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HISTORICAL SOCIETY
SPONSORS SPEAKER SERIES
AVON PARK --
History -- especially local history -- takes
center stage
when the Historical Society of Avon Park offers its third
Summer Sunday Speakers Series, set for July and August.
Each program will be held
Sundays from 2:00 to 4:00 at the Depot Museum,
except for
July 26, when it takes place at the Avon Park
Executive Airport, and
Aug. 23, when no program will be held. Admission is
free but donations are accepted and light refreshments
will be served.
SCHEDULE
*July
12: A “Mid-20th
Century Chat Room.” Come share your memories of the 1940s,
’50s and ’60s.
*July
19: “Writing the Stories of Your Life,” a workshop
conducted by local writer and
historical society president Larry Levey.
*July 26: “Barnstorming, Wing-Walking,
Airport History, and the new FBO,”
presented by veteran barnstormer Walt
Pierce and airport manager C.B. Shirey. (Program at
Avon Park
Executive Airport.)
*Aug.
2: “The Growing Up Years of
South Florida Community College,” a panel
discussion by former faculty and staff, including Dr.???
Wilfred Beumel, Roberta Flowers, Dr. Donald Farrens, and
Yolanda Wyche.
*Aug.
9: “Cowhunters and Cowhuntresses: Taming
Florida’s
Last Frontier,” presented by Dr. Nancy Dale and featuring
local ranchers Glenn and Joy Murphy.
*Aug.
16: “The Early Days of Avon Park Rotary,” presented
by a panel of long-time Rotary members.
*Aug. 23: No program scheduled.
*Aug.
30: “Tales from a
World War
II WASP,” with
Barry Smith
sharing her life as a Woman’s Air Corps Service Pilot.”
For more information, call Larry Levey
at 385-8618.
NOTICE
The Depot Museum
is temporarily closed because of the street-scaping of
Museum Avenue. Please call 863-385-8618 for further
information.
There's laughs and memories
a-plenty in the chat room at the Depot Museum.
Summer Sunday series ends
Speakers zero in on
Avon Park
today … and yesterday
The recently ended Summer Sunday Speakers
Series at the Depot Museum offered visitors both a look-see
at the history of the community and a glimpse at current
events.
On tap to present a picture of Avon Park
today were Sarah Adelt, city manager;
Maria
Sutherland, project manager for the city; and C.B.
Shirey, former
city manager and currently manager of the
Avon Park
Executive Airport.
Local history
took center
stage on several Sundays. Larry Albritton spoke on
his 50 years of barbering in Avon Park. Dr. Ron Sevigny,
Avon Park’s “Mr. Baseball,” talked about the role baseball
has played in the city, including major league, minor
league, and especially high school teams.
The session drawing the largest crowd was
the panel
discussion on “Love and War.” The panel, made up of
Nancy Nunnallee, Bobby Kluberg, Theda Miracle, Jane Barben
and Bob Barben, talked about Avon Park during the days of
World War II,
when the city housed two Army Air Corps training sites, the
Avon Park
Bombing Range and Lodwick Aviation Military Academy.
.
One Sunday was devoted to
David Briley,
a range control officer at the
Avon Park Air
Force Range and also a nature photographer,
displaying his bird and plant photos.
And on several Sundays, visitors took
part in a “chat room,” a format that encouraged everyone to
share their memories of growing up.
Sarah Adelt, left, city manager of Avon Park, chats with
Mary Pardee Roberts during a break at a Summer Sunday
program at the Depot Museum.
Larry Albritton
shows off a
straight razor as he talks about his 50 years as an
Avon Park barber during a Summer Sunday program at the Depot
Musuem.
Historical News
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.
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3 N. Museum
Avenue
