Burying “Old Man Gloom” by Elaine Levey

NOTE: The following is an edited version of a column written in the late 1990s for the News-Sun. It was one of a series dealing with “Yesterday” in Highlands County. Reprinted by permission.

In the early 1920s, Avon Park was a young, aggressive and tremendously optimistic industrial community. The town bragged the other nearby communities could have the tourists. Avon Park would have the industry.

Industry was thriving, with crate and lumber mills, turpentine stills, a citrus cannery and construction going in all directions. Sewers and sidewalks were being laid and the streets were being paved. The Florida land boom was in full swing.

But by 1925, things began to slow down. Suddenly, the boom days were over. Gloom set in. By 1930, the town was barely moving. Folks thought it might turn into a ghost town.

But then someone suggested that the trouble with the town that it was “wrapped in gloom” -- and that this imposter should be buried.

The Chamber of Commerce, latching on to the idea, made plans to bury “Old Man Gloom.”

On June 26, 1930, chamber members staged a funeral procession down Main St. to the grave site at Donaldson Park. One member, E.E. Melton, decked out in a high hat and monocle, led the funeral atop an old brown mule.

Then came the band, followed by pall bearers carrying a casket with the remains of “Old Man Gloom.” Mourners, veiled in heavy black, followed. Next came a bathing beauty section, a children’s section, pirate section, and comic strip characters that made up the four-block-long parade. At the grave site, Claude Pepper -- then a member of the Florida House of Representatives -- delivered the “eulogy.”

Maybe the funeral did the trick. Avon Park never became the “ghost town” that so many had predicted.