Baldwin
Okay, where and, uh—where and when were you born? The address and year, please.
Pottinger
I was born in 1947 in August, but I will tell you this: that I am not a native-born Orlandoan, though my family has been here for many, many, many years. I was born on the British Bay Islands off of Honduras, which, uh, were, uh, for many years a British possession, and, uh—and where my mother’s family, the Kirk-Connells, are from. So in any event though, my family, uh, originally—my, uh, parents, uh—my—my dad’s family came to Orlando and brought him to recover from the great influenza [pandemic] of 1917[1] that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and a million people around the world. He was a, uh, cadet training at the University of Kentucky, and many of ‘em got it. They were able to, uh, come from their home in Kentucky down here and spent the winter, and nursed him back to health. He went back, graduated from UK in ’23, and by ’26 he was back here as a full time resident. So that’s how we got here. Uh, my mother’s family a little the same. they maintained a home in Tampa. Uh, My grandfather—her father—was, uh, a sailing ship captain, and, uh, came back and forth to Tampa Harbor, and, uh, she was born in the Bay I—British Bay Islands, Honduras, and, uh—which are a neat little thing, if you look at a map. They’re only three major islands of it and a bunch of little keys, but Honduras is the only country in Central America that faces north, and that’s where, eh, we’re all related with the same families in the Cayman Islands. So a—anyway, the indigenous to the Caribbean [Sea], uh—that’s how I got here.
Baldwin
Hm, very interesting. So how old were you exactly when you moved to Orlando?
Pottinger
I was just a—a baby. yeah.
Baldwin
Okay.
Pottinger
Mmhmm.
Baldwin
So what would you say was your favorite part about growing up in Orlando?
Pottinger
I think the neighborhoods of Orlando and then the friendships that we had in a small town. Uh, a wonderful place to grow up. Uh, you—particularly among the families that had been here a long time, uh, you knew each other across town. I mean, when I was, uh, young dating and what, uh, I went to Edgewater High School, but I dated girls from Boone High School, and in the afternoon, the little motor scooters—or later, the cars—would cross the boys from Boone going to Edgewater, ‘cause, of course, they were prettier girls, and the boys from Edgewater going to Boone, because they were beautiful girls. So that’s kind of the way, uh, we all grew up. we knew each other. Uh, it was a relatively small town, and, uh, that changed—the first change of that was Martin Marietta [Corporation] moving here from Baltimore[, Maryland], and, uh, bringing eight thousand families. Uh, I think I’m right on that figure, but, uh, eh, the—the—the life and breath of Orlando, uh, breathed around their ups and downs at Martin Marietta, uh, when, you know, armaments and so forth—missiles and such—were big. Things were booming and when they laid off three thousand people, Orlando was in dire straits.
Baldwin
So like, what time of year—what year…
Pottinger
That would have been the late ‘50s.
Baldwin
Okay[?].
Pottinger
Yeah, that was all dairy land. All dairy.
Baldwin
Very interesting. Um, how and why did you become involved with Orlando Remembered?
Pottinger
I’ve always been a historian. Uh, I—I know it. With contemporaries of mine, it—it probably bored them to death, uh, but I was, uh, uh, a language person, and—and I was a history person. I wound up being a banker, but mathematics was never my long suit. I just, uh—people were—and—and that provided well for me in life. So, uh, that’s, you know—that’s kind of the reason I be—got involved. People asked me to come to get involved with Orlando Remembered, and it was my pleasure and has been all these years.
Baldwin
Very interesting. So you were not one of the founding members of…
Pottinger
No, I was not, uh, because, at that particular time, I was spending a little time out of here, and, uh, uh, the—the origin of it started at, uh, the Beacham Theatre. That’s where the first meeting—and I could not be there that particular time. Uh, We had a, uh, place in North Carolina, and, uh, like so many Floridians that grew up in the days before air conditioning, if you had 50 cents to clink together in your pocket, you either rented or you owned a place, as we did in Islands[?], North Carolina, or somewhere up that around Asheville—western North Carolina. Anyway, I was not here for that. So—but I soon right[?].
Baldwin
So you’d been there almost the entire time.
Pottinger
Almost the entire time.
Baldwin
You just missed the first meeting?
Pottinger
Just wasn’t at the very first meeting, which I consider were the founders. I knew every one of them, um, there—there were some wonderful—The Serroses, the Pajo[sp], Vandenburg[sp]—Pajo[sp] Pounds, we all knew her as. So forth and so on. A lot of them that were very active in that time. Grace Chewning[sp], um…
Baldwin
Are a lot of the founding members still…
Pottinger
There are still a number of them, surprisingly enough, still—still around. Uh, Andy Serros is, uh—that I mentioned earlier—and his brother, Bob [Serros], is[—is active, but, uh, Andy passed away a few years ago and he was one of the original founders, and there was, uh—there were a couple of others that have passed away.
Baldwin
What is the overall goal of Orlando Remembered?
Pottinger
To preserve, uh, the memory of areas and locations, and landmarks in the city, and, uh, we’ve—we’ve done that in several ways, but, uh, I think one of the—the best ways is the, uh—the location of displays in various spots around Downtown Orlando, and a couple outside of downtown, uh, with memorabilia, uh, of that area, and, uh, You know, at some point in time, I’d love to take you on a walking tour and—and show you some of those things. Just to stroll down, uh, Orange Avenue, and you can see the way it looked in the—sometimes as far back there’ll be something there from the 1890s, from one of the hotels—from the hotel that my grandparents stayed in, when they came that year in 1918—at the Wyoming Hotel. Uh, there’s a set of china and—and some se—tableware that I believe are in the display at the Orange County Courthouse. Uh, go in the courthouse—for any of you that might want to make that tour and see—walk in the front, leave your holstered items in the car, because you’re going to go through the, uh—the, uh, security thing there, but go over to the left and you’ll see it, uh, in the lobby there. You’ll see a great one. Uh, it tells all about what’s happened on that street and that block and that area around there. It, uh, uh, had the Wyoming Hotel on it, which was only a winter hotel, as many in Florida were. It closed in the summer, like Park Avenue did.
Uh, my in-laws had a, uh, store on Park Avenue for over 40 years, and they were one of the very few that stayed open year-round. Uh, Most of ‘em were—would head back in the cooler—warmer months of Florida. They’d go to cooler locations, uh, whether the hotels or the shops, like there—not—that wasn’t so in Orlando, necessarily. it was a year round, but in those winter destinations like that and such, they’d go, uh, up to Algonquin, you know, up to Maine, up to, uh, uh, Vermont—wherever they might be, and, uh, open a shop up there for the summer months and come back. So our whole, uh, life around here was really dependent on those northerners coming down, and, uh, in the early days, before Martin Marietta and such, in the winter time, we had not only the casual tourists who came down, because—to try and get away for a week or two—we had those that came down, as later my grandparents did, after enjoying it so much and—and many others, and spent time down here.
Some of them spent the winter, some—excuse me—spent six months, but we also had the, uh, we were the winter, uh, trotting horse capital of the United States, and it brought a lot of revenue in. Uh, it was at—held out at Ben White [Raceway], which was a raceway that was at the corner of about what’s Lee Road and—and [U.S. Route] 441. Uh, It’s now a big athletic fields, and there’s some stables, I think, still in the back, but it was a huge, uh, money infusion in the winter. Those people came—the owners of those—that was—it was always considered a, uh, uh, society kick above, uh, horse racing. Uh, the trotters and pacers were brought down, and, uh, they stabled them here, and, uh—the races. It—it—you knew when—you knew when Ben White opened, because traffic picked up. Now that would sound ridiculous with today’s horrible traffic in Orlando…
Baldwin
[laughs].
Pottinger
But back then there weren’t that many cars on the road and—and, uh, man, you’d see these automobiles come into town and up on the hood was a, uh—a metal, stainless, pretty thing of a, uh, trotting horse and a—and a sulky[?] behind it, You know? You knew they were involved in that. Eh, It just, uh—one of the things that—that, you know, came across that kept our town going before Martin Marietta and before [Walt] Disney [World Resort] and such.
Baldwin
Mentioning the horses, do you have an exhibit that features that aspect yet?
Pottinger
You know…
Baldwin
Aspect yet?
Pottinger
We—we have some pictures of it in one or two, but we don’t have anything, because there’s no facility out there left at Ben White to put it in. We would do that, because there—there—there’s enough, probably, memorabilia from those days, but what we try to do is locate what was on those various blocks. Maybe not just a block, maybe an area, in other words.
We’ve—in some cases, we’ve helped spon—helped sponsor a plaque, uh, like for the air base that was in town. Where Herndon Airport[2] is today. It was the Orlando [Army] Air Base before it was the Navy base.[3] So, uh, you know, there are—there are—newcomers, or what maybe consider themselves long time Orlandoans—that remember a Navy base out there, but I remember when it was the Orlando Air Base, and—and we had another air base that opened, uh—was Pine Castle Air Base, and, uh, that’s, uh, now the Orlando International Airport. The runways were there for the big bombers and it was a SAC base—a Strategic Air Command, and again, both of those things brought in a great deal of money when they came here.
Uh, the—the closing of Orlando Air Base was going to be a pretty big blow, and at that time, the owner and publisher of The Orlando Sentinel was a man name Martin Andersen—always with an “EN” at the end. Never—you could always tell somebody new to town when they write it as “Anderson,” but Martin Andersen was a Texas boy who knew LBJ,[4] and, uh, Johnson was president and, uh, he persevered on it and got a branch of the Great Lakes Naval Training Center to be established on the base, on part of what had been, uh, the—the air base, and, uh, it—it brought in not just recruits. It brought in families. It brought officers, enlisted men. It brought a whole lot of payroll coming in here. It was wonderful. Ah, uh, again, another mile stone that came along through connections or coincidence—whatever it might be. Uh, the same thing with the—the air base out here. Uh, it was going to close and MacDill [Air Force Base] in Tampa was going to take over as the air base for Florida—the major one, and, uh, the facilities were there for many years. The terminal was a big, uh, round-top hangar that had been used by the, uh—by the, uh, Air Force itself, and there was a lot of housing out there. There’s still some housing, uh, in—in that area out there, but, uh, there—There’s a, uh, Naval exchange, uh, where, you know, those that are qualified can—retirees and so forth—can go shop and so forth. Uh, a lot of other services were—were left in place and the city has had good use out of it.
Baldwin
Good, good. How does the group decide which sites to commemorate with exhibits?
Pottinger
Well, usually, it’s sponsored. Someone, uh, finds someone, uh, you know, that—that owns a building in that location, uh, and we—sometimes the building owner contributes financially to building—the displays are not cheap to put together, and, uh, you know, they’re—they’re—they’re housed—they’re lighted many of them and so forth, but, uh, it also takes someone who—who might have worked in that building or—or owned a building there and, uh, they have memorabilia, and, boy, we seize on it when we do, and, uh, they’re—they’re scattered throughout mostly in the downtown area. Uh, I mentioned the courthouse. The big Bank of America tower has one that we’re redoing in there now —I dedicated that when I was president of Orlando Remembered. Uh, I did a number of the—of the dedications of those, e—e—either when I was involved as—as one of the officers or not, but, uh, we have one in what was the Rutland building and that was a well-known building. That’s the corner of, uh—of Jefferson [Street] and—no, no—Jack—excuse me, uh—I believe it is on Orange Avenue at the corner of Washington [Street] —Washington and Orange. Uh, A building that once housed the most prestigious, uh, men’s store and lady’s store in downtown, when they were private companies, not big, you know, uh, uh, department stores—nation chain—national chains and such. Uh, We have another one in the SunTrust [Center] tower downtown that we’ve had there in the, uh—what was originally the CNA Building, but where the Citrus Club is, and that name has changed a number of times on that building.
So—but, uh, they’re—they’re throughout there. They, uh—and again, usually it’s—it’s because someone has a real interest in it or a financial interest in getting one of those, uh, displays in there. Uh, eh, It’s, uh—it’s a job to maintain them. They need periodic cleaning and dusting. The city has—has helped us with one. There’s one at the, uh, Bob Carr [Theater] auditorium, uh, that shows—that used to be the Orlando Municipal Auditorium. It was the auditorium and it wasn’t as big as it is today. If you go inside and you really look, you’ll see the old front is 20 feet back from the front now, uh, and it’s where people gather outside and so forth, but it’s air conditioned and then—so forth. It’s—it’s an anti-room to the—to the auditorium itself. We’re hoping that—that it’ll stay that way. There’s talk of tearing it down, and it’s a treasure that, uh, those of us that—that love Orlando, uh, would hate to see come down, and, uh, it—it—it’s a memory. I mean, we went to, uh, plays, you know, eh, when we were in junior—I mean in the grade school—went there. Uh, the Junior League used to put a play on every year there, and all the school children in Orlando got to take turns going down to see it in busses and so forth. I remember that as a—a child. It—it was great.
Baldwin
So you mentioned the exhibits are usually started by somebody who’s interested. Eh, like—I’m sure a lot of people are interested in creating different exhibits. How do you decide which exhibit’s going to be created by that person?
Pottinger
Well, we can only do one at a time, because we’re—we’re—we have no continuous funding basis. So a lot of times, it also depends on the owner of a building. who’s going to, first place, give us the space and the electricity and so forth, and might want one of those in there to draw, uh, attention to their own building or, you know, it’s a lot cheaper than buying a, uh, painting to put on the wall, probably, for ‘em, over the long run, uh, and It—it gives—it’s on tours many times. Uh, I’ve done those tours and taken people, you know, and I think the, uh—the museums now has[sic] a tour basis. I’m pretty sure that includes that, and—and their brochures that—that you can get, you—today you go online and you can find out where they all are and it’s even a map, I think, in there to—to follow through.
Baldwin
How does Orlando Remembered pay for the exhibits?
Pottinge
With contributions from its members, uh, from, uh, the owners of the building. Uh, most of the material that goes in there—in fact, t—to all of it, it is given to us. It’s donated to that particular, uh, point to—to some—someone that may have worked in—the one, you know, where there was a department store. Uh, hey may have the old nametag out of the back of a sweater or something. Uh, you know, to one that had a, uh, restaurant in it, there’s some china from that Wyoming Hotel, I tell you about, and some, uh, other things. So the materials that go into it, we don’t pay for. We just need the—the cabinetry and so forth—is—is all custom done and it’s done attractively. So it’s thousands of dollars to do it, and, uh, uh, uh, I’m talking, you know, uh, uh, five figure in thousands. So, eh, you know, it’s—it’s, uh, not something that you just decide because you have some china that you’ll put it in there. You need—you need a, uh, sugar daddy that’s—that’s there to contribute.
Baldwin
Roughly how many members of Orlando Remembered are there?
Pottinger
I can’t tell you that. I really don’t know. I’m—I’m a, uh, you know—I—I just—I can’t recall a—a recent number.
Baldwin
Okay. In your opinion, what’s your favorite Orlando Remembered exhibit?
Pottinger
Well, I love the one in the courthouse, as I said. Uh, There’s, uh—there are several of them downtown that, uh—that the, uh, one at the Municipal Auditorium—that’s another one that I like. The one that was in the Rutland building, and at, uh, one time, I’m not sure we still have the one that was at the, uh, back of Central Avenue-side of, uh, the northeast corner—southeast corner of Central and Orange, which was originally Yowell’s[?] and became Yowell’s[?] -Ivy’s Department Store. Uh, it’s an office building now, and who knows what’s in the downtown—downstairs. It rotates constantly, but, uh, that was a good one. SunTrust has an[sic], uh, good one.
Some of ‘em, you know, we’ve had to track down, because all of sudden somebody goes by and looks, and it’s gone. Someone has, you know—the manager of the building has decided to put it in a storage room, hopefully. Uh, we’ve—we’ve lost a couple of ‘em that, uh, you know, uh—the materials We’ve had to buy back a janitor or custodian—whatever it would be—keeper of ‘em—at, uh, one of those corners at Central and Orange—took a lot of it home and we had to repurchase things, because it had been given to us, and, uh, you know, you—you just—it can happen in a moment, and—and it can, you know—I mean, we are not a—a business that goes by and checks it every week. So, you know, months can go by and one of our members doesn’t notice it, and no one calls us and says, “You know, there was a display in, eh, the lobby, but it’s not there anymore.” Well, I don’t know that we—we don’t really have a—an office phone number to call.
So, uh, we—we’ve been through all of that with it, but, you know, determination and a love for the city and to continue its history has kept us going, and we continue to provide these. So we’ll—it costs money to maintain them. Again, as I think I mentioned earlier, they have to be cleaned. They have to be opened. they’re sealed. It has to be a, uh—it’s not a, uh—take a—a rag down there and—and clean the outside. You gotta clean the inside, you gotta clean the displays, gotta clean the linings, and so forth. So it—it takes—it takes upkeep and it takes, uh, continuous maintenance.
Baldwin
Who’s responsible for…
Pottinger
Well, the…
Baldwin
Cleaning and everything?
Pottinger
We’ve—get someone to do it—a professional to do it, and again, that’as part of—of maintaining these. Uh, we—we don’t have any huge balance, so we have to do it as we can.
Baldwin
What are your personal goals for Orlando Remembered in the future?
Pottinger
I’d like to see it continued on and on, and, uh, the, eh, eh, you know—for those of us that are, as I am, near 70, uh—and—and we’ve got members that are, you know, 85 years old, and so, uh, uh, you know—but we’ve got members coming along that have lived here 35 years, 50 years, 60 years. There’ll be things that they remember that have changed dramatically in Orlando that—and there’s space to make, uh—to put a display up, uh, and—and I think that, uh, they’ll be active in that. Uh, we’ve tried to get some other organizations, and then[?]—I won’t mention the name, but, uh, there’s one that’s a lot of young ladies your age—under 40, I think—and you go inactive[?] or something, if I remember right.
My wife and daughters were—daughter was in that, but, in any—in Junior League—and, eh, you know, we may indeed get them interested. So there are things like that, that, uh—that—that will be of interest to someone later, and the displays that we did will be of no more interest, uh, in many cases. Some we hope, but once you lose the generation that remembers what was in that building, it becomes something for the history museum, not something for an active mind to draw you back to your own personal memories of it, and, therefore, you need to continue on, and, o’ course, downtown now, you’ll have to have a great memory of which nightclubs were where…
Baldwin
[laughs].
Pottinger
‘Cause that’s about all there is in those buildings downtown anymore. So—but, uh, you know, there—there are spots for it everywhere.
Baldwin
Has Orlando Remembered had—had a lot of success at attracting younger generations and everything?
Pottinger
Uh, I think we’ve—we’ve done alright. We’ve got a good, uh, variance of age groups. Uh, we’d like to have more younger people. We’d love to have people your age. We’d love to have people from the university, and, as you are doing, take an interest. We welcome you. There are no dues to come, uh, help us. We’d love to have it.
Baldwin
How does Orlando Remembered interact with the community?
Pottinger
Well, we try to do it with these displays and—and by keeping them alive. A little bit of writing the newspaper has done well with us, and we’ve been able to, uh, get some good publicity when we open these, and, uh, once in a while, we do an interview, like this one is—is being done, and we have others. We’ve—I’ve[?] done a TV interview and a—a show. So, I mean, it’s—it’s, uh, eh—I’ve also gone around to schools and some of—not specifically to talk about Orlando Remembered—but I try to bring out when I talk about history to them, the, you know—go see the displays that are—that are available, and, uh, it—it’ll—it’ll—and take your parents with you, because they’ll remember a lot of those things that are in there.
Baldwin
What was the connection between Orlando Remembered and the Historical Society of Central Florida/the Orange County Regional History Center?
Pottinger
Not really anything in the—in the years other than cross membership. Uh, it’s two separate accounts and, uh, two separate organizations. I was also president of the Orange County [Historical] Museum[5] and the historical society—Orange County Historical Society, before it moved downtown, when—the last year that it was at Loch Haven [Park], in what is—I’m trying to think what’s there in that theater thing now—but anyway, um, it—it was there for many—it was originally in an old, red brick courthouse when I was a little boy. That’s where that park in front of the historical museum is. Uh, in the front was an 18, uh, 88- or 1892- courthouse, and it was the—the 1927 courthouse where the museum—museum is today—was there and active as the courthouse. This red brick building was start—had the—the museum in it, that was all volunteer, run by the Antiquarian Society, which was a group of prominent family ladies who gathered memorabilia and—and volunteered hours up there, and, uh, it was relatively small, but it was the beginning of the history center. Some of those volunteers’ children or grandchildren had been active in the historical society and in Orlando Remembered.
Baldwin
Which organization were you president of first?
Pottinger
Uh, the museum, I think, uh, eh, eh, if my memory serves, but I think—yes, I’m certain of it. Uh, again, age hits you
Baldwin
[laughs].
Pottinger
You try to remember which one was which, but I—I was president of the historical society and the museum, uh, and I think that was 1999 or 2000 [inaudible]—something like that—and, uh, after—following that—that I really got active in—in Orlando Remembered. I had been a little bit active, but I’ve given you another line—something else to do. You know, when you get finished being the president of an organization, the greatest thing you can do is to step aside and let the new people have it, and don’t hang around from it.
Baldwin
Sometimes that’s the hardest thing though.
Pottinger
It is hard. It is hard, but, uh, in any event, uh, it—it—it was a good break and I’ve—I’ve enjoyed it. Both of ‘em.
Baldwin
How does—how does one become involved with Orlando Remembered?
Pottinger
Oh, our meetings, and—and, uh, I can give you an address—you may have it—for Grace, uh, and she is, uh—she is our recording secretary and a great person, and you do have that, uh—that address—e-mail. Uh, she can put you on a mailing list. We’d love to have—and if there are other students that would like to come sit [inaudible]—to some, it may be very boring, you know, and—and we talk about the same thing—about trying to get a display. I don’t know how long we’ve gone on trying to put together getting a display on the Navy base of some[6]—what would I call a Navy base—but out at Baldwin Park. Not just a little sign, but a—a real display of what used to be there— the glass-cased display. It’s gonna happen one of these days, but gosh, you know, even somebody that’s a member gets tired of hearing, “Well, we’ve made no progress on the,” you know, this and that, and the next thing over and over, but we—we—right now, there’s a lot of, uh—a lot of our displays are[sic]—have[sic] hit the age and stage of maintenance, and so, that’s been our—our push this last year, rather than new ones, but we’ll continue on, and perhaps we’ll go beyond just Orlando. You know, Winter Park area has others and, uh, you know, a, uh—a couple of the—the fine families out in West Orange County have done a great job in Winter Garden. Uh, they’ve—they’ve really done a super job. If you’ve not been to Downtown Winter Garden, don’t miss it. It is as pretty, if not more beautiful, than Park Avenue in Winter Park. It’s, uh, uh—it’s two streets with a park—little park down the middle, and some great restaurants. Good place just to go out and sip one in the evening or to eat lunch or something.
Baldwin
I was actually just there last week for their [Central Florida] Railroad Museum.
Pottinger
Oh, wonderful.
Baldwin
So that’s a very…
Pottinger
That’s great.
Baldwin
It’s the first time I’ve ever been Downtown Winter Garden.
Pottinger
Isn’t it…
Baldwin
It’s so pretty.
Pottinger
A cute little town?
Baldwin
Mmhmm.
Pottinger
It really is, and—and it was dilapidated—is not the word for it—15 years ago. I mean it—but again, several families, uh, have, uh, the Chicones and a few others have put together some—some wonderful things out there. Uh, Again, I urge you to go out there.
Baldwin
So I know you mentioned that like, downtown’s all just nightclubs and stuff and Orlando Remembered does exhibits. Would Orlando Remembered ever try to preserve an entire building, you think? or is that too far out of the question?
Pottinger
No, I think it’s too far beyond what—what, uh—again, we have no source of—of continuous income. So it—it wouldn’t, uh—unless someone donated a building to us, and, uh, you know, it’d be wonderful, and, uh, you know, you could do vignettes on, uh, you know—throughout the building, or—or a home, you know, that showed various spots. That might even be safer than the way we do it where we’re putting our display—an expensive display in the lobby of a building. Again, without constant control, we don’t know when it winds up at the janitor’s garage at home. So, you know, you—you just need a continuous thing, and, you know, we have no employees. It’s not—it’s just volunteer. All of it.
Baldwin
How do you believe Orlando Remembered will change in the future?
Pottinger
Well, I know there’ll be changes to it, but I think some of ‘mem will be good, because I, eh—just like this right now, I see more interest in young people with history, uh, you know, than—than there were—was in my day growing up. It—it—there was very little interest in—in, uh—I was—I was a rarity to be a young lad, and, uh, uh, I don’t know of another soul…
Lester
I’m Dr. Connie [L.] Lester, the Director of the RICHES program, and you are listening to the RICHES documentary podcast.
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Lester
Welcome to the RICHES documentary podcast. RICHES—the Regional Initiative for Collecting the Histories, Experiences, and Stories of Central Florida—is an umbrella program housing interdisciplinary public history projects that bring together different departments at the University of Central Florida with profit and nonprofit sectors of the community in order to promote the collection and preservation of the region’s history. By facilitating research that records and presents the stories of communities, businesses, and institutions in Central Florida, RICHES seeks to provide the region with a deeper sense of its heritage. This series feature a podcast every two weeks, in the middle and at the end of each month that will explore various aspects of Central Florida history.
In today’s episode, “Gentrification and Urban Renewal: Revitalizing Central Florida’s African-American Communities,” Geoffrey Cravero examines some of the reasons that these once flourishing neighborhoods began to decline, and what city leaders are doing to save these communities.
Cravero
Hi. I’m Geoffrey Cravero, and in today’s episode, “Gentrification and Urban Renewal: Revitalizing Central Florida’s African-American Communities,” we’re gonna be speaking with Representative Geraldine [F.] Thompson and Dr. Benjamin [D.] Brotemarkle about the Parramore district of Downtown Orlando, and Dr. Julian C. Chambliss and Fairolyn Livingston about Hannibal Square, the African-American side of Winter Park, Florida. Central Florida’s African-American community was once relatively prosperous, consisting of a thriving business district, populated by a mix of professionals and working-class families, and in many ways, quite self-sufficient.
This podcast will examine some of the factors that led to the ultimate decline of these regions, the efforts that have gone into restoring them, and the overall effectiveness of those campaigns. Geraldine Thompson has been a representative in the Florida State Legislature since 2006. A former educator and administrator at Valencia Community College, she is also a founder of the Wells’ Built Museum of African American History and Culture.
The Executive Director of the Florida Historical Society, Dr. Brotemarkle has written several books on Florida history and culture, including Crossing Division Street: An Oral History of the African American Community in Orlando and Beyond the Theme Parks: Exploring Central Florida. You might also recognize him as the producer and host of Florida Frontiers, the weekly radio magazine of the Florida Historical Society.
Dr. Julian Chambliss is an associate professor of history at Rollins College, specializing in 19th and 20th century urban America, African-American history in Florida, race and ethnicity, American planning history, as well, as other topics related to the urban experience.
Born in Hannibal Square, Fairolyn Livingston has spent most of her life in the community, and is now Manager of the Hannibal Square Heritage Center.
I’d like to thank each of our guests for taking the time to speak with us. I asked Representative Thompson and Dr. Brotemarkle to tell us about the rise and fall of Orlando’s Parramore community.
Thompson
Parramore was founded in the 1800s, uh, when the city was just, uh, beginning to form, and it was the location where many African Americans lived initially. The city was separated, as was the case throughout the South, generally by the railroad tracks. You had the, uh, white community on one side and the African-American community on the other side. So, uh, Parramore is just west of the railroad tracks in Downtown Orlando, and the pioneers in the African-American community who made significant contributions to the City [of Orlando] and to Central Florida lived in Parramore.
When the community went through integration at the end of, uh, “legally sanctioned apartheid” —is what I call it—uh, the idea was that, in order to get true integration, you had to close some of the major institutions in Parramore. So you saw the schools, uh, close. Many of the churches also moved out. Uh, the Parramore area had become saturated, and people needed other places to live, and so, uh, places like Washington Shores, the Richmond Heights area, uh, Carver Shores, were established and many people moved to those areas which were, at that time, considered the suburbs, and many of the professionals who lived in Parramore also moved, and so you left behind, uh, people who were, for the most part, renters, who did not own the properties where they lived. Uh, there was very little that was owner-occupied in Parramore—a lot of absentee landlords.
So when you lost the major institutions like your schools, your churches, the professional individuals who had made it the economic and the social hub for African Americans in Central Florida, then an element, uh, of crime began to—to build, and, uh, there were a lot of problems, and quite frankly, a lot of the decision-makers, who were deciding what was going to happen and how Central Florida, uh, would grow, did not really consider Parramore worthy of much of an investment, and so that’s what led to a blighted area for a very long time.
There have been a lot of very effective efforts to bring business back into the community. Uh, there is one charter school now in the community—the Nap Ford [Community] School. Other than Nap Ford, however, there are still no schools in Parramore. The students are bussed out to nine different, uh—different schools in—in the area. Uh, the businesses that have come into the area include, uh, the Bank of America. You now have the Federal Courthouse that is also built in the Parramore area, as well, as the Florida A[gricultural] & M[echnical] University College of Law. Uh, the Wells’ Built Museum, which is in the former Wells’ Built Hotel, um, is celebrating now 10 years—our 10th anniversary, and so we have been able to document, and to preserve, and to share a lot of the history of Parramore, which makes people much more aware that it is a significant co—uh, community, and as we revitalize and as we grow, it’s something worth saving.
We are in the process of, uh, restoring the residence of the person who built the Wells’ Built. His name was William Monroe Wells, one of the early African-American physicians here. He came here in 1917, and in addition to a thriving medical practice, he had a social club, which was called the South Street Casino, and he brought, uh, big bands, [Edward] “Duke” [Kennedy] Ellington, [William] “Count” [James] Basie, Ella [Jane] Fitzgerald, to perform at the South Street Casino, which he owned, and after the entertainers, uh, finished performances, they didn’t have a place to stay. So that was his motivation for building a hotel, and, uh, so in addition to refurbishing the Wells’ Built and operating it as a museum of African-American history, we’re now in the process of refurbishing his home, which was located where the new Amway Center, uh, is, And that’s another business that has come into Parramore, which is Downtown Orlando, and so the home was moved rather than, uh, to have it demolished, and we will make it part of the museum complex, and we’ll operate a museum store in Dr. Wells’ residence. So his legacy is alive and well, on South Street.
Brotemarkle
Well, there are many factors that—that led to the demise of the hotel and casino. Uh, first of all, eh, as—as great and wonderful and necessary as the civil rights laws of the 1960s were, once African Americans could move anywhere they wanted to, uh—and this is not unique to the Parramore neighborhood. This happened to communities throughout the South, in particular, uh, but many of the community leaders—that[sic] helped keep the infrastructure of the community together—moved out of the neighborhood. So consequently, in many cases, uh, all that were—were left were the people who couldn’t afford to move anywhere else, and actually, in the case of the Parramore neighborhood, this had actually started a little bit before that in the 1950s. People had started migrating over to the Washington Shores neighborhood in Orlando, but the—the—the civil rights laws definitely contributed to the continued exodus, uh, from the Parramore neighborhood of many of the people, uh—the community leaders. Uh, also, the building of I[nterstate Highway]-4, uh, right through—right by the—the Parramore neighborhood kind of—into that neighborhood, uh, helped to break that up a little bit, as well. Uh, that was, uh, another factor.
Uh, so as these—as the community leaders moved out of the neighborhood, the Parramore neighborhood itself entered, uh, a state of social and economic decline, and, uh, I—I think it is starting to, uh, pull out of it a little bit, and that was really part of the purpose of the Wells’ Built Museum of African American History and Culture—was to be an economic engine for the neighborhood, and hopefully, tap into this cultural and heritage tourism and bring people into the neighborhood for that reason. It is a fascinating era because, uh, again, between—with—with Division Street as the dividing line the—the Parramore neighborhood was really a thriving, self-sustained community, uh, parallel to the—to the white community in Orlando. Uh, here were institutions, Jones High School, uh, many of the churches, uh, that really created a strong fabric. Uh, uh, there was a, uh, uh, African-American chamber of commerce there in the Parramore neighborhood. There were black theatres. There were everything that the community needed right there. Uh, tailors, and—and businesses of all types were right there, and—and of course, the Wells’ Built Hotel and South Street Casino right in the middle of all this—this—this thriving African-American community.
So it’s really an interesting, uh, look at history, and—and also, the unintended negative impact of those civil rights laws in the 1960s, again, as—as wonderful and as necessary as they were, they really did have this—this unintended negative impact when, uh, some of the community leaders moved out, and, again, the building of I-4, kinda right through the heart of the community, and, uh, the East-West Expressway too, meeting right there, uh, caused further problems, uh, but I—I think that the community is—is pulling out of that era of social and economic decline that it suffered in the late 20th century, and hopefully the Wells’ Built Museum of African American History and Culture is contributing to that.
Cravero
Dr. Chambliss and Mrs. Livingston describe some of the factors that enabled Hannibal Square and Winter Park to grow into thriving communities, and how this prosperity has affected the development and gentrification of the region.
Chambliss
Well, in that early period, um, Hannibal Square, was, I think, able to grow and be successful because, of the model of, uh, attracting residents, promoting, uh, Winter Park as a sort of like leisure, uh, vacation destination, uh, and this has really become at the core of the identity of Winter Park. If you think about Winter Park over time, it really was founded by [Loring] Chase and [Oliver E.] Chapman as a sort of destination location for people who wanted to sort of live a certain kind of sort of leisurely lifestyle. Well, into, uh, 20th century that—that has been maintained.
If you look at the growth of Winter Park, uh, which grew rapidly after, uh—in the 1930s and 1940s and 1950s, like, and the people of Winter Park recognize. It’s part of the reason that it grew is because, like, they really sort of like saw the place as a kind of residential haven, and the fact—by the time you get to the 1950s, um, the city is known as the “City of Homes.” Um, and part of this is because they have like a large number of wealthy residents. Again, those wealthy residents have servants, and some of those servants are working in—in—are black people, uh, working in these white homes and then going back across the railroad tracks to Hannibal Square. So like, they have this steady work from all these rich people and that really does affect Hannibal Square.
At the same time, there’s a number of architectural—James Gamble Rogers is a very well-known architect—really sort of crystallized the architectural identity of Winter Park, with a fresh revival—a Medi—a Mediterranean revival style. So when you look at the homes, there’s a lot of like talk about Winter Park and Park Avenue—really sort of like crystallizes that sort of European style, uh, café culture look, right? And that really starts in 1960, and they really sort of keep trying to promote that. The chamber of commerce does a great job of trying to promote that and maintains it really today. it’s one of the reasons that these places really talk about Winter Park. They tend to talk about it as a place where you just want to kind of like stroll, in sharp contrast to the rest of the sort of retail and vacation experience in the rest of Central Florida, and as a consequence, the growth of the east side of Winter Park has been phenomenal, and the value of land there has grown tremendously, and so much so that by the time you get to the late 1990s, uh, arguably, the east side of Winter Park is built out, alright? So you can’t cheaply acquire land on the east side of Winter Park. You can buy a lot and—and really, we’re talking—we’re talking about the high-end of the real estate bubble, and Winter Park was one of the places where values were extremely high, and so the east side, really, by—by every stretch of the imagination is really sort of built up in value, um, over the period of the town.
The west side, which was the black side—which was sort of like off limits because it was—because of segregation—had lagged behind. It started out with the development of the town, as I—as I said, a sort of economic area where African-American property owners, and—and business owners, and African-American businesses were flourishing in Hannibal Square, but very quickly, with the end of—of official Jim Crow segregation, um, you see middle-class people moving out, and the median income and the median age on the west side of Winter Park really starts to—the income starts to go down. The age starts to go up, and services for the west side don’t keep. in fact, [inaudible] great stories about the fact that the roads, on the west side of Winter Park, weren’t really sort of kept up at the same level as the roads on the east side of Winter Park, And other kinds of infrastructure issues like that, and as a consequence, the value of homes and property on the west side lagged behind that was on the east side of Winter Park. So value of black property lagged behind value of white property, which is common.
As a result of that, there’s a lot of push, um, to do something about the—the view—the view-scape and the housing stock on the west side, and if you go back and look at some of the language that people use in the city council meetings or in some of the things that people are saying when they—they’re pointing to houses that are boarded up, they’re talking about a spike in crime, and indeed, there is a real concern that Hannibal Square, which by this time, is no longer home of like businesses more like light retail and bars and things like that—convenience stores—that are really the haven for—in the minds of white residents, at least—crime and violence. Indeed, there is[sic] the police reports show large number of drug arrests or suspicious crime in the west side in 1980s and early 1990s, and it really sort of spurs on dialogue about what needs to be done to improve the housing stock to clean up Hannibal Square and basically correct this problem, and there are a variety of reasons for this. I mean, some of it was the crime, but also, if you look at the way that the town is laid out, if you’re coming in through[?] the main drag, coming in—off of, like, Orlando Avenue, one of the main sort of like entry points into the city of Winter Park is through, um, Morris [Avenue], and you basically go through the heart of the black community to do that, and if you go back to the 1990s, that looked radically different than it does now.
If you look at it now it looks actually quite nice, ‘cause it’s been rezoned and it—there’s new buildings, uh—office buildings, mix-use stuff—but back then, it—there were homes there, and some of them were boarded up, and the City had routinely had issues or had programs in place where they were trying to address this question, of, like, the quality of housing stock on the west side. They had some housing rehabilitation programs that they created in the 1970s. They supported, of course, you know, the creation of the Winter Park Community Center in Hannibal Square, but really, you know, the economy changed, as I said, and the median age started to creep up.
So you get a large number of elderly people who, eh, own property—been in their family for generations—but they couldn’t keep it up in a way that the City might want, and so—so this created an opportunity for developers to come into, um, the west side and champion sort of a new push to sort of rehabilitate the region, and this made sense from the City’s standpoint, because, like, depressed property is low—low tax property. so if you want to increase your tax base, you want to improve the—the value of the property there—but it also created, like, a high gentri—gentrifying push, because, remember, you can’t cheaply build anything on the east side of town. So for most developers, they’re really looking to do a big project. they kind of have to do it on the west side of town. They had to do it west of the railroad tracks.
So in the late 1990s and the ear—early 2000s, the City of Winter Park creates a Community Redevelopment Agency—the CRA—and the sort of focal point of the CRA is the sort of box that is bordered by Park Avenue on the east, Webster Avenue on the north, and, like, [U.S. Route] 17-92, and then Fairbanks [Avenue]. So it’s a huge block, and basically it’s Park Avenue and Downtown Winter Park, and the black side of town. So that’s a huge swath of land, and it—it’s prime real estate that could be developed, but is also, primarily, the heart of the black community, and almost immediately, large numbers of residents in the black community recognized that the City’s efforts to improve the area of the CRA was going to push out the black community. Now, from the City’s standpoint, the City’s always maintained that its goal was to maintain the character of the black community or the character of Hannibal Square, but if you’re going to allow traditional market forces to be your primary vehicle to achieve this, then gentrifying effects are almost unavoidable.
You can’t, as the city’s done—like the city’s done a, uh, sort of three-tier sort of approach. It’s provided loans for businesses to move into Hannibal Square. It totally redesigned, um, Shady Park, which is in the center of Hannibal Square, in response to some of the crime and complaints of some of the businesses that were being enticed into the—into the area, because of the CRA. So the old part was—had a lot of benches and—and shading covers, and—and older people would hang out there and talk, and the new park sort of took all that away, and is much more aesthetically pleasing, but is also a place where you can’t really linger, which made a lot of sense, in terms of trying to address some of these questions about crime and—and—and disruption associated with that area—um, but they also worked very diligently to eliminate some of the bars, some of the focal points of crime, and that was successful. They moved in new businesses so that Dexter’s on Winter Park, uh—Dexter’s a fairly well-known restaurant chain in the area—where it became like really an anchor and they created a parking lot for it, and then a number of other businesses—light retail, service-oriented, and restaurant businesses—moved in, and of course there was a train—a change in the infrastructure or the sort of decorative infrastructure of the street. So like you had the decorative brick put in, and, like, new lightening-like fixtures—so basically, extending the feel and look of Park Avenue, down New England [Avenue] into, uh, the heart of the community, which was Hannibal Square.
Of course, African Americans felt and, I think, some of them continue to feel that that process is deliberately pushing them out, and they have a point, because once all that—all that was in place, one of the things that started happening is that the—the tax assessment for the area started to change. People had previously—been sort of locked at a tax assessment of like, you know, a very low number. Everything gets reassessed when a large number of businesses start moving in. So these are older people. Remember, the demographics of the area are that the older people are staying and younger people are moving out. So the old people tend to be on fixed incomes, and pensions, living off their retirement savings. So a big hit, in terms of—“I used to pay $500 in taxes. Now, I’m paying a thousand.” It’s a huge deal, and because the property on the west side, as I said, had not kept up with property on the east side, there was a new assessment on all the value of the property. So people were being offered you know, two, three, four times what they bought the property for originally—and to move out—and some of them were, and this is one of the things that really sort of like characterized the region.
So, um, at the height of the real estate bubble, there was tremendous gentrifying pressure on Hannibal Square, and lots of developers were active in the area, and probably the most famous ones was Dan Bellows, who’s usually associated with the transformation of Hannibal Square. he has a number of big projects, and, you know, sort of mixed-use with retail on the bottom and residential on the top, and that really sort of, like, changed the nature of the community, and Bellows is often painted as a boogeyman, and there are a number of stories associated with him, but he’s sort of emblematic of a kind of push to create new construction in the area, in part because that’s the place where you can with relatively minimal investment do something big, and that has been the sort of overriding problem for the west side for many years.
There has been, for well over a decade—I mean, since the late 1990s, I think, there’s been a sort of push to—“There’s going to be the in here. I want to improve the west side. I want to bring more businesses here,” and as a result, uh, longtime residents have, um, sort of been displaced. There are new businesses there, but they don’t really cater to the residents, or nor do they really employ the residents, which is also really problematic. I mean, you don’t really see west side residents going to eat at Dexter’s. So from a sort of symbolic standpoint, African Americans feel that they’re being pushed down, and from an economic standpoint, there are push and pull factors that are hastening the exit of African Americans in the area.
Livingston
Leading up to, uh, the Civil Rights Movement and even probably as early as 19—late 1940s, after the, uh—World War II, the job market begin[sic] to change a bit. More opportunities will open up for, uh—for Afro-Americans. Many Afro –Americans, uh, went away—military, school, whatever the case may be—and didn’t come back, because they felt there was nothing here for them, outside of service to somebody else. They wanted to have real careers and—and—and do big things in the world, and as a result of that, the community began to age, if you will, and certainly after the Civil Rights Movement and—and moving forward, many more of our young people are moving away, because they feel that they don’t have access or they can’t make it in this area in—in—in Winter Park, you know?
It’s been a painful process for them. Generally, uh, when you’re talking gentrification, between the original people who were in a place, and the wealthier people who come into the place, there’s usually a group—a group in between, but for us, we went—we went—we went right from, um, families being displaced to a business area that really doesn’t have any services that local people find of service to themselves. So gentrification’s been a hurtful process, because when people come in to redevelop, they don’t come in to redevelop for the people who are there. They don’t get input from the people in the community, because that’s not what’s gonna drive the dollar, you know? Nobody’s gonna come in and put in affordable housing or affordable rental units outside of a group such as Habitat for Humanity, who’s doing a great job, and the Hannibal Square Community Land Trust. Uh, people felt that they were just pushed aside, and the most painful thing was the picture that was painted of the neighborhood. That’s what they did. They just [inaudible] and made it like a noose, and put it around the necks of the people in this neighborhood, and pulled the chair.
See, some people have been injured over and over and over again. They were injured during slavery. Then, after Reconstruction, they were injured again, and then, Jim Crow came along, and they were injured. So they’ve been injured over and over, and when you keep injuring people, and they[?] don’t get a chance to heal, it—it can really do something to—to them. You know, even though on the outside, they look cold, and they’re moving forward, and they’re doing things, there’s still a pain in their souls that is just almost undescribable[sic].
Cravero
I’d like to thank our guests, Representative Thompson, Dr. Brotemarkle, Dr. Chambliss, and Mrs. Livingston for joining our discussion. I’m Geoffrey Cravero. Thank you for listening.
Lester
Thank you for listening to the RICHES documentary podcast. Feel free to contact us with any questions or comments on the program that you just heard. Please join us for the next episode, “[Episode 5:] A History of Gay Days.”
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Kaczmarek
Alright, uh, today’s date is Wednesday, October 31st, 2012. I’m interviews— interviewing Mr. Gene Kruckemyer in his office at University of Central Florida about his involvement with the [UCF] Public History Center and the Student Museum [and Center for Social Studies]. When did you first move to Sanford[, Florida]?
Kruckemyer
I moved to Sanford in 2004. So I’ve lived within view of the museum for the past eight years. I can see it from my front porch.
Kaczmarek
Nice, and where are you originally from?
Kruckemyer
From Orlando.
Kaczmarek
Oh, Orlando. Okay, and what brought you specifically to Sanford?
Kruckemyer
Uh, back in 2004, when with a succession of three hurricanes coming through Central Florida. Uh, the first hurricane came—we had purchased a house in Sanford as an investment actually, and we weren’t going to move there, but, uh, the first hurricane came and knocked our power out in Orlando. Uh, we had the house in Sanford. It had power. We decided to just move up there until everything was okay back in Orlando, and then two more hurricanes came, and did the same thing, and we just finally decided to stay in Stan—in Sanford, uh, because we enjoyed living there. We enjoyed the town. We enjoyed the people.
Kaczmarek
Nice[?], and, um, you worked at The Sanford Herald for a while?
Kruckemyer
Currently, uh, I’m at the University’s News and Information office. I’m the news editor. Previous—previous three years, I was the publisher of The Sanford Herald, and for the 33 years before that, I worked at The Orlando Sentinel.
Kaczmarek
Oh, okay, Um, and what did you do at The Sanford Herald?
Kruckemyer
I was a publisher.
Kaczmarek
Publisher? Okay.
Kruckemyer
Which is—which is basically the, you know, CEO [chief executive officer] of the newspaper. Making sure all the different departments worked together and…
Kaczmarek
And how did you first learn about the Student Museum?
Kruckemyer
Well, it was—in my time as publisher at The Herald, uh, while living right across the park from it. I, uh—I couldn’t avoid it, but—but the issues that were coming to the museum were that, uh—it was during a critical time, while I was the publisher, that—that the school—the Seminole [County Public] School[s] Board was considering closing the building down, because of economic reasons, and, uh, people in town and the county—the whole county—got involved and started creating committees to preserve the building, and that’s how The Herald got involved, and, uh, one of the things that we did was to, um, uh, redo the school bell that had not been used for decades. The building was built in 1902, and, uh, it was first used as a—as a, uh, senior high school.1 Uh, I think, in 1911, it became a, uh—a grammar school.2 And it was that until 1984, when it was put on the [U.S.] National Register for Historic Places, and it was turned to the Seminole County, uh, Student Museum—or actually they called it—it had a longer name like—you probably know what it is. It had like—it was the, um—uh, the Student Museum and Center for the Social Studies, but most people just called it the Student Museum, and it was a place where fourth graders go to learn Florida history, and it was a hands-on, uh, interpretive museum for other people come in during the week and learn different things about local history, and Florida history and, the native, uh, Floridians, uh, pioneers—a demonstration garden in the back show what people used to grow in the 20th, uh—at the turn of the 20th century. So it’s an interesting place.
Kaczmarek
And how did you get specifically involved with the bell?
Kruckemyer
Um, I did a column one time. Uh, it was a Q&A with the building. I asked building questions and answered questions, and, uh, I talked to a friend of mine in Sanford—her name is Bette Skates—and she was student at the, uh—uh, I think she was there when it was a grammar school, and, uh, she said she wished that bell would be, you know—able to be rung again. It hadn’t been rung in decades. Nobody knows why it stopped being used, but, uh, in 1916, the building got electricity, so they put in an electric bell. Sometime after that, they stopped using the bell, which had a, uh—a pull cord that went from the bell tower to the principal’s office, but the—but the hole was blocked off, so it wasn’t used, and I was talking to Bette, and she said she sure wished that bell would be able to be used again.
So, uh, I thought that’d be a good project for The Sanford Herald. We, uh—we decided to make it work. So I talked with the then superintendent, whose name is Bill Vogel, and, uh, we—we figured out how much it was going to cost, and, uh, I had, uh—I contacted a friend of mine in Sanford—his name is Steve Meyers[sp]. He’s a[sic] historic preservationist and he does construction work, and—and, uh, he and I went up one day and he did all the work, and I was the gopher[?], and I ran his errands, and he made a new channel for the rope and put a marine-grade rope up there, and, uh, now it goes to the principal’s office, and every year they use the bell on the first day of school to signal the start of school for each year.
Kaczmarek
Wow. Um, and what was—you talked a little bit about the process of restoration. Um, what was the community, um, reaction to you this project?
Kruckemyer
Well, you can imagine, a lot of people that, uh, went to school there over the years had a—had a soft spot for the building. So, uh, they were objecting to the plans to either close the school on purpose, or just let it fade away, you know? Uh, so a lot of people formed committees to, uh, preserve the building. Um, uh, they raised money different ways. They had sales. I think—I think they still have periodic garage sale, at least until I think UCF [University of Central Florida] took over. They used to have periodic garage sales to help, you know offset the costs, ‘cause the school board was in some dire financial problems, because of the economy. So they didn’t have the money for it, but, uh, at least the community groups kept it going long enough, until UCF thankfully came in and, uh—and leased the building to use it for the Public History Center.
Kaczmarek
And, um—let’s see. Are you—what—what other projects were you involved with the museum, if any?
Kruckemyer
Um, that was—that’s pretty much, uh—as far as The Sanford Herald—I mean, uh, that’s pretty much right there in my neighborhood.
Kaczmarek
[laughs].
Kruckemyer
So, uh, I’m sorta a—a watchdog to see if there’s anything that needs to be reported. That’s been going on so the only thing.
Kaczmarek
And, how are you involved with the Public History Center now?
Kruckemyer
Um, I’ve been to several of the events that have been there.
Kaczmarek
[laughs].
Kruckemyer
They just had the, uh, Pumpkin Fest, and I was there on the opening day of school, and, uh, there was another event recently I went to, um…
Kaczmarek
The open house?
Kruckemyer
The open house.
Kaczmarek
And, you’ve lived in Sanford for—since 2004. Um, have you seen a lot of changes within the community of Sanford, since the time you’ve lived there?
Kruckemyer
Um, I—I live in the historic district, and the museum, er—the Public History Center was in the museum—in the—in the, uh, historic district. So we live in an area that doesn’t see as much change as a lot of places, uh, because there are[sic] a lot of restrictions of what you can and can’t do, but I don’t mind. I moved into the neighborhood not even knowing that was the case, and I think that history’s—or the, uh, historic district is one of the things that’s really saved Sanford, because people got interest in preserving the neighborhood, preserving the houses, preserving the way things used to be, and that’s something I enjoy.
Kaczmarek
Nice. Um, and when you said you worked at The Herald, what would—what would you say would be one of your more memorable experiences with The Herald? I know The Herald goes back and it’s a part of Sanford and that it’s been around for a long time. Um, what would you say would be one of your most memorable experiences as working at the smaller paper—as compared to The Sentinel—is?
Kruckemyer
Well, um, in my time there, I—I always maintained that the community papers were going to be the ones to survive, because, um, bigger papers—they carry a lot of things that you can get online at a hundred different sources. The things that are in a community paper are only in the community paper, and one of my goals was to—to make sure that we could provide to the community with what—what, uh—what they needed to know, and people seemed to respond. We did all kinds of, uh, reader interactive things and, uh, contests, and—and, uh, I started something called the “Centennial Forum,” which was, uh, like, uh, every edition. We’d have an, uh, opinion piece written by somebody from our, uh, town. We had all kinds of people running for supervisor of elections to, um, handymen, to teachers, to just everybody. So that was something that got a lot of positive response, and, uh, it worked so well that once I came here, I sorta, uh, hijacked that idea. Brought it to the university, and we started a similar thing called “UCF Forum,” and, uh, every Wednesday, we have an opinion piece by somebody that’s on our panel. We had nine people on the panel and they’d rotate, and, uh, so the, uh, opinion piece runs on the UCF website every Wednesday.
Kaczmarek
Very nice, and now, you said you had a column about—with the museum. What—can you tell me a little bit about that?
Kruckemyer
Uh, the original one was a column I wrote when I was at The Sentinel, and, uh, that was the one where I had the Q&A, where I talked about the building.
Kaczmarek
Yes.
Kruckemyer
And they asked how old it was, you know, and its interest and its favorite movies—that sort of thing [laughs].
Kaczmarek
[laughs] And what were its answers? [laughs].
Kruckemyer
[sighs] Oh, um, I don’t remember offhand. I know I asked about relatives, and it said it had relatives all over the world, like the Louvre, the Smithsonian [Institution], and…
Kaczmarek
[laughs] And how would you describe the community of Sanford to someone that doesn’t, like, know Sanford?
Kruckemyer
Uh, as I said, I moved 8 years ago, and, uh, it’s not as congested as Orlando is. Uh, it’s—it’s a community that I enjoy. In fact, they’re undergoing, uh, a program right now called Imagine Sanford [Community Vision and Strategic Planning]. It’s a, uh, group that’s been called together, and I’m on the committee to do that. Um, so we’re just looking to see what’s Sanford wants to be like within the next 10, 20, 30 years. What are the things we value? What are the things we want to improve? What are the things we want to change? Uh, so this something that we’re undergoing right now, and, uh, hopefully by next May, we’ll have a report to, uh, give to the [Sanford] City Commission to—to tell what we think should be done.
Kaczmarek
Wow. That’s really interesting. Well, thank you very much for your time. I really much appreciate you doing this interview with me.
Kruckemyer
You’re welcome.
Kaczmarek
Uh…
Kruckemyer
[inaudible].
Calvert
My middle name is Calvert, which is my mother’s last name, and she and I are related to the Virginia Calvert, and that goes all the way back to Lord Baltimore.[1] The first one was George [Calvert] and the second was Charles [Calvert]. Anyway, one of my crazy relatives tried to sue the City of Baltimore, claiming the land was his. Needless—he didn’t get very far, and of course, there was a Calvert whiskey at one time, and they have one of these genealogy books—it’s an advertisement—and they got up to my mother and me, and they didn’t carry it on any further, so I stopped drinking their dang whiskey.
Phyllis
You never did anyway.
Calvert
But that’s my story. I’m going to stick to it.
Thompson
Well now, Lord Baltimore came from England, but Calvert whiskey—I thought that was scotch?
Calvert
No, it was a blended one made by a Canadian.
Thompson
So your family is English?
Calvert
All English.
Thompson
So how’d you get to Sanford?
Calvert
I’m in the engineering business and we came down here. One of the senior partners, Just Deets[sp], visited a Northern client of ours in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, by the name of Cecil Osier, and we had done work for Cecil up there doing developments, and he was down here building a bunch of manufactured homes that don’t look very nice, but they’re over on Summerlin [Avenue] around there—those little box homes? And Deets stopped by to see him, and he told Deets that the city didn’t have a sewage plant at the time, and he said that they were going to interview for an engineer to design the sewage plant and that we should apply, and so Deets went down and met old Leffler and Busch[sp] —two of the old families in Sanford—and they were in a partnership. Busch later became [inaudible] engineer.
Thompson
Leffler—was that the Judge [Kenneth Murrell] Leffler?
Calvert
It was his brother. His older brother was an engineer. We formed a partnership with them, and I was sent down here to do the inspection. Decided I liked the place and came down and started an office. Over the years, that turned into what now is CPH—Conklin, Porter, [&] Holmes [Engineers, Inc.].
Phyllis
And when he came down to inspect this sewage plant, we had gone down to my grandmother’s in Southern Florida…
Calvert
I came in 1963.
Phyllis
My son is fourth generation Floridian. I was born in Florida. My dad came down here to help build houses back up after the 1928 hurricane, so he met my mother and they got married and had me, and then I was only here six months, but I lived up North about 35-40 years.
Thompson
Where was your home up North?
Phyllis
In Southern Illinois.
Thompson
And that’s where you came from too?
Calvert
No, I came from Northern Illinois—outside Chicago.
Phyllis
And we met at the University of Illinois.
Calvert
I came home from [the] Korea[n War] and went back to school working on a Doctor’s degree, and went to a church service—a social event—and met her there, and that’s how…
Phyllis
Immediately, we knew we were for each other [laughs].
Calvert
That was a long time ago. We were married 55 years ago.
Thompson
So how did you know right away that he was the one?
Phyllis
Well, he looked good and he had a graduate degree, and I decided—and he was a Christian. I thought he was, and he was, because we met in a Presbyterian church there on campus, and I just thought, “That’s the right one.” I don’t know what he thought, but anyway, we got married.
Calvert
The program that evening was on Korea, and of course, I knew much about that.
Phyllis
So he was sitting there by me telling me all of this stuff about Korea and I thought, “Oh, this man sounds so fascinating.” [laughs] So we married and lived up there about seven or eight years, and then he came down and we said, “Let’s go visit grandmother.” And he had never been to Florida and he said, “Oh, this weather is so nice down here. I wish we could start a branch office down here.” and that’s what he told the firm up North and they said, “Yes, go down and start it.” So he did.
Calvert
I was general manager up there.
Phyllis
Here, he was in business with William Leffler for a short period of time, and then William decided that he didn’t want to be in engineering. Very bright, bright man, but he decided he wanted to go back and farm or have his properties out near Osteen or something like that, but the amazing story is that we came here right about when integration was starting in the schools in the early Sixties and William…
Calvert
I got somewhat discouraged by the situations and decided that even though I had a good client base, that I wanted to go back up North, and I went back to see if I could get my old job back and the company said “Yes.” But in the meantime, the city manager and Lee Moore called up there and said, “We don’t want you to leave.” And they said, “If you come back, we’ll let you design a marina for us.”
Phyllis
So he designed the marina and it was built in ’67, and the amazing part about that was that, at that time, you could dredge part of the stuff up from the lake and make the 13 acres of ground that the hotels and stuff are sitting on. Today, you could not do that. They would not let you dredge up and put more land…
Thompson
So you deepened the lake by taking the…
Calvert
Dredged it up and built an isle, and then the roadway and all to it and I designed the dry storage building out there and the docks—the whole thing. That was a long time ago.
Thompson
Well, we’ve had a lot of stories about what happened in integration and what the situation was with the blacks—what happened?
Calvert
Well, I was with William Leffler, and we were going to Eustis and he had—well anyway, we got shot at by a bunch of black folks. He had a citizens’ white council…
Phyllis
He belonged to the White Citizens’ Council, which is the KKK [Ku Klux Klan].
Calvert
No, no. They are two different organizations. He belonged to both, and a car pulled alongside of us and somebody pulled out a gun and shot at us, and we chased them—of all things. I didn’t have any interest in that. I was in Jim Spencer’s—the bar—when the first blacks came in there, and that was something.
Thompson
How did that happen?
Calvert
Many of the regular customers got up and left, and they were ignored for a considerable period of time, and they just sat there and waited, and finally the owner did go and asked them what they wanted. It was a very awkward situation, but they did get served. Most of the customers left.
Phyllis
At that time they were trying to integrate the schools here and William Leffler had a…
Calvert
Honey, let’s not get into that.
Phyllis
Well, anyway—it was in Time magazine.
Thompson
It’s history.
Calvert
Well, first I had an experience. Our son was a gifted student up North and we got down here—that was one of the disappointments. The schools here weren’t anywhere near as good as the Northern ones and he was in a gifted class up there, and I noticed that the textbooks said, “For average and below students.” That bothered me badly, because he wasn’t average or below. So I went in to see the superintendent of the schools and said, “How do you expect to raise that level if you keep teaching for average and below?” And it was Ray Milwee, and he said, “Well, that’s what our students are—average and below.” I said, “Don’t you want to change that?” He said, “You can’t change that.” So I had absolutely no luck, but later William went in and his daughter had a black teacher—the first black teacher in the schools—and he didn’t like that at all. Wouldn’t accept it, so he went in and confronted Milwee with the same situation, and Milwee wouldn’t change it so William hit him. Beat him up and it made Time magazine. It was quite a—and he pleaded—the funny thing is I got a jury summons to be a juror in his trial. I went over to the courthouse and I knew the prosecuting attorney well, and he said, “Cal, what are you here for?” I said, “I came to be a juror in William’s trial.” and he said, “Like hell you did.” He went in and got the judge to dismiss me, and that’s, of course, what I wanted, but it was funny.
Phyllis
And at the same time, the neighbors we had up North where we lived—it was a mixed neighborhood. There was a Chinese family, a black family—and I will say, they were culturally put together. Well, we did have a man next door that drove a bread truck, but mostly—being a university town, they were mostly intellectuals. When I went to school, in Southern Illinois, I went to school with—with black children all the time and thought nothing of it.
Calvert
And when we came down here, the only people that really were see[sic] was controlled by the old landowner families, and socially, we were not accepted. We were Yankees and not accepted, and our first friends here in town were Jewish people and some of the blacks. They’re still friends of ours today.
Phyllis
In 1985, when Mayor Bettye Smith started the Martin Luther King[, Jr.] choir[2]…
Calvert
We both saw the Martin Luther King choir for 20-something years [inaudible], so we’re culturally adept.
Phyllis
But they weren’t used to that, and I had a birthday party for my daughter, who was six at the time. So I told her, “You can invite six children from your class to come to the birthday party.” and one was a little Stallworth girl—like Mill Stallworth’s daughter—a black girl, and a lovely, lovely person, and when they went outside to play a while, and somebody—a passerby or neighbor, but I won’t say who. It certainly wasn’t Connie Williams, because she is very culturally non-prejudice[sic] at all, and it wasn’t Rosita Jacobson, because she lived across the street and she was Jewish, so she wouldn’t have said anything, but somebody else said, “I wanted to tell you that we don’t mix socially with the blacks here.” and I said, “But we do.”
So that set us back a couple of steps, but then one of our Jewish friends, the Tetenbaums, got us into a barbecue club, which was out in what is now in Hidden Lake, and they introduced us to some people out there, and we got in, not because we were trying to get in, but anything to have people be a little more friendly[sic] to us.
Calvert
There’s quite a story about the marina in some respects, because the [Sanford] City Council didn’t have a tenant or anybody to rent or lease anything to when they started and decided to build that. That took a lot of guts.
Phyllis
On whose part?
Calvert
I’m the [Sanford] City Commissioner. The newspapers was urging them to—the Gilos, who were the publishers at that time—were urging them to and they had no tenant—nobody to lease or rent anything to, and here they were going to build an island, and during construction, they got a marina operator to do it, basically, with ash and oil.
Phyllis
But he designed the marina with floating docks so the water [inaudible].
Calvert
So I give the [Sanford] City Commission a lot of credit to have the nerve to do that and to proceed with the project, and it’s been a huge success, and I never did a job where we got as much construction for—it was the whole thing, including some of the buildings—only cost a million dollars—building it all up from nothing.
Phyllis
He designed that dry storage building—that big building that has the stripes on the side. At that time, some hotel came in and it’s changed hands a lot.
Calvert
It’s a motel now.
Phyllis
We lived on the lakefront at that time. We just rented a house, because we weren’t too sure if we were going to be able to stay or not. That’s when we first came, and after the marina thing, he got some jobs for being city engineer for places like Eustis.
Calvert
Well, I had those before I went up North—a whole bunch of the cities and counties around here.
Phyllis
[inaudible] and gave us a base to stay, and I would’ve thought too that it would’ve been very courageous for that lady black teacher—whoever she was—to walk into that Sanford Middle School or Seminole High [School]…
Thompson
Was she in it when it was Seminole High—as the first black teacher? Or was it…
Phyllis
I don’t know. William’s daughter was not a little, tiny girl, because knowing William...
Calvert
Other things that I thought were noteworthy is, for instance, the Central Florida Zoo [and Botanical Gardens].
Phyllis
When we came, it was downtown.
Calvert
One block right behind the [Sanford] City Hall. You could make quite a story about the moving of that and the...
Thompson
I’ve never heard that story—how it happened.
Calvert
Well, they had a zoo behind the City Hall, right down the lakefront there.
Thompson
I saw an aerial picture of it and thought it was much larger than it was. It’s very small.
Calvert
And the woman’s name was Hood—that was the curator there. He worked for the city and she did, and her whole job was to tend to the zoo, and they had one lion and you could hear him roar. You could hear him and then they decided—well, a bunch of businesspeople facilitated the Central Florida Zoological Society[, Inc.], and a number of us contributed money, so that we could relocate it. I put up several thousand dollars to the Sanford Atlantic Bank and so did others, and that served as seed money to borrow against to relocate and build the Central Florida Zoo. I had connections with contractors so I went to C. A. Meyer and Amick Construction[, Inc.] and leveraged them into building the roads in and doing all the earthwork for the original zoo. That was quite a contribution. It was all donation and the two of them—C. A. Meyer and Amick Construction—donated all the work to build the road and do the earth or the original zoo, and I was one of the founding directors of the Central Florida Zoo.
Phyllis
Both he and I had served on the zoo board at one time or another.
Thompson
Did you all have anything to do with the actual moving of the animals?
Calvert
No, my thing was contributing the money and doing the construction of the roads and all of the earthwork out there. There were many other people around town. Doug[las] Stenstrom did. Glenn McCall, the druggist, did. Dr. Hickman, the dentist from Maitland, was involved. I don’t really remember all the other people. That was the way that the zoo got started.
Thompson
What was the reasoning for moving the zoo? Did somebody donate the land?
Calvert
I think it was bought. It was bought. Right along there was Leffler land and a bunch of it was Kirchhoff. Now, have you ever talked to Bill Kirchhoff?
Thompson
No, I haven’t.
Calvert
Beside the stories of the marina and the zoo, the other one that I know a lot about is the historic trend or the beginning of the historic movement in Sanford.
Thompson
The historic trust?
Calvert
No, ot the trust. The whole idea of historic preservation becoming a forefront program in Sanford, and Sarah Jacobson was the one that started that whole thing, and she got me again, Doug Stenstrom, Don Knight, Glenn McCall—a bunch of downtown businesspeople—and we applied and got money to do historical surveys, and the state sent a[sic] historical architect and a plain historian and they worked out of my office. They’d go looking at all the insurance records, titles, and deeds, and all the interesting things they could find out about the buildings. That went on for a couple of years, because they’d come back and they’d found out the railroad magnate [Henry Morrison] Flagler had owned this and that—it was an old train station, and that’s the Piper Building, and they’d find all this interesting stuff about all of the other old buildings.
The first thing we did was we got the whole downtown district on the Federal Register of Historic Places.[3] It was first a downtown district—one of the few in the state for a whole downtown district, and we had to do all of these surveys and then we moved to the area behind it—the [Sanford] Historic Trust. We got that designated as a residential historic district. Now the people in the historic trust didn’t have anything to do with that. They formed the historic trust after all this was done, and I, in my many travels, kept thinking about park benches, and I picked out a bench from various places that I’d gone, and bought one for 900-and-something dollars, and had it brought here, and the city liked it, and it’s one of those—it’s downtown. They use that on the waterfront and everywhere. Then we got grants and formed a Downtown Historic Development [inaudible], and we got grants—the owners would apply, and we would sponsor them, and they got grants to fix up the facades of many of the buildings, and you’ll also see then when we have a historic board later. I was chairman of the [Sanford] Historic Preservation Board that the city conceived, and we got plaques that were put on all of the buildings that you see downtown. Then the historic trust came into being. They came later and formed their historic trust for remodeling the buildings and all of the homes. Then we had a few—Bettye Smith and I did a local one for the St. James AME [African Methodist Episcopal] black Church. They’ve got a local historic designation. That whole thing started with Sarah[?] Jacobson and a bunch of us, and that’s been very successful. Now the historic trust people kind of take the credit for the whole thing, but they didn’t start it. They did a good job.
Thompson
Well, I think they have done a good job, but the city—I don’t know if you noticed, but the City of Sanford and the Sanford Historic Trust did the first Cultural Preservation Award and gave that to the City of Sanford for what we’re doing today.
Phyllis
I started in 1973. My mother and two other little ladies and I started the Meals on Wheels program. I have a newspaper clipping showing a picture of us...
Calvert
We’ve done that longer than anybody in Seminole County—the two of us.
Phyllis
I’ve done it ever since then—36-37 years, and I think, because of that, I got the Jefferson Award [for Public Service] for this area, but there were others in other areas and Orlando and everything that got it too, and so, when it went statewide, of course, it wasn’t only that that got me the award.
Cal and I had done so many things around town—you know, volunteer things— ‘cause that’s really what we live for—is volunteering. He’s done about a 150 pro-bono engineering jobs for little churches, or the crisis center, or the Salvation Army sign out front and things like that. At one time, they gave him the Topper Award and, at the same time, they gave me the Dr. Luis Perez Humanitarian Award the same night, and I didn’t expect that. I knew he was to get the Topper Award, and so I didn’t say anything to him about it and then when we got there, I knew. I had some relatives coming, because I knew he was going to get that award. Then they started out with the humanitarian award first, and they got up and started talking about this woman—who was me, you know, and I thought, “That sounds like me.” And they were giving me this award and I said, “You’ve got this wrong. I’m not supposed to get this award.” and I didn’t want to say it and take all the—my husband, and they said, “Oh, but you are. This is the humanitarian award.” And I felt so disheartened, because I thought, “Gee whiz. I thought they were going to give him the Topper Award and here they’re just giving me an award,” and it turned out later in the evening that he got the Topper Award.
When we started this Meals on Wheels program—I don’t remember which church, but I think it might’ve been the First Presbyterian [Church of Sanford] downtown, which we were members of—and they decided they wanted to start a Meals on Wheels program and there were only four of us ladies. You could only take about eight people yourself, so there must’ve been 35 people, and we got the meals from the hospital, and they had them in these big, green plastic containers, and so we’d have to collect those from the clients—we call them “clients.” It was all-volunteer stuff. The next day and take those back—sometimes during, sometimes not, and then get the other meals. And, as the years went on, the mothers of these other ladies were 20 years older than I, so they’re all dead now, but I have a newspaper clipping of when I started, but 10 years after I started it, he started it, ‘cause he was retiring, but he’s done it 10 years less than I have.
Calvert I still do pro-bono engineering. I’ve done over 200 projects. There’s an awful lot. I’m still doing them.
Thompson
We‘ve known that you’d been doing those pro-bono when we had to have the engineers—pay an engineer to put up the risers for the theater.
Calvert
Well, I did the first one for what they now call the Wayne-Densch Theater.[4] I did the first structural study there that they used as a credit to the Federal Government to get their grants. Then I did structural inspections both on main theater and the building next door they later got.
Thompson
Well, how did you get into this wonderful, giving spirit?
Calvert
We both believe we were put here to help other people.
Phyllis
Our mission is just to help other people. We get the fun out of it, because it’s the one-on-one thing that’s important.
Calvert
It keeps us occupied. It’s something worthwhile to do.
Phyllis
We’ve been on lots of boards, but I say, “What you get on boards is a lot of splinters.” We’ve been in the Martin Luther King choir for 25 years. Bettye Smith started that. She was the one that got the Sanford Woman’s Club[5] integrated, and that didn’t go so well with many of the ladies that dropped out, when she brought in these lovely, fine four ladies. Because they were saying, “Well, you bring in one like that and who knows who they’ll bring in.” It’s the fear thing, and then Rosita Jacobson was in the club at the time, and they had a time getting Rosita in, because she was Jewish. They asked me to join for many years and I knew they were so segregated. I just didn’t want any part of that, but I used to say, “That’s the Sanford White Women’s Club.” but that changed over the years and these lovely black ladies are in and the Jewish ladies.
Calvert
I have another story to tell and it’s about the rescue mission.
Phyllis
The Rescue Outreach Mission [of Central Florida] on Thirteenth Street.
Calvert
They had kind of a ramshackle operation out there. Mother [Blanche Bell] Weaver was running it with the help of pop and it was really a rag-tag thing. She started out by being a cook and ran the restaurant on Thirteenth Street.
Thompson
And everybody went there.
Calvert
That’s right, and one day she walked into our office downtown and said, “I understand there’s a man here that likes to help people.” [laughs] And I ended up helping her. I donated land. I bought some lots and donated the engineering, and we built the women’s and children shelter, and I was, for 21 years, on the Board of Directors of the rescue mission. Mother Weaver founded that, and her church over there also founded it. That’s quite a story too, because she started out by having children just come—she kind of adopted them and they moved into her house with her. She was preaching at this church, and then she got the idea of founding a homeless shelter and started it, and then she called on me and then together saw about building the women’s and children’s shelter. Much of the money came from one man, and he should be talked to if he will talk to you, but he’s very, very generous.
Thompson
And who is that?
Calvert
Mike Good. Briar Construction.[6] Every organization that I go to and am part of, such as the Children’s Home Society [of Florida]—I’ve been on that board, and I look to see who the big givers are. Mike Good is at the top of the list.
Phyllis
Soon after we first came here, Thelma Mike was, until just recently, administrator at the Good Samaritan Home [of Sanford]. That’s just an assisted living center for people and they—somehow, the Good Samaritan Home hadn’t noticed they hadn’t paid their taxes for some time...
Calvert
They hadn’t paid their withholding and their unemployment and that stuff. They were in big trouble and the whole city got together and bailed her out.
Phyllis
They owed the government about $100,000. The whole city—respecting her so much—came forth and got people here and there to raise money, and they let her off.
Calvert
They raised considerable money.
Thompson
My first employee stole a lawnmower from the Good Samaritan Home. He started working for me after he got out of jail. He had to pay restitution to the Good Samaritan Home, and I told Thelma that story and she laughed and laughed. She said, “If he needed a lawnmower, I would have given him that lawnmower.”
Phyllis
We both started out in a choir when we first came here, because both of us had sung for years and years, and we have been singing in the First [Presbyterian] Church [of Sanford] downtown, and then about 1991 it had a split over a pastor and it...
Thompson
They moved over to Markham Woods Road.
Phyllis
No, that one’s a great one. That’s where most of these people downtown went. We went to another church for a year.
Calvert
We didn’t originally. We went to Oakland, followed our choir director.
Phyllis
We didn’t want to make an exodus—Markham Woods, because Markham Woods was started by Dr. [inaudible] and in 1985, they were—when did you join?
Thompson
That would’ve been years ago. We lived just a block down from the church.
Phyllis
We came there in 1991, and been in that choir for all those years too. We’re about at the place where we don’t do solos anymore.
Thompson
Well, what about your children growing up here, and do you have any family stories of the kids?
Phyllis
Well, our kids stayed out of trouble, so I guess we don’t have any stories. Our daughter is almost 48 now. She’s in California and she’s a veterinarian. We’re in the process of getting a home for her. She has MS [multiple sclerosis] and she’s partially disabled, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at her. She swims a lot, but she can’t work full-time now. She’s moving back here after 20 years to live with us. She’s single. We have a son in Orlando who works for the city at [Orlando] City Hall.
Calvert
It’s a funny thing about him. He played guitar for years and he had a rock band in high school and before, and he and Ricky Bowing—they used to—that room up there that’s now our music room was open—it was a breezeway, and they used to practice there and I remember getting out of the car way over at her mother’s house and I said, “Oh, there’s somebody playing ‘Proud Mary,’ just like Charles and his band did.” And all of a sudden I realized it was them. I decided right then that we had to enclose that breezeway and make a room out of it [laughs], and we’ve had all kinds of animals in our backyard. We’ve had horses there.
Phyllis
Well, the horse would only stay overnight one night, but she had [inaudible] brought it in—brought it right down 46. At that time there wasn’t that much traffic, and then she got ready to take it back out and it was starting to storm and I said, “You better not go now.” so she left the horse in the backyard.
Calvert
There was a pig back there for a while, when Robert [Conklin] had his heart surgery. She sent him a piglet from Tennessee and the pig grew up in the backyard and got huge in three months, and we had a judge there and the head of the code enforcement next door, and we had a pig in the backyard, but only for three months. Voley was sitting there on the couch talking to us one day and we were talking about Robert having to have a new valve. He needed to have heart surgery for a valve, and we were talking about the possibility of them using a pig valve, and right at the minute we said “pig,” the pig went, “Oi” right behind—and he turned around and looked, but he didn’t get it. He didn’t understand.
Phyllis
A pig valve only lasts about eight or nine years, because that’s all...
Calvert
They use them on older people. Now they use cowbells[?].
Phyllis
He had a metal valve at the age of 17. Now he’s the one that lives here in town and he works for NAPA Auto Parts, and he’s a manager of parts at OIA [Orlando International Airport], the big airport down there, for the ground vehicles, not the airplanes. He’s certified as an ASE [Automatic Service Excellence] mechanic, which he did for a few years, but the heart thing was too much for him.
Calvert
We always said, “We have one that can fix your car and one that can fix your cat.” [laughs].
Phyllis
So that’s the three kids, and the one in Orlando is project manager in the engineering department for the City of Orlando, and then the veterinarian daughter is going to move back here.
Calvert
The story there is he wanted to be a sound engineer and he had gone to Stetson [University]. Then he kind of went to music, and he went to Denver[, Colorado] to take recording engineering. Then he decided to go to—he got accepted to go to Berkeley College for Music[7] in Boston[, Massachusetts], and he went up there and he called me on the phone and said, “Dad, you won’t believe this, but they said I have to start over as a freshman. They won’t give me credits for the other stuff.” And I said, “Charles, go back inside and ask a different person the same question.” And he did and we just held the line open and he came back after a little while and he said, “Yes, they said I have to start over as a freshman. I want to come home.” and I said, “Okay. Come on. Under that circumstance.” Anyway, then he came back and he served as a soundman for a local band that played all over the United States that went by the name of Root Boy Slim. They were really quite good.
Phyllis
And [Root Boy Slim and] the Sex Change Band.
Calvert
Yeah. Well, they called it that. He traveled to New York City, [New York] and Baltimore and all those places as their soundman, and he got hit on the head with a beer bottle and it was a tough, tough life, because those people live on the thin edge of everything. After that, he called up and said, “Dad, I decided I want to go back to school and be an engineer like you.” [laughs] So he moved back.
Phyllis
And of course, they accepted all his LAS [Legal Assistant Studies] stuff at University of Florida. So he got a Master’s Degree and got really good grades. His sister got her veterinary medicine thing from there in 1991 too, but she wanted to go to California, because they were paying a little bit more at that time, but she didn’t realize how much more expensive everything was. Having been there, the climate is good for her, because it’s not as humid as here. After 20 years, and now that she’s partially disabled, she feels she ought to be a little nearer her aging parents, since we’re over 80 and we just think it’s time to—she said one time, “Well, I think within the next five years, I want to move back to Florida for sure.” I said, “Ruth Ann [Conklin], if you want us to help you move, in five years, we’re going to be about 87 years old.” She said, “I’d better move now, hadn’t I?” I said, “Yes, I think so.” You want to tell her the story about you, Gino [Pelucci], and the fundraising?
Calvert
Well, I—he doesn’t even remember who I am, and I worked with him and for him for years. Even before Heathrow—way back—I did a bunch of factories for them up in other states and my cousin, Bob B.B., was the general manager for Chung[?] King, when he decided that he shouldn’t be running it anymore, and he hired my cousin, who was a board member of Campbell Soups,[8] and he was high help in things. He ran Chung[?] King, because Gino was very volatile. He would run around handing out 100 dollar bills or swearing loudly at people and stuff, and he wasn’t what you would call a “consistent” manager. My cousin used to tell me that Gino had hundreds of ideas that would come into his mind all the time, and he would write my cousin notes about, “This is an idea.” and at the end of the day he’d send another note: “Forget all those ideas.”
Phyllis
When Gino was featured at one of these Boy Scout[s of America] dinners, and he was a speaker—and this was maybe three years ago or something—Cal said he needed to go over and say hello to Gino. He went over to say something to Gino and Gino acted like he didn’t even know who he was, and then he said...
Calvert
And Brenda [inaudible] was sitting there and she said, “Gino, this is Cal Conklin. He was your engineer for Heathrow. He did all the engineering in Heathrow for you.” And Gino looked up at me and still no recognition. I said, “How about—you remember Bob B.B.?” And he just lit up, because he remembered that. I don’t think he remembered me, but he remembered the guy who had run Chung[?] King for him.
Two stories about him that I think are kind of funny: I would attend many of his board meetings at his request. Most of them there was an accountant and a lawyer and so forth, and there were all kind of “yes-men” with him. We were having a meeting, and a young man came to make a presentation, and it wasn’t long, and I knew he wouldn’t be interested, but he said, “Young man, does foul language offend you?” And the young man said, “No.” He said, “Why you dumb son of a bitch.” He just lit into him and cussed him out up and down and back and forth. Every foul word you could think of.
When the Presbyterian Church downtown was having a building program—when they put the Fellowship Hall and they redid the sanctuary—I was the special gifts chairman. General Hutchinson was the overall chairman, and one of the people I had to call on, besides Warren Patrick and a bunch of other, was Gino Pelucci, and the only reason we did was his daughter would come to Sunday school once in a while, and the preacher was with me,[9] and I walked in and Gino said, “Hey. I’m glad to see you.” We shook hands and he said, “You’ve got a rendering of what you’re going to do. That’s good.” And he got down on his hands and knees and began pointing to the rendering and telling me all of the things I should say to anyone I was presenting to. He was going to teach me how to make a presentation. “You should point out all the good features that you’re going to be in this program.” And then I got down on my hands and knees right there alongside him, and the preacher’s standing there and they’re just incredulous. You can just imagine the scene. When we got ready to finish up he said, “And now the most important thing, Cal. You must remember that when you call on people—you’ve got to ask for enough. Remember.” And he didn’t seem to realize that I was going to do it to him. I stood up and tried to recall all of the things he had said, and I went through it as well as I could, and I asked him for $40,000, and his jaw dropped about a foot, and he said, “Cal, you asked for enough.” When we bought this house, his pilot was also trying to buy it. Gino didn’t really want him this close. He used to stop and talk to me all the time.
Phyllis
Within the last year, when they go by—they aren’t usually driving—they have a driver or something. They often wave while[?] we’re out in the yard.
Calvert
He used to stop and talk, but now he’s lost his recollection of what my part and background was.
Phyllis
He had Hubert Humphrey come to his home, when Hubert was running for vice president.
Calvert
Even when he was vice president, he was down here.
Phyllis
They’d come from the airport and go by here, and our son had one of those etch-a-sketch things, where you put the little dots—and he hung it in the window.
Calvert
Little Gina [Pelucci] came here to play with Ruth Ann.
Phyllis
Gina Pelucci came over here to play with Ruth Ann, and brought her pet mouse—a little black and white thing. Of course, our daughter loved animals, and we did too, and it didn’t frighten me or anything, but when she got ready to go home, she couldn’t find the mouse, and we never did find that mouse. I’m sure it’s hiding around here somewhere. [laughs].
Calvert
Well, one thing that is funny is that everywhere I go people tell me I look like Jimmy Carter. Well there’s a picture of Jimmy Carter right up there, and when we went to Panama, we were going through customs, and as I approached the customs thing. The guy hollered out, “¡Jimmy Carter ahí!” All these people came running around, and I thought, “I’m just going to go along with it.” A woman wanted to have her picture taken with me, so I put my around her, smiled, and took a picture with her.
Phyllis
‘Cause he didn’t know any Spanish, he couldn’t say, “No, I’m not Jimmy Carter.” It would sound like—it happened at the resort...
Calvert
It happened six times on one trip. I got invited into the bar for a drink and all sorts. He’s a big hero, ‘cause he’s the one who turned the [Panama] Canal over to them.
Phyllis
He thought if he said no when they wanted their picture taken, and he didn’t speak English, it would sound like, “I’m Mr. Big and you’re paparazzi. Get away from me.” So he’d just smile and let them take his picture.
Calvert
One lady—I never did understand that. Well, I’d go shopping in Wal-Mart, and very often somebody will tap me on the shoulder and say, “Here, I’m going to go home and tell my folks that I went shopping with Jimmy Carter.” The City of Sanford does a great deal. The county does not. The county feels they have to go to Orlando to get the big engineering firms, and it’s very strange, and of course there’s competition between cities and the counties, and there always has been. We started out doing both, but in your local area, you usually end up doing one or the other and we’ve ended up doing all the cities essentially.
Phyllis
We bought it out. Us[sic] and the porters and the homes bought it out and...
Calvert
We bought it from CRS and a national firm. Clark Deets[sp] was sold to Richardson and then to CRS—Rawlins and then CRS.
Thompson
So there were several owners before you?
Calvert
Clark Deets was the original one I went to work for in Urbana, and my professors were the ones that started it. They resigned from the college and hired their better students, and there were three of them. A structural man, a civil man, and an environmental or sanitary man, and I was actually one of the very first ones they hired, and we made a big business out of that and got into the 200 range in the country, and then I came down here and saw it and thought it’d be good to make a branch, and then the company got sold and ended up with CRS [inaudible]. They did the big arenas. The big one in Gainesville, and they were mainly doing things in the Middle East in the [United] Arab Emirates. All of that fancy stuff there, and they had no idea what our business was here. I mean, it was all local. They just didn’t understand. It wasn’t the kind of business that they did, and when we decided to go into business for ourselves, I said, “We may be able to get this for a song.” And the other two just wanted to leave and I said, “No. Let me have a try at it.” So I went down there, and we paid $35,000, and we got all of the new business, and they even paid us 5 percent of the collections for three years, and so they ended up—we were roughly 10 percent of their organization and they ended up paying us to take it away from them.
Phyllis
And this was 1981, when it first became Conklin Corps.
Calvert
And the other two worked for me.
Thompson
And I opened up the Rib Ranch in 1981 and I retired in 2008. My husband was ill and he died last year. I was lucky to be with him at that time.
[1] George Calvert.
[2] Correction: Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Chorus.
[3] Correction: National Register of Historic Places.
[4] Correction: Wayne-Densch Performing Arts Center.
[5] Correction: Woman’s Club of Sanford.
[6] Correction: The Briar Team.
[7] Correction: Berkeley College of Music.
[8] Correction: Campbell Soup Company.
[9] Virgil Bryan.