asked Jeanette to dance. She didn’t know how to dance! She was out there doing the best she could, so she was our heroine of the night.
We did have a couple of Sanford boys that were there that came and rescued us, and once we had, a couple years later we met some of the New Smyrna boys. They were more our age. And we had a bonfire on the beach with hotdogs—I guess, I don’t remember—and invited the boys that we knew. And some of the fellows that usually stayed at the beach with their families. They were over there. We asked them to come. There are all these people showed up at our bonfire. All these cars, all these people. Our chaperones got kind of upset. Finally, after a while, they came and shooed the others away, because we got a little scared too.
Yeah. We met the local fellas from over there, and we dated some of them. When there were football games, or any kind of sport, we always played New Smyrna and whatever. So we’d always go to the games, and they’d come over, and we’d see the New Smyrna boys. That was a big deal. And so forth. That was fun. One time, a couple boys from Sanford came over, and said, “Let’s go to the drugstore.” And so the whole bunch of us—I think there were six or eight of us—the whole bunch of us jumped in the backseat and went down to the drugstore. And after that, one of the fellas said, “Where do you want to go?” “Let’s go to Daytona.” We took off to Daytona and went to the boardwalk. Of course, didn’t tell our chaperones, we just went. Didn’t get home until, oh, late. So they were furious. We had to wash the dishes, I think, for the rest of the week or something like that.
Dombrowski
But it was worth it?
Stinecipher
Oh, yeah. It was fun. We had fun.
Dombrowski
Well, those are all of my questions. Is there anything else you’d like to mention?
Stinecipher
Hm.
Dombrowski
You, Sanford history, teaching? Anything.
Stinecipher
I don’t know, but we could talk about my parents.
Dombrowski
Okay. Okay.
Stinecipher
They met at Piedmont College, in [Demorest,] Georgia. My mother went up—she was a Congregationalist, and that was a Congregational school. And my dad was from Tennessee and his sisters—one of his sisters was teaching there. He was the youngest—next-to-youngest—of a family of ten. So he and his brother decided to go down to Piedmont College. And they met there. And Mother just stayed for two years. You could teach after two years then.
Then Dad graduated in [19]25. He sang in a quartet—a male quartet—that traveled with, uh, advertising the college all up into the eastern states. That was something for him—all of them—especially for my dad and his brother, because they had never been anywhere. I’ve got his diaries at home telling about their experiences, staying at home, staying in hotels, and YMCAs [Young Men’s Christian Association], and all this. And singing, mostly in churches. And all like that. And they traveled for one year after he graduated. He graduated ’25. They traveled for one year. And they had been traveling in the summers or before that. And so, in the fall of ’26, he came to Sanford and got a job at Chase & Company. Stayed there for 40 years, became head of the Building Material Department. And he and Mother got married on July 6, 1927.
Dombrowski
Did you have any brothers and sisters?
Stinecipher
No. I was an only child. They waited nine years before I was born.
Dombrowski
Oh, wow. Okay. Those are my questions. Thank you!
Stinecipher
Okay.
Dombrowski
Thank you for your time.
Stinecipher
Oh, you’re welcome.
[1] All Souls Catholic Church.
Youngers
Hello, my name is Stephanie Youngers. Today is November 12, 2010. And I am interviewing Mr. Ed L’Heureux here at the Museum of Seminole County History. How are you today?
L’Heureux
I’m fine today.
Youngers
Good. We would like to begin by asking where and when you were born.
L’Heureux
I was born in Gloversville, New York. Upstate New York. In May of 1939.
Youngers
And how did you make your way into the Florida area?
L’Heureux
My dad and mother moved from New York to New Jersey during World War II. He was in the Coast Guard and my mother inherited some property in Central Florida at the end of the war when her uncle died. And we came down to seek it out. We sold a little farm in New Jersey, and loaded things on a truck like the Okies going to California, and came to Florida with no turning back. And we didn’t like the property. My mother didn’t like it. It was rattlesnake-infested. But we decided to stay, because we liked Florida.
Youngers
Oh, well good. And about how old were you when you…
L’Heureux
I was five. Five years old.
Youngers
You’ve been here a long time, then.
L’Heureux
Since I was five.
Youngers
You might as well be a native.
L’Heureux
I wish I could claim the other five years.
Youngers
Whereabouts did you live when you moved here?
L’Heureux
We moved to Winter Park. Winter Park.
Youngers
So, wow. When, I mean, do you have memories of Winter Park, as far as the way it looked, and…?
L’Heureux
Oh, absolutely. There were wooden sidewalks on two blocks in Winter Park, just like Little House on the Prairie. You know, out west in that TV show. Wooden sidewalks. You’d clop along, and then they were torn down about two years later to make way for a bank, but it was a frontier town.
Youngers
Really.
L’Heureux
All the old cars were still around. People came in the winters and went back up north in the summers. A couple of garages close to Park Avenue in Winter Park, you would see the old Pierce Arrows and Cadillacs and Packards that were there. They’d take the train back up north and leave the car here for next winter. So it was a sleepy, beautiful little town in those days.
Youngers
Oh, wow. Well …it’s still a pretty little town.
L’Heureux
It still is. It still is.
Youngers
It definitely has gotten much larger.
L’Heureux
Yes. Regrettably.
Youngers
Did they have any kind of local gathering or events or anything in Winter Park that you attended?
L’Heureux
One of the first things I remember were fish fries. They had mullet fish fries. The Lion’s Club put them on and brought concrete blocks to the grammar school playground. Put wooden planks on top for tables, and concrete blocks and wooden planks for benches, and they’d cook this mullet and they’d deep-fry this mullet, you could smell it a block away. And it was delicious.
Youngers
And it was a whole town event that everybody attended?
L’Heureux
Well, it could have been a town event. Anybody could come and pay maybe for a dollar for the dinner. And the Lion’s Club put it on about three or four times a year, and everybody came and they strung lights on the playground. Those naked yellow lights—the little bulbs—and a little music in the background. And it was tremendous.
Youngers
Oh, very neat.
L’Heureux
The whole fish fry. Yeah. I remember it.
Youngers
So, the schools you attended?
L’Heureux
Winter Park Elementary, which is part of Rollins College today. It has been torn down now. But old Winter Park Elementary and Winter Park High School was built in 1923. Went to all three public schools there and loved it dearly. It was a great town. Great town. Nobody locked their houses or their cars. Literally.
Youngers
Wow. You can’t do that now.
L’Heureux
No. You can’t do that now.
Youngers
So, did you go to college from here?
L’Heureux
I went into the Army right after high school, and got out fairly soon, had a little period of time. Went to Stetson University up in DeLand about 40 miles away. I went to DeLand and graduated with a history degree there, went on to law school, and moved back to Orlando and Winter Park and have been in that area ever since.
Youngers
And you still live there now?
L’Heureux
I live in Winter Springs, which is close. It’s north. But that whole area has been my home for the longest time. When I give speeches, they say I’m a native when I’m introduced, but I can’t claim that first five years.
Youngers
Sure you can.
L’Heureux
Wish I could, but…
Youngers
Did you work as an attorney when you came back?
L’Heureux
No, no, no. I never practiced law at all. I dropped out before I was through. There was a lady there—I fell in love with her and we both didn’t like the law that much, for some strange reason. We both dropped out and we were married just under 40 years.
Youngers
Oh, wow. That’s good.
L’Heureux
She passed away in ‘03 of cancer, but we had a long life together.
Youngers
Good. What did you do, as far as a career and things?
L’Heureux
I was in the insurance business. I had an insurance agency. I had a Nationwide Insurance agency. I never liked business particularly, because I was trained a[sic] historian and I always wished that I’d been closer to that. And now, late in life, in my sixties and seventies, I’m a public lecturer on a myriad of Florida topics. And I write books. I’ve written 15 books, and I’m doing what I should have done as a younger man. And late in life, I’m able to do what I wish I had done earlier. So it’s kind of nice.
Youngers
So, you’re writing books. Is that just a passion you always had?
L’Heureux
Yes. I had a joint major in Stetson—History and English. And I always wanted to write books. And I always wanted to write books about Florida—novels. And in my insurance career, which was somewhat boring—I hate to say that, but it wasn’t really a stimulating thing for me. I had a family to raise, kids to raise, and I went through it and did it and was able to accomplish it, but the fire was not in the furnace. And my dad saw that melancholic hue when I was in my early forties, and he said, why don’t you dust off your pencil and pen and write again like you did in college? Because in college, I wrote for the paper. Wrote feature articles for The DeLand Sun News, up in Stetson at DeLand. And one day, I was out walking in a field and I saw a story. It just came to me. And I wrote it, and I wrote a second and third and fourth, and took it down to Rollins College, to a friend of my dad’s who was in the English department, and he thought they were very good. And my career was launched.
Youngers
So you’ve been doing this now since you were in your forties?
L’Heureux
Yes, yes, over 20 years.
Youngers
Oh, very nice. And when you do public lectures and things, what do you talk about?
L’Heureux
I have a slate of, oh, about 35 topics. All aspects of Florida history. Current, old history. Civil War. Seminole Indian Wars. Many of the industries—citrus, cattle, timber. The early founders. The early explorers. The treasure coast. Over 30 lectures I’ve crafted and researched and I deliver all around to all manner of places.
Youngers
And you do them at the local colleges?
L’Heureux
Yes, I do college level. Civic clubs, retirement centers, private organizations—business enrichment for companies that want to enrich their employees with a lecture. All kinds of ways and things. And I’m doing that now, currently in retirement, and I love it.
Youngers
Well, you said you were married, and you mentioned you had children. Do you have a special courtship story?
L’Heureux
Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. Funny you’d ask that. It’s not staged. I’ll never forget it. We were in law school together. And I had noticed her, because there were three women in the law school, and the rest were men. And she cut a pretty nice figure and I noticed her early on. And we had never spoken. We had seen each other and she had noticed me and I had noticed her. We were both freshmen. She had come in a semester before me. I had come in on the off-semester. And oh, maybe two or three weeks had gone by, and I had heard that everyone was dating her, and I found out that nobody was. It was just a rumor. We sat next to each other on a bench before class. The first words she said to me were, “I wonder what colors eyes our children will have.”
Youngers
Oh my.
L’Heureux
Just like that. Just like that. And for once in my life, I was speechless. She said it just like that. And the answer was blue and brown, but not on the same child. So we had a son and a daughter, and they were brown-eyed and blue-eyed. The first thing she ever said to me. So I guess that’s a courtship story.
Youngers
That was very forward. And that’s right.
L’Heureux
That’s exactly what she said.
Youngers
That’s awesome.
L’Heureux
It just—I wonder what color eyes our children will have.
Youngers
That’s very good.
L’Heureux
Isn’t that amazing?
Youngers
Yes, that’s awesome. And do you have any special family heirlooms or keepsakes that your kids share? Do your kids share your passion for history?
L’Heureux
Not particularly. That’s strange. They don’t. My wife was trained as a journalist. And I had the English major, and History, and I had been writing. We both were writers. She wrote in industry.
My son is a[sic] entrepreneur of sorts. He’s a very successful businessmen. He went to Georgia State [University] on a tennis scholarship and was an excellent student all the way along. And he operates and owns a company. And he’s a businessman and a coach. He coaches his daughters—my granddaughters—in lacrosse. And he’s steeped in the business world, but also with his church and philanthropic things. He likes history, but not with the same passion I have.
My daughter is in the insurance business. Similar to what I did for a long, long time. I think mine was 27 years—something like that. And she’s got two children. My son has two children. She’s too busy to read much about history. So I don’t think—even though they’re smart children, they were exceptional in school, and I don’t think they have that historic bent. That happens a lot. But they’re both successful in their own right, and I’m happy about that.
Youngers
You all lived in Winter Park for a long time. Do you remember any historical events that happened?
L’Heureux
Yes. I do. A couple I could mention. Rollins College had a very close union with Winter Park. They were joined at the hip, and they loved each other, and they just cooperated all the way through. It was wonderful to see. Rollins had something called The Animated Magazine” where people would come and speak and tell their life story, or a portion thereof. Some of the greatest notables of the age came. And I was selling newspapers there as a young boy, in my teens and even younger—10, 11, 12, 13. And I saw some great people. James Cagney, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings—the writer—Mary [McLeod] Bethune—the educator—all kinds of people from all walks of endeavor. And that made a great impression on me, because I knew some of these people. I knew their plaudits, I knew their successes, and yet I could see them speak from a stage. And here I was scurrying around trying to sell newspapers there. They held it every winter, in one of the months without a lot of rain. They held it outdoors in February. It’s usually cool. And I remember in the early days, when I was just a little boy, the women and men would come all decked out. Women would wear hats, you know, all women wore hats until somewhere in the ‘40s—‘50s, I guess it was. And they’d wear their fox stoles with little beaded eyes, you know—and foxes, all heavy coats in the winter time. And men would dress up with hats. I remember that. And I think I got a lot of history from that.
One thing from my youth that I recall, when Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote The Yearling, the famous book which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939. The movie came out in the late ‘40s. With Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman. And the theaters thought so much about it that they decked the theaters—the lobbies—in a Florida motif. Hanging moss, they had a possum in a cage, they had a raccoon in a cage, they had palmetto bushes in there, just like the big scrub that she wrote about. And it was—everybody was decked out in old frontier days, and you walk in the lobby, you thought you were at Cross Creek, where she lived. And you can’t get that today.
Youngers
Oh my. And that’s the theater in Winter Park?
L’Heureux
Well, the theater in Winter Park, the Colony [Theatre], and the theater in Orlando, the Beacham [Theatre]. Today, you’ve got a multiplex. You know, you’ve got 20 little theaters. Nobody talks to anybody, you just go in, and there you go. And you can never get that today. But they thought so much of her movie, after she won the Pulitzer Prize. They decked the lobby of the theaters in Winter Park and Orlando in a Florida backcountry theme. Literally. You know, you could see a possum in a cage, and a raccoon, and moss dripping down, you know. Palmetto bushes, which were cut up and put in there as props. So I remember those things.
Youngers
Wow. Were there—when you were attending school and things, during the times of segregation and things, do you recall anything as far as when those differences came in? Were there any notable things in the Winter Park area or even Seminole County area that you remember as far as that?
L’Heureux
Well, I remember never playing ball against any black boys or African-Americans. Never. You know. They had their own schools. And it was a shame, because they were great athletes. I never interacted with them in high school in any manner. We knew where they were, they knew where we were, and we were friendly to them, you know. But I look back and remember the colored restrooms, where they were marked “colored,” where the African-Americans had to go to separate restrooms.
I remember my dad’s business. He was in the trucking business. And he would hire casual labor every day down in Winter Park in Hannibal Square. And we’d go down there and they’d come up to the door of his car and ask whatever he was paying, and they’d negotiate the pay, and then they’d get in the back seat and go for a day’s labor. When I was out on the trucks with him—because I worked on my dad’s truck from the time I was 12 years old—hauling freight, hauling furniture. We’d go to a diner, and get something to eat sometimes at lunch, and if we didn’t bring our lunch. And the black laborers would have to sit out back. Sit down on the ground out back. And my dad would order a sandwich for them. They would go through the kitchen, go out the back door, and they’d sit and eat it out back. They weren’t allowed in to sit.
Youngers
And they didn’t even really have a dining area?
L’Heureux
No. There was no dining area, even. And we took the bus a lot in those days, from Winter Park to Orlando. I used to go down to Orlando to a bookstore—McVicker’s—go down to the theaters there when I was a small boy—10, 11, 12. On the bus, by myself. If I use “colored,” “blacks,” “African-Americans” —it’s interchangeable, because they called themselves those things at various times. But they would come on the bus, and they’d march right to the back of the bus. And sit, and there’d be no question about it. And if one was sitting and a white woman came on and there was no place for her to sit, they were expected to give up their seat.
Youngers
Wow.
L’Heureux
So I was in the terrible segregation days. Grew up in it. It was terrible. I loathe the fact that it took place. I would like to have interacted with them. I played baseball—sports—in high school. We never played against blacks ever, that I can ever remember.
Youngers
Once they made that change, how did the community react?
L’Heureux
Well, some fought it for a long time, because they always wanted something to lord over people. You know how people are. A lot of people embraced it, were happy about it, and glad it came along. But it was a very begrudging thing. It didn’t happen overnight. We had Brown v. the Board of Education—the lawsuit and the legal argument at the Supreme Court—but it wasn’t like turning a light on or off, you know, all of a sudden. There was a transition period of several years. Several years.
I remember when I was at Stetson—my senior year, I was in charge of homecoming. And we had a black entertainer come from New York for a homecoming dance and a concert. His name was Roy Hamilton, and he was excellent. He wasn’t quite as famous as Johnny Mathis in those days, but this is in the late ‘50s—‘59 or ‘60—and I was in charge of getting him lodging, for he and his wife, and his bass player, and his piano player. And no motel would take him. No motel would take him. And I had to put him up in a couple of houses in the black section of DeLand. And this—this guy was a New York entertainer, he was an RCA Victor recording artist. He was big. Roy Hamilton, back in the ‘50s and ‘60s. And I couldn’t find lodging for him. He drove—drove down from New York and I was so embarrassed. No hotel would take them. So, to answer your question, it was a long process. It didn’t happen overnight.
Youngers
Wow.
L’Heureux
It’s hard to believe, isn’t it?
Youngers
It is. It is. Is there any other things, like those type of events, that you can recall? I mean, I know the history of just this area—they had the freeze, and they had hailstorms, and the fires, and hurricanes, and things.
L’Heureux
Well, hurricanes, yes. I can tell you stories about the hurricanes. The Weather Bureau [National Weather Service] was so embryonic in its stage, and so much in its infancy. We didn’t have good rapport with the Weather Bureau, because they didn’t have good rapport with the storms. And we had our radios in the early days before TV. We had our little Philco radios. And they’d scratch and you could barely hear them sometimes.
And the indicator of hurricanes was not somebody coming on the TV or the radio to tell you, it was the Australian pines. Australian pines were brought to Florida as a windbreak. And also, a windbreak against hurricanes. And also, because they looked kind of pretty in margins of road and along canals and this kind of thing. My dad had Australian pines on our property. Our warehouses were next to our home, because we lived in a rural part of town. And the Australian pines would whoosh and you’d hear them make a sound that was different than just a little storm. The hurricane sound was unmistakable. It was a wail—an actual wail. And we’d hear it, and then we’d say, “There must be a storm coming.” And a lot of times, it’d be a hurricane. It would be a hurricane, and this was the late ‘40s, the early ‘50s. And I can remember some terrible storms that came through Orlando. Rowboats on the street, you know, and the water off, the lights off, for days. But the early warning for hurricanes was so backward, because we didn’t have the technology for it. And we missed school all the time. And it would rain for days when the storms were around. I remember distinctly, storms in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s that were rough that came through here. Trees down, and power out, but we had no notice. It wasn’t like the hurricanes in ‘26 in Miami and ‘28 that came across Lake Okeechobee. When they were there, you knew they were there. But not any notice. And even in the ‘40s and ‘50s, we had almost no notice of hurricanes.
Youngers
Wow. Wow. That’s—kind of makes you wonder what we would do without these things.
L’Heureux
Exactly, today.
Youngers
You were saying earlier too that your father ran a trucking business?
L’Heureux
My dad had a trucking business, and there’s a great story there. He bought an old truck—a 1934 Ford—in New Jersey, where we had our farm. He was in the Coast Guard and almost farmed by night. He farmed with the lights on on[sic] the tractor. He’d farm at night, because we was trying to make a living. And my mother would take the produce and sell it downtown. In an old Pontiac car with a running board, and my sister and I were three, four years old, and we’d go with her.
He bought this truck to transport our belongings from the farmhouse to Florida. My mother inherited this property out near Rock Springs, out near Apopka. And he had money from the sale of the farm. And he built our house that summer. The war was over that summer. And the goods coming in, like [inaudible] nails to build a house were slow. My dad had never built a house. My dad was afraid of nothing. He built a house and not knowing how to do it. He built it. The footers, the concrete block foundation, the rafters—he just built it with the help of two men from town, and had a little money from the sale of the farm.
The summer—and by fall, the money was low, and he had no job. The house was up, we were in the house. So he took the truck down to the railroad station, when the Rollins co-eds were coming in for the year. And in those days, almost nobody drove a car to college. You took the train. Literally. And Rollins was a fancy, expensive school, even in those days. He met somebody down in Winter Park. “I’ve been here all summer. I need a job.” “We built our house. We’re in our house. I need a job now.” He had that truck. The man said, “Why don’t you go down to the train station and walk down through the cars when they stop and tell them you’ll haul trunks to the college—to the dormitories?” He said, “Taxicabs have been doing this for years.”
So my father took his truck down there, and in competition with the taxicab drivers, he walked up and down the train saying, “We’ve got a truck outside to haul your trunk.” So he started hauling trunks to the college for about 10 days, till everybody was down and school was in session, and he was out of work ,because he had worked for 10 days. So he ran an ad in the paper in Winter Park. He had a caption that read, “We will move anything”. And he put it in the paper with a phone number—four digits. You could talk to the operator. And this was right after World War II. And he set up a moving business. And he was in the moving business 28 years.
Youngers
Wow.
L’Heureux
Trucks and warehouses, and that’s how he had his start.
Youngers
Wow, that’s really cool.
L’Heureux
I think so. He had a truck and no job, and he put the truck to work.
Youngers
Wow. And your mom—did she stay home?
L’Heureux
She stayed home and ran the office. And he was in the early years out there in the truck, hauling with everybody else. And then he graduated to giving advice and direction behind the scenes as he got older and his business grew—flourished.
Youngers
Wow, that’s a really cool story.
L’Heureux
I think so.
Youngers
Well, is there anything that you would like to discuss that I haven’t really brought up?
L’Heureux
Well, yes. I guess. Let’s see. I was very fortunate in living as a young boy and young man through probably as wonderful a time in Florida history as there could be. That was from the end of World War II until the early 60s, when all the riots started and all the national trouble with the Vietnam War. There were about 15, 18 years in there that were just marvelous. And I—it was all my grammar school years, my high school years, my college years. It was just a remarkable place to grow up. It was remarkable.
I would ride my bicycle—you are not going to believe this. Nine and 10 years old, I’d ride my bicycle two and a half miles to Downtown Winter Park, go to the police station, and say, “I was going to lock it in one of their little racks. Would they look after it?” I’m telling you the truth. I was taking the bus to Orlando for the day. And I’d get on the bus at age nine or 10, by myself. You know, you never thought about bad people. You never heard of them. And I would go to Orlando on the old bus, go to McVicker’s bookstore and buy a Hardy Boys book. They were popular then. Go to a Saturday matinee and see Roy Rogers and Gene Autry and eat popcorn and Coke. Spend all day in Orlando. Go by the Cub Scout den, the Yowell Drew Ivey’s—a great department store. Look for the next badge I was going to get, or a new hat, or whatever. And come back in the afternoons, after being in Orlando for six or seven hours, claim my bicycle from the police rack, unlock the thing that locked it, and ride home at night, and be gone all day. Nine, 10 years old. I’m telling you the truth. Nobody thought a thing about it.
Youngers
Wow.
L’Heureux
Today, you couldn’t even—I was in grammar school! I remember going once when I was 10 years old to Orlando with a $10 bill for Christmas presents. And I bought my dad a fishing lure at Denmark’s Sporting Goods store, which was a landmark—Denmark’s. I went to the Yowell Drew Ivey’s, and bought my sister a little gift, a Nancy Drew book. Because Nancy Drew was like Hardy Boys. Nancy Drew was for girls, and Hardy Boys was for boys. And I went over to Dickson [&] Ives, went up the floor in an elevator, and bought my mother a nice handkerchief. And I had lunch down there. I had bought a gift for my sister, my father, my mother. And went to the movies and came home and still had change from the $10 bill.
Youngers
Oh, my goodness.
L’Heureux
I remember it, I was about 10 or 11 years old.
Youngers
Wow.
L’Heureux
And it wasn’t that I was particularly brave or anything. It was just that you didn’t have any worries. Nobody accosted you or anything. There was never any trouble. I’d go to Orlando alone for the day.
Youngers
Wow. I don’t even go to Orlando alone right now.
L’Heureux
Exactly. Exactly.
Youngers
So, you’d mentioned too that you had served some time in the army?
L’Heureux
Yes.
Youngers
Did you serve in the war?
L’Heureux
No, no. I’m not particularly proud of that, but it wasn’t my fault. I had the wrong age. I was too young for [the] Korea[n War] and too old for [the] Vietnam [War]. Now, I would have been old enough for Vietnam, but I was married by then, had a child by then, and I didn’t go.
But I signed in the Army Reserves when I was in high school. I went to Reserve meetings when I was a junior in high school. And senior. That’s pretty young to be out there—a soldier with men. I was only 16. And then I went in the active duty after high school. And got out—and we only went six months to active duty, and we were in Reserves seven and a half years.
And I was going to go to Davidson College in North Carolina, because some friends went and I was accepted there. I came back in January, after six months in the service, from June to January, and some friends talked me into going to Stetson for just a semester. Because if I didn’t go to school, I was going to be on my dad’s trucks hauling furniture. I promise you—I hated to go home on the weekends form college, because I’m going to be on his truck working. So I said, “Going to college is better than working on Dad’s trucks.” So I went to Stetson and liked it and never went to Davidson. I went on through Stetson the whole time. But that’s how that worked out.
We used to—when I finally got a car at Stetson, I could get a tank of gas a week if I’d come home and see Mom and Dad. It was only 34 miles from DeLand to Winter Park. And I would run the gas down to near the E-mark, because I knew how far it was. There was a Pure station in our neighborhood—an old Pure station—and I could get a tank of gas. And of course, I always bought my dirty linens home in a big duffel bag for Mother, you know. I would, time and time and time again. One time, I got down to Casselberry, and I thought that I was going to run out of gas. And I pumped nine cents. Nine cents of gas. And the gasoline was about 32 cents a gallon. I got enough to get me home. Nine cents!
Youngers
Oh, my goodness.
L’Heureux
There are more, you know, people that are older—a hundred years old—remember the early 1900s, which is even more archaic than what I’m talking about. But you asked me what I remember. That, from end of World War II until the Vietnam War, America was at its zenith, its power, its influence, its peacetime.
And it was a marvelous time to grow up in Florida. Florida was booming. The tourism was starting. The [Lockheed] Martin Company came to Orlando. The Cape [Canaveral] was starting to make some rumbles, and Orlando was really growing. I know in my graduating class—and my sister’s—we were about the same size, the year before me. We were 56, 57, 58. We’re all about the same. Two or three years later, the class size had doubled, because of the Martin Company and all the Allied Aerospace Company [Allied Aerospace, Inc.]. People were flooding into Florida in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s. But it was a great place to grow up. I miss it. It’s gone. It’s gone.
Youngers
I can understand that. Do you remember when they first built [Walt] Disney [World?
L’Heureux
Oh, yes. I remember “B.D.”—“Before Disney”. Oh, I do. I do. I went into the brokerage business and met a man who made a lot of money by being on the inside looking out, and bought land as a speculator. He ran a service station in Beverly Hills. And he owned it. He was blue collar, but he owned it, and all the stars would gas up there. And he flew an aircraft, along with a couple of his buddies. Had a little piper cup group. And the word is, that Disney was coming east. They had Disneyland, and they were coming east, and they thought it was going to be St. Louis[, Missouri]. Proved not to be St. Louis, because Mr. [Adolphus] Busch from Busch—Anheuser-Busch [Companies, Inc.], heard something that they weren’t going to serve beer, and he said something at a big gala unveiling, “you can’t come to St. Louis and not sell beer.” And Walt Disney didn’t like that. So St. Louis was crossed off.
The next option was either Ocala or Orlando. So this man from California that owned an old Standard Oil gas station—he was a thousand-aire, he wasn’t a millionaire. He knew some of the stars. And they leaked that this area might be it. So he and three of his buddies flew—took a month off—flew piper cubs[?] to Orlando Executive Airport—the old airport—checked into a motel, hired Kelly [Service, Inc.] girls to post themselves in the various county seats—Kissimmee, Tavares, Sanford, Orlando—to see if anything unusual was being recorded— anything deeds or anything. They ate four meals a day, trying to eavesdrop scuttlebutt. They got their hair cut every week whether they needed it or not. They got their shoes shined. They wanted to be where scuttlebutt was, where gossip was, because they were trying to bankroll the buying of land if Disney was going to buy in Orlando. They’d meet every night and confer. “How’d your day go?” “Where’d you go?” “Oh, I ate four meals in restaurants,” and this and this and this. And they’d move the Kelly girls around every day. The girl that was in Orlando would be in Sanford and then the next day she’d be in Tavares so she wouldn’t be suspicious. And they had a map they put across their bed in the motels there. “Where were you?” It was like a war. They were trying to find out if Disney was coming here. So then money was going.
This is a true story. He gave this story in my living room. In fact, I did business with him. He’s dead now. I shouldn’t use his name. The money was up, and darn it, we didn’t find it. Nothing. Because it was really—only three people in town knew it. The man in charge of The Orlando Sentinel, the man in charge of First [inaudible] Bank of Orlando. I mean, it was like keeping the A-bomb secret. Because Disney knew the prices would escalate.
So here’s the story. And it’s true. They checked out of their motel rooms. They got their planes at Orlando Executive Airport. And they had flown during the month around to see what they could see from the air too. They flew out to present Lake Buena Vista that had a wind sock little airstrip there owned by a family-kind of a mom-and-pop business. Little wind sock, you know. And piper cubs[?] would land. A place to gas up. So they landed there to gas up. It was a two day flight to California. They were flying to Texas and then on to California. Little piper cubs[?], they go about 120 miles an hour, tops.
Youngers
Right.
L’Heureux
There was an old boy there at the little airstrip with an old cracker hat on, piece of straw in his mouth. You know, and he was making conversation with them. And they were glum, because they were there and spent a month’s salary and nothing. And this guy—and this is a true story. He told it in my living room. You could hear a pin drop. This guy said, “What’s going on around here? Mr. Brown down here, he’s got his farm for sale. Mr. Smith down here, he’s under option with some other people, and Mr. Miller down here, he’s selling out too.” “And Mr. C.”—I’ll call him “Mr. C.,” because he’s gone. I want to protect him. He said, “Oh, really? Oh really, really? People around here auctioning their farms? Yeah, we don’t know what’s going on. It’s crazy over here right now.” Well, it was at Bay Lake, right by where it was. And they came in and made some deals with farmers under the rug, and so Mr. C. and his buddies got back in the airplanes, went back to the motel, which was on Colonial Drive—across from a place called Ronnie’s Restaurant, which was famous—checked back into the motel, and redoubled their efforts, and found it.
Youngers
Oh, my goodness.
L’Heureux
And they begged, borrowed, and stole every buck they could from California—their friends, their relatives. And in two short years, they were all multi-millionaires. The guy at the gas-up station at the little family-owned airstrip spilled the beans.
Youngers
Wow.
L’Heureux
Now, that’s a true story, and isn’t that a great story? Yeah, it’s funny, but…
Youngers
It’s great that that’s how you find out stuff, though. It might not be in the middle of the city. It might just be…
L’Heureux
That’s right. They had Kelly girls they hired. They were everywhere. Listening—listening in the corridors of courthouses. All of them got fat, he said, because they were going in every restaurant, every diner, trying to sit and hear something, you know. They got their shoes shined when they glistened, you know. Got their haircut too often. They just wanted to be places to get gossip. Because they’re trying to bankroll big money. Thirty days—nothing. They leave town, they gas up, and the guy at the place spills the beans. And he said, “It was the greatest thing he had ever heard.” He said, “Oh, really? This, Mr. Smith and Mr. Brown?” That probably was not the names, but those were the names he used. It was somebody that was selling out to Disney. And this was all prior to the announcement. So they went back, and said, “We found it.” And it was Bay Lake. And they found it. And they searched for 30 days and couldn’t find it.
Youngers
Well, now, did it really help the area? Initially it brought in a lot of income, and…
L’Heureux
Well, I’m an environmentalist. You know, my books have that theme. I love nature. I love the outdoors. And yes, it’s done a lot of good, but I like the old Florida. I write about the old Florida. The backcountry roads, the way it was, you know. The animals. Not that we had them running loose, because we had cattle fencing and all, but I guess it’s helped. If you’re on I[nterstate Highway]-4 in gridlock, and a tractor-trailer’s across the way and you’re two hours late for an appointment, you’re not liking it. There was no turning back once Disney came. It was just—it was just frantic. It was the most frantic thing I’d ever seen. The people coming in here with jobs, and the growth, it was just unbelievable. I like the old Florida. I like the old days.
Youngers
Wow.
L’Heureux
But that story about Mr. C. is a true story. I did business with him and we had him out to the house one night for beer and popcorn, and had some of my friends over, about 10 of us. Maybe a little more. And we all sat around listening to him tell that story. And that’s just a fantastic story.
Youngers
It’s hard to imagine what Florida would be like without that aspect of it, especially Central Florida.
L’Heureux
Well, it would have grown despite Disney. It was growing early. The Cape—the aerospace industry really took off after the war and in the early ‘50s, it would have grown without Disney. People had pensions. They had retirements for the first time. And they wanted to get out of the cold. So it had started to grow long before Disney. But not at the rate that Disney brought after that. When they came, it was much different than it would have been. It would have been a gradual increase. It wouldn’t be like it is today. But it still would have been a very big state. So we can’t blame Disney totally.
Youngers
No. Well, if you don’t have anything else.
L’Heureux
Stephanie, I think this has been fun. And enjoyable. And to learn that you came from the Okeechobee area, which I know also. And I went to college with many people from the towns around Lake Okeechobee—La Belle—also and I so enjoyed being interviewed by you today.
Youngers
Well, good. I’m glad.
L’Heureux
Thank you.