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https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/fce724952773f51471717fce7ed72c54.pdf
0fd076b6610ed90aeadf407cf5e14674
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Orlando Gay Chorus Collection
Alternative Title
Gay Chorus Collection
Is Part Of
Orlando Gay Chorus Collection, RICHES Program
Type
Collection
Digital Collection
<div class="element-text"><a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/">RICHES MI</a></div>
<div class="element-text"> </div>
Subject
Orlando (Fla.)
Music--Florida
Dance--United States
Gay culture--United States
Description
The Orlando Gay Chorus (OGC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts and humanitarian organization, and part of the Gay and Lesbian Association (GALA) of Choruses. Founded on Valentines Day 1990, OGC is not only one of the largest mixed gay choirs in the United States at over 100 members, but they also boast four smaller ensembles that perform annual concerts, cabarets, and a host of community events, such as Come Out With Pride, Orlando Museum of Art’s Festival of Trees, and World AIDS Day memorial services. In 2017, the group performed at over 105 events, including 15 performances for the first anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub tragedy. Members come from all walks of life and all sexual and gender orientations, including straight allies. OGC lives by the motto “Singing the World to a Better Place” and strives to use music to change attitudes and build a stronger community.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Oral History of Richard Lamberty
Alternative Title
Oral History, Richard Lamberty
Subject
Orlando (Fla.)
Music--Florida
Mass shootings
Dance--United States
Gay culture--United States
Description
An oral history interview of Richard Lamberty, a member of the Orlando Gay Chorus, same-sex ballroom dancer, and software developer. This interview was conducted by Geoffrey Cravero at the Center for Humanities and Digital Research at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, Florida, on October 11th, 2016. Some of the topics covered include a biographical summary, his educational history, discovering dance, his family history, his relationship with his father, same-sex ballroom dancing, the Orlando Gay Chorus, Orlando Cloggers, becoming a dance instructor, losing communication and physical skills from rheumatoid arthritis, world travels as a dance instructor, homosexuality in Japan, the end of his dance career, North American Same-Sex Partner Dance Association (NASSPDA), the history of same-sex dancing, the kinesiology of dance, Dance Vision International Dancers Association (DVIDA) American Smooth Bronze Syllabus manual, reasons for joining the Orlando Gay Chorus, the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub and its aftermath, the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses (GALA) Festival, being a public figure and representing Orlando, violence against homosexuals, meeting a transsexual Muslim, the John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) vigil for victims of the Pulse massacre, homosexuality in the space and defense industry, turning tragedy into positive change, gun control reform, the community response to Pulse tragedy, the significance of the rainbow flag, the long-term consequences of the Pulse tragedy, and the rise of fundamentalism.
Table Of Contents
0:00:00 Introduction <br />0:03:06 Family <br />0:07:24 Same-sex dancing and the Orlando Gay Chorus <br />0:11:06 Living with rheumatoid arthritis <br />0:13:43 Changing attitudes towards homosexuality in Japan <br />0:18:05 History of same-sex dancing <br />0:25:04 Dance Vision International Dancers Association (DVIDA) and the kinesiology of dance <br />0:30:13 Joining the Orlando Gay Chorus <br />0:36:00 Mass shooting at Pulse nightclub <br />0:48:08 Achievements in computer science <br />0:50:36 2016 GALA Choruses Festival and abuse against the LGTBQ+ community <br />1:01:01 Singing at John F. Kennedy Space Center and gun control <br />1:06:37 Community response to Pulse tragedy <br />1:09:11 How the Orlando Gay Chorus can influence political and social change <br />1:17:07 Closing remarks
Abstract
Oral history interview of Richard Lamberty. Interview conducted by Geoffrey Cravero in Orlando, Florida, on October 11, 2016.
Type
Moving Image
Source
Lamberty, Richard. Interviewed by Geoffrey Cravero, October 11, 2016. Audio record available. <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>, Orlando, Florida.
Requires
Multimedia software, such as <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/" target="_blank"> QuickTime</a>.
<a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/reader.html" target="_blank">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a>
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/collections/show/206" target="_blank">Orlando Gay Chorus Collection</a>, LGBTQ+ Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Has Format
Digital transcript of original 1-hour, 18-minute, and 03-second oral history: Lamberty, Richard. Interviewed by Geoffrey Cravero. Audio record available. <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>, Orlando, Florida.
Coverage
Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, Orlando, Florida
GALA Choruses Festival, Denver Performing Arts Center, Denver, Colorado
Japan
Orlando, Florida
Pulse, Orlando, Florida
Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida
University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida
Creator
Lamberty, Richard
Cravero, Geoffrey
Publisher
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>
Date Created
2016-10-11
Date Copyrighted
2016-10-11
Format
video/mp4
application/pdf
Extent
1.09 GB
283 KB
Medium
1-hour, 18-minute and 4-second video recording
Language
eng
Mediator
History Teacher
Humanities Teacher
Music Teacher
Dance Teacher
Provenance
Originally created by Richard Lamberty and Geoffrey Cravero and published by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>.
Rights Holder
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>
Accrual Method
Item Creation
Curator
Cravero, Geoffrey
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
External Reference
Katalin, Lnyi. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/951006947" target="_blank"><em>Same-Sex Ballroom Dance - A Challenge to Patriarchal Gender Order</em></a>. VDM Verlag, 2008.
PeRez, Robert. "<a href="http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2005-12-27/news/DANCER27_1_dance-instructors-professional-dancer-same-sex-dancing" target="_blank">Orlando native overcomes odds, rules dance floor</a>." <em>Orlando Sentinel</em>, December 27, 2005. Accessed November 7, 2016. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2005-12-27/news/DANCER27_1_dance-instructors-professional-dancer-same-sex-dancing.
Shepherd, Lindy T. "<a href="http://www.orlandoweekly.com/orlando/who-leads/Content?oid=2253395#" target="_blank">WHO LEADS?</a>." <em>Orlando Weekly</em>, March 30, 2006. Accessed November 7, 2016. http://www.orlandoweekly.com/orlando/who-leads/Content?oid=2253395#.
Ahlquist, Karen. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/62281651" target="_blank"><em>Chorus and Community</em></a>. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.
Boedeker, Hal. "<a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/os-orlando-gay-chorus-25-years-20150611-story.html" target="_blank">Orlando Gay Chorus marks 25 years</a>." <em>Orlando Sentinel</em>, October 18, 2016. Accessed October 18, 2016. http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/os-orlando-gay-chorus-25-years-20150611-story.html.
Ogles, Jacob. "<a href="http://www.advocate.com/pride/2016/10/06/pride-orlando-will-take-new-meaning" target="_blank">Pride in Orlando Will Take on New Meaning</a>." <em>The Advocate</em>, October 6, 2016. Accessed October 18, 2016. http://www.advocate.com/pride/2016/10/06/pride-orlando-will-take-new-meaning.
Hyman, Jamie. "<a href="http://www.watermarkonline.com/2016/06/16/community-rises-mass-shooting-orlando-gay-nightclub-kills-49/" target="_blank">Community rises up after mass shooting at Orlando gay nightclub kills 49</a>." <em>Watermark</em>, June 16, 2016. Accessed October 18, 2016. http://www.watermarkonline.com/2016/06/16/community-rises-mass-shooting-orlando-gay-nightclub-kills-49/.
Click to View (Movie, Podcast, or Website)
<a href="https://youtu.be/K2rphgLl1sQ" target="_blank">Oral History of Richard Lamberty</a>
Transcript
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>Alright. Let’s see. This is Geoffrey Cravero, and I’m conducting an oral history with Richard Lamberty of the Orlando Gay Chorus. The interview is being conducted in the conference room of the Center fo—of—Center for [<em>laughs</em>] Humanities and Digital Research at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday, October 11<sup>th</sup>, 2016 [<em>clears throat</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Which, by the way, happens to be National Coming Out Day.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>National Coming Out Day. I saw the s—I saw the sign earlier. Excellent, good timing. So, uh, Mr. Lamberty, thank you for speaking with us today. If you would, let’s start by having you state your name and telling us a little about where you’re from.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Richard Lamberty. L-A-M-B—as in boy—E-R-T-Y. Um, I was born in Chicago, Illinois, and we moved to Orlando when I was five. Um, we stayed here until I was 16, and then we briefly moved to Maryland, where I graduated high school, and then I came back to Orlando and attended Rollins [College], um, and then after Rollins, I actually came to UCF[1] for almost two years, during which time I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and they put me on a medication. Um, one of the side effects of that medication was I lost the ability to read, write, and speak, and so I was unable to complete my graduate degree at that time, um—ended[sic] up moving to New Mexico, where my parents had gone, and enrolled in the university out there to, uh, work in their computer science artificial intelligence department, which by the time I got there, was gone, and so there was not a single person left on campus that even knew that I existed, and there was no one to help me with paperwork or any of the transfers of credit or anything. It was start over.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>] Um, continued to work on the degree out there, but got hired to work on a NASA[2] project that I did for five years, and then moved to California, where I stayed for another 18 years, before coming back to Orlando in 2005, um, basically, to be closer to family, and so I have lived here in Orlando ever since.</p>
<p>Um, I started dancing—you were ask—gonna ask about the dancing thing—I started dancing when I was 10 years old, and I danced first with the Orlando Cloggers, which was a—a youth, square-dance clogging group that was sponsored by the City of Orlando, and from that I got involved in what’s called “round dancing,” which is kind of a hybrid between square dancing and ballroom dancing—ballroom dances and figures, but it’s cued in the same way that a square dance is called, and then directly involved in ballroom from that, and, uh—but because of the arthritis issues then it was like, <em>This is not gonna be what I do with my life.</em> I have to have something else to do, but as long as I’m able I can dance, and I’ve continued to do so for most of my life, um, and that’s taken me all over the world. In fact, I just got back from two weeks in Europe, where I was teaching for the 22<sup>nd</sup> year that I’ve been over there teaching at this event in Germany.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Um, you know, life in Orlando—mostly what my life about[sic] here is I’m taking care of my elderly mother. I am her primary caretaker, and, um, and then I do what work is available to me, in addition to that, and, you know, in my field if it can be, so designing software, computer systems and things, or doing people’s websites and such, but, um, mostly my life is about dealing with family, taking care of family.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>And, uh, what d—what did your family do? It was your—did your mother work? Or…</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Uh, my father was an electrical engineer. Um, he had seven children. I’m the fifth of seven, and, uh, so my mother was basically a stay-at-home mom for a lot that, and then didn’t start really working until I was about 16, um, in Maryland, and then…</p>
<p>[<em>phone rings</em>]</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Go away.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>And don’t do that again.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>I’ll make that stop.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>I should’ve thought of that first.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>Oh, that’s alright.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>The only person who can make my phone ring now is my mother.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>]. Okay, um, my father was an electrical engineer. He did a wide variety of things for Swift[?] Martin Marietta [Corporation]. Well, actually, in Chicago, we moved down here for a job at Martin—which was before it was Lockheed Martin—and then, um, up to Maryland. Hated it. Cold weather. Not a[sic] interesting job for him. Came back to Florida at Harris Corporation, where they got involved with the satellite project, um, and then eventually ended up with TRW [Inc.] Space and Defense and retired from them. Um, I worked with TRW Space and Defense—was my first real job in my industry, and then, um, that—on the same project as my father, which was an extraordinary privilege. My father was brilliant and exceedingly humble, um, but just this brilliant man, and I had the privilege of spending five years working with him, and just, you know, being around that mind every day and seeing how he viewed the world, which was fascinating because growing up I didn’t experience my parents quite that way. Um, I grew up in a household where debate was the normal form of communication [<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>You know, and I never knew what my parents thought about anything, because if one of ‘em would say something, the other one’d automatically take the opposite position, and so what did, you know—what did either of them actually believe about the world was almost impossible for me to determine, and, um, you know, in that time period, I actually got to learn about my father, and one of the things that I learned was that he wasn’t ashamed of me, because growing up, he never spoke to me, um, and I—I didn’t know why. It turned out he didn’t speak to me because he was partially deaf and he couldn’t hear me. So when my voice really changed then he could hear me, you know? Alone—the two of us, then he could hear me, and I walked into—he worked in a trailer in the desert, and I walked into his office one day for some reason, and on the wall was a framed poster of a dance exhibition that I had done when I was at Rollins, and I went home and I said to my mother, “Did you know that Dad has the poster from Rollins on the wall in—office?” And she said, “Oh, yes. Your father’s very proud of you,” and up until that very moment, what I had assumed was that he was embarrassed about me because I was a dancer and, you know, not like his other sons, and that really—that wasn’t true. So, you know, that was just—it was remarkable, and, you know, in an era where being gay was not okay, you know, having the security clearance and being gay was not okay, um, it was a very hard thing to do, um, and, you know, my parents were very Catholic. Uh, you know, like “know the pope” kind of Catholic. Um, there’s a photograph of my mother with John Paul II—just the two of them. You know, so it was a, you know—that was not okay.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>And yet, there this poster was. It was an incredible experience.<br /><br />Um, but no. When I came back to Orlando, I continued to dance, and I had gotten involved with same-sex ballroom dancing. Uh, you know, two men dancing together, two women dancing together—which again, two women dancing together has always been socially acceptable; two men dancing together has not, and so, um—and I had a partner here in Orlando. We trained, we worked hard, we eventually won world titles together, and then he quit, and I didn’t have anything to do, so I had heard the [Orlando Gay] Chorus sing, and I thought, <em>I can try this. I don’t sing, but I can try this</em>, you know? I was in chorus in seventh and eighth grade, but, um, I didn’t get a good grade, and when I asked the teacher why she told me I didn’t have a good voice, and so I quit singing, and I never sang again. I mean I wouldn’t sing “Happy Birthday” to people for 35 years. So I joined the chorus and then, you know, started singing with them, and it was fun. It was—I didn’t have to be good. There were [<em>laughs</em>] zero expectations that I actually be good at anything. Not like work, not like dancing, you know—just show up, sing, gave a good time, and, you know, as it happens, apparently, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m okay as a singer, and, you know, had the—the privilege of being a part of the chorus now for six years, and it’s really—it is—it’s a lot of fun. Wonderful thing.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>That’s fantastic. Um, so, uh, can you tell us a little more about how you got involved in, uh, ballroom and Latin dancing? Um, what sort of work, uh, did you do as a board member on the—I saw that you did…</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Oh.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>The North American Same-Sex Partner Dance Association [NASSPDA]…</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>You Googled me.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>I Googled.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Yes.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Okay, my parents were square dancers. They had taken a square dance class here in Orlando, and they had what was called “hoedown,” which was in the parking lot of the, uh, um, uh, Colonial Plaza Mall in where—what now would be the—I guess the Walgreens or the CVS is in that corner—that was parking. They put up a tent one day and they just had the square dance callers with a whole bunch of people, and people were dancing in the parking lot [<em>door closes</em>], and I saw the Orlando Cloggers perform, and that’s what I wanted to do. I wasn’t quite old enough yet. You had to be 10 and I wasn’t 10 yet, and so as soon as I turned 10, then I could start the classes, and it was amazing. It was run by the city. It was $5 per family for the season—not $5 a week, not $5 a person. It was $5 for the entire thing—for three of us to go and take the classes, and I loved it. I thought it was awesome. I loved the dancing, so, you know, I learned to clog, I learned to square dance, and then I learned the round dancing, which was like ballroom, and, um, we moved to Maryland when I was in high school, and I can dance, and I got a job at an independent ballroom dancing studio as a dance teacher at the age of 16. I—and this is 1975—’75 —’76 —and I was making $16 an hour, which is basically still what a—a beginning dance instructor makes—same—same thing—but I was making $16 an hour teaching dance lessons, and I think the minimum wage was $2.85 [<em>laughs</em>]. So it’s like, <em>Woo hoo.</em> I had money. It’s like I’m 16 years old, I’ve got this job that I can—that I love, and I have money. It was amazing and—and I loved the dancing.</p>
<p>Um, when I developed [rheumatoid] arthritis and—you know, what they told me was I’d never walk again. I was 100 percent disabled, and that was while I was here at UCF. You know, the campus was not that big, as it is now, but I couldn’t walk across campus, and the medication had this profound effect on me. I—I couldn’t communicate, um, you know, I couldn’t write coherently, I couldn’t make sense of what I was reading, and I couldn’t—I could not talk intelligently, um, and fortunately, there was a professor here in the Computer Science Department who understood what was going on, and she advised me to, you know, get the medical records brought in and have my record expunged and sealed so that all of that failing grade stuff that showed up, because of that, would not show up on my transcript ever, and without that I would have simply just failed, uh, graduate school, and probably never been able to get back in, um, and then, you know, got enough better that I could move and get back into school and get a job that was, uh—that I loved, um, and tried to dance, you know, as best I could, and it wasn’t always easy physically.</p>
<p>I was—I was allergic to the non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, and so any of them that I would take would cause some kind of a very unpleasant neurological side effect, so it was just better to be in pain. So basically, for 30 years—so I just lived in pain, and didn’t tell anybody. You didn’t talk about it. Um, you know, if it was a bad day, you just tried to dance with your partner not touching actually, you know? It’s like you’re s—and don’t say. Don’t s—never tell anybody why you can’t do anything, you know? Um, yeah, it was really horrible, um, pretending, you know—pretending about a lot of things—pretending about being okay, pretending about not being gay, pretending about, you know, that my brain was working normally when it wasn’t. Basically, life was a whole lot about pretending a lot of things, and very painful—physically, psychologically, emotionally painful experience to live that way all the time.</p>
<p>But, yeah, I got, you know—I danced as much as I could, and slowly, slowly over time. Basically, most dancers peak in their late 20s or early 30. It’s like, <em>Mm, yeah. Not until I was in my late-40s</em>, [<em>laughs</em>] you know, and, um, you know, d—did what teaching I could over the years. I mean, I’ve been traveling to Europe for over 20 years and teaching there, um, uh, various places around the United States, Canada, Japan. Uh, we did—a couple years ago, we did a three week tour in Japan—six different teaching events while we were there. It was just amazing—which in and of itself was fascinating because, you know, there’s a large community of dancers in Japan, and they knew of me and they—they would—when they would come to the United States, there[sic] was[sic] always be at the events that I was at, um, and they brought people over all the time to teach, and I asked—was a big, big international convention that I was teaching at—there was a huge group of Japanese there, and I got invited to the room party with the Japanese—was the only white person at this party, and, um, so I asked, you know—it’s like, you know, “When will I get invited to Japan?” And this—there was this discussion. This rapid discussion in Japanese, and the woman who spoke English best took me into the—the bathroom in the connected hotel rooms and closed the door and said to me, “We cannot invite you.” I was like, “Well, why?” And she goes, “Because whoever invites you would have to accept your shame.” I was like, “Oh.”</p>
<p>So when I got contacted a couple years ago about coming over, there was an American woman living in Japan—I didn’t know her history, but she was an American woman living in Japan with the dancing—and so I wrote to her and said, “I’d love to come, but, you know, you need to know,” and she said to me, you know, “It’s not how it is now.” Things changed. Things changed because finally, the Japanese government had to acknowledge that there were people in Japan dying of AIDS,[3] and so everything changed when they acknowledged that—that these are Japanese people; therefore, they’re Japanese, and the laws changed, and the way that people behaved changed, and now it was just not a problem, and this was like, you know, social change on this huge scale in a couple of years, you know? Things that we have been fighting for in this country for 20 or 30 years and still don’t have—that they could achieve because, as a society, it’s more important that you’re Japanese than it is that you’re gay, you know? So she arranged this trip, we went, we had this amazing time, and it didn’t matter at all, you know? It didn’t matter at all. It matters more here than it does there. Um, you know, I mean I’m—and I still—I love dancing. Although at this point, I’m probably done. I don’t have a partner anymore.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>And if I can’t dance on a regular basis then I lose the ability to dance, which anybody would. Any skill that you’ve developed, if you don’t use it, you lose it. It’s, you know—especially physical skills, but in my case, it’s not just that. Dancing’s what’s kept me well. Um, if I don’t move, I can’t move, and I’ve tried other things. I’ve, you know, gone to gyms, I’ve done swimming, I’ve done all kinds of things. The only thing that’s been really effective is the dancing that I do, and so basically, you know, 47 years of dancing and I don’t have a partner. If I don’t have a partner, I can’t dance. If I can’t dance, I don’t know how long it is that I can walk. That’s the equation. I mean, you know, we talked—I—walking over here from the parking garage was an ordeal, and that’s been, you know—it’s four—four months that I haven’t danced regularly. Going to Germany and having to dance all day, every day, you know? It’s like the first day was just horrible, and after that it was like, <em>Oh, dancing. My body is happy.</em></p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>“It’s fine.” Yeah, so I get distracted easily. It’s okay [<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>Oh [<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>] I’m chatty.</p>
<strong>Cravero<br /></strong>Um, I was gonna—I have a question following up on that—is, um, what kind of—did you face any sort of challenges, um, early on, um, in a same-sex partner dance organization? Like what did you…
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Oh, you were—asked about NASSPDA.[4] That was not the first.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>Mmhmm.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Um, the first organization kind of disappeared. It[?] was the United States same-sex dance, uh, organization that I was one of the founders of. I was also a—a—an honorary founding member of the European same-sex dance organization,[5] and then, at the same time that those two were formed, there was a world organization that was formed that I was on the committee that help form it, write the bylaws, was an officer of, and then there was a dispute about, you know: was that the right way to do this? Did it happen too fast? All that. So that organization shut down. The North American one disappeared, and a couple years later, the, um—or the U.S. one disappeared. Then the—they decided to do—try again, and we created the North American Same-Sex Partner Dance Association—NASSPDA—and I was, again, one of the founders, uh—original co—co-president with a woman, um, Barbara Zoloth, was one—one of my students for many years, and, um, you know, then—actually, I was the first honorary member of the organization when I went off the board. They voted me in, and, uh, you know—so I—I’ve been involved in the history of same-sex dancing in the United States since essentially its beginning.</p>
<p>Um, I ran the first, uh—well, not the first. The first same-sex dance competition was a long time ago in New York—the first one we know of—but it was a one-time thing, and then nothing happened for years and years, but I put one together with, uh, my partner that[sic] I went to the Gay Games in 1998 with—Tom Slater—and a woman—a straight woman that[sic] was helping us—Ava Kaye—and, um, then the three of us decided this was important, and we put together, um, it was—I think it was “March Madness”—might have been the first one. It was either “March Madness” or “April Follies,” and then, the next one, you know—we did series of them that—that I ran with the two of them for many years, starting around 2000—2001—and then, when I moved away, I ran the next year remotely, you know, went back for it, but it was too much. So I turned it over to this organization—a non-profit in the [San Francisco] Bay area that has run it ever since, and so it’s the longest-running same-sex, uh, dance competition in North America, and longer than many of the ones in Europe, um, and, uh, so there’s the—you know, very small community of people involved in that in this country. We don’t have a history of partner dancing in this country in the way they do in Europe and other places in the world, but there are people that are[sic] really love it. It’s this wonderful thing to do. It’s social, it’s engaging, it challenges the mind and the body, um, it’s great exercise in a gentle way, um, and it’s fun. It’s just a tremendous amount of fun.</p>
<p>Um, competing in the same-sex world is so different than the mainstream world. The mainstream world is very cutthroat, and the same-sex world is, you know, the—the—the people who’ve been to mainstream competition that come to one of the same-sex events is like, “What? It’s like, “You s—you act like you like each other. You know, this isn’t like a competition. It’s like a party. It’s a celebration,” and that’s exactly what it feels like. We are celebrating something that we can’t have. I mean there were rules against same-sex couples competing, uh, in regular competitions. Some of that has changed now, but there were rules against it. You weren’t allowed, you know, a—and it’s not just that you, you know, could if you wanted to. Y—you weren’t allowed, and while I wasn’t directly involved in a lot of the politics in the mainstream world to do that, um, I was behind the people who were, you know? I wasn’t—they hated me in the mainstream world of ballroom dancing from day one because I was an out[-of-the-closet] gay man doing ballroom dancing, and there were none. It was like, “Y—you can’t do that.” I got told when I was trying to compete as an amateur, and then as a professional, “Sh—y—you can’t be ‘out.’ You ca—you have to stop talking about this. You can’t bring a boyfriend.” I was like, “Yeah. No, I don’t—I y—I don’t need you to dance. I don’t do this for a living. You can’t make me,” and so—oh, they did not like me [<em>laughs</em>]. I mean I—when I was still trying to be an amateur, there were actually lawsuits filed against me. Try to keep me from dancing—trying to, you know, declare me “not an amateur.” I was—I had a sports lawyer. It was—I mean, I f—finally quit. I was spending about $5,000 a year defending my amateur status with the lawyer. It was like, <em>This is ridiculous.</em> This thing’s already so expensive. I was spending $20-25,000 a year dancing, and on top of that, I’ve got to spend lawyers’ fees? Nobody else has to do this. So I just—I gave up. I let them m—make me go pro, and then, you know, dance in Europe more than the United States, because in Europe nobody knows who I am. They don’t care. Then you get judged on the dancing.</p>
<p>Uh, you know—you know, this thing that I’m passionate about. I just love doing it. I love teaching, I love dancing, you know? The, um—the next world championships for same-sex dancing is gonna be in Miami in August of 2017 at the, uh—the World Outgames, and I won’t be dancing, you know? I’ve—I’ve danced at every Gay Game since 1998. I’m the only one. The Gay Games in 1998 was the first time they had dancing, and my partner and I took third. We danced in Sydney[, Australia], and then, let’s see—it was, uh, Amsterdam[, Netherlands], Sydney[, Australia], I wanna say Chicago[, Illinois], Cologne[, Germany], Cleveland[, Ohio]. The next one’s Paris[, France] in ’18, and, uh—and then the Outgames. We danced in Montreal[, Canada] for the first one. We didn’t go to the next ones, and then, um—and then it’ll be Miami. I don’t have a partner. I don’t get to dance. It’s like a four-hour drive from where I live, and I won’t be dancing. It’s just so miserable. I don’t have a partner, and it’s something—you can’t do it alone, you know, and it’s really—you know, it’s hard to reflect on—the 47 years is coming to an end, and I don’t have a say in that. It’s just gonna happen.</p>
<strong>Cravero<br /></strong>It’s tough [<em>sighs</em>]. Um, well, let me see. I—I—you already discussed, uh—I saw that you had to—you overcame rheumatoid arthritis, actually, in a profile I was reading online. Um…
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Oh, was it the one in <em>The Orlando Sentinel</em>?</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>I think it was, yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>With a picture of me and the dog.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>That’s right.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>Then that was the one.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>Um, oh…</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>You’ll see.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>I also saw there that you did, um—you were a technical consultant on the rewrite of a DVIDA[6] American Smooth Bronze Syllabus manual. Could…</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Oh, yeah, DVIDA.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>Could you explain what that is and describe the work you did on that?</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Um, DVIDA is, uh, oh, Dance Vision—D—Dance Vision International—DVIDA—of—Dance Vision International is the company. DA—o I don’t remember what it stands for. A friend of mine, um, Diane Jarmolow, that I used to coach and have known forever, um, she got—she contacted me about helping with the manual, which was very nice. It was great. It was really lovely to be asked, but I’m very technical. People know that I have this profound very deep understanding of dancing, which happened while I lived in New Mexico. Um, I couldn’t dance much. It was, you know, a 60-mile drive to the closest dance studio, which I would do. There[?] was a—a woman there that did some dancing that I could do, but we were only allowed to dance after the studio closed at night, ‘cause the owner didn’t want people seeing us because we didn’t fit the profile—she was the teacher there, and he was afraid that we would scare people off, you know? It’s like wrong level, wrong kind of dancing for what the studio was about, and so two weeknights a week, I would drive to El Paso[, Texas], be there at 10 o’clock at night, and dance ‘til midnight, and drive home and have to be at work at seven in the morning.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Um, but, um, while I was there, I met this woman who did ballet, and her husband—fiancé was a PhD kinesiologist at New Mexico State University and he wanted a project, but, you know, at the time—this was when they were doing a lot of things with, you know, analyzing on video tape athletic performance, ‘cause they were looking at, you know, runners on treadmills or swimmers in float tanks or cyclists on stationary bicycles, and seeing, you know, how do you optimize the human body in motion—and he didn’t want to do any of that stuff. So what I did was taught his w—his fiancé how to ballroom dance while he analyzed what we were doing, which, basically, no one had ever done before. No one had ever looked at the—the—the actual human body while it was dancing in this way, and n—not just one body, but two—how two bodies worked together, and he did this analysis of it with—with knowing nothing about dancing. So all of the language of dancing that had been used for 80-90 years to teach it had nothing to do with what he wrote about…</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>Right.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Or what he analyzed. So not, “Here’s what somebody has always said about what we’re doing,” but, “This is what the bodies are doing,” and I—so he wrote about that and then I got all that information, and then I had that, so I could write about dancing in—in the dance world, and I wrote papers that would get published about here’s why the feet do what they do, here’s the way that your hold actually works in the frame—you know, not what Patrick Swayze says about it in <em>Dirty Dancing</em>…</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>But what’s actually going on, and that kind of revolutionized the way that dancing was looked at all over the world, and my—my work got spread all over, um, and so because of that I became well-known for this level of technical understanding, and when Diane needed help with the new manuals they were writing, then I got an email. It’s like, “You willing?” It’s like [<em>claps hands</em>] yes.” [<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>“I’ve been waiting for this.”</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>“Fix the stuff that’s wrong.”</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>And so, yeah. I worked on those manuals, and, in fact, my former partner is now working on the new set. He’s up in, uh, Indiana, and he was actually just down here for three days to talk to me about it, ‘cause he’s actually—he’s now the consultant for the next set of stuff that’s being done, um, but yeah, I got a credit in the—in the—in the book and everything, and it’s like “technical consultant,” and it was all this weird stuff. What’s the difference between “brush to” and “brush toward”? What’s the difference between a “brush” and a “collect”? You know, it’s like how to—what’s the difference between “side and slightly forward” and “forward and slightly side,” and it’s like all this really technical stuff, which I’m well-suited to because I love language, you know, from my own issues with language—couldn’t speak for a long time. I love language. I’m a mathematician. So, you know, my—I had a double major at Rollins—mathematics and English—and the dancing is mathematical. The partner dancing is a—is a mathematical construct actually, and then I had all this understanding of what was going on because of this analysis that had been done by this PhD kinesiologist. It’s like, you know—it’s perfect. Love it.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>So cool.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>] So, um, could you tell us, uh—so you joined the, uh, [Orlando] Gay Chorus. You talked a little bit about how you got involved. Um, do you have a favorite production that you did that you can recall?
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Um, no [<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>It’s—it’s funny. I don’t have a sticky memory for lyrics. Lyrics are so hard for me to learn—that they don’t stick in my brain very well, and, uh, so, you know, people will say, “Oh, we sang this five years ago,” and I’m going, “Really? I was here then. Did we? I don’t remember,” um, but I—I love singing with the chorus. I—I have no interest in doing any of the solo stuff or anything like that. I have zero—I love singing with the chorus, and we do two major concerts a year—the spring and the holiday. Um, I like the spring concerts, but I tend to love the holiday stuff because the music is different, you know? The—the Christmas stuff, the holiday stuff in general—it’s just got this wonderful character, and, uh, learning—learning about music. I mean, I always had to know something about music because of the dancing. I played piano for several years and I—it was the first thing—I didn’t understand at the time, but it hurt. It got to the point where it hurt, and so I quit, and then I was a great believer in <em>I’m young and healthy. Park across campus and walk</em>, and, uh, at Rollins, I was in the math program. The math courses were on the fourth floor of the [Archibald Granville] Bush Science Center. I always took the stairs. I got to the point where I couldn’t climb the stairs. So I didn’t know what was going on, um, but, you know, how did I get involved with the chorus? My partner quit, and I thought, <em>Well, I won’t be dancing. I need something to do that’s interesting, that will challenge my mind, that will be fun, that will get me out in the world</em>, ‘cause I don’t have a regular job. I don’t meet people. I don’t, you know, have people at work. I don’t go out to lunch. I don’t meet people. <em>So I’ll join the chorus. It’ll be fun</em>, and it has been. It’s really lovely, um, but—and I was afraid to sing, ‘cause I hadn’t—I’d been told I didn’t sing well. Well, they didn’t care, you know?</p>
<p>Now, it’s a little different. The—the chorus actually is[sic] improved dramatically from then. Well, you know, the work of Jim Brown—here at UCF—was our director at the time that I joined, and he did great work with the chorus, and now we have a new director, who’s very, very choral. Very, you know—the sound is gonna be the sound kind of thing, and, uh, I don’t know that I could get in now. You know, if I had—if I tried to join now, I doubt that they would take me. Now, I’m okay. I mean I’ve learned, but, you know, between the two of them, I learned a lot. Understanding a music that’s fundamentally different. I love that. I love learning, and then being with the group and doing.</p>
<p>So, you know, particular thing that we sing that I like the best? No, no. I mean, every concert there’s something that I end up really loving, which is usually a surprise. It’s not the thing that I think at first that I’m gonna like, and, you know, something that’s not my favorite, you know—sing it anyway, um, and most of the stuff is like, <em>Oh, this is fun or not</em>, you know? Some things are more fun to sing. Some things—just the sound of them. We did, um, in the last concert before we went to Denver for GALA[7]—one of the things we sang was a song for—“A Prayer for Children,” and it’s an old s—piece. It was written, um, I think about Croatia during the [Croatian] War [of Independence] there, and it’s gorgeous. It’s hard, but it’s so beautiful. Um, when I first joined it was like I had to be surrounded by other people singing my part, and so it was—you know, it’s like, <em>Mm</em>. I can’t stand next to somebody who’s doing anything different than me. I don’t sing that well, and now, normally, where I get placed is standing next to the altos. I sing bass—I sing low bass. So it’s like bass, baritone—we usually sing the same thing, but not always—and then the altos, and so I’m standing next to an alto and the—in the front, and I can hear the rest of the chorus, and it’s so beautiful sometimes. I mean, there’s pieces that we do—the fun stuff I love. It’s great and fun to sing, but the s—I love the things that the sound of them is—it’s amazing to experience, and that’s what I’ve always looked for in the dance music, you know—the sound of the music that I choose for my own choreography is what I’m interested in, but, you know, chorus is great.</p>
<p>It’s—it’s always been interesting to belong, you know? There’s—like any other human endeavor and organization, there’s groups that form and factions, and the politics of it and all that. It’s normal. I’m used to that, but at the heart of it, there’s this thing that we’re doing something that matters as a group. Um, when the chorus was formed 26 years ago, you know, the—the small group of people that did that, they were risking, you know, employment. You know, to be associated with a gay group publicly like that, many of them could have been fired for it. Um, it was a brave thing to do then, um, and y—you know, it’s not like that n—now. We belong. It’s okay in Orlando.</p>
But, you know, this summer’s been kind of insane. We had had our concert, and the—the weekend of the shooting at Pulse there were several things going on. Um, every year right around that time there is the Orange Blossom [Dance] Festival, which is a big country western dance competition, and I always try to go. Um, well, at least one night, go by, dance and visit with people, ‘cause I know a lot of people, and if like—convention friends—you see them once a year, and—‘cause I don’t go to the other stuff, and I’m not a country western dancer, but some of these people do other things. Some of them are involved in the same-sex ballroom, um, and it’s often my birthday, ‘cause my birthday’s June 11<sup>th</sup>, and so, normally what would happen is I would go on the Saturday. It’s the better night. If you go Friday, people don’t stay up that late ‘cause a lot of them have to get up in the morning and compete—dance with their students or dance in some way, and Saturday’s better. A lot of the competition is over. The stuff on Sunday is different, and so, you know, go there, dance all evening. Around midnight or so, get a group of people and we’ll go out. Go someplace where there is music, um, and—music that you can dance to—partner dance to, and that has, in fact, been Pulse in the past, eh, when it matched up. Latin Night—if it was going on—e could go there and dance. That’d be great.
<p>Um, this year, I went on Friday because Saturday night we had one of our, uh, non-outreach—there’s another word—I—I forget this word every time I go to do it, uh—cabaret. We have three cabaret performances a year. One of them’s at the Parliament House. It’s called “Uncut.” It’s the raunchy one, and then we have the—the, um—the h—February Valentine’s Day one. That’s the love one, and then, the—we have the summer one, and this year, it was early in the summer. It’s often later, and, um—and it happened to be on that Saturday, and since it was my birthday weekend—I wasn’t singing. I—it was like, <em>I’ll go</em>, and they had these VIP’s tickets with the reception and the dinner and then the thing, and it’s like, <em>I’ll go to that</em>. So I had the ticket and I went. It was wonderful, had great time, and then it was done and nobody wanted to really go out, and I did not want to drive all the way out to this hotel and see what’s going on because it was late. Any other year, I would have been at the hotel with the dancers and we would have been going to Pulse and arriving about 12:30 and staying until they closed or later—make them stay open and play music. So I would have had, you know, 25-30 people from out of town, who just love to dance, be there with me, and I just, you know—when—<em>I’m tired. I think I’ll go home.</em> That was the decision.</p>
<p>So Sunday morning, I wake up. I look at my phone and I—there’s all these text messages. “Are you okay?” “Are you okay?” And I’m thinking, <em>It was one singer. Yes, I know we sing at The Plaza [Live]</em>, you know, <em>People know we sing at The Plaza. I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m fine</em>, and then I get into the shower and turn on the radio [<em>laughs</em>]. It was like, <em>Turn off the shower, go back to the phone.</em> It’s like, “Oh, my God. I—I had no idea,” you know—listening to the news. I was like, <em>Wow</em>, you know, nut for being tired, I would have been there. I would[?], uh—bringing people.</p>
<p>So I don’t—I’m not a Facebook person really, but I looked to see, and I saw that there was gonna be a special Mass. The, um—there’s a gay, Catholic group in Orlando, and the priest who runs that, uh, used to sing in the chorus with us, and so I take my mother to Mass every Sunday—very Catholic—in Winter Park—St. Margaret Mary [Catholic Church] —very affluent—and, you know—and after Mass and I was waiting to see would[sic] they say anything, and they—and they did. Um, it wasn’t hugely specific, but it was, you know—they acknowledged what had happened, and the violence. Not that it was a gay attack or anything, but—but at least they acknowledged it at Mass, and we left immediately from there and went to the—to the place, which is a bar, you know? St. Matthew’s [Tavern at the Orlando Beer Garden]. Is—it used to be I wanna say Revolution—on Mills[Avenue]…</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>Right.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Next to the [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community] Center [of Central Florida]. Alright, that’s where they have Mass, and so we went, and, you know, we s—we went to Mass there, and, you know, at some point in the afternoon, there was a message that came out about—we had been invited to sing at, um, Joy MCC,[8] and I was like, “Absolutely, I’ll be there.” It was massive. When[?] you show up and there’s all these cameras, and they have relegated them to this corner in the back, and there’s[sic] way too many people, and there’s some seating reserved in the front for the chorus, and there’s not enough. There’s so many of us that showed up, and I felt terrible. I had to sit, ‘cause I—I couldn’t stand. My hip hurt, my knee hurt. I couldn’t—I couldn’t stand for the whole thing. I had to take a chair away from somebody else, you know, but—and then, it came time to sing. So we lined up in the front and, um, we had “True Colors” and, um, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” and we sang, and, um, by the time I got home, you know, I looked at Facebook and there was a video that had been posted. It was CBS News, and the CBS newsman thought he was so clever. He had gotten the camera spot that was right in the center aisle, and so when we went to do “True Colors,” of course, that’s where the conductor stood, and right in front of him was the soloist, Caitlyn[sp], and so he had a completely blocked view [<em>laughs</em>] of the soloist. He couldn’t get her face—couldn’t get her face, but there’s the camera and there am I.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>And out of this like two and a half minute video, about 60 seconds of it is on my face, and this got posted on Facebook, and re-p—tagged, and posted and posted, and by the time I got home, I had messaged from 11 countries, and it was overwhelming. I mean, you know—we didn’t know a lot yet. We didn’t even know really how many people were dead yet. I didn’t know whether or not I knew anybody. I did—nobody well, no close friends, but it’s a small community. You know—you don’t know what to do. You know what there was to do? Sing. As it happens, I don’t have a day job. So when we get asked to go and sing and—I can say, “Yes.” I can show up at one o’clock at UCF across town for something, or drive out to the [Orange County] Convention Center at crack of dawn and not worry about being late to work, or—I could show up. That’s what I could do, and it was fascinating to see. </p>
<p>We had the Sunday night there and then Monday night at Dr. Phillips [Center for the Performing Arts] on the lawn, which was not supposed to be what it was, but turned into this thing, and—and it just started happening, and we had GALA [Choruses Festival] coming. We knew—and that was gonna change. Everything was gonna change. So we got invited to the—to sing at the formal thing at Dr. Phillips on the 28<sup>th</sup>.[9] I was flying out. I was going early. I have an ex-boyfriend that lives in Denver[, Colorado], and four years ago, I got to visit with him. This year, I was going to do the same. Go early, spend some time with him, meet the husband—you know, of 11 years that I had never met, um—and so I wasn’t—I wasn’t at the first concert at Dr. Phillips inside, um, and I had a few days. I mean, there had been so many things. I think Carol said that between June 20<sup>th</sup>—the 12<sup>th</sup> and the 28<sup>th</sup>, there were 20 outreach things that we did, and I lost count how many I did. You know, some of them were just the ensemble things and s—one or two people, but—but, you know, 20 things that the chorus was involved in, and I had like at least nine that I did in those few days, and I got to Denver, and I had time away from all of it, you know? It was no longer in the news every day, and not what everybody’s talking about. Just time—and, uh, people talk about processing. It was like, <em>Oh, this is what that means.</em> Time to really think—to—to stop and feel, and then GALA would come, and I knew—I knew what it was gonna be like. I mean, GALA’s crazy anyway, and it was gonna be different. We were gonna, you know—kind of like, if you’re gonna be a part of this, you accept an obligation about certain things.</p>
I’m used to—I’m used to being a public figure. Mm—I’m a—I’m well-known in the world of dancing. In the world of same-sex dancing, I’m the grandfather. I’m known. Um, I was well-known in my work in California. I mean, we didn’t talk about it, but I’ve—I’ve done things that people don’t understand, you know? I worked on—when you type on the computer and it offers you the corrected spelling[10] or look ahead,[11] I developed that for the very first system that ever had it—was the—the satellite control system that I did for NASA in the [19]80s. That didn’t become available for a very, very long time. I developed that. The very first clickable interface to purchase—“online shopping” is what we call it now—I developed that. The—the idea that you can get credit by filling out an online form, that was revolutionary. I did that. I designed that. Um, then when you go to an ATM[12] and you put in your money or your check, and it just reads it and tells you—instead of putting that in an envelope and writing on the envelope, and a person has to open it and count it. I did that—not—not for ATMs. Didn’t fit in an ATM when I did it.
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>But that technology was something I developed. That’s what I worked on. I’ve done all these things with computers that have transformed the world as we know it, and that are now a part of everybody’s existence in the Western world, and how we just interact all the time, and my name is not on any of it. I have no patents. I’m not famous for any of it, but the people who were there, they all knew, you know? I walked into a room of computer nerds in the Bay area. Everybody knew who I was. I was the guy that had won a congressional award for software. There wasn’t anybody else that had done that and never has been, you know? I was the guy that walked up to Steve Jobs and told him he was wrong.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>] He was not happy with me. Um, and I—I know what it’s like to be public, and what the chorus was facing was—we were gonna be the face of Orlando—the face of Pulse at this huge thing. When somebody comes walking up and they have to say something to you, or they have to express how they feel, the obligation is listen. Let them. Let them feel what they feel. Let them share what they have to say. Because at that point, it’s no longer about us. People need the space to be able to express, to—to grieve, to process, and we were gonna be their outlet for doing that.<strong><br /></strong></p>
<p>James [A. Rode] was not exactly the kind of director that was used to talking a lot, especially in a performance. The first time he was involved with a performance of the chorus, we sang. He probably said six words to the audience. Not his thing. We were in the waiting area backstage and he spoke to us. We had this set of songs, carefully chosen—changed from what it was supposed to be. I mean, we had—our—our set for GALA was celebratory when we started. Had to change—the message had to change, and some of the music was not music that people wanted to necessarily be singing, um, but it told a story, and he talked to us. “We have an obligation. Find a connection to that music. Relay the message that we’re bringing. It’s hard,” you know, “There’s suffering, there’s pain, and there’s hope. It’s up to us. Create hope, create love.” Like it was beautiful.</p>
<p>So we all walk onstage and we start to sing, as we [inaudible] the ovation, and, you know, you just have to stand there and take it. I used to teach people, “You just gotta stand there and take it.” I made my staff learn to be acknowledged. It’s not easy holding up. It’s not easy, and what did we do? Well, we have to live in Orlando and sing [<em>sniffles</em>]. [inaudible] cause is[?] [inaudible], and then, James read his statement to the audience. None of us had a clue what it said, and then—I mean—oh, God. The man’s eloquent, you know? He’s a schoolteacher, he’s educated, he knows how to write. It was good. It was devastating. It was like—and then, “Let’s sing.” It was like, <em>Oh, no. You’ve gotta be kidding.</em> It’s like—like—I—but, you know, at that point, it didn’t matter. We could’ve stood there and flapped our arms like birds and nobody would’ve cared, and so—but we tried. I mean, by the second verse—it was “You’ll Never Walk Alone”—by the second verse, we—we could maybe sort of sing, and the walkout into that crowd of people.</p>
<p>I remember being in Washington, D.C., you know, mid-[19]90s in like the second March on Washington [for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation]. Being on the subway when I lived in the Bay area—you know, one of gay centrals—it’s like, “No.” You know when you ride on BART,[13] you’re not safe. Doesn’t matter that it’s San Francisco[, California], you know? You—y—y—there’s a way of being circumspect, and I’m—I spent my whole childhood being abused because I was different. I didn’t understand that “different” meant “gay,” but they did. I went[?], you know—I—it was a normal part of my experience to be physically attacked on a regular basis. Thrown into lockers, you know, punched and hit—and that was just normal, and n—there was[sic] no adults who really cared. My mother asked me the other day it was like, “Where—wa—was I affectionate as a mother?” And I said, “Not to me,” And she was shocked—just shocked. It’s like, “I’m the wrong one to ask.” I didn’t let anyone touch me. From—from the day—first day of first grade—new school, you know, didn’t know anybody, new city—and the first thing that happened to me was to be attacked. Yeah, I didn’t let people touch me. Dancing was my way of touch. Other than that, no one touched me, you know? Not hug people, barely would shake hands. Not allowed to touch, and you walk out to this—wanting to hug you. I’m not good at hugging. You have to let people, and I had scheduled my flights that I would actually not stay to the very end. I was so grateful. I couldn’t take it anymore [<em>sniffs</em>].</p>
<p>At GALA, they have “coffee concerts” in the morning. They, um—a longer time slot to do something with. A very small, Canadian group had one of ‘em. It was very crowded. I managed to get a seat. It was marvelous. It was funny. Almost every one of the choruses added something in to acknowledge. you know, It was very—uh, um, I don’t want to seem callous, but it was like, you know, one more—“Thanks,” you know, [<em>laughs</em>] but—and the Canadians change theirs—program too a little bit, but what was fascinating to me was they had this woman in a hijab singing with them [<em>sniffs</em>]. She was fascinating. Soaring soprano voice, phenomenally animated—just, you know, capture everyone’s eye when she was onstage, and they—they sang a song in, um, not Farsi, but, um, Arabic, because of her, and, you know, it’s normal, you know? People are leaving the stage and you line the hallways and everybody comes in. Everybody [inaudible]. So I just waited. I waited. I waited.</p>
<p>We had—we had, uh, you know—people had ribbons that we had made and stickers and the Pulse logos and there was like [inaudible], and I wanted to talk to this woman, and everybody wanted to talk to this woman. She had friends there—all this—and I waited, and finally. Finally, there was a camera crew following her around, and I just waited until she was kind of done and all settled down, and she saw me in the shirt—the shirt, and she looked at me and I looked at her, and I put out my hand and it had one of the Pulse stickers in it, and I said to her, “I want you to have this,” and it was extraordinary. Here’s this woman, who turns out isn’t a woman. She’s—she’s a transsexual in process, who is a convert to Islam, who decided to be Orthodox, found an organization in Canada that would accept her for who she is, you know? Coming to America to a major city after a shooting that’s related to, you know, an Islamic fundamentalist supposedly—not really, but that’s the perception—and as we stood there, we talked—I don’t know—20 minutes. It was amazing, and, you know, the stories that she had to tell. Just m—this is—this is what bravery looks like. I was like, “Let’s get the picture,” you know? I don’t do pictures. I always forget, but I have my picture with her. You know, put it on Facebook. It’s mine.</p>
There were—there’s been a lot of things. Um, one of the outreaches was at, um, [John F.] Kennedy Space Center, and not many people could go. It was like, workday, Tuesday, all day, have to be able to get on base. Not everybody would pass the minimal clearance requirements, um, but I could go, and, um, I was like, <em>Oh, this’ll be interesting</em>, you know? <em>I wonder in anybody will know my project</em>, and that was—it was—and, you know, when I worked with TRW Space and Defense, being gay was not a good thing, um, and when we show up it’s gonna be this auditorium full of people, who— ‘cause they have an organization now. It’s like NASA has an organization for gay people. Different world, and—and, yes, you know—people know the project that I worked on. It’s still a meaningful thing. People actually, you know, there were people who know my father’s name. It was amazing, and that was hard. That was—for me, that was the hardest one to sing there.
<p>There’s still—I just—we just went Sunday to the movie theater, ‘cause Tony Romero—I don’t know what his last name is—invited the chorus and a few other people, ‘cause Ellen [DeGeneres] gave him a showing of <em>Finding Dory</em>, which I did not see, and it’s like, <em>Okay, this is lovely. Get to go</em>—it’s changing. We get to reflect differently. We get to look to a future. The obligation to create something meaningful is on those who survive, who are after. It’s like funerals aren’t for the dead. They’re for the living. We’re living. We get to choose what this means. We get to choose what happens. I want—I want there to be a difference. I want the world to wake up and know, and I don’t want it to be because it was a gay club in Orlando, but something has to do it.</p>
<p>You know, you take the populations of Great Britain, and Australia, Denmark, and Sweden, and, you know, several other countries combined—is less than the population of the United States, and we have, you know, up 50 times the murder rate that they do. It’s not just because we’re stupid; it’s because they have gun laws that are meaningful and we don’t. You know, Australia had a mass shooting[14] and they changed their world. It was sane. We’re insane. We’re living in an insane society. I want sanity. I’m tired of it costing lives.</p>
<p>I don’t look forward to my birthday next year, ‘cause it’s gonna be, you know, the weekend of the one-year anniversary. I don’t want there to be a one-year anniversary. There will be. I’ll be there. I wish I didn’t have to. It’s so preventable. We have to be responsible for what happens next. I have to be responsible for what happens next.</p>
<strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>clears throat</em>]. Well, I guess, what sort of, uh—what would you hope the long-term consequences will be for the Orlando gay community, and really just for the city—the larger city or the—just maybe even society from this?
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>You know, [<em>sighs</em>] it was interesting. Um, after this, it’s like you’re driving around town and there’s rainbow lights everywhere, and like, you know, it was August. W—my brother was in town for the weekend or the day with this wife. They live in Melbourne[, Florida], and we were gonna go to brunch up in Longwood. Driving and getting off at the exit in I[nterstate] 4, it was raining, and it’s—and below it is the banner—“Orlando Untied”—with the rainbow flag. I was looking at it, it’s like [inaudible]. I took a picture out of the window of the car, and we got to the restaurant and, you know, had this wonderful brunch, and leaving the restaurant, they have one of those chalkboard things, you know—two-sided, and on the front side g—walking in is all the specials, and on the back side was the “Orlando Strong”—“Orlando United,” but, you know, I don’t—where was I? Longwood somewhere. Casselberry, and there is the CVS [Pharmacy] with the electronic sign out front that cycles through its set of stuff. One of which was “Orland Strong.” I was like—I think it would be beautiful if what would just happen is that we could be the “City of Rainbows.” W—let’s, you know, that—somehow [<em>laughs</em>] the gay community got the rainbow flag. It’s like, <em>Wow, that was smart</em> [<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>I don’t know if they were actually planning that far in advance, but it was like, <em>Wow, we co-opted the rainbow</em> [<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>It’s like, <em>That’s awesome</em>. It’s like “The City Beautiful.” It’s like “The City of Rainbows.” Wow, I would—I would love for all of these city buildings and—and banks and everything else just like keep putting up rainbows. They’re beautiful. We can create all the meaning we want from them. They’re beautiful. That would be a wonderful thing to have happen.</p>
Um, I would—I want gun control that makes sense. I don’t know that we’re gonna get it. I don’t know how we’re gonna get it, because we—our society is literally insane, but I would like that to be an outcome.
<p>I would like that, you know—we have this political season that we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with the rise of fundamentalism. People don’t understand what that means. Fundamentalism is a particular thing in philosophy. It’s—it’s not just an extreme point of view—that’s orthodoxy. It’s not just that “I’m right and you’re wrong.” It is: “I’m right, you’re wrong,” and the existence of other ideas, other beliefs cannot be tolerated, and must be suppressed or eliminated by whatever means necessary. That’s fundamentalism. We’ve seen it in religions—not just Islam. I mean, you know, American Christianity is full of its fundamentalism. “You will believe the way that I say it’s supposed to be or”—and when, you—political fundamentalism—“I’ll get what I want in this bill or this bill will never happen.” There is no such thing as compromise in fundamentalism. Nationalism is a form of fundamentalism. Brexit is fundamentalism. The rise of these nationalistic parties in Europe—that’s fundamentalism. You know, even the idea that the news doesn’t tell us the facts. They tell us how we’re supposed to feel about what happens. No, you don’t get to tell me how to feel, but somehow that’s become part of news. No, but that’s representive[sic] of fundamentalism. It’s, “You don’t get to have your opinion.” There is “the opinion” and that’s it.</p>
<p>As long as that’s true, we’re not gonna see gun control. We’re not gonna see a society where it’s truly safe to be gay. We’ve made huge progress, but that doesn’t change the way that people think, or believe—believe is worse. Belief takes no foundation. There’s—doesn’t have to be proved, and anything that stands in the way of it can be discounted.</p>
<p>We sing, you know—you know, we talk about the—what is our purpose? We’re gonna change hearts and minds from musical excellence. The opportunity that’s been presented to the Orlando Gay Chorus because of this horrific thing is phenomenal. We get an audience that we would never have had, and we get to stand up, and we get to sing, and we get to do it as a gay group, and people get to hear good music, good singing, and it has a message, and we’re gay. I—you know, I talked to the leadership in the chorus and said, “Don’t be afraid. It’s—you’re not—there’s nothing wrong—there’s nothing wrong with capitalizing on this moment.” We’ve said for a long time that we want to stand up and mean something. The opportunity’s been handed to us. The mistake would be to not take it. Say, “Yes.” Do these things. Put the message out there, and do it for the right reasons.</p>
<p>I said to Tony the other day—the business manager—“You know, there are a lot of survivors in a lot of ways. Most of them can’t—can’t stand up and talk to the world. It’s not a part of who they are,” but he can, and I remember eighth grade. There was this thing happening, you know—one of the kids in school—and I went home and I complained to my mother about it, and she said, “Who did you talk to?” I was like, “No one. Not me,” You know, and she’s, “Well, you know? You should.” I was like, “Why?” It’s like, “Well, because you can.” So the next day, I marched myself into the principal’s office and complained on behalf of somebody who couldn’t. Those who can need to. Tony can stand up and talk to the world about his experience, and maybe change the world’s thinking—little bit by little bit by doing that. he should. He’s not opportunistic. He has a message that needs to be heard, and he’s capable of delivering it, and he can do that on behalf of victims everywhere. He should. The chorus has an opportunity. We should. We can. It’s not opportunistic. Yes, does it move our agenda forward—the agenda we’ve had f—long before this happened? Absolutely, but it’s still the right thing to do, and it’s for the right reasons, and that’s what we should do. We should keep saying “yes” to the opportunities that arise, and over time—it’s already happening—that they’re—they’re not about that anymore. We got to sing with the Second Harvest Food Bank [of Central Florida], because I go to their dinners, and I know the organizer there, and she likes me.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>And after this happened, she said to me, “You sing with the Gay Chorus.” I was like, “Yes, I do.” “I wanna talk to you about it.” I was like, “Not the right one to talk to, but, boy, can I get you in touch with the person who is,” and we got to do this amazing event for an audience who we would otherwise never touch. Changed the perception of a lot of things.</p>
<p>We got to sing the national anthem[15] at the First Responders’ Breakfast. This is not a group of people who are gonna just suddenly say, “Oh, gosh. We need to have the Orlando Gay Chorus come and sing.” We’re gonna sing for the AFL-CIO.[16] It’s like Jimmy Hoffa’s[17] union.[18]</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>We’re gonna sing for them. The gay chorus in Orlando is gonna sing for Jimmy Hoffa’s union.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>That was not gonna happen before, and now, it is. So, you know, what’s gonna come of this? I hope that. I hope lots of things like that. I hope a dialogue, in music for us, that lets people have a different experience of what “gay” means, and then, maybe the world really can change.</p>
<strong>Cravero<br /></strong>Thank you so much for sharing that with us today, Richard. I really appreciate it. Is there anything else you’d like to add? I mean I—that was a great—that was a great place to end, I think.
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>No, you don’t—you don’t want to get me started on Lucy.[19] It’s okay.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>] Read the blog.[20]</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>We can always do a second interview.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Read—read the blog on Lucy.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Did you find my blog?</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>I did.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>I did.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>Well, that’s an interview for another time.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>Oh, yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>This—thank you. You know, it’s like—this’ll go into an archive, and—and who knows? Maybe some researcher a hundred years from now will look at it, but probably, other than that, nothing.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>Aw.</p>
<p><strong>Lamberty<br /></strong>That’s okay.</p>
<p><strong>Cravero<br /></strong>It’s fantastic. Well, this is, uh—this has been Geoffrey Cravero with Richard Lamberty in the conference room of the Center for Digital Humanities and Research at UCF in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday, October 11<sup>th</sup>, 2016.</p>
<br /><div>
<div>
<p>[1] University of Central Florida.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[2] National Aeronautics and Space Administration.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[3] Acquired immune deficiency syndrome.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[4] North American Same-Sex Partner Dance Association.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[5] European Same-Sex Dancing Association (ESSDA).</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[6] Dance Vision International Dancers Association.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[7] Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[8] Joy Metropolitan Community Church.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[9] Of June.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[10] Spell check.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[11] Typeahead.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[12] Automatic teller machine.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[13] Bay Area Rapid Transit.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[14] Port Arthur massacre.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[15] The Star-Spangled Banner.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[16] American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[17] Born James Riddle Hoffa.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[18] Correction: Jimmy Hoffa was the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT).</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[19] Lamberty’s now-deceased dog.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p>[20] http://rexl.org/.</p>
</div>
</div>
2016 Orlando nightclub shooting
A Prayer for Children
acquired immune deficiency syndrome
AFL-CIO
AIDS
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
April Follies
ATM machines
automated teller machine
Ava Kaye
ballroom dancers
ballroom dancing
Barbara Zoloth
BART
Bay Area Rapid Transit
bullying
cash machines
Casselberry
Catholicism
Catholics
CBS News
Center for Humanities and Digital Research
CHDR
Christian fundamentalism
Christianity
coffee concerts
Colonial Plaza Mall
Croatian War of Independence
dance instructors
Dance Vision International Dancers Association
dancers
defense
Denver
Diane Jarmolow
Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts
DVIDA American Smooth Bronze Syllabus manual
El Paso
Ellen DeGeneres
ESSDA
European Same-Sex Dancing Association
Facebook
Finding Dory
fundamentalism
fundraisers
GALA Choruses Festival
Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses
Gay Games
Geoffrey Cravero
GLBT
GLBT Community Center of Central Florida
gun control
gun regulations
gun violence
Harris Corporation
hate crimes
hijab
HIV
hoedowns
homophobia
homosexuality
human immunodeficiency virus infection
James A. Rode
Japan
Jim Brown
John F. Kennedy Space Center
Joy MCC
Joy Metropolitan Community Church
Kennedy Space Center Vigil
kinesiology
KSC
Latin Night
LGBT
LGBT Center of Central Florida
LGBTIQ
LGBTQ
Lockheed Martin
Longwood
March Madness
March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation
Martin Marietta Corporation
mass shootings
NASA
NASSPDA
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
New Mexico
North American Same-Sex Partner Dance Association
OGC
online credits
online shopping
Orange Blossom Dance Festival
Orange County Convention Center
orlando
Orlando Cloggers
Orlando Gay Chorus
Orlando Strong
Orlando United
Orthodox Muslims
outreach events
Parliament House
Port Arthur massacre
Pulse
Pulse massacre
Pulse nightclub
Pulse nightclub shooting
Pulse tributes
RA
rainbow flags
religious fundamentalism
rheumatoid arthritis
Rollins College
round dancing
same-sex
San Francisco
Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida
space
spell check
square dancers
square dancing
St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church
St. Matthew’s Tavern at the Orlando Beer Garden
Steve Jobs
terrorism
terrorist attacks
terrorists
The Center
The Plaza Live
Tom Slater
transgender
True Colors
TRW Space and Defense Park
TRW, Inc. Space and Defense
typeahead
UCF
Uncut
University of Central Florida
vigils
World Outgames
You'll Never Walk Alone
Yugoslav Wars
-
https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/4a31e2436324c921e5d9c510feffd973.png
55e7b147156a69947ac1cdfc3f321813
https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/8a7731a7310d4fff6e498062e47bc871.mp4
34994d1e9770a7e6b7e0d129fa736cc5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Orlando City Hall Collection
Alternative Title
City Hall Collection
Subject
Orlando (Fla.)
City halls--United States
Description
Historic artifacts from an exhibit created by Orlando Remembered at the Orlando City Hall, located at 400 South Orange Avenue in Downtown Orlando, Florida. This exhibit houses objects relating to Orlando's municipal government. The current building opened in July of 1991. The former city hall was located directly in front of current building and was in operation from 1958 to 1991. The exhibit features photographs and memorabilia from past Orlando mayors dating back to 1932.<br /><br />Orlando Remembered is a community based group, dedicated to the preservation of Downtown Orlando's past. To date, the group has constructed 18 exhibits in the downtown area that highlight the current building's connection to the past.
Contributor
Orlando Remembered
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/106" target="_blank">Orlando Remembered Collection</a>, Orlando Collection, Orange County Collection. RICHES of Central Florida.
Language
eng
Type
Collection
Coverage
Orlando City Hall, Downtown Orlando, Florida
Contributing Project
Orlando Remembered
Curator
Cepero, Laura
Barnes, Mark
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
Source Repository
"<a href="http://www.historiciconsoforlando.com/" target="_blank">The Historic Icons of Orlando</a>." Orlando Remembered. http://www.historiciconsoforlando.com/.
Bacon, Eve. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2020029" target="_blank"><em>Orlando: A Centennial History</em></a>. Chuluota, Fla: Mickler House, 1975.
Rajtar, Steve. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/70911136" target="_blank"><em>A Guide to Historic Orlando</em></a>. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2006.
Moving Image
A series of visual representations that, when shown in succession, impart an impression of motion.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Action Center USA
Alternative Title
Action Center USA
Subject
Orlando (Fla.)
Sports--Florida
Tourism--Florida
Description
An advertisement produced to showcase the advent of mid-century modernism in Orlando, Florida. The film depicts marketing strategies aimed at attracting white middle-to-upper class men in either military or defense technology engineering professions. It emphasizes the economic, cultural, and social changes taking place within Orlando that make it an ideal place to raise a family and to live a fulfilling life. The film also depicts developments and signs of growth that occurred in Orlando before the Walt Disney World Resort opened.
Type
Moving Image
Source
Original 14-minute and 28-second color film: <a href="https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/232384" target="_blank"><em>Action Center USA</em></a>. Directed by Grant Gravitt (Orlando, FL: Tel Air Interests, Inc.): <a href="http://dlis.dos.state.fl.us/index_Researchers.cfm" target="_blank">State Library and Archives of Florida</a>, Tallahassee, Florida.
Is Part Of
<a href="http://dlis.dos.state.fl.us/index_Researchers.cfm" target="_blank">State Library and Archives of Florida</a>, Tallahassee, Florida.
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/collections/show/20" target="_blank">Orlando Collection</a>, Orange County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Is Format Of
Digital reproduction of original 14-minute and 28-second color film: <a href="https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/232384" target="_blank"><em>Action Center USA</em></a>. Directed by Grant Gravitt (Orlando, FL: Tel Air Interests, Inc.).
Coverage
Cape Kennedy, Titusville, Florida
McCoy Air Force Base, Orlando, Florida
Orlando Public Library, Orlando, Florida
Central Florida Museum, Orlando, Florida
Loch Haven Art Center, Orlando, Florida
Winter Park, Florida
Colonial Plaza Mall, Orlando, Florida
Date Created
ca. 1960-1969
Format
video/mp4
Extent
98.4 MB
Medium
14-minute and 28-second color film
Language
eng
Mediator
History Teacher
Geography Teacher
Rights Holder
Copyright to this resource is held by the <a href="http://dlis.dos.state.fl.us/index_Researchers.cfm" target="_blank">State Library and Archives of Florida</a>, and is provided here by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a> for educational purposes only.
Accrual Method
Donation
Contributing Project
Orlando Remembered
Curator
Wolf, Casey
Cepero, Laura
Digital Collection
<a href="http://www.floridamemory.com/" target="_blank">Florida Memory</a>
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
Source Repository
<a href="http://dlis.dos.state.fl.us/index_Researchers.cfm" target="_blank">State Library and Archives of Florida</a>
External Reference
Dickinson, Joy Wallace. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/53872607" target="_blank"><em>Orlando: City of Dreams</em></a>. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2003.
Antequino, Stephanie Gaub, and Tana Mosier Porter. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/783150094" target="_blank"><em>Lost Orlando</em></a>. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2012.
airplanes
airports
amusement parks
Arnold Daniel Palmer
Arnold Palmer
arts
automobiles
baseballs
Billy Kelly
boating
boats
Bruce Devlin
Bruce William Devlin
Cape Kennedy
cars
Central Florida Museum
chambers of commerce
church
churches
citrus
citrus groves
Citrus Open Golf Tournament
City Beautiful
City of Orlando
cold war
colleges
Colonial Plaza Mall
Commerce
County of Orange
Dean Refram
Delta Air Lines
dog racing
Doug Sanders
Downtown Orlando
Eastern Air Lines
Elegant Company
festivals
Florida Symphony Orchestra
Florida Technological University
footballs
FTU
George Alfred Christian Knudson
George Douglas Sanders
George Knudson
Glover
golf
golfers
Graduate Engineering Education System
Grant Gravitt
Herndon Municipal Airport
highways
I-4
industrial parks
Interstate 4
jai alai
Jim Carlton
Joan Roberts
Julius Boros
Julius Nicholas Boros
Lake Eola
Lake Eola Park
libraries
library
Loch Haven Art Center
Mad Tea Party
manufacturing
marching bands
Martin Marietta Corporation
McCoy AFB
McCoy Air Force Base
McCoy Jetport
Minnesota Twins
Minute Maid Company
monorails
motor vehicles
National Airlines
orange county
Orange County School System
oranges
orchestras
orlando
Orlando Area Chamber of Commerce
Orlando businesses
Orlando Central Park
Orlando Junior College
Orlando Panthers
Orlando Public Library
Orlando Twins
paintings
parks
planes
Player
retail
roads
Rollins College
Rule
schools
Seven Dwarfs
shopping
shopping malls
shops
space
space age
space race
sports
Spring Training
stores
Sunny Fader
synagogues
Tangerine Bowl
technology
Tel Air Interests, Inc.
theme parks
Tupperware Brands
UF
University of Florida
Vanda Cosmetics
Walt Disney
Walt Disney World Resort
Walter Elias Disney
water skiing
Weiskopf
Winter Park
Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival
Xerox Corporation
-
https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/76f4012612b74ffc2d3959ee492ca03c.mp3
5e5e7d20145b23115d9e1e1033d09a9b
https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/1d01d866c4d73633d8dacba2107b5135.pdf
20e30c3a4e2cf06f05cc432aa1d4ba5d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Orlando Remembered Collection
Alternative Title
Orlando Remembered Collection
Subject
Orlando (Fla.)
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/46" target="_blank">Orange County Collection</a>, RICHES of Central Florida.
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/20">Orlando Collection</a>, Orange County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Language
eng
Type
Collection
Coverage
Downtown Orlando Information Center, Downtown Orlando, Florida
Orlando Public Library, Downtown Orlando, Florida
Orlando Regions Bank, Downtown Orlando, Florida
Contributing Project
<a href="http://orlandoremembered.org/" target="_blank">Orlando Remembered</a>
Curator
Cepero, Laura
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
External Reference
"<a href="http://thehistorycenter.org/Orlando+Remembered+Committee/" target="_blank">Orlando Remembered Committee of the Historical Society of Central Florida, Inc.</a>" Orange County Regional History Center. http://orlandoremembered.org/.
<span>"</span><a href="http://www.historiciconsoforlando.com/" target="_blank">The Historic Icons of Orlando</a><span>." Orlando Remembered. http://www.historiciconsoforlando.com/.</span>
<span>Bacon, Eve. </span><a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/2020029" target="_blank"><em>Orlando: A Centennial History</em></a><span>. Chuluota, Fla: Mickler House, 1975.</span>
<span>Rajtar, Steve. </span><a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/70911136" target="_blank"><em>A Guide to Historic Orlando</em></a><span>. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2006.</span>
Description
Collection of digital images, documents, and other records contributed by the Orlando Remembered Committee of the Historical Society of Central Florida, Inc. Orlando Remembered was created to in response to the proposed demolition of the San Juan Hotel at the northwest corner of Orange Avenue and Central Boulevard in Downtown Orlando, Florida. Orlando Remembered began creating exhibits to "showcase artistic renderings of the time depicted, with artifacts and historical memorabilia from the location in an effort to preserve the memory of Orlando's history while acknowledging the potential of the City's future." In the Summer Semester of 2014, UCF history intern Rachel Williams digitized two of the exhibits created by Orlando Remembered. In the Fall Semester of 2014, Dr. Anne Lindsay's undergraduate class will be digitizing several more of the many exhibits in Downtown Orlando.
Contributor
<a href="http://orlandoremembered.org/" target="_blank">Orlando Remembered</a>
Herrera, Angelena
Jeffries, Andrew W.
Lindsay, Anne
Randall, Robert
Williams, Rachel
Williamson, Ryan
Has Part
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/126" target="_blank">Downtown Orlando Information Center Collection</a>, Orlando Remembered Collection, Orlando Collection, Orange County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/110" target="_blank">Orlando Public Library Collection</a>, Orlando Remembered Collection, Orlando Collection, Orange County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/111" target="_blank">Orlando Regions Bank Collection</a>, Orlando Remembered Collection, Orlando Collection, Orange County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
Baldwin, Caitlin
Interviewee
Pottinger, Dann
Location
Orlando, Florida
Original Format
1 audio recording
Duration
34 minutes and 38 seconds
Bit Rate/Frequency
128kbps
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Oral History of Dann Pottinger
Alternative Title
Oral History, Pottinger
Subject
Orlando (Fla)
Historic preservation--Florida
Description
An oral history interview of Dann Pottinger, conducted by Caitlin Baldwin on November 9, 2015. Pottinger was born August 14, 1947, on the British Bay Island in Honduras. He moved to Orlando, Florida as a small child and attended primary school in the area. Pottinger spent most of his working career as a banker in the Orlando area, however he describes himself as an historian. Pottinger has been involved in a number of historical groups and was an early member of Orlando Remembered, which is a community group, dedicated to preserving memory of Orlando's downtown landmarks. To date, the group has constructed approximately 18 displays, which are located in building throughout the Downtown Orlando area. Pottinger was president of the group in the early 2000s.
Table Of Contents
0:00:00 Introduction<br />0:02:10 Growing up in Orlando<br />0:03:58 Orlando Remembered<br />0:06:28 Goal of Orlando Remembered, snow birds, and horse trotting<br />0:11:48 Air Force Bases<br />0:14:45 Designing exhibits<br />0:21:16 Favorite exhibits and lost materials<br />0:24:21 Personal goals for Orlando Remembered and community involvement<br />0:27:43 Historical Society of Central Florida and the Orange County Regional History Center<br />0:30:28 How to become involved in Orlando Remembered and expanding outside of Orlando<br />0:34:06 Future of Orlando Remembered
Abstract
Oral history interview of Dann Pottinger. Interview conducted by Caitlin Baldwin in Orlando, Florida, on November 9, 2015.
Type
Sound
Source
Original 34-minute and 38-second oral history: Pottinger, Dann. Interviewed by Caitlin Baldwin, November 9, 2015. Audio record available. <a href="http://orlandoremembered.org/" target="_blank">Orlando Remembered</a>, Oviedo, Florida.
Requires
Multimedia software, such as <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/" target="_blank"> QuickTime</a>.
<a href="https://get.adobe.com/reader/" target="_blank">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a>
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/106" target="_blank">Orlando Remembered Collection</a>, Orlando Collection, Orange County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Has Format
16-page digital transcript of original 34-minute and 38-second oral history: Pottinger, Dann Interviewed by Caitlin Baldwin, November 9, 2015. Audio record available. Oviedo History Harvest, <a href="http://oviedohs.com/" target="_blank">Oviedo Historical Society</a>, Oviedo, Florida.
Coverage
Downtown Orlando, Florida
Creator
Baldwin, Caitlin
Pottinger, Dann
Publisher
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>
Contributor
Beiler, Rosalind J.
Date Created
2015-11-09
Date Modified
2016-01-07
Date Copyrighted
2015-11-09
Format
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Extent
31.7 MB
203 KB
Medium
34-minute and 38-second audio recording
16-page digital transcript
Language
eng
Mediator
History Teacher
Provenance
Originally created by Caitlin Baldwin and Dann Pottinger, and published by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>.
Rights Holder
Copyright to this resource is held by <a href="https://www.thehistorycenter.org/" target="_blank">Orange County Regional History Center</a> and is provided here by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a> for educational purposes only.
Accrual Method
Item Creation
Contributing Project
<a href="http://orlandoremembered.org/" target="_blank">Orlando Remembered</a>
Curator
Barnes, Mark
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
Source Repository
<a href="http://orlandoremembered.org/" target="_blank">Orlando Remembered</a>
External Reference
Rajtar, Steve. <em><a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/70911136" target="_blank">A Guide to Historic Orlando</a></em>. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2006.
Transcript
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Okay, where and, uh—where and when were you born? The address and year, please.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>I was born in 1947 in August, but I will tell you this: that I am not a native-born Orlandoan, though my family has been here for many, many, many years. I was born on the British Bay Islands off of Honduras, which, uh, were, uh, for many years a British possession, and, uh—and where my mother’s family, the Kirk-Connells, are from. So in any event though, my family, uh, originally—my, uh, parents, uh—my—my dad’s family came to Orlando and brought him to recover from the great influenza [pandemic] of 1917<a title="">[1]</a> that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and a million people around the world. He was a, uh, cadet training at the University of Kentucky, and many of ‘em got it. They were able to, uh, come from their home in Kentucky down here and spent the winter, and nursed him back to health. He went back, graduated from UK in ’23, and by ’26 he was back here as a full time resident. So that’s how we got here. Uh, my mother’s family a little the same. they maintained a home in Tampa. Uh, My grandfather—her father—was, uh, a sailing ship captain, and, uh, came back and forth to Tampa Harbor, and, uh, she was born in the Bay I—British Bay Islands, Honduras, and, uh—which are a neat little thing, if you look at a map. They’re only three major islands of it and a bunch of little keys, but Honduras is the only country in Central America that faces north, and that’s where, eh, we’re all related with the same families in the Cayman Islands. So a—anyway, the indigenous to the Caribbean [Sea], uh—that’s how I got here.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Hm, very interesting. So how old were you exactly when you moved to Orlando?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>I was just a—a baby. yeah.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Okay.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Mmhmm.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>So what would you say was your favorite part about growing up in Orlando?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>I think the neighborhoods of Orlando and then the friendships that we had in a small town. Uh, a wonderful place to grow up. Uh, you—particularly among the families that had been here a long time, uh, you knew each other across town. I mean, when I was, uh, young dating and what, uh, I went to Edgewater High School, but I dated girls from Boone High School, and in the afternoon, the little motor scooters—or later, the cars—would cross the boys from Boone going to Edgewater, ‘cause, of course, they were prettier girls, and the boys from Edgewater going to Boone, because they were beautiful girls. So that’s kind of the way, uh, we all grew up. we knew each other. Uh, it was a relatively small town, and, uh, that changed—the first change of that was Martin Marietta [Corporation] moving here from Baltimore[, Maryland], and, uh, bringing eight thousand families. Uh, I think I’m right on that figure, but, uh, eh, the—the—the life and breath of Orlando, uh, breathed around their ups and downs at Martin Marietta, uh, when, you know, armaments and so forth—missiles and such—were big. Things were booming and when they laid off three thousand people, Orlando was in dire straits.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>So like, what time of year—what year…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>That would have been the late ‘50s.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Okay[?].</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Yeah, that was all dairy land. All dairy.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Very interesting. Um, how and why did you become involved with Orlando Remembered?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>I’ve always been a historian. Uh, I—I know it. With contemporaries of mine, it—it probably bored them to death, uh, but I was, uh, uh, a language person, and—and I was a history person. I wound up being a banker, but mathematics was never my long suit. I just, uh—people were—and—and that provided well for me in life. So, uh, that’s, you know—that’s kind of the reason I be—got involved. People asked me to come to get involved with Orlando Remembered, and it was my pleasure and has been all these years.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Very interesting. So you were not one of the founding members of…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>No, I was not, uh, because, at that particular time, I was spending a little time out of here, and, uh, uh, the—the origin of it started at, uh, the Beacham Theatre. That’s where the first meeting—and I could not be there that particular time. Uh, We had a, uh, place in North Carolina, and, uh, like so many Floridians that grew up in the days before air conditioning, if you had 50 cents to clink together in your pocket, you either rented or you owned a place, as we did in Islands[?], North Carolina, or somewhere up that around Asheville—western North Carolina. Anyway, I was not here for that. So—but I soon right[?].</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>So you’d been there almost the entire time.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Almost the entire time.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>You just missed the first meeting?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Just wasn’t at the very first meeting, which I consider were the founders. I knew every one of them, um, there—there were some wonderful—The Serroses, the Pajo[sp], Vandenburg[sp]—Pajo[sp] Pounds, we all knew her as. So forth and so on. A lot of them that were very active in that time. Grace Chewning[sp], um…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Are a lot of the founding members still…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>There are still a number of them, surprisingly enough, still—still around. Uh, Andy Serros is, uh—that I mentioned earlier—and his brother, Bob [Serros], is[—is active, but, uh, Andy passed away a few years ago and he was one of the original founders, and there was, uh—there were a couple of others that have passed away.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>What is the overall goal of Orlando Remembered?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger <br /></strong>To preserve, uh, the memory of areas and locations, and landmarks in the city, and, uh, we’ve—we’ve done that in several ways, but, uh, I think one of the—the best ways is the, uh—the location of displays in various spots around Downtown Orlando, and a couple outside of downtown, uh, with memorabilia, uh, of that area, and, uh, You know, at some point in time, I’d love to take you on a walking tour and—and show you some of those things. Just to stroll down, uh, Orange Avenue, and you can see the way it looked in the—sometimes as far back there’ll be something there from the 1890s, from one of the hotels—from the hotel that my grandparents stayed in, when they came that year in 1918—at the Wyoming Hotel. Uh, there’s a set of china and—and some se—tableware that I believe are in the display at the Orange County Courthouse. Uh, go in the courthouse—for any of you that might want to make that tour and see—walk in the front, leave your holstered items in the car, because you’re going to go through the, uh—the, uh, security thing there, but go over to the left and you’ll see it, uh, in the lobby there. You’ll see a great one. Uh, it tells all about what’s happened on that street and that block and that area around there. It, uh, uh, had the Wyoming Hotel on it, which was only a winter hotel, as many in Florida were. It closed in the summer, like Park Avenue did.</p>
<p class="Body">Uh, my in-laws had a, uh, store on Park Avenue for over 40 years, and they were one of the very few that stayed open year-round. Uh, Most of ‘em were—would head back in the cooler—warmer months of Florida. They’d go to cooler locations, uh, whether the hotels or the shops, like there—not—that wasn’t so in Orlando, necessarily. it was a year round, but in those winter destinations like that and such, they’d go, uh, up to Algonquin, you know, up to Maine, up to, uh, uh, Vermont—wherever they might be, and, uh, open a shop up there for the summer months and come back. So our whole, uh, life around here was really dependent on those northerners coming down, and, uh, in the early days, before Martin Marietta and such, in the winter time, we had not only the casual tourists who came down, because—to try and get away for a week or two—we had those that came down, as later my grandparents did, after enjoying it so much and—and many others, and spent time down here.</p>
<p class="Body">Some of them spent the winter, some—excuse me—spent six months, but we also had the, uh, we were the winter, uh, trotting horse capital of the United States, and it brought a lot of revenue in. Uh, it was at—held out at Ben White [Raceway], which was a raceway that was at the corner of about what’s Lee Road and—and [U.S. Route] 441. Uh, It’s now a big athletic fields, and there’s some stables, I think, still in the back, but it was a huge, uh, money infusion in the winter. Those people came—the owners of those—that was—it was always considered a, uh, uh, society kick above, uh, horse racing. Uh, the trotters and pacers were brought down, and, uh, they stabled them here, and, uh—the races. It—it—you knew when—you knew when Ben White opened, because traffic picked up. Now that would sound ridiculous with today’s horrible traffic in Orlando…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>But back then there weren’t that many cars on the road and—and, uh, man, you’d see these automobiles come into town and up on the hood was a, uh—a metal, stainless, pretty thing of a, uh, trotting horse and a—and a sulky[?] behind it, You know? You knew they were involved in that. Eh, It just, uh—one of the things that—that, you know, came across that kept our town going before Martin Marietta and before [Walt] Disney [World Resort] and such.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Mentioning the horses, do you have an exhibit that features that aspect yet?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger <br /></strong>You know…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Aspect yet?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>We—we have some pictures of it in one or two, but we don’t have anything, because there’s no facility out there left at Ben White to put it in. We would do that, because there—there—there’s enough, probably, memorabilia from those days, but what we try to do is locate what was on those various blocks. Maybe not just a block, maybe an area, in other words.</p>
<p class="Body">We’ve—in some cases, we’ve helped spon—helped sponsor a plaque, uh, like for the air base that was in town. Where Herndon Airport<a title="">[2]</a> is today. It was the Orlando [Army] Air Base before it was the Navy base.<a title="">[3]</a> So, uh, you know, there are—there are—newcomers, or what maybe consider themselves long time Orlandoans—that remember a Navy base out there, but I remember when it was the Orlando Air Base, and—and we had another air base that opened, uh—was Pine Castle Air Base, and, uh, that’s, uh, now the Orlando International Airport. The runways were there for the big bombers and it was a SAC base—a Strategic Air Command, and again, both of those things brought in a great deal of money when they came here.</p>
<p class="Body">Uh, the—the closing of Orlando Air Base was going to be a pretty big blow, and at that time, the owner and publisher of <em>The Orlando Sentinel</em> was a man name Martin Andersen—always with an “EN” at the end. Never—you could always tell somebody new to town when they write it as “Anderson,” but Martin Andersen was a Texas boy who knew LBJ,<a title="">[4]</a> and, uh, Johnson was president and, uh, he persevered on it and got a branch of the Great Lakes Naval Training Center to be established on the base, on part of what had been, uh, the—the air base, and, uh, it—it brought in not just recruits. It brought in families. It brought officers, enlisted men. It brought a whole lot of payroll coming in here. It was wonderful. Ah, uh, again, another mile stone that came along through connections or coincidence—whatever it might be. Uh, the same thing with the—the air base out here. Uh, it was going to close and MacDill [Air Force Base] in Tampa was going to take over as the air base for Florida—the major one, and, uh, the facilities were there for many years. The terminal was a big, uh, round-top hangar that had been used by the, uh—by the, uh, Air Force itself, and there was a lot of housing out there. There’s still some housing, uh, in—in that area out there, but, uh, there—There’s a, uh, Naval exchange, uh, where, you know, those that are qualified can—retirees and so forth—can go shop and so forth. Uh, a lot of other services were—were left in place and the city has had good use out of it.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Good, good. How does the group decide which sites to commemorate with exhibits?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Well, usually, it’s sponsored. Someone, uh, finds someone, uh, you know, that—that owns a building in that location, uh, and we—sometimes the building owner contributes financially to building—the displays are not cheap to put together, and, uh, you know, they’re—they’re—they’re housed—they’re lighted many of them and so forth, but, uh, it also takes someone who—who might have worked in that building or—or owned a building there and, uh, they have memorabilia, and, boy, we seize on it when we do, and, uh, they’re—they’re scattered throughout mostly in the downtown area. Uh, I mentioned the courthouse. The big Bank of America tower has one that we’re redoing in there now —I dedicated that when I was president of Orlando Remembered. Uh, I did a number of the—of the dedications of those, e—e—either when I was involved as—as one of the officers or not, but, uh, we have one in what was the Rutland building and that was a well-known building. That’s the corner of, uh—of Jefferson [Street] and—no, no—Jack—excuse me, uh—I believe it is on Orange Avenue at the corner of Washington [Street] —Washington and Orange. Uh, A building that once housed the most prestigious, uh, men’s store and lady’s store in downtown, when they were private companies, not big, you know, uh, uh, department stores—nation chain—national chains and such. Uh, We have another one in the SunTrust [Center] tower downtown that we’ve had there in the, uh—what was originally the CNA Building, but where the Citrus Club is, and that name has changed a number of times on that building.</p>
<p class="Body">So—but, uh, they’re—they’re throughout there. They, uh—and again, usually it’s—it’s because someone has a real interest in it or a financial interest in getting one of those, uh, displays in there. Uh, eh, It’s, uh—it’s a job to maintain them. They need periodic cleaning and dusting. The city has—has helped us with one. There’s one at the, uh, Bob Carr [Theater] auditorium, uh, that shows—that used to be the Orlando Municipal Auditorium. It was the auditorium and it wasn’t as big as it is today. If you go inside and you really look, you’ll see the old front is 20 feet back from the front now, uh, and it’s where people gather outside and so forth, but it’s air conditioned and then—so forth. It’s—it’s an anti-room to the—to the auditorium itself. We’re hoping that—that it’ll stay that way. There’s talk of tearing it down, and it’s a treasure that, uh, those of us that—that love Orlando, uh, would hate to see come down, and, uh, it—it—it’s a memory. I mean, we went to, uh, plays, you know, eh, when we were in junior—I mean in the grade school—went there. Uh, the Junior League used to put a play on every year there, and all the school children in Orlando got to take turns going down to see it in busses and so forth. I remember that as a—a child. It—it was great.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>So you mentioned the exhibits are usually started by somebody who’s interested. Eh, like—I’m sure a lot of people are interested in creating different exhibits. How do you decide which exhibit’s going to be created by that person?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Well, we can only do one at a time, because we’re—we’re—we have no continuous funding basis. So a lot of times, it also depends on the owner of a building. who’s going to, first place, give us the space and the electricity and so forth, and might want one of those in there to draw, uh, attention to their own building or, you know, it’s a lot cheaper than buying a, uh, painting to put on the wall, probably, for ‘em, over the long run, uh, and It—it gives—it’s on tours many times. Uh, I’ve done those tours and taken people, you know, and I think the, uh—the museums now has[sic] a tour basis. I’m pretty sure that includes that, and—and their brochures that—that you can get, you—today you go online and you can find out where they all are and it’s even a map, I think, in there to—to follow through.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>How does Orlando Remembered pay for the exhibits?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinge<br /></strong>With contributions from its members, uh, from, uh, the owners of the building. Uh, most of the material that goes in there—in fact, t—to all of it, it is given to us. It’s donated to that particular, uh, point to—to some—someone that may have worked in—the one, you know, where there was a department store. Uh, hey may have the old nametag out of the back of a sweater or something. Uh, you know, to one that had a, uh, restaurant in it, there’s some china from that Wyoming Hotel, I tell you about, and some, uh, other things. So the materials that go into it, we don’t pay for. We just need the—the cabinetry and so forth—is—is all custom done and it’s done attractively. So it’s thousands of dollars to do it, and, uh, uh, uh, I’m talking, you know, uh, uh, five figure in thousands. So, eh, you know, it’s—it’s, uh, not something that you just decide because you have some china that you’ll put it in there. You need—you need a, uh, sugar daddy that’s—that’s there to contribute.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Roughly how many members of Orlando Remembered are there?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>I can’t tell you that. I really don’t know. I’m—I’m a, uh, you know—I—I just—I can’t recall a—a recent number.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Okay. In your opinion, what’s your favorite Orlando Remembered exhibit?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Well, I love the one in the courthouse, as I said. Uh, There’s, uh—there are several of them downtown that, uh—that the, uh, one at the Municipal Auditorium—that’s another one that I like. The one that was in the Rutland building, and at, uh, one time, I’m not sure we still have the one that was at the, uh, back of Central Avenue-side of, uh, the northeast corner—southeast corner of Central and Orange, which was originally Yowell’s[?] and became Yowell’s[?] -Ivy’s Department Store. Uh, it’s an office building now, and who knows what’s in the downtown—downstairs. It rotates constantly, but, uh, that was a good one. SunTrust has an[sic], uh, good one.</p>
<p class="Body">Some of ‘em, you know, we’ve had to track down, because all of sudden somebody goes by and looks, and it’s gone. Someone has, you know—the manager of the building has decided to put it in a storage room, hopefully. Uh, we’ve—we’ve lost a couple of ‘em that, uh, you know, uh—the materials We’ve had to buy back a janitor or custodian—whatever it would be—keeper of ‘em—at, uh, one of those corners at Central and Orange—took a lot of it home and we had to repurchase things, because it had been given to us, and, uh, you know, you—you just—it can happen in a moment, and—and it can, you know—I mean, we are not a—a business that goes by and checks it every week. So, you know, months can go by and one of our members doesn’t notice it, and no one calls us and says, “You know, there was a display in, eh, the lobby, but it’s not there anymore.” Well, I don’t know that we—we don’t really have a—an office phone number to call.</p>
<p class="Body">So, uh, we—we’ve been through all of that with it, but, you know, determination and a love for the city and to continue its history has kept us going, and we continue to provide these. So we’ll—it costs money to maintain them. Again, as I think I mentioned earlier, they have to be cleaned. They have to be opened. they’re sealed. It has to be a, uh—it’s not a, uh—take a—a rag down there and—and clean the outside. You gotta clean the inside, you gotta clean the displays, gotta clean the linings, and so forth. So it—it takes—it takes upkeep and it takes, uh, continuous maintenance.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Who’s responsible for…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Well, the…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Cleaning and everything?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>We’ve—get someone to do it—a professional to do it, and again, that’as part of—of maintaining these. Uh, we—we don’t have any huge balance, so we have to do it as we can.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>What are your personal goals for Orlando Remembered in the future?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>I’d like to see it continued on and on, and, uh, the, eh, eh, you know—for those of us that are, as I am, near 70, uh—and—and we’ve got members that are, you know, 85 years old, and so, uh, uh, you know—but we’ve got members coming along that have lived here 35 years, 50 years, 60 years. There’ll be things that they remember that have changed dramatically in Orlando that—and there’s space to make, uh—to put a display up, uh, and—and I think that, uh, they’ll be active in that. Uh, we’ve tried to get some other organizations, and then[?]—I won’t mention the name, but, uh, there’s one that’s a lot of young ladies your age—under 40, I think—and you go inactive[?] or something, if I remember right.</p>
<p class="Body">My wife and daughters were—daughter was in that, but, in any—in Junior League—and, eh, you know, we may indeed get them interested. So there are things like that, that, uh—that—that will be of interest to someone later, and the displays that we did will be of no more interest, uh, in many cases. Some we hope, but once you lose the generation that remembers what was in that building, it becomes something for the history museum, not something for an active mind to draw you back to your own personal memories of it, and, therefore, you need to continue on, and, o’ course, downtown now, you’ll have to have a great memory of which nightclubs were where…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>‘Cause that’s about all there is in those buildings downtown anymore. So—but, uh, you know, there—there are spots for it everywhere.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Has Orlando Remembered had—had a lot of success at attracting younger generations and everything?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Uh, I think we’ve—we’ve done alright. We’ve got a good, uh, variance of age groups. Uh, we’d like to have more younger people. We’d love to have people your age. We’d love to have people from the university, and, as you are doing, take an interest. We welcome you. There are no dues to come, uh, help us. We’d love to have it.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>How does Orlando Remembered interact with the community?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Well, we try to do it with these displays and—and by keeping them alive. A little bit of writing the newspaper has done well with us, and we’ve been able to, uh, get some good publicity when we open these, and, uh, once in a while, we do an interview, like this one is—is being done, and we have others. We’ve—I’ve[?] done a TV interview and a—a show. So, I mean, it’s—it’s, uh, eh—I’ve also gone around to schools and some of—not specifically to talk about Orlando Remembered—but I try to bring out when I talk about history to them, the, you know—go see the displays that are—that are available, and, uh, it—it’ll—it’ll—and take your parents with you, because they’ll remember a lot of those things that are in there.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>What was the connection between Orlando Remembered and the Historical Society of Central Florida/the Orange County Regional History Center?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Not really anything in the—in the years other than cross membership. Uh, it’s two separate accounts and, uh, two separate organizations. I was also president of the Orange County [Historical] Museum<a title="">[5]</a> and the historical society—Orange County Historical Society, before it moved downtown, when—the last year that it was at Loch Haven [Park], in what is—I’m trying to think what’s there in that theater thing now—but anyway, um, it—it was there for many—it was originally in an old, red brick courthouse when I was a little boy. That’s where that park in front of the historical museum is. Uh, in the front was an 18, uh, 88- or 1892- courthouse, and it was the—the 1927 courthouse where the museum—museum is today—was there and active as the courthouse. This red brick building was start—had the—the museum in it, that was all volunteer, run by the Antiquarian Society, which was a group of prominent family ladies who gathered memorabilia and—and volunteered hours up there, and, uh, it was relatively small, but it was the beginning of the history center. Some of those volunteers’ children or grandchildren had been active in the historical society and in Orlando Remembered.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Which organization were you president of first?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Uh, the museum, I think, uh, eh, eh, if my memory serves, but I think—yes, I’m certain of it. Uh, again, age hits you</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>You try to remember which one was which, but I—I was president of the historical society and the museum, uh, and I think that was 1999 or 2000 [inaudible]—something like that—and, uh, after—following that—that I really got active in—in Orlando Remembered. I had been a little bit active, but I’ve given you another line—something else to do. You know, when you get finished being the president of an organization, the greatest thing you can do is to step aside and let the new people have it, and don’t hang around from it.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Sometimes that’s the hardest thing though.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>It is hard. It is hard, but, uh, in any event, uh, it—it—it was a good break and I’ve—I’ve enjoyed it. Both of ‘em.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>How does—how does one become involved with Orlando Remembered?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Oh, our meetings, and—and, uh, I can give you an address—you may have it—for Grace, uh, and she is, uh—she is our recording secretary and a great person, and you do have that, uh—that address—e-mail. Uh, she can put you on a mailing list. We’d love to have—and if there are other students that would like to come sit [inaudible]—to some, it may be very boring, you know, and—and we talk about the same thing—about trying to get a display. I don’t know how long we’ve gone on trying to put together getting a display on the Navy base of some<a title="">[6]</a>—what would I call a Navy base—but out at Baldwin Park. Not just a little sign, but a—a real display of what used to be there— the glass-cased display. It’s gonna happen one of these days, but gosh, you know, even somebody that’s a member gets tired of hearing, “Well, we’ve made no progress on the,” you know, this and that, and the next thing over and over, but we—we—right now, there’s a lot of, uh—a lot of our displays are[sic]—have[sic] hit the age and stage of maintenance, and so, that’s been our—our push this last year, rather than new ones, but we’ll continue on, and perhaps we’ll go beyond just Orlando. You know, Winter Park area has others and, uh, you know, a, uh—a couple of the—the fine families out in West Orange County have done a great job in Winter Garden. Uh, they’ve—they’ve really done a super job. If you’ve not been to Downtown Winter Garden, don’t miss it. It is as pretty, if not more beautiful, than Park Avenue in Winter Park. It’s, uh, uh—it’s two streets with a park—little park down the middle, and some great restaurants. Good place just to go out and sip one in the evening or to eat lunch or something.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>I was actually just there last week for their [Central Florida] Railroad Museum.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Oh, wonderful.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>So that’s a very…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>That’s great.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>It’s the first time I’ve ever been Downtown Winter Garden.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Isn’t it…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>It’s so pretty.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>A cute little town?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>Mmhmm.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>It really is, and—and it was dilapidated—is not the word for it—15 years ago. I mean it—but again, several families, uh, have, uh, the Chicones and a few others have put together some—some wonderful things out there. Uh, Again, I urge you to go out there.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>So I know you mentioned that like, downtown’s all just nightclubs and stuff and Orlando Remembered does exhibits. Would Orlando Remembered ever try to preserve an entire building, you think? or is that too far out of the question?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>No, I think it’s too far beyond what—what, uh—again, we have no source of—of continuous income. So it—it wouldn’t, uh—unless someone donated a building to us, and, uh, you know, it’d be wonderful, and, uh, you know, you could do vignettes on, uh, you know—throughout the building, or—or a home, you know, that showed various spots. That might even be safer than the way we do it where we’re putting our display—an expensive display in the lobby of a building. Again, without constant control, we don’t know when it winds up at the janitor’s garage at home. So, you know, you—you just need a continuous thing, and, you know, we have no employees. It’s not—it’s just volunteer. All of it.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Baldwin<br /></strong>How do you believe Orlando Remembered will change in the future?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Pottinger<br /></strong>Well, I know there’ll be changes to it, but I think some of ‘mem will be good, because I, eh—just like this right now, I see more interest in young people with history, uh, you know, than—than there were—was in my day growing up. It—it—there was very little interest in—in, uh—I was—I was a rarity to be a young lad, and, uh, uh, I don’t know of another soul…</p>
<div><br /><div>
<p><a title="">[1]</a> Correction: 1918.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[2]</a> Now called the Orlando Executive Airport.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[3]</a> Naval Training Center Orlando.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[4]</a> Lyndon Baines Johnson.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[5]</a> Present-day Orange County Regional History Center.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[6]</a> Naval Training Center (NTC) Orlando.</p>
</div>
</div>
Andy Serros
Antiquarian Society
Baldwin Park
Bank of America
Beacham Theater
Beacham Theatre
Ben White
Ben White Raceway
BHS
Bob Carr Theater
Bob Serros, Pajo Pounds
Boone High School
Central Avenue
Chicone
Citrus Club
CNA Building
Connell
Dann Pottinger
Downtown Orlando
Downtown Winter Garden
Edgewater High School
EHS
Grace Chewning
Herndon Airport
historic preservation
Historical Society of Central Florida
horse racing
horse tracks
horse trot
horses
Junior League
Kirk
LBJ
Lee Road
Loch Haven Park
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson
Martin Andersen
Martin Marietta Corporation
MCO
Naval Training Center Orlando
NTC Orlando
OCRHC
Orange Avenue
Orange County Courthouse
Orange County Historical Museum
Orange County Historical Society
Orange County Regional History Center
orlando
Orlando Air Force Base
Orlando Air Force Base, Orlando AFB
Orlando Army Air Base
Orlando Executive Airport
Orlando International Airport
Orlando Municipal Auditorium
Orlando Remembered
pacers
Pako
Park Avenue
Pine Castle AFB
Pine Castle Air Force Base
Rutland
SunTrust Center
The Orlando Sentinel
trotters
U.S. Route 441
US 441
Vandernburg
Washington Street
Winter Garden
Winter Park
Wyoming Hotel
Yowell
Yowell-Ivy’s
-
https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/d89fff5fd36fe539e5c1da44e20fcbd8.pdf
9c12d807cbfc067d407afae47676996f
https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/0814329076fb17c9b9a60e64d2441092.mp3
4d3afc70af6c37f5e5e08db488b666b7
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Linda McKnight Batman Oral History Project Collection
Alternative Title
Linda McKnight Batman Collection
Subject
Ocala (Fla.)
Orlando (Fla.)
Oviedo (Fla.)
Port Tampa (Fla.)
Sanford (Fla.)
Silver Springs (Fla.)
Titusville (Fla.)
Zellwood (Fla.)
Description
Collection of oral histories depicting the history of Seminole County, Florida. The project was funded by Linda McKnight Batman, a former teacher, historian, and Vice President of the State of Florida Commission on Ethics.
Language
eng
Type
Collection
Curator
Cepero, Laura
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
Source Repository
<a href="http://www.seminolecountyfl.gov/departments-services/leisure-services/parks-recreation/museum-of-seminole-county-history/" target="_blank">Museum of Seminole County History</a>
External Reference
<span>Museum of Seminole County History, and University of Central Florida. </span><a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/744676869" target="_blank"><em>Researcher's Guide to Seminole County Oral Histories: Linda McKnight Batman Oral History Project</em></a><span>. [Sanford, Fla.]: Museum of Seminole County History, 2010.</span>
Contributor
<a href="http://www.seminolecountyfl.gov/departments-services/leisure-services/parks-recreation/museum-of-seminole-county-history/" target="_blank">Museum of Seminole County History</a>
Coverage
Seminole County, Florida
Ocala, Florida
Oviedo, Florida
Port Tampa, Florida
Sanford, Florida
Silver Springs, Florida
Titusville, Florida
Zellwood, Florida
Contributing Project
Linda McKnight Batman Oral History Project
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
Morris, Joseph
Interviewee
Groskey, Dick
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Oral History of Dick Groskey
Alternative Title
Oral History, Groskey
Subject
Orlando (Fla.)
Altamonte Springs (Fla.)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (U.S.)
NASA
Air Force
World War II--United States
Metalworking industries--United States
Description
An oral history of Dick Groskey, conducted by Joseph Morris on October 28, 2011. Born in Springfield, Ohio, Groskey migrated with his family to Orlando, Florida, in the early 1950s. In the interview, he discusses migrating to Florida, growing up in Ohio, how Orlando and Central Florida has changed over time, his experience contracting with various companies and government institutions, the metalworking industry, business taxes, his service in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, and his wife and children.
Table Of Contents
0:00:00 Introduction<br />0:00:22 Migrating to Florida<br />0:02:37 Starting own business0:04:13 Growing up in Ohio<br />0:06:43 Decision to migrate to Florida<br />0:10:31 How Orlando and Central Florida has changed over time<br />0:15:15 Contract work with large companies<br />0:17:39 Working with government organizations<br />0:20:25 Metalworking industry<br />0:22:38 Business taxes<br />0:24:14 Current state of business<br />0:27:50 Positive changes in Central Florida<br />0:30:15 Serving in the Air Force during World War II<br />0:44:00 Returning to civilian life<br />0:45:00 Wife and children<br />0:50:18 Closing remarks
Abstract
Oral history interview of Dick Groskey Interview conducted by Joseph Morris at the <a href="http://www.seminolecountyfl.gov/departments-services/leisure-services/parks-recreation/museum-of-seminole-county-history/" target="_blank">Museum of Seminole County History</a> in Orlando, Florida.
Type
Sound
Source
Groskey, Dick. Interviewed by Joseph Morris. October 28, 2011. Audio record available. <a href="http://www.seminolecountyfl.gov/departments-services/leisure-services/parks-recreation/museum-of-seminole-county-history/" target="_blank">Museum of Seminole County History</a>, Orlando, Florida.
Requires
Multimedia software, such as <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/" target="_blank"> QuickTime</a>.
<a href="https://get.adobe.com/reader/" target="_blank">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a>
Is Part Of
<a href="http://www.seminolecountyfl.gov/departments-services/leisure-services/parks-recreation/museum-of-seminole-county-history/" target="_blank">Museum of Seminole County History</a>, Orlando, Florida.
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/123" target="_blank">Linda McKnight Batman Oral History Project Collection</a>, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Coverage
Orlando, Florida
Altamonte Springs, Florida
Walnut Hills, Dayton, Ohio
Myitkyina West, Kachin, Burma
Creator
Morris, Joseph
Groskey, Dick
Contributor
Vickers, Savannah
Date Created
2011-10-28
Date Modified
2014-10-10
Date Copyrighted
2011-10-28
Format
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Extent
34.7 MB
211 KB
Medium
51-minute, and 23-second audio recording
25-page digital transcript
Language
eng
Mediator
History Teacher
Civics/Government Teacher
Economics Teacher
Provenance
Originally created by Joseph Morris and Dick Groskey.
Rights Holder
Copyright to this resource is held by the <a href="http://www.seminolecountyfl.gov/departments-services/leisure-services/parks-recreation/museum-of-seminole-county-history/" target="_blank">Museum of Seminole County History</a> and is provided here by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a> for educational purposes only.
Accrual Method
Donation
Curator
Cepero, Laura
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
Source Repository
<a href="http://www.seminolecountyfl.gov/departments-services/leisure-services/parks-recreation/museum-of-seminole-county-history/" target="_blank">Museum of Seminole County History</a>
External Reference
Antequino, Stephanie Gaub, and Tana Mosier Porter. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/783150094" target="_blank"><em>Lost Orlando</em></a>. Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia Pub, 2012.
"<a href="http://sanfordhistory.tripod.com/Links/wtour.pdf" target="_blank">Downtown Orlando Historic District Walking Tour</a>." City of Orlando. http://sanfordhistory.tripod.com/Links/wtour.pdf.
Rajtar, Steve. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/70911136" target="_blank"><em>A Guide to Historic Orlando</em></a>. Charleston, SC: History Press, 2006.
Transcript
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>It is October 28, 2011, and I am talking to Dick Groskey in his place of residence. I am Joseph Morris, representing the Linda McKnight Batman Oral History Project for the Historical Society of Central Florida. Sir, could you tell us a little about yourself?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>What?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Could you tell us a little about yourself and your life?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Well, what would you like, what would you like…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Well, where were you born, sir? Where were you raised?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Springfield, Ohio.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>And when did you come down to Florida, sir?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Well, right after I got married in the early [19]40s. I got out of the service in ’46, and we got married the same year, and we came to Florida in the real early ‘50s.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir. And did you move originally to...</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>No. We—we were going to Miami, and I blew out a tire. It was over on U.S. [Route] 1, and we blew a tire out on the car, and it was late at night on Sunday. We stopped in a motel over on U.S. 1. The next morning, we got up and I asked where the local garage was, and they said, “Oh, it’s clear over in Bithlo. Over Dave Shaw’s garage.” So there happened to be a fellow there that was going that way, and so he took my tire, and we throwed[sic] it in the back of his truck, and he took me over Dave Shaw’s garage, which was right in the middle of no place. Well, Dave got the tire fixed, and one thing another.</p>
<p class="Body">And in the meantime, while he was fixing the tire, I thought, “Well, I’ll look at the local newspaper.” So I’m just thumbing through it. There’s an ad in there: “Machinist wanted.” So I asked Dave Shaw, I said, “Well, where is this place?” “Oh,” he said, “That’s over in Orlando, which is short ways from Bithlo.” So I put a dime in the telephone—it was a dime at that time—and I called this man up, and he was from Youngstown, Ohio. And I told him, I said, “Well,” I said, “I’ve been a toolmaker all my life.” And he said, “I got a job for you.” He says, “Come on over!” So I said, “Well, wait ‘til I get my tire fixed, and I’ll come over.” So he gave me the directions, and I came over to Orlando, and I went down on Sligh Boulevard—and Tool Engraving on Sligh. It was Trade Tool Engraving— was the name of the place. And he said, “I’ll let you run a screw machine second shift.” I said, “Great.” [inaudible] easy. I’d run one before. So I went back to Titusville, told the missus. I said, “Well, we’re gonna have to stay here tonight, but,” I said, “tomorrow we’re going to Orlando.” And she said, “Well, what’s the matter with going to Miami?” I said, “I got a job.” She said, “You got a job?” I said, “Yeah. I go to work tomorrow night.” And I’ve never been out of work since.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Wow, sir. So, why were you going to Miami?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>I don’t know. I just thought that was a place where it was warm and there was a lot of something going on.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Got distracted by Orlando?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>And well, we got stuck here and been here ever since.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Then how long did you work at the...</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>At Trade Tool?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Yes, sir.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Only, well, best part of a year. And that’s when the Martin [Marietta Corporation] company came here, and I helped build the Martin plant. Then I went to work industrial engineering. And I stayed out there about a year and a half, I guess, and then I started my own thing, and been keeping it going ever since.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay. And how did you start your own business, sir?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>One tool at a time.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>And how long have you been in business?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Oh my gosh. Never [<em>laughs</em>]—I’ve always had a shop. We moved the shop down when I moved down from Ohio.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Oh really, sir?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>So you were doing this up in Ohio as well?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>The, um…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>I had a shop in Brookville, Ohio, and then we left Brookville to come to Florida, and I had our furniture in the shop in a—on a semi. We was gonna move it down here, and we moved, after we had the blowout over Titusville, and I got a job there, we went over here on [U.S. Route] 17-92 and rented a three-room apartment over there.</p>
<p class="Body">And I had all the shop equipment come down then after we got established, and I rented a place over in Altamonte Springs. It was a little—about a four-story—I mean a four-office little building that Merris Walker—he owned the whole town practically. He built this building—just a little commercial building—and I rented one of the offices in there. We put all the machinery in there. And at that time, I was working at the Martin company, so we got our little shop going. So I went, quit the Martin company, went back out there, went to purchasing, I said, “I’d like to bid on your work.” And we’ve been going ever since.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir. And could you tell me a little about the place where you grew up? I know it was in Ohio, correct?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Mmhm.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Have you been back?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Only when my dad died in 1966. I haven’t been back since.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir. What was it like growing up out there?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>It was right prior to World War II, and things were tight, but it was a lot—a lot easier. Better times than what it is now. It wasn’t near as fast-paced. People had more of value than they do now. Smaller things meant more. Our—we lived in a middle-class neighborhood where everybody worked, and everybody went to school. Everybody had a car. And we played croquet at night in the backyard. We played football down at the local park. We played baseball at the local park. We played horseshoes. There was always something to do. The local park was just a matter of trees, a drinking fountain, and a shelter house, but there the city provided ball gloves and tennis racquets and things. So you’d go in there, sign your name and get a ball, go up and go play ball.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>And that was kind of the center of activity of the whole community. We lived in what they called Walnut Hills. It was a very clannish type situation, because at that time, in that area—National Cash Register, General Motors [Company], Frigidaire, Dayton Rubber [Company], and those bigger companies—a job was something that there was nothing to be concerned about. That was something that your dad—your dad’s dad probably worked at these same companies over the last three or four generations, because that’s the way things were. You didn’t have to hunt for a job. Shop like I got now—a job shop—there was[sic] hundreds of them in that town. You’d pick up the phone call and say, “Hey, what do you got going? You got 30 days’ worth of work? I’ll be over this afternoon.” And you had another job. That’s job shopping. But if you wanted to go to the major companies like Dayton Rubber, Frigidaire, or one of the big ones—Master Electric, where they made motors—you’d go in there, hire on. They’re expecting you and your kids’ kids to work there. It was job security, which of you have none today. Today, it’s feast or famine. We get a job today, you finish it up two o’clock, goodbye. Go home. There is no security in jobs today, unless you create your own security. </p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Right, sir.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>There is nothing that—you can’t depend on the other man for anything.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir. And how—so you left. You just wanted a change of scenery? You came down to Miami for that reason? Or you were on your way to Miami for that reason?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>No. I spent—like I said, I spent a lot of time over in China and Burma and India. And it was all hot weather. Very hot. We came home in February, and it was just kind of the tail end of the winter, but there was a lot of snow and ice on the ground, and after being in the tropics for that long, and coming in to snow and ice on the ground—and I got married, I told her when we got married, I said, “Look, we’re going someplace else.” I said, “I’m not gonna shovel snow.” I said, “I’m not used to this.” My later teens and then early twenties, I was overseas, and I said, “Boy, I’m not going home and shoveling any snow.”</p>
<p class="Body">So we told her parents, we told my parents, and my dad says, “If you take her and them[sic] kids out of Ohio, I’ll disown you.” Which he did. We never got one dime from him, and he was a wealthy man. When he died, I got just exactly nothing, because I took her and came to Florida with the kids.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>And that was your dad or her dad?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>No. That was my dad.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Wow.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>No. Her dad was more lenient. He was from Georgia, and was a farmer from Georgia. He had a pretty nice business going, and he said, “Well,” he said, “I can understand why you’re doing what you’re doing.” And he says, “If we can help you, we will.”</p>
<p class="Body">But my dad was from the old school, and if it ain’t his way, it’s no way. It was that, but, he said, “You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re leaving the whole security and this and that and everything else.” I said, “No. I’m not.” I said, “Now I was in the service. I’ve been clear around the world.” I said, “I’ve seen other places. I’ve been other places and done other things. I’m not gonna sit here and shovel snow. I’m going someplace else.” “Well, if you do, you’re disowned.” And he did.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>What did your dad do for a living? Did he work in one of these...</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>He was vice president of the [International] Typographical Union.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir. I can definitely see why, after going to the tropics, that Miami might have come to mind.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>That was the only—Orlando—it was just a wide spot in the road, like Kissimmee, that was just a few cars walking up and down the road. But Orlando did have a name, but it didn’t have a name like Jacksonville or Miami. Now, my wife’s from Georgia, and some of her relations—her dad, or her uncle—was warden of the Duvall County farm up there. So we came down—prior to moving, we came down here and visited, and we talked to her uncle at great length, and he was a very, very, very knowledgeable man, and he knew basics of life right here in Florida. So I asked him a lot of pointed questions. He gave me the answers. He says, “It’s gonna be up to you.” He said, “There’s[sic] opportunities here. It’s up to you to make them.” He said, “You can go out there and hustle around.” He said, “You’ll make them.” He said, “Florida’s growing.” He was born and raised there. I figured, “Well, you know what you’re talking about.” So that changed our opinion on going to Miami. After talking to people who had been there and back, and one thing another, salesmen and people who had went down there to live, and got out of the Little Havana area—whatever—they said, “Stay up in Orlando area.” Been here ever since.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, so after you moved here, you were still thinking about going down to Miami afterwards?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>No.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Just talking to these people.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>No. That was it. That cancelled that out. I only went to Miami one time since we moved to Florida. We had a subcontract on the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] building in Miami, and we supplied a lot of the high-pressure ductwork down there. We built it. And we had to get down—as owner of the shop, we had to get down to physically see that our work was in that job. It was a government job. Our work was in that building and that contract—blah blah blah blah blah. And I had to go down there about three different times. Other than that, I never went back.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>That’s where Miami and me[sic] ended.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>That’s where you and Miami have just parted ways?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Yep.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir. Well, how has Orlando changed from when you moved here to now?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>They have ruined Orlando.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Really, sir?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>In what way?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Due to the fact that the people that were responsible—once Orlando was established as a town, and the multitude started moving into that town—the way Orlando was originally set up was a farm town that was easygoing and whatever. As soon as it started to grow with a vast amount of people, which happened in the ‘50s, it really blossomed, and when it did, they lost reality with what Orlando was all about.</p>
<p class="Body">When we moved here, you could drink the water out of Prairie Lake. You could go along, there was water along the ditches on every main road out at the main area of the town here. There was[sic] fish in these ditches. People would be along the side of Route 50<a title="">[1]</a> fishing, and water wasn’t that deep, but there was fish in them. I worked at the Martin company, and when I’d come home at night, I’d take the boys, and we’d go over to Lake Monroe and sit there on the seawall, and in an hour’s time, I’d have a bucket so full of fish you could hardly pick it up. Where’d they all go? Where’d the mullet go? Where’d the blue crabs go? Everything has been polluted.</p>
<p class="Body">They ruined Central Florida. Now we’ve got crime. A lot more. A shooting in Central Florida back in the ‘50s—unheard of, unless it was a hunting accident. Somebody pulled out a gun and shot his own foot. It was unheard of. Now it’s an everyday occurrence. You go to Pine Hills today and somebody’s gonna shoot somebody before you can drive through it. They have ruined Central Florida, because that is the element that follows growth. There’s that type of person that will follow growth, and try to reap what they can off it, and they have ruined Central Florida.</p>
<p class="Body">Central Florida—I won’t even go to the coast. You used to be able to go anyplace up and down the east coast. You could pull off the side of the road, cross the dunes, and go fishing. It’s all barricaded off. Chain-link fence. “Keep out.” Don’t come here, don’t go there.</p>
<p class="Body">When we first moved, when we first got ourselves established in Altamonte Springs, I went to a council meeting, and several of the management meetings Downtown—city of Orlando. And most of the people down there—a lot of the people down there were from Baltimore[, Maryland]. Baltimore entered big in Central Florida, because the Martin came here. Martin company came here. They brought all their people with them. And come to find out, most of the people that came with the Martin company from Baltimore were the odd falls they wanted to get rid of anyway. And that’s how the Martin company started here. Well, I went—I helped build the building, then I went to work in it, and I know firsthand.</p>
<p class="Body">But, at any rate, I had a shop in Altamonte Springs. I had the first screw machine in Seminole County. So I went to one of these meetings down there, and I got a chance to speak my voice. I got up and I said, “Well, you fellows don’t have any manufacturing base here.” I said, “You got high-acreage use plant.” I said, “You got two or three big packinghouses. One Blue Goose [Growers packinghouse].” And I said, “You’ve got another packinghouse over in Maitland, but,” I said, “you don’t have anything that’s making anything. You don’t produce any. You don’t have any sawmills. You don’t have any manufacturing, no welding shops, no nothing. Why?” “Because we’re tourist-oriented.” That’s the famous saying: “We’re tourist-oriented.” And still to this day, they’re still leaning away from manufacturing. They don’t want any manufacturing in Central Florida. I tried to explain to them how the economy in Cincinnati and Dayton was based on all these little job shops that was doing something. Now what have you got? Blacks running up and down the ladder picking oranges. That ain’t gonna help the economy. Not one nickel’s worth. The grove owner’s gonna make money, but you and I aren’t. I said, “You have to have diversified activity in that community.” And you know, they said, “Well, you’ve probably got a pretty good idea, but we don’t wanna hear no more.” And that’s where they shut it off, and I said, “Well, to hell with you. Goodbye.”</p>
<p class="Body">And it’s still today the same situation. They want tourists. Get them in, fleece them, send them on a plane back home. They don’t want nothing here permanently. Go downtown. What have they done for the people who live here? If you go someplace, you’re gonna pay money dear for it, because you’re gonna pay just like a tourist. They don’t give the local people anything. They don’t say, “Hey, show me your driver’s license. You come in for two bucks.” “Hey, it’s $28.00? We might charge you $30.00, because you live here.” Uh-uh. I’m soured on [inaudible]. Believe me. That’s why we’re out here on our own little domain. I have nothing to do with them.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris </strong>Okay, sir. So, um, this kind of might be a little bit of a weird question, then—so you’re not a—you don’t go to—or have you ever gone to any of the theme parks that attract the tourists?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>I have never. I have done work for [Walt] Disney World and Universal [Studios Orlando] and everybody else, but it’s always on a bid-item basis. The only reason I will go there is to take a job out, give them a purchase order, and hope I get paid. That’s the only way. As far as spending my money to go to their park, I wouldn’t spend a dime.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Yeah. They are expensive, sir.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>I wouldn’t spend a dime.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>When you say “hope” you get paid, have you ever had a problem with receiving payment from these companies?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Martin company and Disney started out the same way. Thirty days on invoice, 60 days on invoice, 90 days on invoice. Martin company got 120 days on invoice. I took the last invoices right down to personnel, right into payroll. I said, “I want to get paid for these.” “Well, we’re a big company, you know. It takes time.” And I said, “Now, you’re not that big.” I said, “I’m a little guy. We started out 30-day invoice, okay. 60, I can live with. 90, I’m hurting. 120, I can’t do it. Anymore work we do from you, COD [Cash on Delivery].” Now I’m a little guy talking to a big guy, and I said, “That’s it.” They needed us at that time more than we needed them, because there was nobody else except Martin [inaudible] out here that had a shot.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, so they kept trying to put you off?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>That’s right. They kept stringing us out, stringing us out, and stringing us. “Well, we’re a big company!” I said, “Yes, you ought to be able to do it twice as fast. Because you have more facilities than we do. You ought to be able to make your pay the same day.”</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Right, sir.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>So, I said, “C.O.D.”</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>So your business work with these companies has not been the—all you wish they could be?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Well, the Martin company, as you know, right now is one of the largest defense contractors there is in the United States. And had we—at that time, had we had somebody on our side that could go internally there, today we’d probably be a multi-million dollar corporation. Because they made some big companies out of what happened at Martin company throughout the United States.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, but because you couldn’t get anybody, or you didn’t have anybody to work with you there...</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>We—as an outsider, we had nobody on the inside.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Gotcha, sir.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Now, when the shuttle’s arm<a title="">[2]</a> came up at the Cape [Canaveral], when the shuttle’s arm came up, the robotic arm, we were doing NASA [National Aeronautics and Space Administration] work at the time. So I went out to procurement, and I said to them, I said, “Well, we’d like to bid on this robotic arm.” And he said, “Okay, fine.” He said, “You’re qualified. You’re DoD [U.S. Department of Defense] and checked out and everything. Fine.” We got a set of drawings, we come back, and we figured it out. We could make the complete thing except the one base had a milled slot about 12-14 feet long. We couldn’t mill it. I had a friend in Winter Haven that had a big Niles Planer [Machine]. He could do it.</p>
<p class="Body">We submitted our bid. We were second—number two. Now, we’re a little shop, and that was a big job. There was only, I think, four of them to start with, and they were over a period of two or three years. The man out in IOA [inaudible] got the job. We went out and protested. He don’t have enough money in his bid to buy the material to do the job. The purchase agent out there on that contract was a woman. She said, “Well, Mr. Groskey,” she said, “I’ll tell you. We can’t control where he gets his material from. He may have a warehouse full.” That’s the only out I got. He may have a warehouse full. We had to buy it. He had a warehouse. I said, “Okay.” Less than 30 days, they came back and said, “We want you to pick up the contract. He went bankrupt.” I says, “Goodbye.” That’s what I told NASA. I wouldn’t touch it.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Oh really, sir? But you worked with NASA afterwards, right?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Just not on that contract.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Not on that one. Nope. We dropped that one right by the wayside. They wanted us to come back and pick up the ball, and clean up the mess, and sweep the dirt. I said, “No dice.” We don’t get it going in, we don’t want any part of it.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir. Could you tell me more about the work you’ve done with NASA? Because that does a lot for the local community and the local area.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>No. The only thing that we got out there was small stuff that they couldn’t buy it for here [inaudible]. Onesie-twosie things that, like certain types of bearings and special screws, and just little nit-picking stuff. Nothing big.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Oh, okay, sir.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Nothing big. No big contracts. Nothing. Biggest contract we had was from the Navy over here—the [Orlando Naval] Training Center. And we did Navy work, but there was too much red tape in all that work. I’d rather have work off the street. The last Navy job we had, they made four change orders on it. They went through a nuclear submarine. And there was[sic] four change orders. And after the second or third change order, the fourth change order went right back to the first change order, and that—we’d already scrapped it. We had to do it all over again. They don’t know what they’re doing.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Gotcha, sir. So, um…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>We’re very, very, very selective if we take work out that we don’t know the people that we’re gonna do it for. I would rather do a hundred percent commercial work. 100 percent. But right now, the customers we’ve got—we’ve got all the good customers in Central Florida—that they bring work to us. If we take something out to one of those customers, and it’s not according to what maybe they think they want, or they really need, they’ve already given us okay to do it, or purchase orders behind it. We make it, we fab it, we take it out, and if it’s not exactly what they want, it goes right in the dumpster and we get paid for it. Because that’s the way we do business. This is what you wanted, and this is what you got. Now, if you can’t use it, that ain’t my problem. You got what you ordered. And that’s the way we do business.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Gotcha, sir. Okay. Could you tell me a little more about the business here then? I know we discussed earlier, but could you tell me more about what kind of work you do, and who you do it for?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Well, we do sheet metal work, welding, and machine work, general machine work for the complete population. No matter what industry or what kind of a business they have going, we make. We’ve made everything you could possibly think of. We’ve made parts for outboard motors, typewriters, telephones, fishing equipment, hunting equipment, dies, jigs, drill jigs, fixtures, screw machine parts. You name it. If it was made out of metal, we made it. We make high-pressure ductwork, sheet metal ductwork. We make low-pressure ductwork. We make all kind of turning veins, fittings, the whole gamut. Whatever there is in small metalwork, we do.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir. And, could you tell me how…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>We’ve only been stymied once or twice, and that was when we had something that was a—it was more of a compound angle, and we didn’t have facilities to do it with, but I have a friend out in Apopka that’s got a water jet machine. We took it out there to him, and he water-jetted it, and we went merrily on our way. So we have an out. We take them all.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Gotcha, sir. Okay. Can you tell me how your business has changed over the years or grown?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>The business—we try to—according to the tax structure—the way it’s set up—we’re allowed a tax deduction to amortize a piece of machinery over a five-year period. And I understand [Barack] Obama has allowed small businesses to amortize that machine in one year. And I like when we bought our big boring mill down there, that’s a $12,000 machine, we could take a tax write-off in five years for that machine for the $12,000. Well, if you happen to have a good year, that $12,000 would mean a lot if you could deduct it, but you can’t deduct it except for in a five-year period. So you wind up paying more taxes for spending more money, and that’s not right. If you’re spending more money, you should be able to deduct it.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>If it’s shop equipment, it’s capital equipment. But now—I think they got it set up now to where you can deduct that in one-year or two-year period, rather than a five-year period.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>And you said “amortize,” right?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>What does that mean, sir?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>The government would only allow you to deduct off of your taxes—say I bought something for $1,000—a piece of machinery for $1,000. Every year I could get a $200 reduction on that piece of machinery.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>A tax write-off on that machinery. And at the end of five years, I had a tax write-off of that $1,000. Then that machine could no longer be amortized anymore. That machine was a dead piece of equipment in that business. It was part of the business, it made the business worth that much more, but as far as taxes go, you’re done. There’s no more relief on taxes for it.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay. So, well, I know we talked about this a little bit earlier, um, how is business doing these days?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Very bad. Our little shop down there was doing great up until 2002, and I could see then it was starting to slide, because we’d have customers the whole gamut of Central Florida. We’d have everything from photographic shops to big truck manufacturers, truck garages, and the likes of that. The whole gamut. We made parts for everybody. And all of them now have started slowing down, slowing down, slowing down. Because I’m interested enough to ask, “Well, Bill, how’s it going? Is your business going?” “Yeah, we’re up about 10 percent.” “We’re up 15 percent.” And it’s this way across the board.</p>
<p class="Body">There’s only one person that’s got a business in Central Florida that’s got more business than he can handle, and that’s the auctioneers. Now, Don [M.] Dennett in Sanford—[D. M.] Dennett Auctioneering—has been a friend of mine since he was in high school, and Don is running a very good business today. We went to a sale last week over here in Casselberry. [inaudible], a multi-million dollar company, a beautiful shop, bankrupt, up for sale, it went on the auction block. I said to Don at the sale, I said, “Don,” I said, “Why in the world would something like this happen?” He said, “There’s no volume.” There’s no volume of work. He happened to have an Air Force contract that kept him going for the last two or three years. When that contract ended, he was done, because he had so much invested in big equipment, nothing to do. He had to sell out. Don says, “I could have a sale—an auction a day, if I wanted to. There’s[sic] that many people going bankrupt.” But he only has one a week, because the market will only handle so much. Otherwise, you’d have people there buying shares for a dime and the likes of it. He waits until the smoke clears, then he’ll have another auction.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>But he is busy all the time, believe me. Right now he’s ready for two more auctions. I talked to him yesterday. He got two more shops that went out, and a bunch of restaurant equipment again. A couple more restaurants went broke, and he’s gonna sell them at the auction. But he has got more work than he knows what to do with. Because that’s people’s downfall that he’s advantaged—he’s taking advantage of.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>This is not a problem you’re having though, sir?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>No. We’re sitting tight. We’re solid. We don’t owe a dime to anybody. We have one thing. We buy steel on a30-day basis. We buy sheet, plate, angle, and beam, and bar from three different companies. We pay our bills at the end of the month, every month, religiously. Every 30 days, we pay our invoices up and they’re done. We run no credit with nobody, pay cash for everything.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir. The proper way to run a business, right?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>And 90 percent of the people—I’d say 95 percent of the people that we work for appreciate that fact, because their paperwork don’t carry over month to month to month to month. When they deal with us, and come out, if we don’t have a prior agreement of 30 days on invoice, they pay cash and bring a check with them, because that’s the only way we’ll work. We won’t chase any money. You can’t spend your time chasing bad debts. And over the last 40 years, I don’t think we’ve lost a hundred dollars, and that’s because somebody died, and there was no heirs. That’s the only reason.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Gotcha, sir. Well, I know you said that they ruined Central Florida.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Yep. That’s right. Yep.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Would you say there’s anything good in Central Florida, anything that—I mean, you discussed what had gone wrong. Would anything in your mind have gone right?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Well, sure. What Florida did, by them having all of their eggs in one basket with tourism, they’ve helped other industries and other things grow with them. The motel industry grew, the restaurants and the stores, the retailers and one thing another. A lot of those people now have picked up to where they rely on all of these people that’s coming in. But when people come out of the airport, and they go to Disney World, they’re more or less captive at Disney World. Now, most of them are here say two days, three days a week, something like this. their money is limited to what they can do, and when they have to spend $75 to go up to that gate, they’re gonna think twice about having to go outside to buy something. Disney’s smart enough to know this. That’s why they’ve got them captive. Restaurants, hotels, motels, the whole nine yards. Get them in the gate and keep them.</p>
<p class="Body">But there’s[sic] still a few people who want to see Central Florida. They want to get out and look around. “We haven’t come out here.” But that—Central Florida in that respect has grown along with all the tourists, and it’s helped the people that did stay here by giving them more of an opportunity to do things. Bowling alleys, and your arts, and a lot of your museums have grown. Your arts and science have grown. Everything has helped the local people, and I consider myself to be part of the local people. But they have given us an opportunity of more things which weren’t here.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>So you can give them the benefit of the doubt. They—their finances and their establishment created an environment that people wanted. So it kind of rubs off on us local people. We’re able to go take advantage of it too.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir. That’s a—I was going to say, that’s a very interesting perspective, because you never go to those parks. You never do any of those things.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>No, no.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>But the benefit—the side benefits they bring with them…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Right. Right.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Gotcha, sir. I know before you mentioned you were, that you had served in the military.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>The military?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Could you tell us about that, sir? Like what branch? Where? When? What were you doing?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Well, I was in the military prior to—oh, what the hell they called it? Well, when the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>And I was in Fort Knox[, Kentucky] in the regular Army before the Japanese hit Honolulu and Oahu[, Hawaii]. Now, when I went into Fort Thomas, Kentucky—I went from there to Fort Knox. I went to Fort Thomas, Kentucky, there wasn’t enough of us in that barracks to keep the fire going at night. We had to take shifts to keep the fire going at night. They declared war. The next day, they were standing in the hallways. They had to have so many people pouring into that place. There was a mobilization overnight. Believe me.</p>
<p class="Body">Well, when I enlisted in the service—I enlisted, I was never drafted—I enlisted in the Air Force. There was[sic] no openings. So I left Fort Thomas, Kentucky, and went to Atlantic City, New Jersey, for basic training. Well, when we got out there, of course the wartime conditions and everything—blackout at night and the whole story, everything was all window-curtains [inaudible] and the likes of it, no headlights and everything. Well, I left there and went out to Chanute Fields,<a title="">[3]</a> Illinois, and joined the Air Force. They had an opening, so I got transferred from the Third [United States] Army into the Air Force, which I had enlisted for to begin with. I wanted to get in the Air Force. So I went out there to Chanute Fields and went through tech school, graduated from tech school, and got assigned to a regular Air Force unit, and was with them for quite a while. And then, well, we stationed in California, and stationed in Texas, and stationed in New Mexico and quite a few places.</p>
<p class="Body">And then, as the [World] War [II] progressed, they took our unit and broke it up into four units, and made air combat cargo units out of them. So what we done was to air-drop supplies, ammunition, and equipment to the troops that were on the ground. That was our main—we were a transfer. I’d say an airborne trucking outfit. But on our mission, whenever we took what we had there, if there was another outstanding hospital in the area, we went to that base and haul a load of wounded back. “Litter patients,” we used to call them. So, we’d take a load of supplies over wherever we were going, and bring a load of litter patients back to the next general hospital. And that was our total obligation. And I did that in China, Burma, and India.</p>
<p class="Body">Now, when the war ended, we were flying into Chongqing[, China] when the war ended, from Myitkyina [West], North Burma. That was our last big U.S. air base in that part of the world. And when I say “big air base”—it was a grass, dirt strip with landing mats, but that was still—in that part of the world, that was a big air base. We flew [Douglas] C-47 [Skytrain]s, [Curtiss] C-46 [Commando]s, and [Douglas] C-54 [Skymaster]s. And when the—when the Japs—we had moved out of Myikyina and went down to Bhamo, Burma right at the war’s end.</p>
<p class="Body">And we were flying in into Saigon[, Vietnam],<a title="">[4]</a> and when the war ended, then our orders—the way our orders were written that, at the war’s end, we will be dis—our organization, equipment, will be disbanded by the most expeditious means. And our colonel, who was Colonel Scannel[sp] [inaudible], was a 36-year-old [United States Military Academy at] West Point man and a full-command pilot. Now that’s a hard nut to crack. That’s as good as you can get in the Air Force. We were all sitting down at what they called the “bomb crater.” We had a movie that night. Just a big bombed-out hole in the ground. We was all sitting around. They suddenly flashed the lights on the camera, and he says, “Boys, it’s all over.” And it took about a minute for it to sink in—the fact that the war was over. And it was. And then two days later, we pulled out of there, loaded our planes, we went back down into Tasgaon, India. But when we left, all the tents, all the equipment, the toolboxes, everything that was left on that strip, was either given to the hill tribes or was destroyed in the fire. We closed the base up, and that’s the way we left.</p>
<p class="Body">Now, one story that vividly sticks in my mind was at Myitkyina—that’s M-Y-I-T-K-I-N-A<a title="">[5]</a>—Myitkyina, North Burma. Before the war, it was a big town. Well, the Japanese, in order to go on their route from Japan—through China into India—that’s what their object was. They’d already just about taken over China, and they were into India pretty deep. Well, our object was to see that they didn’t get any further. We were kind of stopped dead [inaudible] in the middle. MARS Task Force and Merrill’s Marauders [inaudible] were the ground troops, and we’d get everything they had—ate, fed, shot, and whatever—we supplied them—air-dropped whatever to get to them. Well, one day, on the south end of our strip, was[sic] two fighter groups that supported us as air cover while we were flying and dropping supplies—the 82<sup>nd</sup> and 93<sup>rd</sup> fighter group. There was [North American Aviation] P-51 [Mustang]s and [Republic] P-47 [Thunderbolt]s. Now, most of these fighter planes, they were bombing down at the—in the Mekong valley [inaudible], and they were down around the bridge over the River Kwai.<a title="">[6]</a> That was one of their last bombing missions.</p>
<p class="Body">Well, the line chief and I were standing alongside the strip, and we was[sic] watching it. They’d take off about five, six, seven planes at a time. They’d fly together as a group, low-altitude bombing on these targets, like roads and bridges and commercial buildings that was of value to Japanese. So, Master Sergeant Hinky [inaudible] and I were standing there with a hot—typical hot day—and we was watching these P-47s take off, one right after the other. Well, when a fighter plane’s carrying a thousand-pound bomb under the belly of it, they got a load. Well, they would start up there at the end of the strip, and they’d tow [inaudible] them. They were full-throttle. By the time they got halfway up the strip, they’d be just about off the ground. And at the end of the strip was rice paddies and jungle. Well, we watched these planes—one, two, three. And the third one coming down the line on all of a sudden, he went straight up in the air. And line chief said to me, said, “Well, look at that damn fool.” And I said, “Yeah, but look at there.” And a thousand-pound bomb had let go of the bottom of that plane, and here he was coming down the middle of the strip tail first—a thousand-pounder. So Hinky looked at me, and I looked at him, and I said, “We better duck.” And we went under the first thing that was there, and it was a big truck, and we went under it. Well, that bomb went right at the end of the strip, went right out in the rice paddy, and just settled down as nice-you-please and didn’t explode. It went “poof” right in the mud. We crawled out from the trunk and Hinky said to me, he said, “Damn, that was close.” I says[sic], “Too close.” And I said, “Yeah, but look where we were.” And we were underneath a tanker full of hundred-octane gasoline. Oh, boy. That was a nice experience to have. That was just one of the little things that happened throughout the war.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>When did you, what age were you signed up, sir?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>My 21<sup>st</sup> birthday. I was in combat.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay. When did you, uh—but you said you signed—you enlisted prior to World War II, correct?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Yeah. I was 18.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Oh, okay. And did you enlist right after high school?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir. And, um…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Matter of fact, about—I went to trade school.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Oh.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>That’s how I got my start to shops [inaudible]. I was going to trade school, and we had just finished. The way our school worked—it was called Dayton Cooperative High School. They had—well, all the instructors were professional people. They were professional in their trade. Well, the shops is what I was in basically, and of course, all of the instructors were master toolmakers. Well, when the war started, my class was just about ready. We went to school two weeks and worked two weeks. That’s the way co-op[erative] was set up. You had to carry a[sic] 80 average to go to school. If you didn’t maintain your class grades, as well as your shop grades, you got pulled out. You had to go to a regular school. You could no longer become a craftsman. You had to be interested and have a know-how to what you wanted to do. You had to want to know what you were doing. Well, at that time—that was in—oh, I think we graduated in December that year—and I went into the service September, just prior to that. And I’d say 90 percent of our class—males in our class—all went in about the same time. The whole class of ’41 just about all went in the military just about the same time. And I don’t think—of course, we lost track of all of them—but I don’t think after graduation—that year after graduation—it wasn’t more than a handful that even graduated after that because they all went in the service.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Was that very normal at the time, sir?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Yes. Very much so.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey <br /></strong>The patriotism was extremely high. They had—Japanese had submarines out off the East Coast, they had submarines off the West Coast. They were at our back door.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Hm. Okay, sir, and you said you served for five years?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Mmhm.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>And did you—was that when the war was over, or...</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Yeah. Yeah.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>And you came…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>I was in the 1348<sup>th</sup> air combat—air drop unit. And, when that—our orders were cut in North Africa before we left Algiers[, Algeria], when we was sent into the CBI (China-Burma-India] Theater, the general that wrote our orders for our outfit said that, “You will be there for the duration plus six months.” Now that’s just like a life sentence. How long will it last? You gotta be there, and six months more. But luckily, when it ended, we was gone out of there off of our former base in two days—three days at the most.</p>
<p class="Body">We went what they called “down the valley” into India, then we stayed there to be “disoriented”—is what they called it—to be re-civilianized. We had to turn in our guns, and all of our grenades, and all of our fighting equipment, and try to be civilians. Well, that didn’t—took longer than that to do. But anyway, we stayed there, I’d say, for a period we was in Tasgaon, India—for about a month. And then we got on the [USS] <em>General</em> [<em>M. B.</em>] <em>Stewart</em> and came home. We came home first-class on a big general ship, which was a well-relief. We could have hot meals. You had a bed to sleep on. I mean, you wasn’t[sic] sleeping on the ground. I mean, we’re civilians now. Yeah. This is really living.</p>
<p class="Body">Well, anyway, we got back into Camp Atterbury, Indiana, which was a discharge center. And the man in charge of the center—our whole outfit was there. We had 1,300 men and officers with our whole complete unit. All of our pilots were drafted civil pilots—Delta, Eastern, all of them were commercial pilots. They hated the military. Between them and us, the ground people, we got along fine, because we didn’t like it either. We got along great. Well anyway, when we got into Camp Atterbury, we got all the shots and all the rest of the stuff, and turned everything in, and got all the paperwork done, the commanding officer of that base had our commander, General Scannel—or Colonel Scannel—stand up, and he said, “Colonel,” he said, “we want to offer you people, your outfit, 1,380 men, all an increase in rank, one rank, with a one-year contract.” The Colonel says, “I would like to speak for our men, in behalf of them.” He said, “We have 1,500 hours, most of us, of combat flying.” He said, “We want to go home and stay there. It’s your baby. We quit.” And that’s the way it ended. There wasn’t one man re-enlisted. We had it.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>You had your fill?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>We had it. Don’t want no part of it. But I’ll tell you still today—still today, there’s[sic] things at night flash through my mind of what we had done and what we did.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Well, thank you for your service.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>It sticks in your mind. At that time, and the way the elements, and the way everything was, you don’t forget things like that. No, I don’t care how old you get, you will not forget them. You try to, but there’s[sic] things that always come back, like things that got blew[sic] up, and things that got burnt out, and stuff. You don’t forget it. I don’t care what you do. I’d be down running lath, and sometime you remember that time or something like that.</p>
<p class="Body">We changed an engine [inaudible], and we used to call him “Tokyo Joe.” There was a zero. He used to come over about two o’clock every afternoon, and he’d drop what they called cluster bombs. Small, little ones. Just enough to worry you. Well, one of them hits your tent—boy, you got a mess. Blow everything up. Tokyo Joe would come out every afternoon two o’clock, and he’d drop a few cluster bombs, and back over the mountains he’d go.</p>
<p class="Body">Well finally, one day, we had a [Lockheed] P-38 [Lightning] group that was going into Saigon. And this one pilot, he said, “Well, you know,” he said, “I’m gonna get that S.B.” He said, “I can fly higher than he can.” So here come old Tokyo Joe over one afternoon right after chow, and we seen[sic] this boy fire that P-38 up and he went straight up in the air, and Tokyo Joe knew something was happening. He turned tail and started to run, and before he got over the base of the Chin Hills, he blew him out of the sky. That was the end of the Japs. That was the last time we had him.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>No more Tokyo Joe?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>No more Tokyo Joe.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Well, what would you do with your afternoons after that, then, sir?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Oh, we worked, we worked round the clock. We had them—our planes flew seven days a week, 24 hours a day.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir. How long after you got back before you moved to Florida? How long did that take? Did you have to shovel snow for a winter?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>No. it wasn’t too long. A couple years. Yeah.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Oh okay, sir.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Well, I was just feeling things out to try to become a civilian again, and decide which way I wanted to go. I knew I wanted to be into metalwork, but I didn’t know how I wanted to approach it. I didn’t know exactly how I wanted to do it—how I wanted to really get things started. And then, as we got married, and we had a couple kids, and one thing another started, I said, “Well, I gotta get my own business going. That’s all there is to it.” I just can’t—I can’t work for somebody else, because he’s not only going to take the cream of the crop, and I’m going to do all the dirty work. I want to be in a position where I can do the dirty work, take the cream of the crop, and try to establish some new business. Try to build a new product. Try to do things.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Makes sense, sir.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Without being a number in somebody’s shop. So that was the way it started, that’s the way Reg Co. came about.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir. Can you tell me about your family?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Like who they are, how old, what year were they born?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Okay. Well, we got married in 1946. And Larry [Groskey]—Larry is the oldest one. He come along a year later. And Ronnie [Groskey] was the next son born, about a year or two later. Then the twins came along about two years later.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Two boys? Two girls?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Karen [Groskey] and Sharon [Groskey]. And then Rusty [Groskey] came along about a year after that, and then that was the end of our family. We had five children.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>And what’s your wife’s name, sir?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Mary Ann [Groskey].</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Oh, okay. And what are your children doing now?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Well, the oldest one, Larry, is up in De Leon Springs. He’s got a rat farm. He raises rats commercially. These people that have reptiles and all kinds of weird people—they—he’s got a steady stream. He’s got quite an operation going, many buildings full of these rats. And he sells them all over the world. Now, there’s that many kooks out there, but he’s got a real good business going.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Now, the other son, Ronnie—he’s got a drywall business. He does drywall work and painting. The girls—Sharon, my one daughter, is a schoolteacher over in Sanford. Karen is an expediter for Fed Ex downtown. And Rusty works in the shop with me.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Oh, okay, sir. And, do you have a—how did you meet your wife?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Well, that was a long story too. At—we both worked at National Cash Register. When I came out of the service, I went to work for National Cash Register, because my dad had worked there all his life, her dad had worked there all his life. So it was just a simple matter of walking in, getting a job, because that was where you—if you decided to work there, you had a lifetime job. They didn’t hire people and fire them the next day. There was enough business in that company. It was self-sustaining. When they made National Cash Register, they went all over the world and there was boxcar loads of material coming in every day. It was its own entity. When you went to work there, you quit looking for a job, because if you couldn’t make it one department, they’d transfer you to another department. There was 38,000 people working in that building—in that factory. They could find something for you to do.</p>
<p class="Body">They had a huge restaurant. So at noontime one day, the fellow that I was kind of running with at the time—he was a Navy man. We got along real good. He was running screw machines. So was I. So one day at noontime I said—well Friday, they always had fish fry, and boy, it was good fish. So Friday we’d go to the mess hall and eat lunch. Well, while we were sitting there eating lunch, Annie and her girlfriend—she worked up in Building 4. It was assembly—some kind of assembly job. Well anyway, her and her girlfriend was down there eating too. One of them had dropped a spoon on the floor. And I don’t know whether Mike picked it up or I did, but one of us picked it up, and we handed it to them, and we got to talking, and that’s how it started.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay, sir. Something as small as a…</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>It was obscure as obscure can be. So I said to her, I said, “Yeah, my name’s Dick.” She said, “My name’s Ann.” And she said, “I work over in Building 4.” I said, “Well, we work in Building 27.” And we got to talking there for a few minutes, just at lunch period, and I said, “Well,” I says[sic], “where do you live?” She says, “I live out off of Smithville Road.” And I said, “Well, I live out in Walnut Hills”—both parts of east Dayton. And, I says, “Well, what are you gonna do Friday night?” She said, “I don’t know.” I said, “Well, you want to go bowling?” She said, “Sure.” I got her phone number, and that was it. We started going together. We got married, and she got laid off, because at NCR, you couldn’t have two people in the same family unless they were married, and once they got married, you couldn’t hire them. Two people can’t work there.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>She got married. She got laid off. Well, that’s how it started. So we got married, she got laid off, and I went out, I bought a little piece of property, and I started building a house, and over a period of about two years, I got the house built, and we had all the children then. Well, most of the children then. And one thing led to another, and we outgrew that, and we went out in the country, and I bought five acres and built a house out there, and when all the children were in school, that’s when we came to Florida.</p>
<p class="Body">Things got real bad up there, up there in the ‘50s. You couldn’t buy a job. It got the same way here, except it was localized. And I went to Indiana, went to Kentucky, I went all over. There was[sic] no jobs. Nobody was hiring. So I said, “Okay.” I said, “We’re not shoveling more snow.” I said, “We’re loading up and we’re leaving.” So I hired a local trucker. I said, “Now, I want you to move my shop.” We took just the prime equipment out of there, just enough to know we could make a living. Drills and saws, a couple laths, and one thing another. Everything else, had a public sale. Sold the house, the farm, everything. We got in the truck and we moved, come to Florida. Been here ever since.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Had a lot of reasons to come to Florida.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>Yep. And like I say, when I went to work at Trade Tool Engraving, we’ve never gone out of a job since. I went back to the motel in Titusville, I said, “I wanna pack a sandwich and a couple apples or something.” I said, “I’m going to work tonight.” She says, “You’re doing what?” I said, “I got a job over in Orlando.” She says, “You kidding me?” I says, “No. here’s the paper.” And looked at it, and she said, “Well, I’ll be damned.” Been working ever since.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Well, there you go, sir. Do you feel like there’s anything we haven’t talked about that you’d like to talk about?</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>No. We’re just about as plain as you can get. Everybody in this part of the world knows us and knows what we do. We’ve got a reputation for doing a good job quick at a fair price. We—I don’t think we’ve had more than one or two disgruntled people that needed something done, and that was the fact that they were the type of people that nobody could satisfy. They have never come back, and I’m glad of it. Now, as you see, we have no advertisement whatsoever, yet we’re busy all the time. That speaks for itself. We do good work on time at a good price. And people always come back.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>The ones you want to come back [<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>And they will tell somebody else. I always give them a business card. I said, “Now, your neighbor wants something done, here it is.” That’s the only advertisement we got.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Morris<br /></strong>Okay. Well, thank you, sir, for taking the time out today.</p>
<p class="Body"><strong>Groskey<br /></strong>I’ll show you one of my cards here. Yeah. There you got them right there.</p>
<div><br /><div>
<p><a title="">[1]</a> Florida State Road 50.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[2]</a> Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS), also known as Canadarm 1.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[3]</a> Chanute Air Force Base (AFB).</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[4]</a> Present-day Ho Chi Minh City.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[5]</a> Correction: Myitkyina.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[6]</a> Khwae Yai River.</p>
</div>
</div>
Altamonte Springs
Atlantic City, New Jersey
auctioneering
Bithlo
Brookville, Ohio
Canadarm 1
CBI Theater
China-Burma-India Theater
contractors
D. M. Dennett Auctioneering
Dave Shaw
Dayton Cooperative High School
Dayton, Ohio
Dick Groskey
Don M. Dennett
Florida State Road 50
Fort Knox, Kentucky
Fort Thomas, Kentucky
Historical Society of Central Florida
Japan
Japanese
Joseph Morris
Karen Groskey
Larry Groskey
Linda McKnight Batman Oral History Project
little patients
Martin Marietta Corporation
Merris Walker
metalworking
Miami
Morris, Joseph
Museum of Seminole County History
Myitkyina West
Myitkyina, Myanmar
NASA
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Cash Register
orlando
Orlando Naval Training Center
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
Reg Company
Ronnie Groskey
Rusty Groskey
Sharon Groskey
Shuttle Remote Manipulator System
Springfield, Ohio
SR 50
SRMS
tax
taxes
Tokyo Joe
tourism
Trade Tool Engraving
U.S. 1
U.S. 17-92
U.S. Air Force
U.S. Army
U.S. Navy
U.S. Route 1
U.S. Route 17-92
USS General M. B. Stewart
veterans
Walnut Hills
World War II
WWII