Tammaro
Okay. Today, it is March 19th, 2015. I am interviewing James [Marion] Jones as part of the UCF [University of Central Florida] Oviedo History Harvest, and we are recording this interview at the Oviedo Historical Society located at the Lawton House in Oviedo, Florida. So my first question is: what is your full name?
Jones
My full name is James Marion Jones. That’s Marion—M-A-R-I-O-N. I was born June the 19th, 1945.
Tammaro
Um, and when did your family come to Oviedo?
Jones
My—on my paternal side, my, uh, great-great grandfather was…
[cell phone rings]
Jones
Was Batts Nusum Mitchell. He was the first one to move here in about 1870. He was, uh, a dentist, and he also farmed in the area now known as Mitchell Hammock, and—off Mitchell Hammock Road, which that’s named for him. Uh, in fact, he’s buried out in the Drawdy[-Rouse] Cemetery. You know where that is? Rouse-Drawdy[sic] Cemetery on Rouse Road, by UCF.
Tammaro
Oh, yeah.
Jones
Uh huh, he’s buried out there. He was the first one of our family to move from[sic] Oviedo—to Oviedo from Georgia, uh, again around 1870.
Tammaro
Okay, um, did you—your maternal family—did they live here? Or is that…
Jones
Excuse me?
Tammaro
Different? Your maternal family?
Jones
Oh, my maternal family. My maternal family—my, um, mother’s—my, uh, mother’s family was from Macon, Georgia.
Tammaro
Oh, okay.
Jones
And as far as I know, back there, on their side, my great-great grandfather fought in the [American] Civil War. His name was C. A. Dewberry. Uh, he fought in A. P. Hill’s division of the Army of Northern Virginia, under—under [Robert E.] Lee. He was, uh, injured in the Battle of Vicksburg[1], was captured at [the Siege of] Petersburg,[2] held as a POW [prisoner of war] in Virginia until the end of the war, and, uh, the[?]—he lived until 1922—I believe that it was—then[?] died in Macon, Georgia, and then my—I don’t know how my mother and father met in Macon, but they did, married in Macon, and then he brought her back to Oviedo where the rest of my paternal side was—was living at the time, and, um, my, uh—again, it was my—I keep getting all the greats confused [laughs] —Great-great-great-grandfather was Batts Mitchell. He has a daughter…
[cell phone rings]
Jones
Named Emma Jean Mitchell, who married the first Jones, uh, and her name was, uh, Emma Jean Mitchell Jones. They’re buried right here in the Oviedo Cemetery
Tammaro
Oh.
Jones
And—and again, he practiced farming out in what’s now known as the Mitchell Hammock area, and he, uh, practiced dentistry too, and, uh, when he, uh—when he died, we gave his dental kit, which is a rather elaborate dental kit, to the University of Florida and the Florida State Museum
Tammaro
Oh, wow.
Jones
In Tallahassee. That’s a picture of his dental kit. They’re all pearl—pearl-handled, uh, instruments, uh, even still had some of the chemicals and that—that he—they used then in 1870s, including arsenic—believe it or not [laughs].
Tammaro
[laughs].
Jones
And stuff like—you can have that, if you’d like.
Tammaro
Oh, thank you.
Jones
And I still have the original picture of it too, if you ever wanted a better copy, but, um, uh, it—it—yeah, they moved here. He traced it—we traced it—we can trace his lineage—Mitchell’s—back to 18—to 1700s, and they moved here from Ireland and Scotland. Uh, in fact, I don’t know if you’d be interested in any of this or not. I just ran, uh, this, uh, thing. I didn’t do all this work. Somebody else did…
Tammaro
Mmhmm.
Jones
This work, but that was the, um—the lineage there.
Tammaro
Oh, wow.
Jones
Of, um, where we came from. I’m somewhere around generation six or seven, I believe. Uh, it goes back to—it goes back to the old country anyway, beginning like when the first Mitchells moved here from Ireland and Scotland. One of ‘em served in the [American] Revolutionary War, and then his son served in the War of 1812, and then we had some that fought in the, uh, Civil War, for the South[3] of course [laughs].
Tammaro
Right.
Jones
The— I [inaudible]—the War—War of Northern Aggression, it was known as in the South, you know?
Tammaro
Mmhmm.
Jones
[laughs].
Tammaro
Wow.
Jones
And, uh, just—just for you—your case, that’s the, uh, maternal side where I came from,
Tammaro
Mmhmm[?].
Jones
And, um, the first one of that, [inaudible] I can’t trace her back as far as the old country. I never had really tried though, but that’s where they came—they all came from Macon, and thank God they left Macon too. You ever been to Macon, Georgia?
Tammaro
I have not.
Jones
Oh, don’t ever go.
Tammaro
No?
Jones
It is hot, dirty, smelly—oh, it’s a terrible place [laughs]. Great place to be from [laughs].
Tammaro
Right.
Jones
But, um, anyway…
Tammaro
Okay[?], um, so, what did your parents do?
Jones
My, uh, oh, okay, uh, like I say, uh, Dr. Mitchell—he had a, um—his daughter Emma Jean married the first Jones. He had a general store in Oviedo. He—he would’ve been my great grandfather, and then my grandfather, uh, continued that on, and he had a general store. He also worked for the railroad, and he was postmaster of Oviedo for about 15 years, and then his son—my father—John Batts Jones, Jr., uh, was postmaster of Oviedo post office for 25 years until his death in [19]63.
Tammaro
Okay[?]. Um, uh, what would you say your father was like—like his personality?
Jones
Uh, he was very businesslike. Uh, they worked hard back then. Uh, I know that, back then—actually when he was a postmaster—back then, in those days, the post office was open six days a week, including Saturdays, and of course, they had to be there in advance to open up, they had to be there afterwards to shut down, so I’ll bet you he worked a 70-hour week, and my mother was a clerk at the post office as well, and, uh—so they worked long, hard hours. It was—it was—back then in those days, it was—it was a hard life. It was a lot—lot of hours of work. [Inaudible], you know, we don’t appreciate it, uh, now, I don’t think, uh, but they did. They worked very hard. He’s very businesslike, but, uh, they were good.
They had, uh, two children: my brother[4] and myself. Uh, both of us went to Oviedo High School. I think there were 12 in my brother’s graduating class of Oviedo High School in 1955. There were 30 in my graduating class in 1963, and there were half—there were about five of us, I think, that started in the first grade together and went all the way through—graduated together.
Tammaro
What did your brother do—go on to do?
Jones
My brother, uh—you see, the basketball picture up? He was a, uh, superstar in basketball. In fact, he set records at Oviedo High School that are[?]—still exist. He’s in the hall of fame up there, and he got a full basketball scholarship to the University of Florida, uh, and he played up there his freshman year. He was red-shirted his sophomore year, and then in the summer of his sophomore year, he was working for the Alachua County, just to make some spending money, and he—and, uh, he was, uh, working with the road department, and he was sawing a limb off a tree and he had a terrible accident, fell, and nearly died, and—and he—and he was left with a severe handicap after that, which he had to cope with for the rest of his life.
So that ended his—any potential sports career that he might have had, because he was—he was excellent in basketball particularly, but[?] he was also a good baseball player. Oviedo didn’t have football back then. We didn’t have enough people in the school to have a football team [laughs].
Tammaro
Oh.
Jones
Uh, oh, where was I? Then, of course, uh—then I grew up in his shadow. He was eight and half years older than me. I certainly grew up in his shadow. Oviedo was a little town back then, and everything circulated around the church and the school.
Tammaro
[laughs].
Jones
And, of course, everybody in town knew everybody, whether you went to the gas station to get gas for your car, or whether you went to the barbershop to get a haircut. It was really—you’ve seen the movie. Do you remember—you remember Mayberry R.F.D.—that TV series?
Tammaro
Oh, I don’t know.
Jones
Okay.
Tammaro
Sorry.
Jones
You’re too young. Okay, it was just a little one stoplight town, and I grew up in his shadow. “Are you going to be as good as your brother? You gonna be…” Well, Johnny was 6’3”, 185 pounds in high school. I was 5’8, 140 pounds [laughs]. There wasn’t any way I was going to be another Johnny Jones in sports, but he was my hero, nevertheless. I loved him to death, and—and, uh, we had a good, warm, uh, relationship growing up until he, uh—until his injury [inaudible] almost took his life.
Tammaro
Mmhmm[?].
Jones
Buddied around with him. You wouldn’t know we were eight years difference, ‘cause he always took me along with him everywhere—just about everywhere he went.
Tammaro
Um, okay, so did you have any favorite family stories that you wanted to tell?
Jones
Oh.
Tammaro
Or any traditions?
Jones
Gosh, well, our, uh—like I said, work was always a big part of, uh, my mother and dad’s life, and when it came to, uh, vacation time, we did one of two things: we either went to the mountains in North Carolina or we went to Daytona Beach and spent a week or two—or a week or two up in the mountains. That was—that was their life. That’s what they loved to do. They loved to go to the mountains and they loved to go to the beach. So we would do that. Of course, I was like an only child, uh, because my brother being so much older. So when we would go on these vacations, I was like an only child, by myself. Wasn’t anybody to play with, but I had to make up my own, uh, time. Uh, in the summer, uh—again, all the life in Oviedo, in that time, circulated around either the church or the school during the regular year. When I say “regular year,” I mean like the school year from September to June.
Tammaro
Mmhmm.
Jones
Uh, uh, and then in the summers, the only thing there was to do in the summers was to go to the Oviedo swimming pool. Are you familiar with the Oviedo swimming pool…
Tammaro
Yes.
Jones
Down in Sweetwater Park?
Tammaro
Yeah.
Jones
It was built on WPA.[5]
Tammaro
Oh, really?
Jones
Uh huh, uh, back in the ‘30s, and it really was a nice pool. It was one of the nicest pools in the area. In fact, people came from as far away as Titusville and others—and other cities to use the Oviedo pool, because it was—it was—it really was a nice pool, uh, for its time. Of course, they ended up closing it in, mm, late ‘60s, because there’s no way—it didn’t meet any mind of health standards. It didn’t have a filtration system. It didn’t have a chlorination system.
Tammaro
Wow [laughs].
Jone
What they would do is, every three or four days, they would empty all the water out of the pool and fill it up with fresh water.
Tammaro
[laughs].
Jones
So the day after they filled it up with fresh water, it was cold [laughs].
Tammaro
I bet.
Jones
And then, by the fourth day, it was really nice and warm [laughs], but, uh—so that was all there really was to do much in, uh—in Oviedo back in—in, uh, the summertime was the pool, and as it[?] got a little bit older, uh, there were some summer baseball leagues for, uh—for little kids. They called them Babe Ruth Leagues, Where you just, uh—just got together and played, uh, Sanford schools or Longwood or something, uh, and then like I say, during the school year, everything circulated around the church and the school. The “school” primarily meaning basketball games, and, uh, the baseball games, of course, were played, uh, during the day, and so that wasn’t as big a community event, because people were working. They didn’t have lights back then. Um, so, eh, the, uh, basketball games were the main thing—that and—and church. Um, Oviedo was quiet. It was, of course—I started—I was born, again, in 1945, right at the end of the war. It was a quiet little town, safe. Nobody locked anything. I don’t know that we even owned any keys to the house. Um, nobody ever stole anything, or anything like that.
One kind of funny story, along that line, my mother and my brother had been to church one Sunday night. They came home and she went in. I stayed home with my dad, and she woke my dad up, and she called him J. B. that was his nickname, J.B. “J.B., who’s asleep on the couch?” And he, uh—and—and, we had a couch, [inaudible] “Nobody. It’s just Jimmy and I here.” She says “Somebody’s asleep out there on the couch.” So I went out there and sure enough, some drunk had wondered in off the street, laid down on the couch, and gone to sleep [laughs]. So I guess they just woke him up and send him on his way. I would have been just a real little fella at this time, but I remember that was just hilarious, because nobody locked anything. I don’t know if we owned any keys to the house.
Tammaro
Oh.
Jones
[laughs] And everybody else was the same way too.
Tammaro
Oh, um, what church did your family go to?
Jones
The Oviedo Baptist Church.
Tammaro
[inaudible]?
Jones
Right across the street there. Uh huh, my—in fact, my, um—my great grandfather, J. M. Jones, was the clerk of the, uh, church for many years. I don’t know how many. Uh…
Tammaro
Okay, um, did you go on to go to college as well?
Jones
Yeah, I went—after I graduated from high school in ’63, they had a junior college in Orlando called Orlando Junior College at the time. It was a private junior college. I went there for one year, and then I transferred to the University of Florida in Gainesville. It was before UCF.
Tammaro
Yeah.
Jones
There were no other—yeah, all the other colleges in the area were a few private schools—private colleges, like Rollins [College], Stetson [College], Florida Southern [College]. So I went to Gainesville, and also I always wanted to go to Gainesville, because that’s where my brother Johnny went too.
Tammaro
Did you enjoy it?
Jones
Oh, yes. Best[?]—look—look back at it now, some of the best years of my life. Of course, like every other kid, at the time, you know, “We gotta hurry up and get outta here and get on with life and blah, blah, blah,” and when you get older, you look back and those are some good years, and—wish I took more time to smell the flowers [laughs].
Tammaro
Um, so I understand you went to Oviedo [School] when the plane crashed?
Jones
Uh huh. Sure, did, and, uh, I wrote up a little thing that I sent to— I don’t know if you got this or if I sent it to—Desta’s[6] her name?
Tammaro
Oh, yeah, I think she told me about it.
Jones
Uh, yeah, I’m, um, you know—do you where the old school was? You seen pictures of the old school up there?
Tammaro
Yeah, yeah.
Jones
It was a typical old two-story, brick schoolhouse.
Tammaro
Mmhmm.
Jones
And I happened to be on the first floor, on the west side, in my English class. The teacher was Jack Caliber[sp], and I was sitting there and staring out the window, as I often did [laughs] in school—class, and I saw, uh, these planes coming barely above treetop level. There were three of them at first. There were, uh, two what they call [North American A-5] Vigilantes. They were all photo reconnaissance planes out of NAS[7] Sanford at the time, and just as they came over treetop, they obviously realized that there was a school dead ahead, and a two-story school, and they were not going to clear it. The playground, which is right across the back of the property here, was full of elementary—the elementary kids were at recess, at that time. Uh, the—the high school kids, like myself—we were all in the big building. Anyway, as soon as they realized that the two Vigilantes just phew, peeled off like that, and that, uh, A3J [Vigilante]—the one you see the picture of there.
Tammaro
Mmhmm.
Jones
That—that’s not the plane. That is just, uh, one of the type planes.
Tammaro
Okay.
Jones
Uh, as soon as he saw it, he did—what you’re used to seeing planes horizontal. I mean, I served on an aircraft carrier in the Navy, and [laughs] so I’ve seen lots of planes, and you’re used to seeing them, but as soon as he saw the school, he did this, and went completely vertical, and it is still etched in my mind. You—you don’t see planes in that vertical position, and he did that, and then, shoo—bam, and he landed about, oh, probably no more than a couple hundred feet from the school property, but [inaudible] in the orange grove that was owned by the Ward family at the time, and of course, pandemonium was breaking out at the school, even though we—there weren’t many of us. There was only like—oh, like 300 of us in the whole school at the time. That’s grades one through 12, and, um, my business teacher, right across the hallway—Novella [Driggers] Aulin was her name. She said, “Jimmy, Jimmy, won’t you—I need you to go check on Burt [Ward] and Bill Ward. See if they’re okay,” because they—they were some friends of hers that had a mobile home right over there in that area. She said “Here, take my car.” She gave me the keys to her car. Now, I was a junior in high school [laughs]. They’d hang you for this kind of stuff today [laughs]. She handed me the keys to her car, an old Mercury. I remember I had a hell of a time driving it, ‘cause it had some kind of weird transmission.
So I go out there and I jump in, and I was the only one that left the school grounds, and I drove around to the site, and by the time I got over there, the Navy had already posted a sentry, but that—but there—I was from here to the door to the crash, but I think—there was nothing—it was nothing much left. When a plane crashes and burns, I mean, it just—it just burns up. There’s a big ball of, uh, fire from the, uh, jet fuel, but that just goes up—whish, and that’s it. The rest of it then is just smoldering, and I didn’t put this in the write-up, ‘cause it was kind of, um, gross, or macabre, but you get the bodies of the three dead were on top of the ground still strapped into their, uh, seats. Uh, so then I went back to the school and I told—told Novella that Burt and Bill’s house was okay. That is didn’t hit ‘em. Of course, one of the other teachers was mad as hell at me for leaving the school grounds [laughs], but that was okay. he couldn’t do anything, because the other teacher not only gave me permission, told me to go, gave me the keys to her car, and, um, I was—I was on the student council at the time, so, uh, a delegation of us went over to Sanford to the memorial service for the three that died, but they definitely—they gave their lives to avoid hitting that school. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it, because they—they would have hit—there’s no doubt they would have hit it.
Tammaro
Alright, um, so, uh, you were in the Navy?
Jones
Yeah, I was—I was—like I say, I went over to Florida, and I graduated from Florida—the University of Florida—in ’67. This was right in the middle of the Vietnam War.
Tammaro
Ah.
Jones
And, uh, so I had to choose, uh, what I was going to do, so rather than being drafted and going into the Army, I, uh, signed up and I went to, uh, went to the Naval Officer Candidate School in New Port, Rhode Island, where I got commissioned as [inaudible] in 1967. Ending up staying and getting out in ’69, at the end of the war, and I stayed in the Navy Reserves[sic] for 20—a total of 25 years, and retired in 1991 as a captain.
[cell phone rings]
Jones
Yeah, I graduated—I retired in ’91. Um, when I got off active duty in 1969, I wanted to teach, so I went to work for Seminole County [Public] School system. I taught two years at—well, it was, at that time, South Seminole Junior High School. Then it became, the next year, South Seminole Middle School. Then I transferred to Oviedo Junior-Senior High School, where I taught for one year, then they moved the middle school to Jackson Heights [Middle School]. Uh, it had been a sixth grade center and they added the seventh grade out there. So I went out there, and I became the assistant principle at Jackson Heights, and I was there for 21 years, I believe, or—21 or 22 years at Jackson Heights, and then I transferred to Tuskawilla Middle School. I was their assistant principle for nine years, and then I transferred my last two or three years to Lawton Chiles Middle School, where I retired in—I think it was 2003.
Tammaro
What did you teach?
Jones
I taught math.
Tammaro
Oh.
Jones
Mmhmm.
Tammaro
Did you enjoy that[?]?
Jones
Oh, yeah. I’ve always been math—math buff. My, uh, high school math teacher’s probably shaking his head, but, uh—but I did. I would say one thing you might find that was interesting: I remember when I—when I was at, uh, Oviedo Elementary School, you know, the—the price of one of those half pints of milk were three cents, at that time [laughs].
Tammaro
[laughs].
Jones
I think a full lunch—and it was a full lunch back then—it wasn’t the kind of lunches they have now—like, it was 30 cents, but the milk was three cents. So it’s a different time, and, uh, so then after, uh—after I, uh, retired, then I—I, uh, always liked the, uh, east coast, and Oviedo was getting so big. This area was getting so big then that I decided to move over the Melbourne. That’s where I’ve been ever since.
Tammaro
Yeah. So how do you feel about all the changes in Oviedo?
Jones
Oh, I tell you. It’s, uh—it’s progress, I guess, but there’s sometimes [laughs] I wish they’d just put it back the way it was, but, you know, you can’t go back again. That’s just—it’s gonna get—it’s—in the next 20 years, it’s gonna be even bigger. No doubt about it. It’s—it’s—it is something. It’s something. I remember when I was in high school, where—where UCF is out there, that property was for sale, and it had a plywood si—signs up there with, uh, Carrigan and Boland Realty. All that property was for sale for 300 dollars an acre.
Tammaro
[laughs].
Jones
And the—and the sign stayed there ‘til it rotted down. That’s just how [laughs]—it wasn’t—you can imagine now what it’s worth [laughs].
Tammaro
Yeah.
Jones
[laughs].
Tammaro
That’s crazy. Did you hear they’re tear—they’re gonna make this road[8] bigger?
Jones
Yes, they did. I have, um—my cousin, um, Mary Jones, um, owns one of the buildings in the old…
Tammaro
Oh, really?
Jones
Down—Mary Jones Bird owns one of the buildings, and, uh, in fact, she was here visiting last week, and she told me she had just closed with the State of the Florida. Are they going to take this house down over here—you know, my old house?
Tammaro
Um, I don’t think so, I think it’s everything before the Baptist church. Like Townhouse [Restaurant]…
Jones
All that way?
Tammaro
Down that way.
Jones
Um…
TammaroYeah.
Jones
Uh huh, okay.
Tammaro
So I don’t think so.
Jones
I just wondered if they were going to take it down. I—I guess it’s open to some—some sort of office buildings…
Tammaro
Yeah.
Jones
Or something in there now. Many years ago, I was here for one of their[9] Great Day in the Countries, and I, uh, just went over there and walked through, just kind of looked around for old time’s sake, because as a little kid, I remember I thought it was huge, and then I went in and looked and I said, Man, this is little.
Tammaro
[laughs].
Jones
[laughs] But, uh, okay. I was wondering about that.
Tammaro
Yeah, I think that staying. Um, okay, so do you have any interests or hobbies?
Jones
Yeah, boating, sailing…
Tammaro
Boating?
Jones
Fishing, outdoor activities like that.
Tammaro
Okay.
Jones
I, uh, right now, in my retired years, I spend three—three months a year, I spend over in the Bahamas, and then we come back during the—when hurricane season starts, we start getting ready to go back the next year, and we have a lot of family that comes over with us every year, ‘cause they all love it, and stay with us for a week or two, and friends, so that’s what—that’s what I’m—that’s what my life’s doing right now.
Tammaro
Do you have family that’s still here in Oviedo?
Jones
Yes, uh, my daughter Dawn [Raquel Jones] Jensen is very active in the [Oviedo] Historical Society.
Tammaro
Oh, okay.
Jones
You know her?
Tammaro
Yes, I think I met her.
Jones
Yeah, that’s my daughter. Uh, my, um—my other daughter, Kathy [Jones], lives in Miami Beach. I have a daughter, Pam [Jones], that lives over in, uh, East Orlando, and then just two years ago, I—we lost a son, uh, uh, Jimmy. I[?]—he passed away and, uh, lost him, and that’s—that’s the family, and my cousin, Mary—she, uh—she was down—she lives in Asheville, North Carolina now. She was a longtime Oviedo resident too, but I guess that Dawn actually is really the only one who’s still living in the Oviedo area—in Oviedo, as per se.
Tammaro
Right. Alrighty, um, so were you remarried—your wife?
Jones
Yeah, uh, I got married, um, out of, uh, college. Had the two children, Pam and Jimmy, and then that marriage didn’t survive. Remarried in 1995, uh, a girl from Goldenrod. We had two children Dawn and Kathy, and that’s it.
Tammaro
Oh, okay. Um, so is there anything that you want to tell me that I haven’t asked you about?
Jones
Oh, gosh, I’m trying to think…
Tammaro
[laughs].
Jones
Oh, hi. I’m Jim.
Tammaro
[laughs].
Horner
Desta [Horner].
Jones
Oh, you’re Desta. Okay, great. Yeah, uh, we’ve been having a very interesting conversation. I [inaudible]. Let me look here real quick. Dawn, uh, sent me some things, said you might want to mention this, that, or the other. Let me see what it was that, uh, she said to talk about. Uh, uh, um, uh, well, we had, uh—the Oviedo School was really great. We had some really wonderful teachers…
Unidentified
Yeah.
Jones
There, and I really do credit the success that I have had in life with the great teachers that, uh—that we had. I know Mrs. Palmer—Betty Palmer Sprat. She’s a member of your historical society. She was my science teacher in high school—wonderful lady, uh, and there were several others like her that, uh, didn’t take any gruff from us, and believe me, we were capable of hand—handing it out [laughs], but they were always a step ahead of us [laughs].
[1] Commonly known as the Siege of Vicksburg.
[2] Officially known as the Richmond–Petersburg Campaign.
[3] Confederate States of America (CSA), commonly known as the Confederacy.
[4] John “Johnny” Jones.
[5] Originally called the Works Progress Administration and renamed the Work Projects Administration.
[6] Desta Horner, the President of the Oviedo Historical Society.
[7] Naval Air Station.
[8] Broadway Street.
[9] Oviedo Woman’s Club (OWC).
Dombrowski
This is an interview with Bette Skates, the church historian for Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Sanford. This interview is being conducted on July 8, 2010,[1] at the Museum of Seminole County History. Interviewer is Diana Dombrowski, representing the museum for the Historical Society of Central Florida.
Skates
Good.
Dombrowski
I just have some basic questions first. Your name is Bette Skates, but where and when were you born?
Skates
I was born in Philadelphia[, Pennsylvania] in 1933.
Dombrowski
Oh, wow. What brought your family to Florida?
Skates
My father’s ill health, which is what brings most people to Florida back in the day.
Dombrowski
Yeah. That’s true. When did you move here? Did you grow up in Central Florida?
Skates
I moved to Sanford in 1944.
Dombrowski
Oh, okay. What was it like? Could you describe it? Was it very big? Was it busy?
Skates
Sanford was a railroad town. And my father worked for the railroad—is the reason, besides the fact that his health was not good, and he needed to get out of the North. And he was a Georgia boy to begin with. So he wanted to come south. And so when he had this opportunity to work for the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, at the freight station, he was very eager to accept the job. We came in on a train that they call the—well, there’s two of them. One was the Orange Blossom Special, and the other was the Champion. And this was the passenger train from the North—from Philadelphia and New York. All points north.
When we came into the station, my mother had never—well, yes. Mother had been south before, but we hadn’t, as children—very young children. I was ten—nine or ten. And when we pulled into the station and got off the train, the humidity hit us like it was going to knock us out. And I said, “Oh. Let’s get back on the train.”[laughs].
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
And that was before air—trains were air-conditioned too, but—but it was still cooler on the train.
Dombrowski
Wow.
Skates
So my dad said, you know, “This is nothing. This is fine. This feels wonderful. Get used to it.”
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
[laughs]And my mother—she’s just kind of being quiet and fanning herself. We had this—it—it was the old station that was on—on Ninth Street, and they’ve since torn it down.
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
On Ninth and, uh—well, it was just Ninth Street. I guess there was side street, but I don’t recall. right off of French Avenue. Because then the tracks still all—we still had tracks running all over downtown.
Dombrowski
Hmm.
Skates
They’re—they’re not there now, because back in the day, when trains first came in—all of the wharves and the produce—everything came in to downtown to the river. So, um, we had—let me get back to my story. So we got off the train and my sister and I—and she was a year younger than I am—and we both started—“Something smells funny. What is it?” My dad said, “Oh, that’s sulfur water! Oh, come over here, girls!” He says. “Come over here!” And here’s a water fountain, right up against the train station. I think it was a brick train station. Right there, it’s all green inside, where the water is coming out. And we’re looking at this saying, “Oh, this smells so bad!” You know. We’re holding our noses, and he’s getting very annoyed with us. “Take a taste of that water. That’s healthy water. That’s better than drinking that Schuylkill River water you’ve been drinking in Philadelphia.” Of course, my mother is being as she always is—long-suffering. And she said, “Well, they can taste it if they want to.” We tasted it and we almost gagged! Sulfur water—the first time you ever taste it, is horrible. You do get used to it. And you do realize that it is healthy.
Dombrowski
Okay.
Skates
But, it’s all the water fountains in the city. And there were water fountains in the parks, and there was one in front of the [First] Baptist Church [of Sanford], and different places. They were all over town. And they were all sulfur water.
Dombrowski
Wow.
Skates
So you did get used to it.
Dombrowski
Oh my goodness. So was the smell everywhere too?
Skates
Everywhere. Sulfur smells like rotten eggs.
Dombrowski
It does. Yeah. I remember we went to the [Ponce de Leon’s] Fountain of Youth [Archaeological Park] and they were giving it out, you know.
Skate
Yes, yes. But it’s supposed to be good for you. So, we got off the train there. And we—I think we took a cab, because we didn’t have a car at that time. And we went to an apartment my father had rented. And I guess I need to say this too, because these are the things that people that haven’t lived here don’t understand or can’t get used to. When we got to the apartment—we had an upstairs apartment. A lovely old two-story house in Sanford just two blocks from where I live now, by the way. And the whole upstairs—this was during the war—and every house in Sanford had been made into apartments and efficiencies, because the Navy base[2] was here, and housing was a premium.
As we started to go up the stairs, and on the porch was a burlap sack that had something in it. My dad said to me, “Bette, grab that bag and bring it upstairs.” We had our suitcase and everything. I went to pick up the bag, and roaches came out of the bag. They were flying roaches and they were flying all over. I don’t know how many. It might have been two, but it seemed like a hundred. Of course, I dropped it and screamed and had a hissy fit, a good Southern expression. Someone had left a bag of oranges there for us. And, so roaches, of course—so that was my introduction to Sanford.
The apartment was lovely and it was cool with oak trees. Of course, I found out that oak trees breed roaches too, so we had roaches flying in the windows and things like that. Yeah, like the water, and the humidity—you try to get used to it. I don’t think I ever got used to the roaches. But that was my introduction to Sanford.
Dombrowski
How long did you live in the apartment?
Skates
We lived there for four years, and then my mom bought a house. And my father was ill. I mean, he was very ill, and he knew he was dying. My mother opened a beauty shop downtown, just in 1956, because she knew that she was going to have to support the family. He died in ’56. So she had her beauty shop for 25-30 years in Downtown Sanford.
Dombrowski
That’s really nice.
Skates
She’s the one that could tell the stories [laughs].
Dombrowski
Okay [laughs].How has Sanford changed when you were growing up there? It was a big railroad town, and your mother, it seems, was there for a very long time. Did you see it get busier? Or develop more?
Skates
Yes, development. The stores that I remember, as growing up, are—I was trying to think if there are any that are still downtown. But, coming from a big city, it was very nice that we could walk everywhere. Ride bicycles.
We went to school at the grammar school and then at Seminole High School, which was just up not too far from my house. I mean, everything was convenient. It was very nice. It was a good, homey feeling, and everybody was friendly. It was a very nice place to grow up, I think. And the schools—my father did not think much of the schools, but then again, in the South, schools hadn’t really caught up by that time. It took quite a few years for them to catch up to what we had been used to. But it, you know, was a nice place to grow up. Very nice.
Dombrowski
That’s—that’s nice [laughs].
Skates
[laughs] Yeah.
Dombrowski
What was it like for your mother to set up the beauty shop? Was it very difficult? Or…
Skates
It was very difficult. My grandparents—her mother and father—had lived in Philadelphia. And they had, um—they sold their property up there and came down, just after my dad died, to live with my mother. I know—to help her. We didn’t realize it, at the time, but, um—and they helped her with finances for the beauty shop
Dombrowski
Okay.
Skates
So that was—it was very nice. And they lived with us actually, until they both died. They lived with my mother. Um, So that was, um—that was the way she could do what she did. The beauty shop was, um—what—what she would charge for what—for the work she did—I wish I had a price list. But I remember one time, she said something about a dollar and quarter for a manicure. We all said, “Is that all?” She said, “If I had charged a dollar and a half, they wouldn’t come back.”
Dombrowski
Oh, wow.
Skates
So, I mean, the prices were—were—were really…
Dombrowski
Different.
Skates
Different.
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
[laughs] Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. But it was her—her hopes[?]—her beauty shop was in the Montezuma Hotel, which that building has burned down since…
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
Then. It was a big hotel that was built here in the 1880s.
Dombrowski
Hmm.
Skates
It was about four blocks from the river, and People would get off the steam ships and walk up the little hill and—to the hotel. It was called the “Bye Lo Hotel,” at the time—I mean, at that time. It was later changed to the Montezuma. But it was—when Mother had the beauty shop there, it was a little spooky
Dombrowski
Really?
Skates
It was old, you know?
Dombrowski
Yeah.
Skates
And—and there’s a lot of people who still lived there. But, uh, it burned down a few years ago. [inaudible]…
Dombrowski
Hmm.
Skates
About 12 years ago, I guess. So, uh, that was—that was a loss, but it was the first hotel in Sanford that had a swimming pool. Maybe the only…
Dombrowski
Oh, wow.
Skates
One. It was in the basement…
Dombrowski
Oh, okay.
Skates
Of the hotel.
Dombrowski
That would be cool.
Skates
Yeah.
Dombrowski
Yeah.
Skates
So that was neat. Later, they, uh, put a furnace in the swimming pool and didn’t use that anymore. I never saw the swimming pool with water in it.
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
I did see it with a furnace in it.
Dombrowski
Oh [laughs].
Skates
But, uh, um…
Dombrowski
Um, Where did you go to school? Did you go to college?
Skates
Yes.
Dombrowski
Okay.
Skates
I did. I went to Stetson University, um…
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
I started at Stetson in 19well, let’s see. I was going to OJC—Orlando—it was Orlando Junior College. I went there for a while, and then I went to Stetson. It took me—I—I figured this out one time, but I don’t remember. Let’s see. 70—It took me about—I hate to say too much, because I—I—it took me a long time to graduate. I got married when I was 18.
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
I went to college, and I spent three months at Middle Georgia College, up in, uh, Cochran, Georgia. My cousins, uh—my dad’s sister wanted their daughter to go, and she wouldn’t go. She was homesick. And they said, “Well, if Bette would come and go with her, she would go.” So I went there, and I spent three months. Had a wonderful time. Made the Dean’s List. Was just doing fine, except I had a boyfriend, and I was in love
Dombrowski
Aww [laughs].
Skates
[laughs]. And my moth—the woman’s—the—the—the boy’s mother kept saying, “Well, I was married when I was 18,” So I decided that it was good enough for her, it was good enough for me. So I married him. So…
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
I went to college in between having my children.
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
Every time I could get, uh—I could find some money, or get a loan, or—there—there were student loans—there were [Federal] Pell Grants we could get. They—Loans were much easier to get in those days, so I could get student loan. So I would go to school for a while and then I would get pregnant again. And then I’d…
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
Go to school for a while and then I would get pregnant again.
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
This went on until 1964—well, it—let’s see when. I don’t remember how many years. But I finally started teaching when I was—when it was, um—it was 1965, I think.
Dombrowski
Oh, okay.
Skates
So it took me a long time to get certified to teach, but I did. And then I taught for 30 years in Seminole County.
Dombrowski
Wow.
Skates
Yeah. Which has been exciting.
Dombrowski
How many children did you have?
Skates
I have four children.
Dombrowski
Oh, okay.
Skates
Yeah. So I was kind of spacing this. Finally—I might want to censor this—finally about 1968, my husband got tired of it. Anybody, I guess, could understand that. He said—he didn’t sign on for that. So that was alright. But we managed, very well, and thank goodness I had my education so I could support my family. So it was good.
Dombrowski
So you taught in the school system for 30 years. What was it like in the 60’s? What was integration like?
Skates
My first 10 years, I taught out in Geneva [Elementary School].
Dombrowski
Oh, I like Geneva.
Skates
Oh, I love Geneva. I still hear from those kids. They’re great. Of course, they’re not kids. They’re grown. It was wonderful. It was probably the best teaching assignment you could have for a beginning teacher. Because by that time, I was 35 when I started teaching.
I was trying to think of how to put this. The schools had not been integrated much at that time. I don’t remember the year that I had the first black student, but I had a sweet boy. Now I was teaching fifth grade. He had come up through the grades. There was only five grades—five classrooms—at Geneva.
And the first year that I taught there, I taught in the auditorium, because there was no place. So what they did was take out the first couple rows of seats and let us set the classroom up right in front of the stage. Which was good until I got a couple of kids that were a little bit older than they should have been in fifth grade—a boy and a girl. And next thing I knew, they were behind the stage, and I had to go get them. They were good kids, and they really didn’t do anything bad, I don’t think. But I would have been in big trouble.
But anyway, the first black child I had—I was going to say I’ll never forget his name, and I did. What a sweetheart he was [laughs].
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
But he was just testing. He was testing us, going to see if the system was going to work. He was a nice kid. Good parents. If I called his parents before he left school, by the time he got off the bus at home, they were back at the school to see what he had done or hadn’t done. Because he didn’t like to do homework and he didn’t like to do class work. Guess he had just been allowed to get away with more than he should have. But he wasn’t used to me. Anyway, he was a nice kid. Yeah, it was interesting, and the children we had at Geneva—the black and the white children—were I think just the salt of the earth. I mean they were really good people. Parents were country folks, most of them at that time. Now, later on, when UCF [University of Central Florida] opened, we started getting a different group of children. Their parents were more educated. They were professors and people that worked at the college. And so by the time I left Geneva, it had changed a good bit.
My two younger boys, I brought with me to Geneva, so I taught two of my own children in fifth grade. Which was—everybody says, “How is it working?” I said, “It works fine.” No problem. They were good kids to begin with. It worked out. It was fine. That was good too, because, that was, at the time, in Sanford. My two older children—there were a lot of problems at schools in Sanford, with the integration. They started busing—I don’t remember the year. When I was going to Geneva, my daughter was being bused to what used to be an all-black high school—Crooms High School—which they did just to integrate. And that was wrong. Because the kids—the black kids were not happy, the white kids were not happy. And the black teachers and the white teachers were all upset about it, but they were busing the kids across town. So I’m driving to Geneva ten miles away and my daughter is in a bus driving across the city, and I don’t know where she is and what’s happening. It was worrisome. But it all worked out. It just took time and a lot of patience on both sides. It should never have been separate to begin with, but we have to fix our mistakes.
Dombrowski
So tensions were high?
Skates
Very high.
Dombrowski
Was it ever violent?
Skates
Yeah. There was violence. A lot of it was threatened. You know, just like, if you go down this street, we’re going to throw rocks at the bus and things like that. That was very worrisome. And my oldest son, when he was in ninth—and well, high school. It was ninth grade at Crooms. But when he was in ninth grade and tenth grade—all through school, he was a big boy, and had red hair. And it was a novelty. He got a lot of—he did his best to stay out of trouble, but trouble came to him. And of course, he tells me now he got blamed for a lot of things he didn’t do, but I’m not going to go there. You know how kids are. Anyway, he hung in there. His high school experiences were very bad. Very bad. Yeah. It was real sad. But my daughter didn’t seem to have the problems. She was also redheaded, but she seemed to go with the flow easier. He was a target. You know, a big guy. But he’s not a fighter. He didn’t want to fight, but anyway. We got through it [laughs].
Dombrowski
Good [laughs].Did you all live in Sanford at the time? Did you drive to Geneva and back?
Skates
I drove to Geneva. Yeah. I bought the house that I’m still living in, in 1958.
Dombrowski
Wow.
Skates
Yeah. So I raised my family there. And just last couple years ago, we celebrated our 50th—I said, I’ll never have a golden wedding anniversary—so we celebrated our golden anniversary living in the house. So the kids got together and each one did something. But anyway, they have a photograph of the house framed in a beautiful frame that my grandson found when he was working for the College Hunks Hauling Junk. He found a frame and on the bottom of it my daughter wrote in gold, “Thanks for the memories.” So it’s very nice. I have it hanging over the piano. It’s very nice.
Dombrowski
That’s wonderful. So it’s downtown?
Skates
Yes. It’s downtown. If you go—First Street is the street where all the commerce is, where the business is. I live between Eleventh [Street] and Twelfth [Street] on Park Avenue. And Park Avenue’s the main street that goes down to the lakefront, and used to be [U.S. Route] 17-92 back in the day. That is where traffic went through the town. It’s in the historic district.
The house was built in 1924. It’s probably more than anybody wants to know, but it’s called a “Craftsman Airplane Bungalow.” Because the upstairs is one room, and a bathroom, and it has 12 windows all the way around. So it looks like you’re looking out airplane windows. You’re not. They’re regular windows, but anyway, that’s what it’s called.
Dombrowski
That sounds really cool. I love Craftsman style.
Skates
Yes. It’s really nice. I have pillars on that house that are real unique. They’re made out of coquina.
Dombrowski
Wow.
Skates
Yeah. My fireplace—the chimney is made out of coquina. And it’s much higher than the first floor. It goes up past the second floor, because the second floor is sitting kind of in the middle of the house. It’s really neat. You’ll have to come see me.
Dombrowski
This sounds like a real Florida house.
Skates It is a real Florida house. Yeah. For a good many years we didn’t have air conditioning, so we had what they called an “attic fan” that’s up in the second floor attic. When you turn it on and you open a window in each room, one window—it sucks the cool night air in and keeps the house cool. Only it slams doors, you have to be real careful, because doors get sucked. You get slamming doors all day. But it was neat. I don’t remember being miserable.
Dombrowski
Well, good.
Skates
I don’t remember being exactly hot. So it must have worked.
Dombrowski
Were you a member of the church since you moved here?
Skates
No. We were Lutheran when we first moved here. My sister and I had both been confirmed in the Lutheran Church in Philadelphia. And so I convinced my husband that he should join the Lutheran church, and so we went as a family until he left. And well, the kids were teenagers, and you know how hard it is to get teenagers to go to church. So I just decided that I had always loved the [Holy Cross] Episcopal Church, and I loved the architecture, and the history, and Jesus. I’m sorry, Jesus. I get carried away. But so we—my daughter and I, and my youngest son—all joined the Episcopal church. My two older sons were not interested. But they were grown by that time, and I didn’t feel like I could force them to do that. They had to want to do that. And I’m still a member.
But how I got the job as historian, I made the mistake of correcting someone. You know how when someone says, “Oh, it was 1873—2, or something?” I said, “No. it was ’73.” “We need a historian. You’re—you’re it. You’re going to do it.” [laughs].
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
I said, Oh, my gosh. I should keep my mouth shut. [laughs].
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
But I love it. I’ve been doing this since, um, [20]04.
Dombrowski
Wow. Okay.
Skates
Yeah. So the church, they said, had no written history. I’ve—I’ve found all kinds of stuff, so it’s—I’ve collected it. I’ve got it together. I write a news, uh, article each month for our church newsletter that goes out every month, telling, you know, whatever it is I found out recently about the church. And so it’s—it’s a good thing. I enjoy it.
Dombrowski
Could you speak a little about the church? When it was founded, you know?
Skates
Yes,. This was General [Henry Shelton] Sanford’s church. When General Sanford—Henry Sheldon Sanford—came to this area in 1870—probably 1870. It was after the Civil War, and he was trying, as a lot of—I don’t want to call them “carpetbaggers,” but some people do. A lot of people—wealthy northerners—came down and tried to make their fortune, or another fortune. He had been ambassador to Belgium. They called him a liaison. Liaison? That doesn’t sound right. Well, anyway, yeah. I guess he was. But he also was a spy for the Union Army during the war—the Civil War.
Dombrowski
Oh, my goodness.
Skates
And he was traveling around going to different foreign capitals, trying to get some of those countries to send ammunition and guns to the North. So there’s a whole big story that I haven’t even started on of his spying for the North. But when he finished up with that job—I guess he retired from that job, because he was probably in his 50s then, I think. He married a beautiful lady. She was living in Belgium, but she was from the United States. The Sanford Museum has a huge, gorgeous painting of the home they lived in, in Belgium. It looks like a small—like maybe the Queen might have had that summer home, or something. It was beautiful. We have friends in Sanford that have visited that area and that house, and they’re using that house as a retreat for nuns now. Anyway, General Henry Sanford—he became a general, because he gave some cannons to the state of Minnesota, because he wanted a title. So the Governor of Minnesota [Alexander Ramsey] made him a general.
So, anyway, let’s see. Let me get back to the church. So he bought a lot of land down on the lakefront. He was right for his time, that Sanford—and of course it wasn’t called Sanford in those days) —that this area, Mellonville, was going to be the “Gateway to South Florida.” Because all supplies—food, you know, everything that people need to start up a homestead—they would have to buy in Sanford. So he had a lumber mill. Somebody else had a grocery store. I mean they had all things people, you know, the pioneers, would need.
He bought orange trees from all over, and he planted orange trees. One of his groves—his first grove [St. Gertrude’s Grove] —was downtown right on the lakefront where there’s apartment buildings and city hall and things there now. Citrus didn’t do too well there. The soil apparently wasn’t good enough, and so they moved out to what he called Belair [Grove], and that’s out towards Lake Mary, around the lakes. So, his Belair Groves[sic] were very profitable.
About 1873, he decided that there needed to be a church. He and his wife, Gertrude [Dupuy Sanford]—now, Gertrude didn’t come here much, because this was not her cup of tea. And when you see pictures of her as a young girl, she’s absolutely beautiful. Beautiful clothes, and very high class. And they had about five children and they were all born in Europe. She didn’t come here often. But he planted Belair in orange and lemon trees. He had a grove manager whose name was Reverend Lyman Phelps. General Sanford was from Connecticut. And he convinced this Episcopal priest to come down to start a church. Well, he did, but he also made Lyman Phelps his agent and his farm grove manager, because the man had a background in botany too. The man was very, uh,—he was very versatile.
When, um—when General Sanford—I call him “General Sanford”. A lot of people say he—he doesn’t deserve that title, but it just comes easy to me, for some reason. It—it denotes a lot of the things that he did, other than just being Henry Sanford. Um, so they started to build this church, and Mrs. Sanford wrote to all of her wealthy friends, and in her letters, she said, “Please, um, help us build our dear little church.” And that was her—the way she called it—their “dear little church” in San—in—in this city. Someone, finally, along the line—a friend of his daughter—[inaudible] said—said, “Well, we should call this city ‘Sanford,’ after you, Mr. Sanford.” And Mr. Sanford said, “Ha. What a good idea.”
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
[laughs]. And I don’t remember the years that that was—that was started. But, so anyway, by 1873, they had completed the church. Lyman Phelps and Reverend Holeman—H-O-L-E-M-A-N—um, were priests there. And they had, um, services that—these priests—I—when I read their—in the diocesan records, there’s—they had to keep records of what trips they went on and where they went. They rode horses, walked—horse and buggy—through Florida sand, which anybody that walks through it knows that—there was[sic] highways. The only way you went were by animal, you know, roads, where animals, or maybe the Indians, had made them. Um, they went to, um—but they went all over Central Florida. They went to Eustis, to Longwood, to Orlando. They started the St. Luke’s Church in Orlando, which is now the Cathedral [Church of St. Luke]. They went all over Central Florida, uh, especially Lyman Phelps. Um, But he—they were, um—it just amazes me, when I read their exploits, and the alligators…
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
You know, the mosquitoes, the—oh, my soul. But, um, anyway, so that’s how the—the Episcopal church got its start. That church—that was built in 1873. 1880, along comes—and they called it a “tornado,” and I haven’t been able to say that it wasn’t, but I think it was more like a hurricane, and maybe a tornado—a tornado was [inaudible]. It blew down Mrs. Sanford’s dear little church.
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
And we have pictures of it. And the—the steeple is laying on the ground, and the church is still standing, but it’s—it’s—it’s damaged. So they got busy. Mrs. Sanford raised some more money, and by, um, 1880, they had built another—well, yeah. It was 1873. By 1880, the church blew down. By 1881, they had a new church built. That church survived until 1923, and it burned down.
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
So they—1924 and ’25, they rebuilt it. So the church standing on that property is still on the same property that Sanford gave us. That church now was built, uh, in 19—1924, it was completed. It’s, uh, what they call “Spanish Mediterranean” [Architecture]. It’s…
Dombrowski
Oh.
Skates
Very Spanish-looking. It’s a very pretty church.
Dombrowski
Where is it?
Skates
It’s on the corner of Fourth—Park Avenue and Fourth Street.
Dombrowski
Okay.
Skates
And the parish hall was built by 1926. So one of the things I always thought was interesting, when they first built—or probably the second church—in the side where they had some room, they put orange trees so that in case times were bad, they would have some money. They would have a way of getting money still.
Dombrowski
Aw.
Skates
That was kind of interesting.
Dombrowski
Um,I do have a question. I don’t know much about the church in Sanford. Is it the main church for the city? Are most of the people in Sanford Episcopalian?
Skates
No, no. They’re not. Probably back in the day, it was the only church, but then of course, the South is mostly Methodist and Baptist. And right now the street—Park Avenue should have been called “Church Street.” Because there’s the Episcopal—well, first, a block closer to the lake was the Congregational church. But since they’ve moved that—they tore it down and moved down Park Avenue. The next church was Holy Cross. Then, next door to us is the [First United] Methodist Church [of Sanford]. Right next door to that is the [First] Baptist Church [of Sanford].
So on Sunday mornings, we used to have a real traffic jam down there. Not so much anymore. No, Holy Cross—I think it’s like all the churches. They’re struggling. But we’re still here. We have two services, an 8 o’clock service and a 10 o’clock service. If we had everybody at 10 o’clock, we would have a good crowd. But when you separate it into two—the people who go at 8 o’clock won’t come at 10. The people who come at 10 o’clock won’t go at 8 o’clock. So our priest does two services. And yeah, it’s a busy little church. We have a fairly good-sized Sunday school, considering Sunday schools are hard for churches these days too. So, probably at one time it was the center of the area, church-wise, but not anymore.
Dombrowski
In your time as a historian there, have you—reading through the documents and that sort of thing, have you noticed any trends in how many members they had? Like when UCF came, did more people come to the church?
Skates
It was the biggest—the largest crowds that we have ever had was through the war years when we had a Navy base in Sanford. And that started up as a training base for carrier—for planes to land on carriers. I’m not as familiar with the history of the Navy base, but it closed at the end of World War II, and it was a big drop in the congregation. But then when [the] Korea[n War] came back, they started the base up again. And a lot of those people too have been Navy people—very sophisticated—have been all over the world. Lived in many different places.
So those are the people we seem to pull in more than the people that grew up here. Most Southern people are Baptist. My dad’s family—they were all Baptist. But it’s different. Different churches suit different people. I mean, you want whatever it is that makes you feel the presence, or that you feel that you need, that’s where you should be. So I’m very ecumenical. I can, um, belong to any church you want to [laughs]. But Holy Cross is lovely. And the services are beautiful [laughs].
Dombrowski
Uh, how involved has the church been in the community? Do they hold a lot of, have they held a lot of events?
Skates
Sanford—Holy Cross—was the “Guiding Light for Grace and Grits,” which is to feed the homeless. It’s a feeding program that we had at Holy Cross. And I can’t remember these years, it’s been going on for a long time. And we had it at Holy Cross. Every Wednesday night, Holy Cross would feed, oh, a hundred people. But it would depend on the season and what. Homeless people from all over. And not just men, but families. People would come to eat.
A few years ago, we wanted to remodel the parish hall, which is where the kitchen is. And we opted to find another place to hold the Wednesday night feedings—dinners, I should say—and that was—that was hard, because the people at the church—and we have some people who are so dedicated to this—they finally found that the City [of Sanford] would let them use the [Sanford] Civic Center. It costs, I think, $200 a month or something like that. We have to pay the City for that. So now they’re feeding them down there. And also, during the transition when the parish hall was being refurbished, and the kitchen was—when we had a new priest—he really has done a lot. I mean, he has Wednesday night services, and so they had a meal there on Wednesday nights, and classes and everything. So that kind of made them want to keep the “Grace and Grits” out there. And Holy Cross wasn’t the only one that does this. I must explain this. Every church—not every church, but many churches in Sanford—there’s a Methodist church, St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Lake Mary, the [All Souls] Catholic Church [of Sanford]. All of them.
Dombrowski
Just a minute here. Just to make sure.
Skates
All of them have people that come and help so we’re not doing it by ourselves. Did it run out of battery?
Dombrowski
No. It’s working. No. It’s working, I just wanted to make sure that the whole thing had recorded and everything. I’m sorry.
Skates
But anyway, it’s a whole city thing. There’s a whole lot of people involved in this. So, yeah. We do that. We also have our new priest—well at least not that new anymore. He’s been here 2 or 3 years, and he’s very much involved in helping the homeless. They call it “SACON[sp].” I couldn’t tell you what it stands for, but they go to different places in the neighborhoods and help homeless people get ID cards. Because if they don’t have an ID card, they can’t—well, there’s a lot of things they can’t do. They can’t even get shelter sometimes, if they’re going to shelters. So this has been a good thing. And helping—it’s helping the city to know what the population is of the homeless, and where they’re staying and what they’re doing. So that’s a good thing. He was just very much involved in that.
We have some kind of a health thing one day a week at Holy Cross in the mornings, where people can come. I’m not really sure what, I guess I shouldn’t say anything about it, because I’m not sure what that is. I don’t what the group is that’s doing it. But yeah, Holy Cross is involved.
Dombrowski
Uh, is there anything about the church that you’d like to discuss that we haven’t covered?
Skates
We have a lot of memorials in Holy Cross that I’ve been trying to—and this is a hard job. We actually have two memorial books that from the beginning people have—the gifts of love that they’ve given in memory of someone that they lost. But when I go to the memorial books, there are items in there that we no longer have. We’ve had a couple of break-ins over the years, so they’ve lost some things, and then there’s items that we have that aren’t listed. So we’ve endeavored to work on this. I was trying to take pictures and it’s just one other job that I haven’t finished. It takes a lot of time to do that. And I really—I could get help—old-timers, because I’m not an old-timer there. They’ll say, “Oh no, I remember that was given in memory of so-and-so.”
Right now, I’m working on—when the church was rebuilt in 1923-1924, the altar and the pulpit at the front was very plain. I can only tell from pictures, but unattractive. And in 1940, sometime, a member of the choir—and I’m still working on this. This is one of those strings you have to keep following and try to see if you can come to the end—was killed in an automobile accident. And he is—what’s the word? They have said that he had given in 1945 money to buy a new altar. A new altar, and reredos behind the altar, and an altar, and chairs. We have a lot of furniture, because it’s a very formal church. I don’t think you call it “High Episcopal.” I think some people might, but we have a good candelabra, good communion-ware. A lot of stuff. And anyway, this man—apparently there was a big brouhaha that the vestry wanted to put a new roof on the church, which is a tile roof—which always needs work—or to buy the altar furniture. And just recently I talked to a lady, who’s in a—a Heritage [at Lake Forest] nursing home out here, who was telling me about this. I didn’t know this story. And she said, “Oh, my goodness.” She said, “Everybody was fighting, and everybody was mad. They wanted the roof.” “No, no. We want the altar.” Well anyway, the altar people won out, because the priest wanted the altar…
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
Redone [laughs]. So, uh—so I’m still working on that. And, as, uh, oral tradition says, that that money was used for the new altar-ware—altar and furniture, I should say—um, by this man, who gave it, But, um—in honor—in [inaudible] —yeah. In of our members who fought in World War II.
Dombrowski
Okay.
Skates
So I asked one of our older members if he remembers that. He says, “Oh yeah, there’s a plaque up there in the front of the church someplace that tells all the members that died. I’m sure it says something about ‘in memory of’ that.” Well, the plaque wasn’t there, so several ladies started on a search of the rooms, and they found the plaque. Only, it wasn’t a plaque. It’s a big framed picture with 70 names beautifully written by someone on there, with little gold stars next to five men who were killed during the war. But I still don’t know if it’s a memorial to them for the furniture. So I’m working on that, because I have the big memorial plaque reframed and I guess we’ll rededicate it one of these days when we find out what’s the story on it. But there’s things like that that come up when someone will say, “Well, who gave that baptismal font? What was that all about?”
Or, we have two things in the church—this is interesting—we have two things in the church that we know for certain were there in the first church. That General Sanford gave: a crucifixion picture that he had bought in Belgium and donated it to the church. That picture—and we were trying to get an idea of the value of it—and the man that we had restore it said, “It’s not worth a thing. All it’s worth is what it’s worth to the congregation. But as far as famous artist, no.” It’s the crucifixion. Even after it as restored, still doesn’t look very good. Because it went through the hurricane the first time. Through the fire the second time. Someone rescued it. So it has—the restorer said it has water damage. So that was something that we know General Sanford physically probably touched, and that it was there. The other thing is a small lectern, where they put the Bibles on, or the prayer book. And that’s in the chapel that was given by Reverend Lyman Phelps. We think he built it. He made it in memory of his wife. So that’s pretty interesting to have two things back a hundred and how many years—138 years or whatever it is.
Dombrowski
Oh. That’s very special.
Skates
Yeah. It is special. So it’s the history. I mean, I could go to any church. I love—just love churches. But I love the history of this church. It’s—and I’m sure that if I were in Philadelphia I’d go to Christ Church I went to Williamsburg [,Virginia][3]—my mother and I—we went to the—oh, what was the name of that Episcopal church[4] there? It’s so beautiful in Williamsburg.[5] Where Patrick Henry gave his speech.
Dombrowski
In Virginia?
Skates
In Virginia. That was—so it’s the ambiance. It’s what you feel. It’s very interesting. And I do get excited about it [laughs].
Dombrowski
I’m just going to check the battery one more time. Oh, it looks fine. Whoa. I didn’t notice the bars. They change as I talk and get closer. But the battery’s fine. Okay, great.
So, uh, you’re a historian there. It sounds like you do a bunch of different things.
Skates
I’m kind of a detective. There’s not a day goes—well, a day—there probably is. But not a week goes by that someone says, “Bette”—well somebody asked me the other day, “Isn’t our,”—we have a huge bell on the bell tower—“Isn’t that bell called ‘Raphael?’” I said, “No, I don’t think—that’s not the name of the bell.” And he said, “Oh, I’m pretty sure it is.” Well, now I have to figure it out. Is it or isn’t it? Or, people will say, “Well, where did the bell come from?”
Oh, and then we have this magnificent organ of Ferrante[sp] Brothers organ from—I can’t remember where it’s from. I want to say Canada, but I may be wrong. It was installed in 1947, and this is just a magnificent piece of furniture. Ferrante[sp] Brothers. I believe there’s another name that goes with that. I guess I can’t remember. But anyway, it doesn’t matter. This is not a test. That was put in in 1947, and I’ve forgotten how many pipes there are for it, but—oh, more than 100 pipes. There’s pipes and pipes. Pipes that you can see over the choir loft, but there’s also a whole closet full of pipes. Our organist—she knows how to play it. It’s just beautiful. So that was—I don’t know where the money for that came from. As far as that being a memorial, or something, I don’t know. I don’t think so. So many things are, but that’s not. But someone will say, “Well, what year was the organ installed?” Or, “Where did it come from?”
So I—yeah. I do. I have to have a little notebook in my pocketbook and I keep writing it down and then I have to go back and research it. And I have a lot of friends too that have been long, long-time members there, so I usually go to them and say, “Do you know anything about this?” And some of them will say, “No, I don’t know.” Or, “We’ll look it up.” But we have—and I’m trying to get all the histories together and put them in one place so it’s pretty organized. It’s fairly organized, but not as much as I would like to have it done. But I’ve saved all the newsletters[sic] columns that I’ve written over the years. I have them each in a different notebook with acid-free paper so after I type them I print them off and put them in the folders and so I’ve got all that. So that’s a pretty good history right there. It’s good. Did I answer the question? [laughs].
Dombrowski
Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Skates
Also, I must give credit to Alicia Clarke at the Sanford Museum. We have much help from her. And then some! Sorry.
Dombrowski
[laughs] No. I don’t mind at all. I know we’ve been talking for a long time now, but if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to find out more about what your time as an educator was like Seminole County.
Skates
Oh, I think I had the best 30 years that you could have had really, because it was—right now, I have friends, my neighbors. I have a lot of friends still teaching, and it’s very different now. It’s very different. We had—the wonderful thing we had that teachers today don’t have, and that’s freedom. You can’t say—if Johnny brings in a whole bag of shells that he had his mother just collected at the beach, we can’t dump those shells out and sit down and go through them and maybe catalog them or talk about them or what can we do with it. There’s no way of being spontaneous, because teachers today—if that child brought that in, I would have to say, “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to put that away. We don’t have time to look at that.” And that bothers me a lot. Because I really feel like the teachable moment is when the kid is interested. And if nobody is interested, then there’s no teachable moment.
It’s—when I was teaching at Idyllwilde [Elementary School] one year, the kids found a dead rabbit on the playground. I have a friend who had just moved here from Chicago[, Illinois], and she was working with me at the time. She was getting ready to take over half of my class, because I had 45 kids in my class. And they had hired her to take part of my kids. But she tells me about this every time she thinks about it. She said, “So, the kids wanted to know what to do with the rabbit.” And I said, “Well, we’re going to have to bury it. Let’s bury it.” So we got a shovel from the janitor and the boys dug a hole right outside the classroom door. And buried the rabbit. Well, they got to talking about what was going to happen to the rabbit in the ground. Well, of course the kids—and these were fourth and fifth graders—they would say, “Well, the bugs and the worms are going to eat him,” and so forth. So, just before school was out, the boy that dug the hole said, “Ms. Skates, can we dig that rabbit up? See what’s left? See if we can find his bones?” And I said, “Well, that’s a good idea. Let’s do it.” So we did. We couldn’t find it! This kid dug up a whole are as big as this table. Couldn’t find a thing left of the rabbit.
Dombrowski
Oh, my goodness.
Skates
But that sounds—and it would probably almost be silly to some educator—but those are things that—what did they learn? Well, we could put a whole bunch of things on the board. We learned this. We learned, you know—what is this? So, or you know—well like the space shuttle. We had classes when the Space Shuttle [Challenger] blew up. We all went outside on the playground to watch the space shuttle go up. And this was—what was this? [19]89?
Dombrowski
Oh, I have it here. No, I don’t.
Skates
But anyway, we were all out on the playground, watching, and we saw it went up, and we saw all these stars and everything. The kids were all saying, “Look at that. They’re putting out stars,” all kinds of things that kids would think of. And my fellow teacher was standing next to me, she said, “I think we ought to take the kids in.” I said, “Okay.” So we take the kids in. Well, she happened to have a little TV set in her closet. And we brought that out to see what had happened. And we could do that. You couldn’t do that today.
Dombrowski
That’s true.
Skates
She brought it out and we set that out between our two classrooms. We watched it all day long. The kids—it was very sad. We all were grieving. So we grieved together. So, what is this? How did this happen? All we could do was speculate. We didn’t know. But what would you, you know, you…
Well, first off, I think taking time outside would probably take time away from teaching about the FCAT [Florida’s Comprehensive Assessment Test].
Dombrowski
I was going to ask how you think the FCAT has influenced—okay.
Skates
You know, every week, teachers, back in the day—and I retired in [19]97. Every teacher gave a test at the end of the week. You would take your math book and go through—and everything that I had taught in math that week—the test would be on Friday. Same thing with spelling tests—on Friday. Social studies on Friday. And we did teach social studies. We did teach the Constitution. We did teach early American history. We did teach that. I think that, in fifth grade, we stopped at the Civil War, but that’s all we had time for. So, you gave the test. At the end of the week, you knew what the child had done. By the time you correct those papers, you knew that Johnny and Mary and Susie were having trouble with multiplication. So next week, let’s zero in on those three and their multiplication tables. How hard is that? I mean, why do we have to do what they’re doing now? I don’t understand.
Dombrowski
I don’t want to interject my opinion too much, but my mother teaches middle school. And so I’ve heard a lot about FCAT, and a great deal about how it’s changed. She used to teach in New York and it’s very different.
Skates
Oh, yes. I think, even now—well, this friend of mine that came down—she wasn’t a friend at the time, but now she’s my best friend—from Chicago, you know. She’d said, “Oh, my gosh. These schools—they’re so far behind! In Chicago in fifth grade, we were doing this.” And you know, well, it takes a long time. I mean, you know, the [Great] Depression hit the South harder. The agricultural society makes a difference. Kids are not—they may be working in the fields some. I mean not so much in my time, but it was just different. And it takes a long, you know—I think this a lot about even the ship of state, it takes a long time to turn a ship around. And it takes a long time to turn the education system around. It’s like it’s the biggest boat you ever saw and you’re just trying to turn it around and make things better. I think we’ve come a long way, but I think there probably still is a way to go.
But now we’ve got—it’s so muddled with this FCAT and this—pushing, pushing these kids. My grandson goes to a parochial school. Goes to St. Luke’s Lutheran Church School in Oviedo. He doesn’t have that stigma hanging over his head. He’s going in third grade. He loves school. He’s a good student. And he struggled to begin with. He had problems with his reading. But if he were in the public school, he would really be in trouble. First off, he’d be going into the third grade. You have to take the FCAT. If you don’t pass that, you have to repeat third grade. Well, his handwriting is very poor, what are you going to do about that? But the private school—they give them more time. They also give them more one-on-one situations. I don’t know. I’m just so that glad that his mother and father—my son and his wife—are so wise. And it’s a sacrifice. It’s a lot of money every month to keep him in private school. He’s their only child, which is a good thing. It’s tough. Your mother is right, and she’s right in the middle of that FCAT business in middle school.
Dombrowski
Uh, you mentioned the Challenger accident. Are there any other events that stick out in your mind, that you remember teaching or going through with your students?
Skates
What did we have? [John F.] Kennedy’s assassination didn’t affect me, but it did my children. They were in elementary school and Kennedy was assassinated—my two older ones. They were talking about this, not long ago, about the atomic bomb scare with the Cuban Missile Crisis. They were talking about the duck-and-cover. You know, an atomic bomb is blowing up over your state, and what do you tell the kids to do? You tell them to get under their desks and cover their head[sic]. That involved them. I wasn’t teaching in ’63. Let’s see, what else could there be? Thinking back to Kennedy, I can’t think of anything else.
Dombrowski
Okay. Did UCF opening or Cape Canaveral opening change…
Skates
It did. I think it changed. With the Cape, with Geneva—the school—when we started getting the influx of people moving to that area. The fathers were engineers and the moms worked, most of them, over there too. Those were great kids. I don’t know, maybe because the parents were involved in scientific things like the engineering and everything. Every couple years, it seems like they come up with something new. Your mother can relate to this too.
They taught us what they call the “New Math.” And I’d only been teaching a couple years and we had this great, and I still have the book—a great big blue book about New Math. Well first off, we were supposed to be teaching the metric system, and that was because of the engineering thing, I think. But they had—I remember one of the fathers was an engineer and he came to school and I was struggling as much as the kids were. They gave us the course in the summer and we were supposed to start teaching it in the fall. So I really didn’t—nobody had a chance. The father came in, he said, “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” Now, how do you talk to an engineer? And I was honest with him, “Well, yes. I do.” I said, “We had six weeks.” I think we had a course. And I said, “Not as much as I’ll know at the end of this year.” And he said, “Well, my son doesn’t know what the hell’s going on.” I said, “Well, I am really sorry.” But he was very nice about. But he really kind of put me on my toes. Which was a good thing. I’m glad he did. But by the end of the year, I even knew what prime numbers were [laughs].
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
In fifth grade, you teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I figured the fact that I could multiply and divide fractions—I was pretty smart [laughs].
Dombrowski
[laughs].
Skates
Don’t go beyond that. Oh dear.
Dombrowski
I just have a couple specific questions left. If you wouldn’t mind, just because it’s a personal history about you, what were the names of your children—are the names of your children?
Skates
Phillip, Pamela—well, he’s Jimmy. And the youngest is Bill. They all have their given names, but that’s what we call them. They were—Phillip was born in [19]5—he was born ’54. I have a nice little rubric here. Pam was born in ’56. Jimmy was born in ’58. And Bill was born in ’63. I think I was busy going to school there or something.
Dombrowski
Uh, where—which schools did you teach at? You taught at Geneva.
Skates
I taught at Geneva. That was my first assignment. Well, I went to Southside, which is a school in Sanford right near my home—was where I did my internship, and that’s where my kids went to school. And that’s an old—that was—when I bought my house, that was the best school in Sanford. And that’s the reason I bought that house. It’s now been turned into—what did they call it? A nursing home. Golden Years nursing home. It’s a lovely school. It’s built in a square and in the center is an atrium. And all the classrooms are built around the atrium. And down in the basement is the lunchroom, and up a little flight of stairs in the auditorium. It was a very nice plan for a school, but it’s a nice plan for a nursing home, I guess. But they closed the school, because they built new schools and whatever. But my kids got to go through that, which I was glad for that. At least the two oldest ones did. And then the other two came with me to Geneva. What was the question?
Dombrowski
Oh. Which schools have you taught at?
Skates
Oh, and then I went, I was at Goldsboro [Elementary School. This was a good thing. When I left Geneva, and I had gotten my Master’s in Exceptional Education, and I wanted to teach learning disabled children. And the principal at Geneva, for his own reasons, said he wasn’t going to have a special ed[ucation] class. Well, it wasn’t true, but that’s what he told me. So I had this Pell Grant that I had used to get my Master’s, that if I taught at a [Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965] Title I school, which I don’t know if you know that means now, but it was a school that had more free lunches than any other school or something like that. So the principal at Goldsboro called me and he said, “If you come and teach the learning disabled children at Goldsboro,” he said, “I can sign off on your student loan.” So I spent two years there and signed off all that my Master’s cost me. I mean, I had not paid for—he would sign off the loans—the superintendent would sign it off…
Dombrowski
So they would pay for it.
Skates
So they paid for it. So that was very good. I don’t know if that’s what you call a Pell Grant. I’ve forgotten. But I taught there two years and then the principal from Idyllwilde called and said they had a new wing opening up. They call it the E Wing—Exceptional Ed. Wing. And would I come out and do their SLD [Specific Learning Disabilities] classes. I said, “Oh, yes.” So that’s where I was when I retired.
Dombrowski
Okay.
Skates
That was good. I—those were good years. They were all good years.
Dombrowski
Well, good.Those are all the questions and topics that I have. Is there anything else you’d like to speak to that we haven’t?
Skates
I don’t know. I think I’m probably boring you.
Dombrowski
[laughs] Well, no. This is a good time.
Skates
Now, how are they going to work this? Are they going to have a library?
Dombrowski
Yeah, I think I’ll just…
Skates
Right.
Youngers
My name is Stephanie Youngers. Today is September 23rd, 2010. And I am interviewing Mr. Cecil [A.] Tucker [II], here at the Museum of Seminole County History. Mr. Tucker, how are you?
Tucker
I’m doing great.
Youngers
Good. We’ll start with where and when you were born, if you’re willing to give us that information.
Tucker
Yes. I was born actually in Brevard County in Rockledge. May 26th, 1931. And we lived in Rockledge—my mother and dad and I—for just a few weeks. My dad was working for the state and the tick eradication and his job as a range rider was over in east Orange County. So he moved us to Bithlo. And so, I was in—actually, he was already working for the state and headquartered out of Bithlo when I was born. My mother went over to Cocoa, to where there was some of the family, to help when I was being born.
Youngers
Oh.
Tucker
We lived in Bithlo for about six months. And then we moved to Christmas.
Youngers
Okay.
Tucker
And that’s another story.
Youngers
And is that where you live now, is in Christmas?
Tucker
Yes. Yes.
Youngers
Okay. How—how was it growing up there? Obviously different from today, but…
Tucker
You know, Christmas is a kind of unique community. In a lot of respects, there’s some areas of it—we live a lot different today than it was when I was growing up, primarily because the people worked real hard to keep it that way and not let influence come in.
Youngers
That’s good.
Tucker
But the community is—always had a—it’s a real close-knit community. And people pretty much look after each other, and help each other out. And the [Fort Christmas] Historical Park in Christmas is helping to preserve some of this kind of history.
Youngers
And like, we talked about the Cracker Christmas, and that’s one of the main events out there.
Tucker
Yes.
Youngers
And I know a lot of people don’t hardly go to Christmas, but during that time of year, you’ll find a lot more people out there.
Tucker
Cracker Christmas is always the first weekend in December. That also is the time that we have the tree-lighting and carol singing. We have decorated a Christmas tree. A large, living Florida red cedar. We’ve decorated it every year since 1952.
Youngers
Wow.
Tucker
And we have the carol singing and tree-lighting. Tree-lighting and carol singing, always the first Sunday in December every year. So Cracker Christmas—that weekend involves usually the tree-lighting and carol singing, as well as what’s going on at the fort.
Youngers
And is it like crafts and things at the fort?
Tucker
Yes, at the fort. Crafts and—it’s a real nice festival. It really is.
Youngers
I know most people that go to Christmas during Christmastime want to get their letters stamped from Christmas.
Tucker
Yes. That’s an interesting situation. When Mother became Postmaster in 1932, she found out how much people were interested to get their cards postmarked at Christmas time. So she created a Christmas tree cachet that could be put on the extra onto the cards.
Youngers
The envelope?
Tucker
Yes. Yeah. And so, she started doing that. And that was in 1934.
Youngers
And everything is by hand too?
Tucker
Everything was by hand. Yeah.
Youngers
Wow. So how many people do you think, on average, would come through there?
Tucker
Well, it started out, you know—it’d be 30 or 40 thousand a year. Now, we’re probably somewhere between 300 and 500 thousand a year that have this done. But it’s just for those extra, little special things. We don’t get a whole lot of cooperation out of the Post Office Department. Because they consider this an extraneous thing. It creates more problems for them.
Youngers
Right. But you all still do it out there.
Tucker
Still do it. Yeah [laughs].
Youngers
That’s crazy. Wow. Was there any other kind of events and things that you can remember, growing up?
Tucker
As I was growing up, the school—the activities at the school pretty much centered—it was the activities in the community. We’d have school plays, and get-togethers at school, a covered dish dinner, and this sort of thing. All those kind of things going on all the time in Christmas.
Youngers
Right. And the school is located not in Christmas?
Tucker
Yep. Well, in those days, until 1969, there was a school in Christmas. It started out in the 19—in 18—probably the 1880s. It could have been a little before that. The post office—the church in Christmas was started in 1871, and shortly after that, the school was created in the church, in the building. But we’ve had a school in Christmas ever since, until 1969, when it ended up getting moved to Bithlo.
Youngers
And that was all the grades throughout?
Tucker
We had a, it was eight grades. My first eight years of school was in that building. First four grades—we called “The Little Room,” and that was in the small room. That building has been moved to the fort, and is one of the preserved buildings at the fort. The larger room was grades four—five through eight.
Youngers
And the high school?
Tucker
Well, in those days, they didn’t—we had a junior high, but it went from ninth grade on. And now they call it, well…
Youngers
Now they have elementary school, middle school, and high school.
Tucker
Middle school. Yeah. They call it middle school. So…
Youngers
And which high school did you go to?
Tucker
And then I rode a bus to Orlando and went to Memorial Junior High [School] in Orlando, and then I transferred in the tenth grade. I transferred to Orlando High School—OHS.
Youngers
Okay. And after that, you went to the University of Florida?
Tucker
Well, I went to Orlando Junior College, which was there in Orlando. It was in the early stages of junior colleges getting started. But I only went one year, because I had in my 4-H work. I had won a scholarship to the University of Florida. And that scholarship was fixing to expire on me, so I had to transfer out of junior college up to the university so I could get my scholarship.
Youngers
We’ll come back to your schooling. How long were you into the 4-H? I mean, what did you do while you were in there?
Tucker
I was always very active in 4-H. In fact, when I got on up to—I stayed active in 4-H even when I was in high school. I drove my dad’s cattle truck, and I would haul our dairy heifers to the various shows around. I carried Orange County heifers to Tampa—to the show.
Youngers
So you showed dairy cows?
Tucker
Showed dairy cows and beef cattle. Yeah.
Youngers
Alright. And did you show any hog, or anything like that?
Tucker
No. Never was very intrigued by hogs.
Youngers
I can understand. So you won a scholarship through doing your shows and things?
Tucker
Through the 4-H. yeah.
Youngers
Well, good. Okay.
Tucker
Wasn’t a very big scholarship, but in those days, every penny counted.
Youngers
Exactly.
Tucker
I think it was $100, or something like that.
Youngers
Well, good. And that helped you get into the University of Florida?
Tucker
Well, no, it just helped to pay some of the expenses when I did get in.
Youngers
When you went there, did they have, like—was it still an all-male college, or…
Tucker
You know, I need to do a little research on that. It was close. We did have—when I was attending there, it was co-ed. But it was pretty close to the time that it became co-ed, because I went there when—as I was active in 4-H, we used to go to what they called “Short Course.” And we spent a week at the university in the summertime every year. If you won that position in 4-H, you could go to Short Course. So I had been to Short Course, I guess, every year for five, six, seven years. And so I was involved there at the university as a 4-Her long before I got there as a student, so I knew some of the things that was going on.
Youngers
And they already knew you. They were expecting you.
Tucker
Yeah.
Youngers
So is that what you went to college for was for the agriculture?
Tucker
Yes.
Youngers
Did they have a specific program?
Tucker
I was going to major in animal husbandry. And did.
Youngers
Okay. And you went for four years at the university?
Tucker
Well, I actually went for four years, and I was thinking about going to vet school. And at that time, the only vet school was in Auburn, Alabama. And I applied, and the earliest I could get in, I would be already out of college. You had to wait two or three years to get in. So I decided I would back up and look at the feasibility of going into—I was interested in either extension agriculture, extension work, or in research. So, I ended up going toward a Master’s degree. So I got my Master’s degree, and had an opportunity to go into extension down in Marion County, in Ocala. And that’s what got me into County Agent.
Youngers
So after you graduated, you went right into the [Marion County] Extensions Office? Wow. And you were the youngest, one of the youngest in the state?
Tucker
Well, there were a lot of young assistant county agents my age. But when I became the full agent, I was the youngest at that time of that.
Youngers
And had you—when you first started out with the Extensions Office, did you work there for a while, or did you just go right into the position that you were in?
Tucker
I went right in. When I graduated from university, in Marion County, Assistant Agent position opened up. I applied for it, and received it, and went right into it. And so I was very fortunate, because Marion County was one of the most active 4-H counties in the state. They had numerous state titles, teams, judging teams that won. And then 4-Hers that won positions and went to Chicago[, Illinois], or the national deal. And so it was a great county to go into for training.
Youngers
What did you do at the Extension Office when you first started out there?
Tucker
Well, I—my job was two-fold. As a—see, at that time, I had a Master’s degree in Animal Husbandry and Nutrition. So, I had a job in Marion County working with the cattle people. And then I had the job of being 4-H Agent. And so, as leader of the 4-Hers, I ended up training judging teams. We had judging teams in dairy, and judging teams in beef, and judging teams in poultry.
Youngers
And you taught them, like, what to look for in the animal…
Tucker
Right. In the area of poultry—I didn’t know that much about it, but I found somebody that did.
Youngers
That seems like it would a little bit more in-depth.
Tucker
Yep. But we had some good teams. Some great 4-Hers there.
Youngers
So, when you say, working with the cattle there, like what types of cattle? What types of things did you do with them?
Tucker
Well, it had to do with the cattlemen on their pastureland, and any problems they had with pastureland. And, of course, we had a number of purebred ranches in the area. Some of them were Brahman, some of them were Shorthorn, some of them were Hereford. And Angus. So it was a good training area for me.
Youngers
It sounds like it. And how long were you with the Marion County office?
Tucker
I was with Marion County for two years, and the, just before I left Marion County, the county agent of Marion County—he’d always been quite interested in the Sheriff’s Department, and in fact, he periodically would go on with the Sheriff’s Department on activities, and it became available to him to be able to get appointed as Sheriff. And so he took it. So I was appointed for a brief time as acting county agent in Marion County—big county.
Tucker
But at the time, I had already applied for the job of County Agent here in Sanford, Seminole County, because it had became available.
Youngers
And it was closer to home.
Tucker
And it was the closest one home.
Youngers
Now, when you were up in Marion County, did you live up there?
Tucker
Yes.
Youngers
Okay. Good to know you didn’t try to commute every day.
Tucker
No, no. I lived there.
Youngers
So once he took the position as Sheriff, how long until you got to come down here? I mean, did they find someone else?
Tucker
Yeah. They found someone right away. In fact, I was just Acting Agent to take care of some things at the school. I wasn’t in the county, just for—goodness, it probably wasn’t for more than six or seven months.
Youngers
Then you come down here.
Tucker
Yep.
Youngers
Okay. You want to talk about what you did down here, which was a lot?
Tucker
The county agent that was here at the time—it was an interesting situation. He had—he had almost retired before his retirement. And some of it’s understandable. During the [Great] Depression, they cut back drastically on salaries. In fact, one of the stories told is: one of the farmers said to him, “Charlie, I heard they cut back your salary. Cut back 25 percent.” [laughs] He says, “Doesn’t that bother you?” Charlie says, “Well, yeah. But no, I just set the lever back 25%percent.” Well, he had done that. And he was fortunate that he was—had been in place for a long time. And the farmers were a little unhappy that when he first came in to the county, he did a tremendous job as county agent. I went through his files and things, and letters and all that he sent out, and he did a remarkable job. But after the episode with the salary and all of that, I think he was fortunate that he was real close friends with the director of Extension.
Youngers
Goodness. So you came in about mid-1950s, into Seminole County?
Tucker
In 1956, I came here. The joke in the community was that, well, if you want to look for the county agent, just go down to Roumillat and Anderson’s Drug Store. He’ll be down there in the coffee shop.” So I says, “I tell you what. You won’t find me in Roumillat and Anderson’s. I’m going to go down to the other drug store.”
Youngers
Oh, goodness.
Tucker
But Charlie had—Charlie had a good job. It was just there towards the end.
Youngers
He was ready to go.
Tucker
Yeah. And some of the old time farmers here, they pretty well understood. And so—but he was—the day came time for him to retire. It was pretty well fixed.
Youngers
So when you came in, what types of things did you do down here?
Tucker
Well, one of the first things I did was to begin to get the 4-H going. Because there wasn’t much going in that area. And then I started working on the—bringing all of the mailing lists of the various farms—the citrus growers, the vegetable growers, the cattlemen—bringing those up to date. Charlie pretty well had a list, but he wasn’t keeping all of it up-to-date. And that was one of the things I worked on.
Youngers
So there was quite a bit of agriculture planting?
Tucker
Yes. There was. In those days, we still was one of the more active vegetable producing areas in the state. And we had quite a bit of citrus here. We had probably 15 to 18 thousand acres of citrus.
Youngers
And that was in the Sanford area?
Tucker
In the Sanford area—Seminole County area. Now, the unique thing about that is, Seminole County is the fourth smallest county in the state in land area. So to have much acreage of anything is a little unique, because of the size of it.
Youngers
I know the big thing that I’ve heard is, like celery and citrus.
Tucker
Yes.
Youngers
But I know there was maybe some other things in there, as well.
Tucker
Well, in the—in those days, the nursery part of it was not—it was just beginning to come on. And in the ‘70s, we predicted that the nursery part—ornamental, horticultural, nursery—was probably going to outstrip the rest of it. And it has. But that’s just one of those things of how an area changes to meet the needs of the community.
Youngers
Wow. And what about like agriculture—beef and things? I know there’s still quite a bit of it here, but not as much as it was.
Tucker
No. In fact, the only thing that is as much as it was is ornamental horticulture. The vegetables has dropped way down. Almost nil right now. Beef cattle is still, over in the eastern part of the county is where most of the traditional pastureland was. And it’s still a lot of it over there.
Youngers
So that’s like, Geneva?
Tucker
Geneva. Yep.
Youngers
Oviedo kind of area.
Tucker
Chuluota. Yep. Kind of area. Osceola.
Youngers
Chuluota. Osceola. Okay. Back in those days, was it more prominent? Did it come further into Seminole County, or is it just kind of always in that general area?
Tucker
It’s always been out in that area, although every area in the county had some cattle scattered in it. Not today, but back in those days.
Youngers
No. Definitely not today. Now, when you were with the exchange office, you were telling me earlier about getting the new buildings, and even using this building, the county home building,[1] as an agricultural office. Could you tell me a little bit more about that?
Tucker
Alright. Let me back up before that. I probably developed more offices for the county than any other department head. When I became county agent in 1956, we were in the bottom floor of the courthouse. I called it the Salt Mine Section of the courthouse. And it was just basically one big room, which housed my office, the home economics agent’s office, and we had Agriculture Stabilization and Conservation [Service (ASCS)], the old AAA. That office was also in that area. And so, basically, and I was trying to develop part of the program that we provide in extension to farmers is information about agriculture. And some of the best information that Extension has available are the bulletins that they print on the various topics. So, I determined that we were going to have a—when I was working my way through college at the university, one of my jobs, I worked in the bulletin room. And we sent out to county agents all over the state. They would send in an order for so many bulletins of this, so many bulletins of that. And so I was involved in shipping those out to the various agents. So I was pretty well familiar with the—what was available in bulletins. And I determined, in Seminole County, we was[sic] going to have the best supply of bulletins south of Gainesville. And we did.
Youngers
Wow. What kind of things did the put out for bulletins? Was it like that tell of, like maybe a pest type thing for plants, or…
Tucker
Right. They would have a bulletin out on chinch-bug control. And a bulletin out on varieties of grasses. You name the topic, and they had it. In vegetables, there was a general vegetable production guide that gave how many pounds of seed, and how you would do for all the vegetables for growing a garden.
Youngers
So being down here in Seminole County and making more offices, and making more of this information available, you were very helpful to more of the general population here, to help them with their agriculture.
Tucker
Yeah. And that was part of the making information available. So when I came in to the—to the Salt Mine Section of the courthouse, it was a little bit difficult to do what I wanted to do with the—just that one big room. So, I showed—in those days, the [Seminole County] Clerk of the Court pretty much ran the county. And so, I was to see Mr. Herndon, and I said, “Mr. Herndon, I know we really need a little bit more office space. And the other day, I was downstairs here, on the other side our office in this big storage area down here, and I could regroup a lot of stuff that’s in there, and make an office right there.” He says, “Son, let’s go down there and see what you talking about.” So I went down there and showed him, and he says, “We’ll think about that.” And he agreed, as I recall. I don’t think I even had to restore the stuff. They moved it around. And so we put an office in, and it was an all-inside deal. I didn’t have any—if I’d had claustrophobia, I would have been in trouble, because there wouldn’t have been any windows.
Youngers
No windows. Wow.
Tucker
But it provided more wall space to do what I wanted to do. And that was to put these bulletins available for people to see and pick up.
Youngers
Right. And then did you all stay in that office, or did you eventually move out into the new one?
Tucker
Well, we were there until the early ‘60s. The judges needed more room. And we had made our space into a pretty nice office area, over the course of time. And so they wanted that space. So again, I says, “Mr. Herndon, there is an abandoned county building. It’s a good building. It has a potential. And what I’d like to do is for us to create a[sic] ag[ricultural] center and move all the agriculture people we’ve got—we’ve got soil conservation, plant inspector, we’ve got ASC here, and put all of us in one area for the farmers just to come into one spot. To see all these things.” And so, he says, “Well, we’ll think about that.” Well they appointed a committee, and I was on the committee, and we created the Ag Center at the Stockade building down here.
Youngers
And that’s where everybody moved with you.
Tucker
They all moved with me.
Youngers
Wow.
Tucker
Yeah. So then they wanted more space for the road department. And that was shortly about the same time that the county home had moved out of here. And so I said again, “I know where there’s a place that would really work out better for us, because we’re a little bit crowded here for all the people for the Ag Center.” And they agreed to it.
Youngers
So you made this entire area here?
Tucker
This entire building became the Ag Center.
Youngers
Wow. And how long was that office here?
Tucker
From the middle ‘60s until 19—I think Frank [Jazzen] moved over into the new Ag Center in the mid-70s.[2] I had already left as county agent at that time.
Youngers
And how long were you County Agent?
Tucker
Thirteen and a half years.
Youngers
Wow. So what did you do when you were done being the county agent?
Tucker
I had an opportunity to go into a farming operation growing watercress down in Oviedo. Went into a watercress-growing enterprise, another young fellow and I. And after a couple of years, well, we ended up merging with Don Weaver and his brother-in-law, and created B&W Quality Growers. That grew into a pretty sizeable watercress-growing operation. We were the largest in the eastern part of the United States. And we had farms in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Florida. Later on, I got out of that.
And Joe Baker, who had Baker’s Dairy over here, was interested in my coming to work for him. In fact, when he found out I had gone into the watercress, he says, “Cecil, you, uh, I didn’t know you was[sic] available.” I said, “Joe, I probably wasn’t available for anything except what I did.” Because it was a good opportunity that I got into. Anyway, when I got out of the watercress deal, I went to see Joe. He says, “Yeah. I’m still interested in you.” And he says, “When can you start?” I says, “Well, I got a couple of things I got to finish at home. I’ll need a couple of weeks.” He says, “No. I need you to start Monday.”
Youngers
Alright then.
Tucker
So, I managed Baker’s Dairy here for a couple of years. And then, well, let’s see. I got out of Extensions in 1969. And then I was in the watercress business for a couple of years. And then I managed Baker’s Dairy for I guess it was about a year and a half on each one of them. In 1972, I opened my own farm and garden supply store in Sanford. Tucker’s Farm and Garden Center. And we ran that as a family operation for the next 30 years.
Youngers
And it’s Myer’s now?
Tucker
Yeah. Horstmeyer [Farm and Garden]. Horstmeyer. Yeah.
Youngers
And when did you sell that there?
Tucker
Well, I sold it to my son in 198—1983. That’s when I moved to Christmas. Let’s see, ’83-’84 —somewhere along in there. And he sold it to his friend, Horstmeyers[sic], in—about 15 years later.
Youngers
So during the time that you lived—or that you worked—out here in Seminole County, did you still live in Christmas?
Tucker
No. I’ve always lived in—from the time I came here as County Agent, I’ve lived here in Seminole County. I didn’t move back to Christmas until I sold the store and moved back to Christmas in the mid-80s.
Youngers
So you lived in the Oviedo-Chuluota area?
Tucker
No. Always right here in Sanford. Actually, over here is what’s called Citrus Heights. That’s where we lived.
Youngers
The whole time?
Tucker
The whole time. Yeah. Well, I shouldn’t say the whole time, because I bought a house on Rosalia Drive, and we lived there a few years, and then I lived out her. [laughs].
Youngers
Now, during all this time you met a lovely lady?
Tucker
Actually, I met her and courted her while we were in college at the university.
Youngers
So she went to University of Florida too?
TuckerShe went to the university for a while. Her mother had to have an operation, and that was money sending her to college had to be used. And so by that time, she and I had gotten pretty serious, and she got a job working for an orange packing company in Orlando. And after—I don’t know—a little over a year we ended up getting married. And then she came back to the university.
Youngers
How’d you win her over? Did you do anything special? Or did you just say, “Alright, woman...”
Tucker
We need to make that a continued story. I’ll be right back.
Tucker
Now then, you was[sic] wanting to know about my wife.
Youngers
Yes, sir.
Tucker
Well, during the year that she was—I knew her—knew of her—before we got to university. I doubt if she knew too much about me beforehand, but we—I was a member of the Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity, agricultural fraternity there, and I would invite her every guest night to come over to the fraternity house and eat with us. And so they got to be pretty—and by the way, you’ll want to put Ms. [Mart Albritton] Tucker on your list as one to do an oral interview.
Youngers
I will do that.
Tucker
Because she is an old-time—as an Albritton, old-time Florida family. But she’s been active here in Seminole County. She helped me in to get the store going. She’s active in the cattle operation. In fact, when I was running the store, she did as much of the cattle work as I did. We had a—a pet at the store. It was a wild pig that became pretty well-known in the community. She used to take it on a leash downtown when she went to make the deposit at the bank. She’d carry the pig with her.
Youngers
What was his name?
Tucker
Pete. Streaky Pete. Pete the Pig. And he grew to be about 700 pounds. But anyway, that’s another story. But she was active in the [Seminole County] Farm Bureau—in the women’s deal at the Farm Bureau. She was active in 4-H, doing some of the judging, and some of the 4-H activities here. And of course, when we were opening the store, she was part of that. So she’d be another one.
Youngers
And she—so you all married before you graduated?
Tucker
Right.
Youngers
So she went to Marion County with you?
Tucker
Yes. In fact—well, let’s see. Before I got my Master’s, she was expecting my daughter. And she typed my thesis. And then when we moved to Ocala, uh—trying to remember at what point—my daughter was born before then.
Youngers
And you have one daughter?
Tucker
I’ve got one daughter and two sons—twins. They were born on my daughter’s second birthday. And then, we have an adopted daughter, as well.
Youngers
And you all have always had cattle in your family?
Tucker
Yes.
Youngers
Put your boys to work?
Tucker
We’ve had cattle in our family since as far as we can tell, going back into the 1700s. And that’s another thing I’m researching, because one of these days, that’s going to be a part of my book too.
Youngers
Wow. That’s a long time. Okay. As far as the cattle in your family—the history—that’ll be good?
Tucker
Yeah.
Youngers
Do you have anything else that you want to add to our…
Tucker
Well, let’s see. Well, there’s a lot of things we could go into and talk about [laughs].
Youngers
We could always come back and talk about different things, if you wanted to.
Tucker
The problem of being able to have—to build a program when the county didn’t have any funds, it was a problem. I needed—and of course, I was always on the low-end of the pay scale. If it wasn’t for the fact that this is where I wanted to be, I’d have gone somewhere else. In fact, when I left to go into the watercress, I was offered a job paying me twice as much I was in extension. And he couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t take it. Because my opportunity that I was going into was better [laughs].
Youngers
Right.
Tucker
Well, let me look here. See if there’s anything—this is interesting. When I came to the county, the phone number for the county agent’s office was 470.
Youngers
470? That’s it? [laughs]
Tucker
[laughs] 470. That’s it. But we went through the medfly infestation, we went through the fire burning the [Sanford State] Farmers’ Market down, and having to help get things going for it to build back up. We had, in ’57—late ’57, early ’58 —a severe freeze deal that actually we had cattle dying, because there wasn’t enough hay, and we brought in hay for that. We had—one of the projects that I worked on was the eradication of screwworms. And my dad was involved in that. That was one of the miracles of using atomic energy to eradicate the screwworm fly. The female fly mates only once. And so they found that if they would raise screwworm flies and eradiate them with atomic energy deal, it sterilized the males, and they put these male flies out in the area, and they mate with the wild females, and the eggs wouldn’t hatch. And by continually doing that, they lowered the population of the screwworm fly to completely eradicate it.
Youngers
Really? So it’s gone for good?
Tucker
Yes. Yes. it’s gone.
Youngers
Wow. That’s amazing.
Tucker
And my dad was involved in that. He was an inspector. And in fact, some of the first pastures that they put the medfly—I mean the screwworm fly—out in was his pasture. So, when I was County Agent, of course I would make contact with the cattle people, and pass along the information to him about what was going on, and if there was an outbreak somewhere, they’d get on top of it.
Youngers
Did they still have the technique of doing the cow dipping?
Tucker
Yes. Now, the cow dipping—this was to eliminate the cattle tick—the fever tick. And in the early ‘50s, they was[sic] still—in fact, my dad worked with that. There’s still a lot of the, uh, dipping going on. Getting rid of the fever tick. And that lasted until, I guess, the early ‘60s.
Youngers
Right. Is that something that they were able to just control?
Tucker
They were able to control it by dipping continually. They were able to eliminate the fever tick. After they wiped out a bunch of the deer who was perpetuating it. And some of your family was involved in that.
Youngers
Yes, sir.
Tucker
Oh, let’s see. We had a fire ant infestation that came into the county and we almost got it eliminated by flying [Boeing] B-17s [Flying Fortress], and putting out Myrex, until the do-gooders got involved and killed the program.
Youngers
And we still have fire ants.
Tucker
And we still have fire ants, and we’ll always have fire ants. But we came about within two flights of eliminating them.
Youngers
Wow. Now, did that have any—the chemicals used, did it have any effect on people? Is that why people got involved?
Tucker
The problem is it could create some problem in the water and affect fish, and that sort of thing. But we could have eliminated that. You know, by staying away from those areas. Anyway. Well, let’s see. Any other questions?
Youngers
No. Not if there’s anything. I mean, I have lots of questions. I know you’re big into the rodeo, and you’ve done a lot for 4-H, and different things like that, but we can come back maybe and talk about that another other time.
Tucker
Well, what do—yeah. Make a list. And we’ll do it. And like I said, I think you need to interview my wife, because I think you’ll find that to be interesting, as well.
Youngers
Absolutely.
Tucker
There’s a lot of little ins and outs of what went on here in the county.
Youngers
Well, I’ll definitely schedule a day with her, so she can come in and talk to me.
Tucker
Good deal.
Youngers
Well, I appreciate it very much.
Tucker
And I appreciate your being on board to help do these things.
Youngers
Absolutely.
Tucker
We want to look through the list of people and be sure that we get some—thing of it is, we’re five years late on a lot of people that passed on. Joe Baker, he—would have been great to be able get his. And I want to set up Don Weaver.
Youngers
Okay.
Tucker
Don Weaver and his family was—they came here from Pennsylvania. But they are pioneers in the watercress industry in the United States. And he lives down in Chuluota, on the south side of Lake Mills. And we’ll work out getting that set up. Anything else?
Youngers
No, sir.
Tucker
Okay.
Youngers
Thank you.