1
100
4
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https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/04510635174e81e5ea6f3d3a9146efca.pdf
662c717c7a532bcff96e4980fcd28e48
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Student Museum and UCF Public History Center Collection
Subject
Museums--Florida
Schools
Elementary schools
Grammar schools
Sanford (Fla.)
Description
The Student Museum and UCF Public History Center Collection encompasses a broad range of materials and items ranging from the late 19th Century into the present. The collection includes artifacts, photographs, documents, videocassettes, and other historical records pertaining to the history of the Sanford Grammar School, the Sanford community through the years, and the history of teaching and learning within the United States from the 19th century to the 2010s.
The Student Museum has collaborated with the University of Central Florida and established the UCF Public History Center (PHC). All of the Student Museum's collections are presently housed at the PHC. The goal of the PHC is to promote access to history through ground-breaking research connecting local to global, provide cutting-edge hands-on educational programs for students and visitors, and to engage the community in contributing to and learning from history.
Contributor
Student Museum
UCF Public History Center
Language
eng
Type
Collection
Coverage
Sanford High School, Sanford, Florida
Westside Grammar Elementary School, Sanford, Florida
Sanford Grammar School, Sanford, Florida
Student Museum, Sanford, Florida
UCF Public History Center, Sanford, Florida
Contributing Project
Student Museum
UCF Public History Center
Curator
Marra, Katie
Cepero, Laura
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
Source Repository
Public History Center/Student Museum
External Reference
"Public History Center." Public History Center, University of Central Florida.
"Student Museum." Seminole County Public Schools. http://www.scps.k12.fl.us/studentmuseum/Home.aspx.
Alternative Title
Student Museum and PHC Collection
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/44" target="_blank">Seminole County Collection</a>, RICHES of Central Florida.
Has Part
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/32" target="_blank">General Photographic Collection</a>, <span>Student Museum and UCF Public History Center Collection, </span>Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/73" target="_blank">Seminole County Public Schools Collection</a>, <span>Student Museum and UCF Public History Center Collection, </span>Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
McLaughlin, Ian
Interviewee
Richards, Storm Leslie
Location
Geneva, Florida
Original Format
1 DVD/DAT recording
Duration
19 minutea and 4 seconds
Bit Rate/Frequency
125kbps
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Oral History of Dr. Storm Leslie Richards
Alternative Title
Oral History, Richards
Subject
Oral history--United States
Sanford (Fla.)
Museums--Florida
Grant writing
Historic preservation--Florida
Historic sites--Florida
Longwood (Fla.)
Walt Disney World (Fla.)
Urban sprawl
United States. Navy
Navy
Nuclear weapons
Archaeology--Florida
Urban development
Archaeologists--United States
Geographers--United States
Conservation--United States
Lake Monroe (Seminole County and Volusia County, Fla.)
Tourism--Florida
Traffic
Description
Oral history interview of Dr. Storm Leslie Richards, an archaeologist and environmental consultant for Storm L. Richards & Associates, Inc. Dr. Richards was born in Patuxent River, Maryland, on August 20, 1950, but his family migrated to Sanford, Florida, in 1953. He graduated from Seminole High School in 1969 and received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D from the University of Florida in Tallahassee in 1973, 1978, and 1987, respectively. Dr. Richards also wrote the grant for the Sanford Grammar School, located at 301 West Seventh Street. This interview was conducted by Ian McLaughlin at Dr. Richards' home in Geneva on October 24, 2012.
Table Of Contents
0:00:00 Introduction<br />0:03:25 Grant writing and rehabilitation for the Student Museum and Center for the Social Studies<br />0:07:21 Other historic preservation projects<br />0:09:18 How Seminole County has changed over time<br />0:12:45 Impact of Walt Disney World Resort<br />0:15:42 Father’s experience in the Navy<br />0:17:57 Closing remarks
Abstract
Oral history interview of Dr. Storm Leslie Richards. Interview conducted by Ian McLaughlin at Dr. Richards' home in Geneva, Florida.
Type
Moving Image
Source
Richards, Storm Leslie. Interviewed by Ian McLaughlin. UCF Public History Center. October 24, 2012. Audio/video record available. UCF Public History Center, Sanford, Florida.
Requires
<a href="http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/" target="_blank">Adobe Flash Player</a>.
<a href="http://java.com/en/download/index.jsp" target="_blank">Java</a>.
<a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/reader.html" target="_blank">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a>
Is Part Of
UCF Public History Center, Sanford, Florida.
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/31" target="_blank">Student Museum and UCF Public History Center Collection</a>, Sanford Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Has Format
Digital transcript of original 19-minute and 04-second oral history: Richards, Storm Leslie. Interviewed by Ian McLaughlin. UCF Public History Center. October 24, 2012. Audio/video record available. UCF Public History Center, Sanford, Florida.
Coverage
Sanford Grammar School, Sanford, Florida
Student Museum and Center for the Social Studies,Sanford, Florida
UCF Public History Center, Sanford, Florida
Walt Disney World, Lake Buena Vista, Florida
Cuba
Creator
McLaughlin, Ian
Richards, Storm Leslie
Date Created
2012-10-24
Date Modified
2012-10-28
Format
video/mp4
application/pdf
Extent
46.9 MB
155 KB
Medium
19-minute and 4-second DVD/DAT recording
6-page typed transcript
Language
eng
Mediator
History Teacher
Civics/Government Teacher
Geography Teacher
Provenance
Originally created by Ian McLaughlin and owned by UCF Public History Center.
Rights Holder
Copyright to this resource is held by the UCF Public History Center and is provided here by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES</a> for educational purposes only.
Accrual Method
Donation
Contributing Project
UCF Public History Center
Curator
Cepero, Laura
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
Source Repository
UCF Public History Center/Student Museum
External Reference
"Public History Center." Public History Center, University of Central Florida.
"Exhibits." Public History Center, University of Central Florida.
"Student Museum." Seminole County Public Schools.
"<a href="http://www.seminolehs.scps.k12.fl.us/" target="_blank">Seminole High School</a>." Seminole High School, Seminole County Public Schools. http://www.seminolehs.scps.k12.fl.us/.
Sanford Historical Society (Fla.). <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/53015288" target="_blank"><em>Sanford</em></a>. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2003.
Click to View (Movie, Podcast, or Website)
<a href="https://youtu.be/OjlBRZidNQ4" target="_blank">Oral History of Dr. Storm Leslie Richards</a>
Transcript
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Alright, today is Wednesday, the 24<sup>th</sup> of October, 2012. It is 3:05 PM. I am with Dr. Storm [Leslie] Richards at his home in Geneva, Florida, and we’re going to discuss his experiences as related to historic preservation in Sanford, specifically concerning the Sanford Student Museum [and Center for the Social Studies].</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>We moved to Sanford in 1953. My dad was in, uh, the Navy at the time, and, um, we came here, uh, when Sanford was a very small community. It was very agriculturally-oriented. Um, there were many, many schools in Sanford. Uh, I went to, uh, about four of them, uh, from about elementary school through high school—all in Sanford, and then I went to Seminole Community College,<a title="">[1]</a> which was what it was called at the time in the 1970s, uh, and got my Associate of Arts degree, and went on to the University of Florida and finished my Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctorate at, uh, the University of Florida in Gainesville. Um, did some graduate work at Tulane University, but, uh, for the most part, I was always at the University of Florida, and I had a very strong interest in historic preservation and archaeology and, uh, urban—urban development, and I think, uh, first time that I really became—became directly, um, associated with the school [inaudible] was I was asked to help write a grant. Um, he grant was originally through the Division of Historical Resources, which is part of Florida Department of State for doing architectural reconstruction and rehabilitation. Um, one of the things that came to me from the very, very beginning was that the school—the [Sanford] Grammar School was such a tremendous resource in terms of historically where[?] Sanford had been. It was constructed in 1907, I think—’02-’07, and, um, it had always been a real focal point for—for education for—for young kids, and I think, uh—I didn’t go to school there and—and I always remember the school having, uh, teeter-totters and having, um, jungle gyms and the having the maypole, uh, swing that the kids would swing around and stuff like that. It’s—it’s the kind of thing where you still remember the kids yelling and screaming, and just, uh, it was a very fun place. Um, academically, I can’t really speak for it, but, uh, I can remember that—that there was always a lot of activity there, and the school, uh, that I identified with the grant that I worked on was a very important hub for Sanford and for Seminole County to—to look at something historic and say that so many people had gone there and so many people’s lives had been involved. I just thought it was a wonderful focal point, um, to try to keep, and, uh, at that time, they were really the first time that they were getting into the notion of it being an historic properties, and being important for a museum, and—and I was just really, uh, excited about that for the kids to be able to go back and look at things the way they were a hundred years ago.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>All right. Um, in what capacity were you involved, specifically with the grant-writing process?</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>Um, because I was—I am a certified archaeologist, and I have a really strong background in historic preservation with the University of Florida and the Urban Re-Use and Planning Department, I was asked to—to come in and take a critical look at if the site was really historic. Now, it had already been designated on the [U.S.] National Register of Historic Places, which one would assume would make it very important, uh, but because it’s part of a district, um, that’s not necessarily the case, and you really want a building like that to stand on its own, be—because the importance not of just the neighborhood, but the importance of it being, uh, the structure that was there, uh, and so I put together, uh, all of the documentation on, uh, why it was historically important, and what it meant to the community, and why the state should look at it as being not just some local landmark, but as something that was important to the county and the State of Florida.</p>
<p>So I wrote that up, and what really ended up happening was that the state looked at that and felt that there was enough merit there that it was designated on a, uh, state list of very important, uh, uh, schools for the State of Florida and it was designated as such with that important notice. I think that the other thing that I did was, uh, I contacted a number of commissioners and a number of people that had on a say on, uh—on how money was being spent, whether it was the school board of, uh, Seminole County, because it was certainly a focus of not just the City of Sanford, but the county also, uh, and told them the importance of preserving that, because at a certain point, older buildings have a way of just deteriorating to the point that they can no longer be used, and it takes an investment, and sometimes, that investment can actually cost more than—than new construction, you know? Rehabilitation’s a very expensive proposition, but what it does for a community, in terms of identifying the importance of a city, and importance of schools, and importance of looking at the people who got an education there and what they went on to do, and is—and it is far more important than any single dollar value.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Right, I see. About how long did that process take from start to finish? From the beginning to the end[?]? [<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>It took probably—the grants program probably took six months.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Hm.</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>I think though the writing that I did, because I had a familiarity with it, was probably in days.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>I’m very quick at what I do, and so I think I wrote the, uh, four- or five-page report of why it was important in—in a day or two days.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Excellent, and what year was this again?</p>
<p><strong>Richards <br /></strong>You know, I think it was probably about, uh, 10 or 15 years ago. I mean, it was probably in the [19]90s—[inaudible] or something like that.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>So like 90s?</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Right, and who all—do you remember which people from the museum you worked with?</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>Se—Serena [Rankin Parks] Fisher…</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Serena Fisher.</p>
<p><strong>Richards <br /></strong>Uh, she was, you know—and I’ve known her for years and years before that, because she’s a geographer and an educator, and—and I’m a geographer also, and so I knew her from the Florida Alliance, um, which was a group of educators who try to—to convey the importance of educating children, and she was working the museum, and, uh, it was the kind of thing that I felt real honored to help her with, because of the possibility of helping people, and, uh, when you drive by the school even today, which I did,</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>Um, it’s one of those things that you can go look at and be proud that it’s still there, because it could be somebody’s patio brick, you know?</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>And—and so it’s a real good place for kids to go and look at the way that things used to be.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Excellent, and were there any other instances in Sanford, in which you helped with local preservation efforts?</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>Um, yes. Uh, the Hopper Academy, which was the African-American school, h, over near the stadium. Uh, I put together the environmental assessment and some of the feasibility studies for—for looking at the rehabbing of that and making that, uh, another focal point, and because it was a wooden building and it had a lot of decay, it was really difficult, and the neighborhood, uh, didn’t lend itself to, you know—there were a lot of transients in the area, and people were sleeping near—in the school, and people were doing a lot of things that were just destructive. I’m not sure that worked out as well as I would have liked, but it was a real, eh, effort for someone to go over there and say, “We’d like to see, you know this—this kept for the community,” and so I worked on that, and, um, also, when I was the senior planner with Seminole County and worked, um, on comprehensive planning, I—I worked very hard to try to get a conservation element that reflected the importance of archaeological and historic sites, um, in—in Central Florida and Seminole County.</p>
<p>In—in the profession that I have now, we do an awful lot of work in Seminole County. Uh, we worked for the airport in Seminole—the Orlando-Sanford [International] Airport. We’ve identified historic sites and identified preservation, uh, concepts for them. [inaudible]. We’ve worked for the Division of Historic Resources on the railroad sites[?] that existed here that came from the 1900s, when they were shipping an awful lot of, uh, produce out throughout—throughout the state and throughout different parts of the country, and so I’ve, you know, worked a lot on different aspects on Seminole County on—on cultural[?] resource assessments and evaluations, uh, both historic and archaeological resources for the county, and provided information for the of State of Florida.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Excellent, and here’s a little bit of a different question. In your experience working in Seminole County and living here and growing up, how has it changed environmentally? You—what do you think are probably the biggest ways that it’s changed?</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>You know, I think—the—the interesting part of that story—and it just hits me immediately—is how recently—this year, someone burnt down the big.<a title="">[2]</a> They got inside the tree and they lit it on fire, and you have a tree that is older than the for—the 1400s. Before [Christopher] Columbus and…</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Wow.</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>This country.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>And the tree was there, and they burnt it up and destroyed it, and it was considered an “accident,” and it was considered of no great significance, and I can remember riding my bike out to the tree when I was a child from Sanford. It’s—it’s probably halfway between Sanford and Longwood on [U.S. Route] 17-92. Uh, I can remember there was a wonderful book written by [Elvira] Gardner, it was called <em>Ezekiel’s Travels</em>.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Mmhmm.</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>And—and Ezekiel, a little black boy, rode his bicycle out to the big tree and they documented that in the 1930s.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Wow.</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>You know, and—and—and they burnt this tree up and it was considered just kind of a…</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>An accident.</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>An accident. So, uh—and I think that—it really has an impact, you know?</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>The—the other thing that I can remember that’s changed so much is, when I was, uh, very young, I used to ride my bike down to the—the band shell, and to the, uh—to Lake Monroe, and used to fish there, and there used to be just the band shell, and just the sea wall, and in the last 25 years, you know, they’ve built, uh—they built hotels there, and, uh, they built, uh, mixed used development there. They have had varying degrees of non-success.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>Uh, but it’s taken away much of the character, you know? I can remember when the zoo was in Downtown Sanford, and, you know, it was a very small zoo. Sorta not like the really nice complex that they have now, but—but Sanford was [inaudible], you know—libraries were there, and it was a place that—that kids went, and young people went, and it was just very different. The [Sanford] Civic Center was a big, big deal, and they had dances every week, and it was just, you know—it was just a place that people went all the time, and, uh, I don’t see that in Sanford anymore. I don’t see that.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>You think some of the character is gone?</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>I think—I think the character—and I think that, you know, its—its, um—its environment, and its, um—the neighborhood, and it’s, um—it’s just the changes that have taken place, you know? I can remember the parades in Downtown Park Avenue, and just, um, very large parades that everybody in the community got involved in, and we have something like that now, but [inaudible]—it’s just a, uh—an agglomeration of people with big bands, and—and crazy things happen from early afternoon to way late</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>[inaudible], and it’s just not something that I’m interested in participating in, you know? Probably there are a lot of people that do, but it’s—it’s just very different from when I was raised in Sanford.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Yeah. As far as developmentally, what effect do you think that the arrival of like Disney Corporation<a title="">[3]</a> and things like that had on the change, if any?</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>Yeah, eh, Disney is a very large beast.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin <br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>And it has a lot of beasts that, uh, have attracted to it—whether it’s the whale beast or the, you know, uh, any number of other international destinations that I think that it’s affected probably not just all of Florida, but the Southeast. It’s the number one tourist destination, you know, in the world, u, and I think it makes Interstate [Highway] 4, which used to be a wonderful opportunity to go to Orlando and you just got on the interstate and ten minutes later, you were in Orlando, and today, it’s, um—it’s questionable if it even functions at all.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>You know, we have a—we have a toll road system, in which, uh, I was assigned to that. I was Deputy Director of the toll way [inaudible] before they actually started developing it, and it was supposed to relieve the traffic and make traffic a lot different in Central Florida, but Central Florida is so densely populated that it was probably nothing can significantly change that. You know, whether it’s a rail system that they won’t put in, it will cost billions of dollars, whether it’s increasing lanes on I-4, or whether the [Central Florida] GreeneWay builds out. It’s—it’s not going to make the quality of life significantly different, in my opinion, you know, but that’s just part of the price you pay.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Yeah. Just out of curiosity, how many lanes did I-4 use to be? [<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>You know, I think it was always six—divided six.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Divided six?</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>Yeah, um, eh, it—it had fewer ramps.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Mmhmm.</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>And so they put in more ramps and more access, and it’s—it’s—the speed is much quicker today than it’s ever been. Uh, the Fairbanks [Avenue] curb is a problem that people have been having for years, and everybody’s looking at the engineering and saying, “It’s got to be engineering.” They say, “It’s got to be, you know, your problems,” you know? People are traveling between their ears if they don’t pay attention to traffic, and that’s why we gotta have people at such a quick pace today, you know? It used to be if you made it to work at 8- 8:30, you know, or if you, you know, were just there. Now, everybody fills the building up at 10-to-8, and, you know, so consequently, everybody gets on the interstate and it’s as fast as they can go, and it reminds me a little bit of Atlanta[, Georgia].</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>You know, if you’re not doing 80 [miles per hour], you’re not getting there.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>I think that the—I think that I-4 is quickly approaching that. If you’re not doing 70, you’re probably not going to make it.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Yeah.</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>You know, that’s just part of reality, part of the [inaudible], and the—the—it’s the quickness of what happens today. It wasn’t like that in the, you know, 1960s.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Okay, before we go, if you could—would you like to share the story about your father</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>Uh…</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>And what he did at the Navy base?</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>We moved to Sanford in—in ’53. My dad was stationed in Jacksonville, um, before that in the, um—in the Navy, and—and when we moved here, my dad was a navigator bombardier and a mechanic, and when the first jets, which were the [Douglas] A-3D[ Skywarrior]s came from California, my dad was part of the crew that flew the jets from California to Florida. That was before the [North American A-5] Vigilantes, before the larger aircraft. These were, you know twin-engine jets, but their total design and their total purpose was, uh, to launch a, uh, nuclear strike, and—and art of what Sanford, you know—Orlando-Sanford Airport today has the bunkers that they kept the nuclear weapons in, and they were going to load onboard the A-3Ds and—and go to Cuba, and my dad was the slim pickins’ of the aircraft, because it was his job to arm the nuclear weapons—To go back in the bomb bays and arm the nuclear weapons with, uh, I guess a detonation device that you screwed in the—in the nose of the bomb, and that was his job. It—and it was very, very stressful, and you know, at the time, I can just barely remember—I guess I was probably about seven—six or seven years old that all these young kids from the Navy would come over to the house, and they would have parties and stuff, and—and what they were doing was, h, the vanguard of changing the world, if—if they had to, and they all agreed to that—that that’s what they were going to do, and my dad was a really big part of that, and I guess there’s—there’s some pride in that, but there’s also some looking back and saying, “Is this really where we were?”</p>
<p>You know, and [inaudible], and I know today—you know, 2012—we’re still talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis and trying to figure out what really happened, and when you think about the people that were going to do whatever they were told to do, you know, there’s a lot of frighteningness[sic] there, and there is a lot of, <em>Have we gone that far?</em> Or, <em>Are we still in the same place?</em> I kinda think about that occasionally.</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Do you have any other thoughts about Sanford or Seminole County or the Student Museum that you would like to share with us before we…</p>
<p><strong>Richards<br /></strong>I think that the Student Museum is, you know—it—it—it—it’s probably a lot bigger than most people really think. It’s—it’s not a matter of postcards and maps and little things that you can touch or handle, but it’s the notion of where we come from and where we’re going, and will people identify those things in 10 years, in 20 years, in 30 years, and say that, uh—that there was something that was very valuable here? It was something that was very important to a lot of people, and I hope we can still see that, and I hope that that’s, uh, a multicultural thing that—that, uh, everybody can look at and say, “This is—this is where we were, and this is where we are, and lot of good things have taken place.”</p>
<p><strong>McLaughlin<br /></strong>Excellent, and once again, my name is Ian McLaughlin, and I’m interviewing Dr. Storm Richards at his home in Geneva, Florida. Today is Wednesday, the 24<sup>th</sup> of October, 2012.</p>
<div><br /><div>
<p><a title="">[1]</a> Present-day Seminole State College.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[2]</a> The Senator.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[3]</a> Correction: The Walt Disney Company.</p>
</div>
</div>
17-92
7th Street
A3-D
band shell
Big Tree Park
Central Florida
City of Sanford
Columbus, Christopher
Cuban Missile Crisis
deputy directory
Disney
Disney Corporation
Disney World
Division of Historical Resources
environmental consultant
Ezekiel’s Travels
Fairbanks
Fairbanks Ave.
Fairbanks Avenue
Fisher, Serena
Florida Alliance
Florida Department of State
Garner, Elvira
Georgetown
grant writer
Greenway
Hopper
Hopper Academy
I-4
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-
https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/2ede11035b08f37e307f9444c768c148.mp3
0e326aea7ef9b98c728bae17ff81ce35
https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/ba180b1e1d8dd7ec76a9409da8627c45.pdf
48968f809e182ddd69bacc587ef4161d
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play Collection
Alternative Title
Celery Soup Collection
Subject
Sanford (Fla.)
Community theater--United States
Theater--United States
Description
The <em>Celery Soup: Florida’s Folk Life Play</em> Collection encompasses photographs, artifacts, and oral histories related to the production of Creative Sanford, Inc.'s and Celery Soup's play <em>Remade - Not Bought</em>, performed at the Princess Theater in 2013. Many of the items in this collection were collected by Dr. Scot French's Tools in Digital History Seminar Graduate Class during the Fall 2013 semester at the University of Central Florida.
Contributor
Dingle, Cathy Lee
Delgado, Natalie
Fedorka, Drew M.
Ford, Nancy Harris
French, Scot A.
Kelley, Katie
Lee, Luticia Gormley
Maliczowski, Linda Lee
Maples, Marilyn
Miller, Mark
Reisz, Autumn
Thompson, Trish
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/44" target="_blank">Seminole County Collection</a>, RICHES of Central Florida.
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/16" target="_blank">Sanford Collection</a>, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Language
eng
Type
Collection
Coverage
Celery Soup: Florida’s Folk Life Play, Sanford, Florida
Creative Sanford, Inc., Sanford, Florida
Princess Theater, Sanford, Florida
Contributing Project
<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>
<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Celery Soup: Florida’s Folk Life Play</a>
<span>Dr. </span><a href="http://history.scotfrench.com/" target="_blank">Scot A. French</a><span>'s Tools in Digital History Seminar Graduate Class, Fall 2013 at the </span><a href="http://www.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">University of Central Florida</a>
Curator
Cepero, Laura
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
External Reference
"<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">WHO IS CREATIVE SANFORD, INC?</a>" Celery Soup. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about.
"<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/" target="_blank">About: History and Purpose</a>." Celery Soup. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/.
"<a href="http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida" target="_blank">Sanford, Florida: How do you make Celery Soup? Add stories, then stir</a>." Community Performance International. http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
Miller, Mark
Interviewee
Newman, Peter
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Oral History of Peter Newman
Alternative Title
Oral History, Newman
Subject
Sanford (Fla.)
Theater--United States
Doctors
Physicians--Florida
Race relations--United States
Description
Oral history told by Peter Newman, playwright, director, and board member of Creative Sanford, Inc., a non-profit organization created to manage <em>Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play</em> community theater productions. <em>Celery Soup</em>'s first production was <em>Touch and Go</em>, a play about how the people of Sanford overcame obstacles throughout their history. This interview, conducted by Mark Miller, deals with topics such as the history of Creative Sanford, and <em>Celery Soup</em>, Newman's playwriting process, the Florida highwaymen, scripts that Newman wrote, the use of history as inspiration for plays, the importance of authenticity, the story of Dr. George H. Starke, dealing with sensitive issues and race relations, the interviewing process, and the community's reaction to <em>Celery Soup</em>'s plays.
Table Of Contents
0:00:00 Introduction <br />0:00:22 History of Creative Sanford, Inc. and <em>Celery Soup</em> 0:05:39 The fireman and Barbara Farrell<br />0:07:17 RECORDING CUTS OFF<br />0:07:17 The fireman and Barbara Farrell<br />0:07:53 How Newman got involved with Creative Sanford<br />0:09:13 Using history as an inspiration for community theater 0:11:49 Fire at the Holy Cross Episcopal Church <br />0:14:05 Importance of authenticity<br />0:16:08 How <em>Celery Soup</em> chooses topics<br />0:19:56 Luticia Lee's rolling pin<br />0:20:52 Dr. George H. Starke<br />0:25:13 Dealing with sensitive issues and race relations<br />0:27:45 Uncle Dieter<br />0:30:25 The interviewing process<br />0:31:51 Community feedback<br />0:34:35 Collecting history<br />0:35:45 Background in theater<br />0:38:04 Future <em>Celery Soup</em> plays <br />0:40:09 Closing remarks
Abstract
Oral history interview of Peter Newman. Interview conducted by Mark Miller.
Type
Sound
Source
Newman, Peter. Interviewed by Mark Miller. Audio record available. <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>.
Requires
Multimedia software, such as <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/" target="_blank"> QuickTime</a>.
<a href="https://get.adobe.com/reader/" target="_blank">Adobe Acrobat Reader</a>
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/82" target="_blank"><em>Celery Soup: Florida’s Folk Life Play</em> Collection</a>, Sanford Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Has Format
Digital transcript of original 40-minute and 19-second oral history: Newman, Peter. Interviewed by Mark Miller. Audio record available. <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>.
Coverage
Celery Soup, Sanford, Florida
Princess Theater, Sanford, Florida
Creative Sanford, Inc., Sanford, Florida
Swamp Gravy, Colquitt, Georgia
Naval Air Station (NAS), Sanford, Florida
Holy Cross Episcopal Church, Sanford, Florida
Mayfair Country Club, Sanford, Florida
Creator
Miller, Mark
Newman, Peter
Publisher
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>
Date Created
2013
Date Modified
2014-04-08
2014-05-07
Format
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Extent
407 MB
206 KB
Medium
40-minute and 19-second audio recording
18-page digital transcript
Language
eng
Mediator
History Teacher
Humanities Teacher
Theater Teacher
Provenance
Originally created by Mark Miller and Peter Newman, and published by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>.
Rights Holder
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>
Accrual Method
Item Creation
Contributing Project
<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank">Creative Sanford, Inc.</a>
<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/" target="_blank"><em>Celery Soup</em></a>
Dr. <a href="http://history.scotfrench.com/" target="_blank">Scot French</a>'s "Tools in Digital History Seminar", Fall 2013 at the <a href="http://www.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">University of Central Florida</a>
Curator
Cepero, Laura
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
External Reference
"<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about" target="_blank">WHO IS CREATIVE SANFORD, INC?</a>" <em>Celery Soup</em>. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com//about.
"<a href="http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/" target="_blank">About: History and Purpose</a>." <em>Celery Soup</em>. http://www.celerysoupsanford.com/about/.
"<a href="http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida" target="_blank">Sanford, Florida: How do you make <em>Celery Soup</em>? Add stories, then stir</a>." Community Performance International. http://www.communityperformanceinternational.org/sanford-florida.
"<a href="http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-10-20/entertainment/os-celery-soup-sanford-20101020_1_oral-histories-swamp-gravy-celery-soup" target="_blank">Tales of Sanford's resilience are the stars of 'Touch and Go'</a>." <em>The Orlando Sentinel</em>, October 20, 2010. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2010-10-20/entertainment/os-celery-soup-sanford-20101020_1_oral-histories-swamp-gravy-celery-soup.
"<a href="http://mysanfordherald.com/view/full_story/12128828/article-Young-dancer-helps-put-spark-in--Touch-and-Go" target="_blank">Young dancer helps put spark in 'Touch and Go'</a>." <em>The Sanford Herald</em>, March 2, 2011. http://mysanfordherald.com/view/full_story/12128828/article-Young-dancer-helps-put-spark-in--Touch-and-Go. "<a href="http://swampgravy.com/about-us/" target="_blank">About Us</a>." Swamp Gravy: Georgia's Official Folk-Life Play. http://swampgravy.com/about-us/.
Transcript
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Very nice. You look good. Okay. Well, I’m Mark Miller, with a graduate student with UCF [University of Central Florida]. And I’m here with Peter Newman, uh—director, writer, everything to do with <em>Celery Soup</em>[<em>: Florida’s Folk Life Play</em>], and, uh, and a powerhouse behind Creative Sanford[, Inc].</p>
<p>So we’re here for an interview. So have you been, uh, with the project from the beginning—Creative Sanford and, um, <em>Celery Soup</em>, or anything?</p>
<p class="Default"><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Creative Sanford actually started, um, probably three years before we actually put on the first, uh, [<em>clears throat</em>]—the first performance. Um, it was based on, um, <em>Swamp Gravy</em>[<em>:</em> <em>Georgia's Official Folk-Life Play</em>], uh, which started in Colquitt in Georgia. And Jeanine Taylor, who runs the, um, gallery across the way there, was really the, uh—the, uh—the, uh, fountain of it. Um, and she came back from seeing <em>Swamp Gravy</em> and decided she wanted to do the same here in. And, uh—I think, um—I mean, she will be able to tell you the story better than I can. But somebody I believe gave her either a check or cash—$200—and said, “There you go. Let’s start it.”</p>
<p class="Default">Um, they ran, uh, three to four years with the, um, funding within the community doing things like the Celery Ball primarily, and other things like that, before they actually, uh, pushed the boat out and, um, got a hold a company up North, that actually also helped to create <em>Swamp Gravy</em>. And they came down here and they did the first show. They, um—they were, um, helping with the “Tea and Tells,” which is where the community stories were obtained. And then, uh, they have, uh, various professional people, like a playwright—and she took the stories, put them together and produced the play. Then they had professional directors, choreographers, lighting, and all the rest of it.</p>
<p class="Default">And, um, they came together and they produced, um, the first <em>Touch and Go</em>. Um, it’s called <em>Touch and Go</em>,because, as you probably know, there was an Air Force—no.it was Navy base [Naval Air Station (NAS) Sanford] here. They—they flew aircraft. Anyhow, Um, the—it was Navy, because the “touch and go” was practicing carrier landings, so what they’d come is—they’d come down in their jets, touch the tarmac, and then take off again, so hence the “touch and go.” That’s what we used to call it. And, uh, one of the, uh, people who was associated with it very early on, he had a story about watching the planes do that when he was, uh, young in the Second World War— just after.</p>
<p class="Default">Um, but we—we felt that, um, after we had done <em>Touch and Go</em>—and, I mean, it was a success. There’s no doubt about it, but after that, um—that we could, you know, really, uh, kind of run with it ourselves. I mean, you know there were[sic] a nice enough bunch of people used to doing it, But, uh, they charged an arm and a leg, so you know you can only sustain that for so long. Particularly in a place like this. So, you know, Colquitt, Georgia, is an amazing place, uh, and if you go up there to watch <em>Swamp Gravy</em>, it is the only show in town. And people come from mile[sic]—I mean, it is unbelievable when you go up there to see that hundreds of people that come to it. They come from all over.</p>
<p class="Default">Whereas here, um, on any one night that we’re putting on something by <em>Celery Soup</em>, you can guarantee that there are between perhaps four to ten other live shows going on in theaters within perhaps a 30 mile radius. And I believe that that is primarily due to the number of people here that are associated with [Walt] Disney [World]. And of course, you know that helps with the whole creative process when it comes around to theater and all its, uh, associated performing arts.</p>
<p class="Default">So we’ve been going now for about four years with <em>Celery Soup</em>. And we’ve went through a number of iterations. We went through, um, <em>Touch and Go</em>.And we put it on for—well, it was quite a timeactually. We put it on over a period of, um, I think it was 18 months to two years we put it on. And we just repeated it basically, though with different directors. So it’s like a different show, but mainly it was, uh—and to be honest with you, we got reasonable audiences.</p>
<p class="Default">Um, But I—I—you know, the time came when we had other stories to tell. and the first story that, uh—that I wrote, uh—to be honest with you, I got a little—and a lot of people did—got a little fed up with doing the same thing. I performed, uh, <em>Touch and Go </em>for 47 performances. I’ve never ever done that with any show throughout my entire life before that.</p>
<p class="Default"><strong>Newman<br /></strong>So I then picked up on this, um, story about the haunted fire station. Of course, it was just around the corner from the theater .and it was such a wonderful story and very easy to tell. It almost—you know, I sat in the middle of the theater—I think it was one Saturday afternoon—and I—it just kind of wrote itself, you know. Uh, very easy to do and Barbara [Farrell] had given us, uh, her story—there were various other sources that I could use like local books., and then when I wrote it, uh, I actually sent it to Barbara and said, “Look. You know you were right with this.” And she said, “The only thing I want to change in it is that…” Uh, the friend who comes to visit her from Coconut Grove, where Barbara first came from—she wanted her to be called Sue, because that was the name of the name of her friend.</p>
<p class="Default"><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Right [<em>laughs</em>].</p>
<p class="Default"><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Okay. So we try. It’s interesting, you know, that you do these things. And when you first look at them, uh, they’re words on a piece of paper, and you don’t really necessarily fully appreciate what there is behind that, but, um, when the—when the word is Barbara Farrell, you know—Barbara’s alive. I went out and met the lady. Very, very nice lady. Very charming lady. And, um, these people are sitting in the audience, so you know you’re actually, um…</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Okay. We’re back after the vacuum break.</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Okay. So, as I say, you know, um, Barbara was, uh, an excellent source. A very nice person. Um, the story was easy to tell, and it didn’t take much research, because it was just really all there. Uh, the only thing that we had to do was really knit together the story of the fireman and the story of Barbara, and then just push them together.</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>And really, um—you know, I know you want me…</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Well…</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>To talk about how I got involved in this but—but—but, this is it, you see? Uh, I kind of got fed up with doing, uh, <em>Touch and Go</em>. I said to myself, <em>Peter, if you’re gonna do anything, you’ve gotta to write it yourself</em>.</p>
<p>So I sat down and wrote this story and I passed it to the board of Creative Sanford—said, “Look, I’ve written a story.” We then had a meeting. I think I wrote this—I can’t remember the exact dates, but I want to say I perhaps wrote this story in late November—in December. They had a meeting to discuss the next, uh, <em>Touch and Go</em>—whatever—whatever it was going to be called—by <em>Celery Soup</em>. And I sat there in the audience, and, um, they said, “Oh, the director’s going to be <em>X </em>and the choreographer’s going to be <em>Y</em>.” And—and this and that. And—and then we got two playwrights. One is Laura Donaldson and the other is Peter Newman. And that is the first time I ever realized that I was a—a playwright for Creative Sanford. So it was, you know—they say, you know, “Some people seek greatness. Others have it thrust upon them.” Mine was well and truly thrust upon me. So, you know, I—I came away from that realizing that I really had to, um—but it’s interesting you, know, because with, with that sort of thing, you know, you’ve got to start somewhere. And get from <em>A </em>and get to <em>B</em>.</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Well this brings up, um, uh—why do you do history? I mean, you know, part of this whole process—I guess <em>Swamp Gravy</em>, and all—how come you do history for this sort of thing?</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Well, uh, because that’s what it’s about. It’s about bringing out the stories that local people have of, uh—of what they’ve done. And turning that into—into some type of play that you can perform in public.</p>
<p>You know, we have—and I’ve sat through hours and hours and hours of these tapes and—and read and read, you know, people’s reports on, on their lives. And a lot of them are the same. Uh, you know, “I—I was born here. I was raised here. My mom and dad were strict with me when I was young. I went to school. Got a job. I got married, had kids, had grandkids. And now here I am and I’m talking to you about it.” And that might be over the course of three hours, you get something like that.</p>
<p>The secret with all of these things, Mark [Miller], is not, um, merely to put a recording device in front of somebody. What you have to do is actually drag out of them almost the interesting stories that they have. and there are very, very few people that come to us that have—that really have interesting stories kind of laid out in front of you.</p>
<p>We have two very notable exceptions there. And one is the family that tells us about Uncle Dieter. And the other is the family that tells us about Elmer Baggs. And the stories about those two individuals—and, uh, individuals they were—are an absolute legion. Uh, you know, we have quite a few of them. But some of the rest you really, really have to, you know, start digging and, uh— and—and—and trying to get at it.</p>
<p>And the history of it, of course, comes from the fact that, you know, history is really, uh, dependent upon how you define it. And for, uh, community theater such as this, we’re looking at, uh, contemporary history. So we’re not going back 65 million years to dinosaurs. We’re not going back 65,000 years. We’re going back 65 years. We’re looking at people’s life spans at what they’ve actually done. People who can remember going back into the 1910s, the 1920s. And, you know, sometimes…</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Collective memory?</p>
<p><strong>Newman</strong><br />It’s—it’s—it is very much a collective memory. Um, the—the— the story that I wrote about the fire station starts with a fireman coming back from a fire in 1923 at the Holy Cross [Episcopal] Church, when it actually burned to the ground. Um, fondly enough we also have the story. Um, and—I can’t remember who for the life of me who it is just off the top of my head. But, um, it’s obviously a—a—an older, uh, guy, saying, you know—telling his story and whatever. And somebody says, “Oh yeah. Tell him about how you burnt the Holy Cross Church down.” <em>[laughs</em>] And apparently this—this—this person was the knave[?] at the Holy Cross fire. He was baptized. And he always thought that it was a candle that they left after his baptism service that actually was responsible for burning the church down. But it just struck me as being, you know, very fascinating that—that here I’ve got the Holy Cross Episcopal Church. Over here is the guy who’s giving his story that actually—that actually relates to that burning down.</p>
<p>So, you know, some of the things that we could tell instead of being snip-its could be much, much, longer. But of course, you know, you have to bear in mind what it is, know who you’re dealing with, and, uh, you have to have an eye to the, uh—the consumption of what you’re actually producing, rather than just producing for producing’s sake. It’s not something that is, um—it’s not an academic exercise. You know, what you’re dealing with. You’re dealing with living history, with real people. You’re dealing with their lives. It has to stand up to their own scrutiny. So if you tell me your tale, and I turn it into a play, I—I could look you fairly in the squarely in the eye and say, “Look, Mark,” you know, “Your story that you were telling in front of all of these people.” And you would be happy with that, as opposed to taking kind of mangling it around and producing all sorts of other things there to make it a little more interesting. I’m sure you have lots of interesting stories, but that’s nonetheless the way we have to have that in the back of our mind all the time.</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>So authenticity—that’s something that is very important?</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Authenticity is very important. I mean, you—you can take it, um, to a degree. I mean, what—what you deal with, for example, you—you might—it’s I—I—I guess it’s like, um—it’s like a, um—a pudding. Uh, uh, and, in that pudding, you’ve got raisins, and those raisins are the bits of authenticity. And then you sort of, uh, really pad other stuff in. You— you can’t be authentic 100 percent of the time.</p>
<p>Um, the last story that—that I wrote, um, for the, uh—for, uh, <em>Remade - Not Bought</em>, was a story about a lady called Arthurene[sp] Wood[?], who worked in the tax office. And this is just a little story—she had about been almost locked in there one night. And, uh Arthurene actually came and—and said—Arthurene and Mona—that was her friend and that was absolutely authentic. But onto the end of it, I grafted this huge story about somebody writing a, uh, check on the side of a cow, which was, uh—was not authentic at all. It was just a, uh—a story, that’s what it was. But it, you know—it made for good theater. So you always have to have, um, an eye to what—what I say what the audience is. The audience will not sit there and listen to somebody going on about their childhood or anything like that, because it is not interesting. And you’re asking these people to pay money to come and listen to what we are producing at Creative Sanford. And you—you’ve got to have something that they are interested in, because, otherwise there’s no point in doing it. Because you’re asking them to pay and—and, otherwise, they go away grumbling and say, “Well, it’s not worth it,” and all the rest of it. You might be alright for that show, but, when it comes around to doing another show, then you find you’ve shot yourself in the foot, and have a much bigger mountain to climb, when it comes around to producing the audiences for a show like that.</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Well, how do you pick your topics then? Uh, uh, apparently, uh, from what we’ve heard, there are, um, a few key words or something that you might—might choose to sort of build stories around?</p>
<p class="Default"><strong>Newman<br /></strong>To a large extent, it depends on the sort of, um, grist[?] that you have for your mill. Um, and it’s not something that you have as a sort of, uh, list of—of topics that you may or may not choose. It’s something that just stands up and hits you out of—soft of—like, for example, when I wrote, um, the highway man. That was something that, um, the, uh—the Sanford council or Seminole County, uh, lawyer. Uh, a guy called Doug[las] Stenstrom. And, uh, he gave his story. And, you know, uh, a very long, actually very entertaining, uh, set of reminiscences. And, out of this, there was[sic] a couple of lines about, um, the—uh, was it the paintings or did he actually mention the highway men? The—the, uh, Florida Highwaymen who painted these paintings, in the [19]50s and the ‘60s and sold them.</p>
<p class="Default">And, um, one of the guys that was originally associated with <em>Celery Soup</em>—a guy called Perry Eschelberg, who actually lives over in Serenity Towers—Bram Towers, as it was then. So I went and talked to Perry, and he said, “Yeah. We’ve got them here.” And he showed me all the Al Newton paintings that are there in the foyer, and you can still see this old one that was screwed to the wall. And so I thought then, <em>This is such a</em>—and fondly[?] enough at that time, um, from something of the public radio that they were talking about that something of the highwaymen. And then I saw something else on the local TV—they were talking about the highway men. So I thought, <em>Right. I’m gonna get home and do</em>—<em> do my bit first</em>. So I wrote this story so the only really, um, catch I could find in it. So to make it more interesting was they took all the highwaymen down, when they renovated the building, uh, a number of years ago and then they put them back up. Originally, I—I entitled it <em>The Mystery of the Missing Highway Men Mystery</em>. But, I mean, it was a nice story I—I felt, that kind of made it a—a little more interesting. Um, but, you know, the actual history of the highwaymen is— is fascinating. I believe, that over the next three or four years, that you’ll perhaps see a lot more people coming out with stories about the highwaymen more than—than what there’s been to date.</p>
<p class="Default">So, you know, how does anything stand up it? It—it—it just does, you know. We got, um— we got—at least I got—I got a story about, uh, somebody who used to have the land lease for the Mayfair Golf Club.<a title="">[1]</a> And, um, I— kind of researched it and then looked at it, and I didn’t—it took me a long time to actually find the angle that I wanted. But, um, I—I wrote what—what I consider to be a funny piece. but it’s, uh—we couldn’t put it on, because there’s this court case going through between the, uh, people who have the lease to the golf course and Seminole County, who actually own the land. And, um, it was about who designed the golf course. So I wrote this story about who designed the Mayfair golf course. So if you come to see next time, hopefully that story might be in there.</p>
<p class="Default"><strong>Miller<br /></strong>[inaudible]</p>
<p class="Default"><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Yup.</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Well, we did see two that that we were interested—that we’re sort of focusing on. Um, one of them is about the rolling pin. And the other story is about Dr. [George H.] Starke. And, um, uh, we’re interested in how you picked those and how you approached them.</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Well, first of all the—the—the rolling pin now—when we did this iteration of, uh—of, uh, <em>Celery Soup</em>, there were two—as I said before, there were two of us writing. One was Laura Donaldson, and the other was me. Now Laura actually found the story about the rolling pin. Again, uh, she got it from somebody,<a title="">[2]</a> who came in and told the story about the cannon, and—and its wheels, and what have you. And she produced a really nice little story about, you know, the rolling pin, the kids, and the—and the mother, and how they use to roll it out. And, you know, they were using a bit of history with that.</p>
<p>Um, Dr. Starke, um—that we used to have a lady,<a title="">[3]</a> uh, who was—she—she was in the original <em>Touch and Go</em>, and now she moved on to the Board of Creative Sanford. She’s, uh, um—she used to be a—a professor at the Seminole, uh, Community College.<a title="">[4]</a> And she said, um—talked to me about this—this, uh—Dr. Starke. And, um, she had a lot of, um, uh, information on him, which she gave to me. And, you know, uh, you read all this stuff.</p>
<p>And, uh, Starke’s interesting, because he was there. If you go down to the Orlando museum<a title="">[5]</a> in Downtown [Orlando], you’ll see they’ve got a big display about [George] Henry Starke, and—and the bombing in Mims, and—and in 1951. You know, when they killed the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] local secretary.<a title="">[6]</a> Um, so that’s all pretty graphically laid out. I went down there to have a look at that. And then [George] Henry Starke’s son—I think his name’s George [Starke]—he was, um—he became a lawyer and he’s a—he’s a—he’s a very well-known financer. He lives up there in New York, but I’ve never gotten a hold of him. But, uh, he’s still around.</p>
<p>But the—the story about Starke—I mean, it’s a really good story. There’s a lot of detail there. It affects a lot of people. Um, it was really how do you, you know, tell it—a story like that? And I—I noticed, when I was going through it, there’s a little time—a little footnote—that said that, when the original researchers were producing all of this information, you know, it said, uh, “As told to us by his—daughter,<a title="">[7]</a>” uh, “in a restaurant in” 1964, or whenever it was. So that—I—I—I kind of took that. That’s how I got the idea of the, uh—the restaurant and kind of bringing it in like that, which I felt was a, you know, uh—a good way of telling, and putting it in—in—in some sort of context. But it was interesting that, um, I, uh, you know—I’m not probably, uh, uh, a native of Sanford, but, um…</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Live here, work here, play here.</p>
<p class="Default"><strong>Newman<br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>] But, um, when, uh, we did the original <em>Touch and Go</em>, uh, there—there was a guy called Will Saunders, and his brother Tommy [Saunders]. Uh, they’re both, uh—black guys. And Will is, uh—really, really nice guys, they were. Will was, um—he used to be on the board of—of Creative Sanford, as well. but he said he preferred to, uh—it was a toss-up between Creative Sanford and watching his football. He preferred to watch his football, so, you know, that—that’s fine. But—but Will’s a great one for photography, you know. He’s taken thousands and thousands of photos of the, uh, <em>Touch and Go </em>shows over the years. In fact, I believe they’re his photos that they are there down there at the [Princess] Theater. But, um, he came to the, um, uh—the—the Starke—when we first did the—the, uh, Starke play. And he came down and said to me—what was it he said to me? He said, “Dr. Starke.” He said, “He actually delivered me and Tommy.”</p>
<p class="Default">So I, you know—it— it’s little things like that—that, you know, just make you realize that you’re not dealing with just words on a piece of paper. This is actually community. there are people that—even the lady, uh—Nancy [Harris] Ford, who’s in the show—I think, uh, uh—she was delivered by Dr. Starke, as well. So, you know, there, uh—obviously a very, very well-known guy, uh, and you know, uh, such a—such a, you know, uh—he—he—his attitude towards people was unbelievable. it really was. You know, uh, this—this string of humanity kind of pours out of the fellow, you know. And to appear twice in <em>Time </em>magazine is—is—is—shows he’s no slouch either. So, interesting guy.</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Well, how do you deal with, uh, counter-narrative or, say, gaps in your story, or maybe sensitive areas? Um…</p>
<p class="Default"><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Well, um, sensitive areas—uh, of course, you know, it’s Sanford. Um, there was, uh, uh— there was segregation here obviously, uh, um, until obviously the mid-70s. and I was actually, um, going to write, um, a story about the segregation of the schools, which you could, um—between Crooms [High School]<a title="">[8]</a> and, uh, uh, uh, Sanford, and—and, uh, the [Seminole] High School, uh, which was in 1972-[19]73. There’s, uh, uh, a friend of mine was there. Nancy Ford was there at that time, as well. And they both had their particular stories to tell.</p>
<p class="Default">But then, of course, we had the—the whole Trayvon [Benjamin] Martin and George [Michael] Zimmerman thing. And, uh, the board really felt that, you know, you could wade around in this ‘til the cows come home, but they didn’t really feel that it was something that we really necessarily wanted to—to overplay. Uh, and, in fact, you know, there is obviously, um—there’s a black element to this and there’s a white element to this.</p>
<p class="Default">Um, and really—I mean, personally, I’d like to see the—the things be a little close together, you know. It—it’s very difficult to, uh, write the stories that we’ve got, um, if you’ve—if you’re not confident that you’ve got the people—you know, the—the—the black people—to come and play the parts. I mean, luck—you know, luckily, we had some really good people., but it’s, you know—it’s—it’s particularly men, um, in the sort of 30 to 50 age range—whether they’re black, white, or whatever color. You know, you just can’t just go tell them that this is not the sort of thing that, you know, really does very much for them. So you—you’ve got to always bear that in the back of your mind. But certainly, you know, we are conscious of the fact that Sanford has, uh, perhaps—I don’t know whether it’s an unenviable reputation, because of what’s happened in the past. Um, and you—you don’t have to look very far to find it either.</p>
<p class="Default">In terms of other things, um, if you look at something like Uncle Dieter, uh—I mean, when I first saw that, they actually asked me to play Uncle Dieter in <em>Touch and Go</em>, which I did. Um, I—I was a little cherry about it, because, of course, you know, he was, uh—wasn’t quite an idiot savant, but very much this sort of, um, like, um, the play<a title="">[9]</a> <em>Rain Man</em>. you know, It’s—it’s—and it’s true that, you know, you could give him your birthdate and he would [<em>snaps</em>] tell you just like that what day of the week it was. You know, he—he—he kind of, you know, lived life to his own beat of the drum. You know, he—he would do things in his own particular way that—that nobody else would think of doing.</p>
<p class="Default">Um, he had this, uh—perhaps you didn’t see <em>Touch and Go</em>—but he had this, uh, rooster that he use to carry around with him that had no legs. And, uh, the—the—the joke was, of course, well, uh, “Where do you find a rooster with no legs?” Where do you find a rooster with no legs? Exactly where you left it. But apparently that—what we— we found out the reason why this rooster had no legs is because, uh, the rooster caught, um—I think it was some sort of parasite—something like that. And, uh, they advised Dieter to bathe the rooster’s legs in gasoline. I mean, and this would be like sort of, you know, like putting, um, gas—gasoline on a cloth and just rubbing it down—something like that. But he stuck this bird in the gasoline for hours. And, of course, eventually it lost its legs. Because of the effect of the gasoline. So he used to carry the rooster around, you know.</p>
<p class="Default">Just—just a man very much following his own light. And, you know, with people like that, it’s very easy to—to write stories about them. With people like that, you know, you’re not demeaning them or doing anything like that. And I think really, when it comes around to looking and—and, I mean, it’s not just here. It’s anywhere, you know. Uh, we’ve got a mix of cultures. You’ve got a mix of people. You know some are old. Some are young. So long as you don’t demean them, or run them down, which is totally unnecessary. Not what were about at all. Then I think you can legitimately tell their story to any audience that you care to invite through the door.</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Very good. Alright. Um, so you’re telling stories about ourselves to ourselves?</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Exactly.</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Alright. [inaudible].</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>I mean, let’s be honest. I mean, you know, you have a story. You might think, <em>Well</em>, I mean, <em>Okay. Fine.</em> But, I mean, you have a story. You’ve got more than one. You’ve got a lot of stories. And, uh, it’s really up to the person who’s doing the interviewing just to kind of drag that story out of the person who is the interviewee. I mean, you know, not everybody sits down and goes on and on and on and on, like I do. You know, sometimes it’s very, very difficult to just bring the person back and say, “Well, you said about this and what about that?” But that is the only way that you can do it to get hold of information from them that you can’t get from a thousand other people. Because you’re not talking about their lives per se. you’re talking about their lives in Sanford and how they interacted within the environment and the community. And, of course, that’s not what everybody does around here, because some people live in Longwood. Some people live in Tallahassee. Some people live in Nigeria. You know, they’re—they’re all born and raised in a family, and perhaps go to school, and have kids ,and da de da de da de da. But it’s the environment that—that really makes the person and the way that they interact with the environment of the people. That’s what makes the interesting story.</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>How does the community react to your play and to your writing?</p>
<p class="Default"><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Well, generally speaking, we—we haven’t—well, we’ve had, um—it’s true to say that, as soon as you put anything on, and hold it up as being— here is a spectacle for somebody to look at and you’re asking them to pay money to come and see it. Um, it holds its self up to ridicule, criticism—call it whatever you will. And we’ve had our fair share of criticism. People criticize that it’s, uh—there’s[sic] too many stories about black people, or there’s[sic] not enough stories about white people, or, you know, this or that or—or whatever. But, to me, that is just healthy criticism.</p>
<p class="Default">If somebody came along and said, you know, “My name is Mrs. X. and my mother gave you this story. And that you’ve just done with my mother’s story, I think is just awful.” I would be very, very, upset about that. And I would want to know why this had happened, but, you know, touch wood. We’ve never had anything like that. Nobody has ever said, um, you know, that—that—that what you’ve done is terrible to the story.</p>
<p class="Default">That, in fact, um—when I played, uh, Elmer Baggs in the first show, Marlene Baggs came up and said, um, you know, that “I— I really enjoyed it.” I got the same thing from, um, Uncle Dieter and, uh, one of his nieces. She said that she enjoyed it as well, because, you know, we—we didn’t demean the person. You know, we told the story. And, if we added a twist of humor to it, as well, or a twist of mystery, you know, it doesn’t take a thing beyond the realms of—of probability. Then that’s—that’s really what you have to do, you know, when you’re telling all of these things.</p>
<p class="Default">You know, if the people have die—uh, died, and—and you tell the story about the founding of Sanford, or something like that, you go back to Colonel<a title="">[10]</a> [Henry Shelton] Sanford, you know—there were two of them. Him and a general. And they kind of tossed up to see what it was gonna be called and all the rest. They weren’t really proper Army generals, and you can do that. But—and it is history. But if—if you’re trying to be sort of faithful to the idea of a community—a historical performance—then it’s—as much as you possibly—if can, use live testimony opposed to something you get out of a history book, then I believe that that’s what you should be aiming to do.</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Well, how do you go about collecting these histories?</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Same way as you do with, uh—we’ve—we’ve done “Tea and Tells.” And these little recorders here are a godsend, because you just put them on the, uh, table and people talk into them. And, uh, you know, sometimes you go to sit and listen to them. Sometimes they’re transposed onto, uh, paper or something like that, so you can sit there and read them. But, you know, it— it’s, um—it’s an art, I think. Interviewing people and getting what you need to get out of them is an art. But generally speaking, um, there are very, very few people who don’t want to come in and talk about themselves, you know, not everybody, but, you know generally speaking, people aren’t resistant to talk about their lives, once you kind of start the ball rolling. It’s, you know—it’s a fascinating subject. You can sit and talk about yourself all night long if you really think about it.</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Do you have writing background? Plays?</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Um…</p>
<p><strong>Miller <br /></strong>Plays?</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Personally, no. The only writing that I—I mean, I was, um, associated with a theatrical group in the UK [United Kingdom] for a long, long time. And I did all sorts of stuff there, including writing. Um, but I’ve never actually sat down and, um, and written a book, or written a play, or anything like that. It’s just—it’s just kind of dabbling here and there.</p>
<p>And this one is as—is as good a place to dabble as any other, because you’re—you’re just looking at, um, little bites that you—that you’re performing. You know, nothing is more than five or six minutes long. Um, it’s, uh—you—you—you try to build the characters to make them interesting. And I—I know how these things should work, because I’ve had so much experience of doing it in the past. But, uh, you can’t afford—I—I—I mean, you can’t afford of subtle nuances.</p>
<p>You know, we’re not talking Broadway Theater. And, uh, and people who are going to the theater every, you know—every week or something like that. What you’re doing is you are producing mass entertainment. And that’s such—it has to be pitched at a certain level. So, you know, it’s—it’s not a question of using complicated plot lines that go on for half an hour, or spending 20 minutes trying to work, uh, you know—work out how a person’s psyche is actually affecting everybody within the—the play. No. You’ve got to have something that’s quick, that’s lively, that keeps people’s attention. And people have a very short attention span for things like this, generally speaking. So it’s gotta be that—it’s got to be—it’s gotta have a certain amount of “razzmatazz” that has to go with it.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, you’ve got to produce a commercial article, because that’s what you’re going to—to go out and sell. So yeah. You know, I mean, when—when I first wrote the—the fireman, you know, it had all sorts of stuff in it and, uh—but it was severely cut down, because, of course, it was just, uh—it was just not required. So you’ve got to be careful of these things.</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Well, what do we have to look forward to in the future?</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Well, it’s more of the same. Um, you know, we have got some, uh, uh, more stories here. I’ve got, um, three that I’ve written. Uh, there’s—there’s the one about the golf course. There’s the one about, uh, a policeman’s dog that used to go and, uh, and test door handles by itself. And then I also wrote one about, um, uh, a fight. It—it was when, uh—again, this was going back to the schools’ integration—and it was a story that a, uh, lady gave us. And I wrote, uh, uh, about that. So, you know, that’s a bit of a kernel there, and then we’ve got other things. And I believe that, um, UCF also has a library of things, because it—it might well be that we’ve tried to kind of keep it to Sanford. Um, but, you know, perhaps we’ll extend it to Seminole County, or something like that.</p>
<p>But there is still a lot of people here. I mean, even during the last show, one of the guys who plays, um—he played one of the firemen, and—and he was also the, um, uh, the president of the—of the Sanford, uh, local business society, right at the end there. His name’s Mike. [<em>clears throat</em>] He said that he knew a guy. Uh, I think this guy rented him a house, or sold him a house. He said that this guy’s father, uh—he used to brew moonshine, over there at the other side of Lake Monroe there. And, you know, the stories that he could tell. So, you know, you—you’ve gotta kinda keep your ears open for something like this. You know, just—just follow up on them. Like, if it’s something interesting like that. so, you know, we’ll look, uh—look and see if we can’t get something that’s light and entertaining next time.</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Alright. Well, thank you very much.</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>I hope I’ve been light and entertaining</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>Yes. You have. Dramatically so.</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Thank you.</p>
<p><strong>Miller <br /></strong>[<em>laughs</em>] Thank you.</p>
<p><strong>Newman<br /></strong>Alright.</p>
<p><strong>Miller<br /></strong>I do appreciate it.</p>
<div><br /><div>
<p><a title="">[1]</a> Correction: Mayfair Country Club.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[2]</a> Luticia Lee.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[3]</a> Dr. Annye Refoe.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[4]</a> Present-day Seminole State College.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[5]</a> Orange County Regional History Center.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[6]</a> Harry T. Moore.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[7]</a> Helen Starke.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[8]</a> Present-day Crooms Academy of Information Technology.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[9]</a> Correction: film.</p>
</div>
<div>
<p><a title="">[10]</a> Correction: General.</p>
</div>
</div>
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<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/files/original/2ede11035b08f37e307f9444c768c148.mp3" target="_blank">Oral History of Peter Newman</a>
1st Street
A. Newton
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Barbara Farrell
Bram Towers
Celery Bowl
Celery Soup: Florida's Folk Life Play
Coconut Grove
Colquitt, Georgia
community theaters
Creative Sanford, Inc.
Crooms Academy
Crooms High School
doctors
Douglas Strenstrom
Downtown Orlando
Elmer Baggs
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folk plays
George H. Starke
George Michael Zimmerman
George Zimmerman
Harry T. Moore
Harry Tyson Moore
Henry Shelton Sanford
highwayman
highwaymen
Holy Cross Episcopal Church
Jeanine Taylor
Lake Monroe
Laura Donaldson
Luticia Lee
Mark Miller
Marlene Baggs
Mayfair Country Club
moonshine
NAACP
Nancy Ford
Nancy Harris
NAS Sanford
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Naval Air Station Sanford
OCRHC
Orange County Regional History Center
Perry Eschelberg
Peter Newman
physicians
playwrights
playwriting
Princess Theater
race relations
Rain Man
Remade - Not Bought
rolling pins
Sanford
SCC
segregation
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Serenity Towers
SSC
Swamp Gravy: Georgia's Official Folk-Life Play
Tea and Tell
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Time Magazine
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Touch and Go
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Trayvon Martin
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Will Saunders
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https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/857f2e7d6754774ca0524f1b2c3be13f.mp3
529d983a4d476472e2c7af2bc648d3ed
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Georgetown Collection
Description
Collection of digital images, documents, and other records depicting the history of Georgetown, an African-American community in Sanford, Florida. Series descriptions are based on special topics, the majority of which students focused their metadata entries around.
Georgetown was established by the city's founder, Henry Shelton Sanford, in the 1870s. The neighborhood spans along Sanford Avenue, with its commercial district between First Street and Fifth Street, and its historic district between Seventh Street and Tenth Street. Though originally much smaller, Georgetown spanned to its present boundaries from East Second Street to Celery Avenue and from Sanford Avenue to Mellonville Avenue. Georgetown thrived at its height from circa 1880 to 1940, particularly in agriculture and transportation.
Alternative Title
Georgetown Collection
Subject
Georgetown (Sanford, Fla.)
Sanford (Fla.)
Contributor
Firpo, Julio R.
Rock, Adam
Has Part
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/78" target="_blank">Marie J. Francis Collection</a>, Georgetown Collection, Sanford Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/101" target="_blank">Sanford Avenue Collection</a>, Georgetown Collection, Sanford Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/16" target="_blank">Sanford Collection</a>, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Language
eng
Type
Collection
Coverage
Georgetown, Sanford, Florida
Contributing Project
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/buildingblocks.php" target="_blank">Building Blocks</a>
Curator
Cepero, Laura
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
External Reference
Flewellyn, Valada S. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/4497409" target="_blank"><em>African Americans of Sanford</em></a>. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Pub, 2009.
"<a href="http://www.sanfordfl.gov/index.aspx?page=483" target="_blank">Pathways to History - Historic Georgetown</a>." City of Sanford. http://www.sanfordfl.gov/index.aspx?page=483.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
Firpo, Julio R.
Interviewee
Refoe, Annye
Location
Sanford, Florida
Original Format
1 audio recording
Duration
1 hour, 33 minutes, and 36 seconds
Bit Rate/Frequency
1411 kbps
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Oral History of Dr. Annye Refoe
Alternative Title
Oral History, Refoe
Subject
Sanford (Fla.)
Georgetown (Sanford, Fla.)
African Americans--Florida--Sanford
Teachers--Florida
Educators--Florida
Segregation--Florida
Nashville (Tenn.)
Description
Annye Refoe, the daughter of Herman L. Refoe, Jr. and Shellye L. Refoe, was born on January 29, 1951. Since her parents both taught at Midway Elementary School, Refoe also attended the school, as opposed to attending Hopper Academy in Georgetown, an historic neighborhood in Sanford, Florida. Refoegraduated from Seminole High School in the class of 1969. After her treatment in the newly integrated Seminole High School, Refoe decided to enroll in a historically black college/university. She graduated from Fisk College in Nashville with a bachelor of arts degree in English in 1973. Upon her return from college, Annye began teaching in August 1974 at Lake Howell High School in Winter Park. In 1982, she started teaching at Seminole Community College, where she later became the Dean of the Arts and Humanities.
Table Of Contents
0:00:00 Introduction<br />0:00:32 Growing up in Sanford<br />0:01:36 Richard Wright's depictions of the South<br />0:03:09 First time being called "nigger"<br />0:03:48 Education<br />0:04:15 Comparing Georgetown and Midway<br />0:11:56 Growing up in Georgetown and attending Crooms High School<br />0:15:31 Desegregation at Seminole High School<br />0:20:02 Interaction with white people in the business district<br />0:26:38 Working at a drug store<br />0:30:54 Seeing <em>The Great White Hope</em> at the Ritz Theatre<br />0:32:00 Seminole County Public Schools<br />0:34:51 White teachers' reactions to having black students<br />0:37:44 Ku Klux Klan riots<br />0:38:59 Experience at Fisk University in Nashville<br />0:41:25 Majoring in English and dream of being the first female sports columnist<br />0:42:37 Interacting with communities in Nashville and student protests<br />0:45:30 Moving back to Sanford and then to Winter Park<br />0:46:50 Influence of her parents on her life and the community<br />0:54:51 How Sanford changed oved time<br />1:00:17 Teaching at Seminole County College<br />1:00:24 RECORDING CUTS OFF<br />1:00:24 White teacher barred from teaching ballet to African-American children<br />1:02:08 Returning to Sanford and employment after college in the 1970s<br />1:07:21 Experience as teacher and later as dean at SCC<br />1:13:58 Experience teaching right after college and being called "nigger" by a student at Lake Howell High School<br />1:19:20 How Refoe distanced herself from Sanford<br />1:21:03 Disintegration of sense of community due to integration<br />1:23:02 Need for preserving past<br />01:23:37 Annye's definition of Sanford while growing up and in the present<br />1:27:56 Annye's gratitude for being a teacher<br />1:30:10 How people connect to Sanford<br />1:33:50 Sanford and other small towns losing their history
Abstract
Oral history interview of Annye Refoe. Interview conducted by Julio R. Firpo at the home of Dr. Stephen Caldwell Wright in Sanford, Florida.
Type
Sound
Source
Refoe, Annye. Interview by Julio R. Firpo. Home of Dr. Stephen Caldwell Wright. April 15, 2011. Audio record available. <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>.
Requires
Multimedia software, such as <a href="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/" target="_blank"> QuickTime</a>.
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/41" target="_blank"> Georgetown Collection</a>, Sanford Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Coverage
Georgetown, Sanford, Florida
Midway Elementary School, Midway, Sanford, Florida
Crooms High School, Georgetown, Sanford, Florida
Seminole High School, Sanford, Florida
Goldsboro, Sanford, Florida
Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee
Lake Howell High School, Winter Park, Florida
Creator
Firpo, Julio R.
Refoe, Annye
Publisher
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>
Contributor
Wright, Stephen Caldwell
Date Created
2011-04-15
Date Modified
2014-03-17
Format
audio/mp3
Extent
944 MB
Medium
1-hour, 33-minute, 36-second audio recording
Language
eng
Mediator
History Teacher
Geography Teacher
Provenance
Originally created by Julio R. Firpo and published by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>.
Rights Holder
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>
Accrual Method
Item Creation
Contributing Project
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/buildingblocks.php" target="_blank">Building Blocks</a>
Curator
Firpo, Julio R.
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
Source Repository
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a>
External Reference
Flewellyn, Valada S. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/4497409" target="_blank"><em>African Americans of Sanford</em></a>. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Pub, 2009.
"<a href="http://croomsaoit.org/#about" target="_blank">About Crooms Academy</a>." Crooms Academy of Information Technology, Seminole County Public Schools. http://croomsaoit.org/#about.
Postal, Leslie. <a href="http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2001-11-23/news/0111230278_1_crooms-academy-seminole-sanford" target="_blank">"Historic Crooms Academy Embraces A High-tech Future</a>." <em>The Orlando Sentinel</em>, November 23, 2001. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2001-11-23/news/0111230278_1_crooms-academy-seminole-sanford.
Robison, Jim. "<a href="http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1991-08-04/news/9108030386_1_crooms-academy-sanford-hopper" target="_blank">Professor's Legacy Lives On In Seminole School History</a>." <em>The Orlando Sentinel</em>, August 4, 1991. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1991-08-04/news/9108030386_1_crooms-academy-sanford-hopper.
"<a href="http://www.goldsboromuseum.com/The-Education-In-Goldsboro.html" target="_blank">Education In Goldsboro & Sanford</a>." Goldsboro Historical Museum. http://www.goldsboromuseum.com/The-Education-In-Goldsboro.html.
Sanford Historical Society (Fla.). <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/53015288" target="_blank"><em>Sanford</em></a>. Charleston, SC: Arcadia, 2003.
Cohen, Rodney T. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/53874175" target="_blank"><em>Fisk University</em></a>. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Pub, 2001.
"<a href="http://www.seminolestate.edu/about/who-we-are" target="_blank">Who We Are</a>." Seminole State College of Florida. http://www.seminolestate.edu/about/who-we-are.
African American
ballet
Brooks, Gwendolyn
CHS
Crooms High School
Dean of the Arts and Humanities
demonstration
desegregation
education
Fisk College
Francis, Daphne F.
Francis, Gayle
Georgetown
Goldsboro
Haley, Alex
high school
historic preservation
Hopper Academy
Humphrey, Daphne F.
integration
JHS
Jones High School
KKK
Ku Klux Klan
Lake Howell High School
LHHS
Midway
Midway Elementary School
Nashville, Tennessee
protest
race relations
racism
Refoe, Annye
Refoe, Herman L., Jr.
Refoe, Shellye L.
riot
Ritz Theatre
Sanford
Sanford Avenue
SCC
school
SCPS
segregation
Seminole Community College
Seminole County Public Schools
Seminole High School
Seminole State College
SHS
South
SSC
student movement
The Great White Hope
Winter Park
Wright, Richard
Wright, Stephen Caldwell
-
https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka/files/original/b3c0ebf87dbb1a4f04adfbe31b826e16.pdf
c2a6c4b0226ff8522447e5228e091cb5
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Marie Jones Francis Collection
Alternative Title
Francis Collection
Subject
Midwives, African American
Midwives--Florida
Midwifery--United States
Georgetown (Sanford, Fla.)
Sanford (Fla.)
African Americans--Florida--Sanford
Description
Collection of digital images, documents, and other records depicting the life and work of Marie Jones Francis. Francis, the "midwife of Sanford," lived at 621 East Sixth Street in Sanford, Florida. Francis, the "midwife of Sanford," left behind a successful hotel and restaurant she owned in Sarasota in 1942 to return to Sanford and become a midwife. World War II caused a shortage in doctors and nurses, so Florida's Children's Bureau sent Francis to Florida A & M to acquire her practical nursing license in 1945. She specialized in premature babies and returned to Sanford to aid her mother, Carrie Jones, at Fernald-Laughton Memorial Hospital before they opened the ward in their home. "When her health starting failing," she recollects in a newspaper article, "I took over." Francis converted her house at 621 East Sixth Street to also serve as a maternity ward, where she delivered over 40,000 babies over her 32 year career. She became a midwife in the same vein as her mother, Carrie Jones, and together they ran the Jones-Francis Maternity Hall in Georgetown.<br /><br /> Francis served her community in several ways. She delivered babies for both white and black families from Seminole County, primarily patrons who either preferred natural births or could not afford deliveries at a hospital. In the 1950s, it cost $70 to stay nine days where soon-to-be mothers were taken care of. Francis was assisted by her sister, Annie Walker, who did the cooking. The house and ward also served as a school, where Marie Francis taught nurses the art of midwifery. Nurses would come from across the state to learn how to delivery infants naturally. A heavy burden on a single working mother, Marie Francis had three daughters, Cassandra Clayton, Daphne Humphrey, and Barbara Torre. Clayton and Humphrey became school teachers and Torre became a purchaser at Seminole Memorial Hospital.
Contributor
Firpo, Julio R.
Humphrey, Daphne Francis
Language
eng
Type
Collection
Coverage
Georgetown, Sanford, Florida
Contributing Project
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/buildingblocks.php" target="_blank">Building Blocks</a>
Curator
Cepero, Laura
Firpo, Julio R.
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
External Reference
Dickinson, Joy Wallace. "<a href="http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2008/02/24/3287685.htm" target="_blank">A Very Rich Trail: Florida’s Black Heritage is Celebrated in an Updated and Expanded State Publication</a>." <em>The Orlando Sentinel</em>, February 24, 2008, page J1. http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2008/02/24/3287685.htm.
Moore, Stacy. "<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/items/show/2922" target="_blank">Midwife on Job Here 32 Years</a>." <em>The Little Sentinel</em>, April 4, 1979, page 26.
Jeria, Michelle. "<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/items/show/2933" target="_blank">Sanford's Birth Place: Marie Jones Francis Delivered More than 40,000 Babies in Her Sixth Street Home</a>." <em>The Sanford Herald</em>, Feb 16, 2003, page 1C.
"<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/items/show/2944" target="_blank">Midwives Supply Needed Service Community</a>." <em>The Sanford Herald</em><span>, July 24, 1964, page 3.</span>
Flewellyn, Valada Parker, and the Sanford Historical Society. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/320804616" target="_blank"><em>African Americans of Sanford</em></a>. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2009.
Is Part Of
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/44" target="_blank">Seminole County Collection</a>, RICHES of Central Florida.
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/16" target="_blank">Sanford Collection</a>, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/41" target="_blank">Georgetown Collection</a>, Sanford Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Original Format
1 newspaper article
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
Heritage Jubilee Honors Distinguished Service Award
Alternative Title
1988 Heritage Jubilee Award
Subject
African Americans--Florida--Sanford
Sanford (Fla.)
Georgetown (Sanford, Fla.)
Midwives--United States
Description
A newspaper article about the 1988 Heritage Jubilee Distinguished Service Awards. The Heritage Jubilee is sponsored by the Afro-American Society to honor the birth and achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The program was established in the early 1980s by students and faculty members at Seminole Community College. The committee also created the Distinguished Service Awards, which would highlight the achievements of local African-Americans. <br /><br /> One of the honorees for 1988 was Marie Jones Francis, the "midwife of Sanford." Francis left behind a successful hotel and restaurant she owned in Sarasota in 1942 to return to Sanford and become a midwife. World War II caused a shortage in doctors and nurses, so Florida's Children's Bureau sent Francis to Florida A & M to acquire her practical nursing license in 1945. She specialized in premature babies and returned to Sanford to aid her mother, Carrie Jones, at Fernald-Laughton Memorial Hospital before they opened the ward in their home. "When her health starting failing," she recollects in a newspaper article, "I took over." Francis converted her house at 621 East Sixth Street to also serve as a maternity ward, where she delivered over 40,000 babies over her 32 year career. She became a midwife in the same vein as her mother, Carrie Jones, and together they ran the Jones-Francis Maternity Hall in Georgetown.<br /><br /> Francis served her community in several ways. She delivered babies for both white and black families from Seminole County, primarily patrons who either preferred natural births or could not afford deliveries at a hospital. In the 1950s, it cost $70 to stay nine days where soon-to-be mothers were taken care of. Francis was assisted by her sister, Annie Walker, who did the cooking. The house and ward also served as a school, where Marie Francis taught nurses the art of midwifery. Nurses would come from across the state to learn how to delivery infants naturally. A heavy burden on a single working mother, Marie Francis had three daughters, Cassandra Clayton, Daphne Humphrey, and Barbara Torre. Clayton and Humphrey became school teachers and Torre became a purchaser at Seminole Memorial Hospital.
Type
Text
Source
Original newspaper article: Hawkins, Marva Y. "Heritage Jubilee Honors Distinguished Service Award." <a href="http://mysanfordherald.com/" target="_blank"><em>The Sanford Herald</em></a>: Private Collection of Daphne F. Humphrey.
Is Part Of
<a href="http://mysanfordherald.com/" target="_blank"><em>The Sanford Herald</em></a>.
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/collections/show/78" target="_blank">Marie Jones Francis Collection</a>, Georgetown Collection, Sanford Collection, Seminole County Collection, RICHES of Central Florida.
Is Format Of
Digital reproduction of original newspaper article: Hawkins, Marva Y. "Heritage Jubilee Honors Distinguished Service Award." <a href="http://mysanfordherald.com/" target="_blank"><em>The Sanford Herald</em></a>.
Coverage
Jones-Francis Maternity Hall, Georgetown, Sanford, Florida
Creator
Hawkins, Marva Y.
Contributor
Orseno, Craig
Humphrey, Daphne F.
Date Created
1988
Date Copyrighted
1988
Format
application/pdf
Extent
842 KB
Medium
1 newspaper article
Language
eng
Mediator
History Teacher
Audience Education Level
SS.912.W.1.3
Provenance
Originally created by Marva Y. Hawkins and published by <a href="http://mysanfordherald.com/" target="_blank"><em>The Sanford Herald</em></a>.
Rights Holder
Copyright to the resource is held by <a href="http://mysanfordherald.com/" target="_blank"><em>The Sanford Herald</em></a> and is provided here by <a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/" target="_blank">RICHES of Central Florida</a> for educational purposes only.
Accrual Method
Donation
Contributing Project
<a href="http://riches.cah.ucf.edu/buildingblocks.php" target="_blank">Building Blocks</a>
Curator
Firpo, Julio R.
Digital Collection
<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/map/" target="_blank">RICHES MI</a>
External Reference
Dickinson, Joy Wallace. “<a href="http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2008/02/24/3287685.htm" target="_blank">A Very Rich Trail: Florida’s Black Heritage is Celebrated in an Updated and Expanded State Publication</a>." <em>The Orlando Sentinel</em>, February 24, 2008, J1. http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2008/02/24/3287685.htm.
Moore, Stacy. "<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/items/show/2922" target="_blank">Midwife on Job Here 32 Years</a>." <em>The Little Sentinel</em>, April 4, 1979, 26.
Jeria, Michelle. "<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/items/show/2933" target="_blank">Sanford'S Birth Place: Marie Jones Francis Delivered More than 40,000 Babies in Her Sixth Street Home</a>." <em>The Sanford Herald</em>, Feb 16, 2003, 1C.
Flewellyn, Valada Parker, and the Sanford Historical Society. <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/320804616" target="_blank"><em>African Americans of Sanford</em></a>. Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2009.
"<a href="https://richesmi.cah.ucf.edu/omeka2/items/show/3309" target="_blank">Oral History of Daphne F. Humphrey</a>." Interview by Julio R. Firpo. Home of Daphne F. Humphrey. April 8, 2011. Audio record available. RICHES of Central Florida.
Transcript
Heritage Jubilee Honors Distinguished Service Award
Heritage Jubilee was a concerted effort by the Afro-American Society to commemorate the birth and achievements of Dr. Martin Luther King long before it became the trend to do so.
The students and faculty at Seminole Community College combined in the early 80s to plan a program as an annual reunion and as a community activity which would pay tribute to Dr. King's ideals and through which the community could offer recognition to anonymous as well as outstanding people.
Out of this interest grew the prestigious Distinguished Service Awards and the spotlighting of gifted artists. Heritage Jubilee has become a varied and spirited celebration of leadership in America with special emphasis on the contributions of all black leaders who are too often forgotten.
One of the Distinguished Service Awards for 1988 has been awarded to Mrs. Marie Jones Francis, who for 32 years, practiced the art of midwifery, being inspired by her mother, the late Mrs. Corrie Jones who was a practical nurse and midwife.
Mrs. Francis has delivered over 40,000 babies in this community. Although born in Georgia, she attended Hopper Academy and Crooms Academy in Sanford and did further studies at Florida A&M College in the care of premature and immature babies and at Tuskeegee Institute, Tuskeegee, Ala., in the studies of Improvement in Midwifery.
Mrs. Francis is an active member of St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church where she is an honorary member of St. Paul Gospel Chorus. She is also a member of the Royal Grand Chapter of the Eastern Star. Because of her many outstanding contributions to the community of Sanford, she has received many awards including Outstanding Service to the American Cancer Society, Exceptional Service to Mankind, Heart of Florida District Sertoma International, Dignified Achievement in Public Service, Pilot Club of Sanford, Meritorious Service Gospel Chorus, St. Paul Baptist Church, certificate from Seminole County Health Department and Rehabilitation Services, Seminole Youth Employment Program Honoree and charter member of Mental Health Center Board of Seminole County.
Mrs. Francis is the mother of three daughters, Daphne, Cassandra and Barbara (deceased) and has a granddaughter, Amber Marie.
Rufus C. Brooks, left, and Marie Jones Francis are the recipients of the 1988 Heritage Jubilee Distinguished Service Awards.
Publisher
<a href="http://mysanfordherald.com/" target="_blank"><em>The Sanford Herald</em></a>
Date Issued
1988
Source Repository
Private Collection of Daphne F. Humphrey
Afro-American Society
Brooks, Rufus C.
Clayton, Cassandra
Crooms Academy
Dignified Achievement in Public Service
Exceptional Service Award to Mankind
Florida A&M College
Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College
Francis, Marie Jones
Georgetown
Hawkins, Marva Y.
Heart of Florida District Sertoma International
Heritage Jubilee Distinguished Service Awards
Hopper Academy
Humphrey, Daphne F.
Jones, Carrie
maternity ward
Mental Health Center Board of Seminole County
Meritorious Service Gospel Chorus
midwife
Order of the Eastern Star
Orseno, Craig
Outstanding Service to American Cancer Society
Pilot Club of Sanford
Royal Grand Chapter
Sanford
SCC
Seminole Community College
Seminole County Health Department and Rehabilitation Services
Seminole Youth Employment Program Honoree
St. Paul Gospel Chorus
St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church
The Seminole Herald
Torre, Barbara
Tuskegee Institute