Special to The Laker/Lutz News

Grasshopper co-founder from Wesley Chapel

By Kyle LoJacono

Staff Writer

NEW TAMPA — Few would say field hockey is their favorite sport, but those who love it are fanatical about it.

“It’s just a great game to play,” Tampa Bay Grasshoppers president Jeff Grosvenor said. “We have people from all over the area coming to play and practice, and that shows how much they love field hockey.”

Grosvenor, 63, was born in Trinidad and moved to Wesley Chapel seven years ago from New York. He no longer plays field hockey because of recent left-knee surgery and pain in his right ankle.

Grosvenor, several of his co-workers at a financial services firm in Tampa and other fans of field hockey started the Grasshoppers in 2003 with five players. The club now has 35 men and women, many who attend the University of South Florida and the University of Tampa, that range from age 16 to 65.

One of Grosvenor’s co-workers and founding members is Ravinder Kullar, 54, of New Tampa. Others include Charlie Joseph of New Tampa and Michelle Legesse, team secretary, of Lutz.

Kullar, who plays center-half, was born in Nairobi, Kenya and moved to New Tampa at the same time as Grosvenor. He lived in London as a young man and played on the Under-22 English National Team.

“It’s a great time to run around and play field hockey,” Kullar said. “Jeff and I loved playing (on the same team) up north and wanted to find a place to play down here.”

The hardest thing for the Grasshoppers originally was to find a suitable field suitable for the sport. Kullar said the game is meant to be played on artificial turf because long grass makes the ball hard to control. The first site they tried was a baseball field in the Brandon area, but the grass was too long.

“It was fun, but (Ravinder) told me we needed to find a field with grass short enough so that we could see the ball once it is dropped,” Grosvenor said. “We have those fields now.”

The team practiced each Wednesday evenings until daylight saving time ended on Nov. 1 at the New Tampa Community Park. The Grasshoppers cannot practice in New Tampa because the field has no lights, but they will return to there when daylight saving time begins next March.

They also practice and play their games on Saturdays in Clearwater.

“We’re part of the Florida Field Hockey Association that has another team in south Tampa and ones in Miami, Orlando, Tallahassee and other places in Florida,” Grosvenor said. “Our season is March to October, and we play tournaments too.”

The Grasshoppers finished third in the seven-team league last year, and Grosvenor was recently named interim president for the FFHA.

“I won’t know how I feel about being interim president until the season starts, but I think I’ll like it,” Grosvenor said. “I like playing best, as referee second and as an organizer third; but I still love just being around the game.”

For more information on the team, visit www.tbfieldhockey.com or e-mail Grosvenor at .

By Gary S. Hatrick

The Laker Correspondent

DADE CITY — Jazzercise Bosom Buddies of Dade City raised $27,000 for Making Strides Against Breast Cancer, more than any other team in Pasco County, and qualified as one of the top 20 teams in country for the American Cancer Society benefit.

“That makes us so proud,” said Kris Dail, an instructor with Jazzercise Bosom Buddies. “We love to exercise together, and that is the common denominator that brought us all together. But our common goal is to beat cancer.”

Dail said she never imagined that her group would raise so much money.

“I started it four years ago when I was approached by another instructor to take over as team leader,” she said. “The first year we did a bake sale and a car wash. We raised $900 and I thought that was amazing.”

Although it may sound “fishy,” most of the this year’s money came from one major event that brought in $18,000 — a fishing tournament at St. John’s Pass called Reeling for Racks, Dail said.

Linda Davenport, a member of the Jazzercise Bosom Buddies and a breast cancer survivor, organized the tournament.

“The combination of good weather, a good cause and a good silent auction of donated time and items from the Jazzercise women was the recipe for success,” Dail said. “It was great to see the spirit of everyone giving.”

Fund-raising goes on all year, Dail said. The group has already started raising money for 2010.

“We have a really high bar to meet next year,” she said.

Anyone interested in donating can call Dail at (813) 714-9272 or (800) FIT IS IT.

Countryside Montessori Elementary gets new landscaping donated by Land O’ Lakes business

By Kyle LoJacono

Staff Writer

LAND O’ LAKES — Recent economic difficulties have forced everyone to save every penny, but when a little girl asked if Tony Holbrook of Tropical Landscaping Design Inc. could make her school look better, he could not say no.

The little girl is Giana DiFilippo, 8, who is a student at Countryside Montessori Elementary, located on Ehren Cutoff in Land O’ Lakes.

“I asked if Mr. Tony could make my school look as beautiful as our house,” Giana said.

Giana’s mother, Lynn DiFilippo, hired Holbrook to do landscaping work and to put in palm trees and other Floridian plants on her property.

“Tony did a great job on our house and did just what we wanted,” DiFilippo said. “I told Giana I would ask Tony if he could help us, but it had to be on a donation basis, and I wasn’t sure if that was possible.”

DiFilippo is a substitute teacher and volunteer at Countryside Montessori. Holbrook was able to donate the time and materials for the project, so administrative staff at Countryside Montessori only had to approve the project.

“We’ve done some charitable work at schools in past years, and we had the ability to do it again this year,” Holbrook said. “So when the daughter of a customer asked if we could help out at her school, I couldn’t turn her down. This community has kept our company growing through tough times. No amount of money can replace the feeling of giving and helping others.”

Holbrook, who has lived in the Tampa Bay area for 33 years, went to Lutz Elementary and moved to Land O’ Lakes from Tennessee four years ago. His partner at Tropical Landscaping is Jody Dickerson. Together, their main goal was to improve the drainage between some of the school’s buildings by putting in a river rock design. They also put in Floridian plants and did additional landscaping in the area.

“I also want to put in name tags so that the kids can learn about the plants,” Holbrook said. “I love plants, and maybe the area will spark some kid’s interest in plants, too.”

Dickerson, Holbrook and Holbrook’s son, Ryan, who recently was accepted at the University of South Florida as a pre-medical student, along with several others did the landscaping work on Nov. 6 and 7. Materials for the project cost between $3,000 and $3,500, and labor cost more than $1,000 a day. That brought the entire project’s cost to more than $5,000.

After the plants were put in, McGuire’s Beautiful Outdoors, located at 27251 SR 54 Suite B-14/525 in Wesley Chapel, put fertilizer on the plants and agreed to maintain the plants in the future.

“McGuire’s agreed to take care of the plants, which was a concern of mine because I want them to last so the kids can see them for a long time,” Holbrook said. “We work together with McGuire’s, and together we serve 1,000 customers from all over Pasco and down into Hillsborough.”

The area was revealed on Nov. 9 when the children and teachers came back from the weekend. Giana named the area the Peaceful Garden.

“To give that amount of time and energy into the school, it just amazing to me,” DiFilippo said. “The kids will have a much better school to go to every day now thanks to Tony.”

Holbrook did not just donate his time, energy and materials on the project. He also donated the day on Nov. 7 — his 40th birthday.

“I just planned the project and wasn’t thinking that it was my birthday,” Holbrook said. “Maybe I was trying to forget about it because no one wants to turn 40.

“When my son (Ryan) heard I was working on my birthday, he said as long as I was donating the day, he wanted to as well. He has done a lot of volunteering and earned an award for all the hours he has donated in high school, but this is special because it was last minute and was meant to help me on my birthday.”

Ryan has spent more than 300 hours volunteering while attending Tampa Catholic.

For more information on Tropical Landscaping, located at 5104 Land O’ Lakes Blvd. in Land O’ Lakes, call (813) 361-7004 or visit www.tropicallandscape.net.

Tiken aka Pudge
One day while glancing through the neighborhood flier news,
I came across an ad that read: free kittens to good home, you choose.
I called the number, then it rang, a lady picked up the phone.
She said the kittens are six weeks old, then gave directions to her home.
When I got to her home I knocked on the door,
Walked in the house and sat on the floor.
Here were five little kittens I so adore.
Decisions, decisions are so hard to make,
Which one of these kittens should I take.
Then this one little kitten crawled into my lap
Where he curled in a ball and took a nap.
Needless to say, he’s the one I took home,
For as long as he lives, he’ll be the king of his throne!
Tiken’s owner is Jean Herman of Zephyrhills.

Sweetie Pie is 11 months old with green eyes, a brown nose and lips, and three-inch-long eyelashes. She thinks she is part cat and jumps high on everything, including the dining room table. Sweetie Pie loves squeaky toys and her name fits her to a “T”. Her proud owners are Mr. and Mrs. Dan Benshoof of Lutz.

By Ashley Dunn

News Editor

WESLEY CHAPEL — Samuel Lum can’t recall where he was or what he was doing the day Pearl Harbor was bombed, but he does remember how it made him feel.

“‘I’m not gonna sit down and take it,” he said he remembers thinking. “‘I’m gonna fight.”

From his kitchen table in the Seven Oaks neighborhood of Wesley Chapel, 90-year-old Lum summoned up memories of World War II — flying over Germany in 1944, being captured by enemy soldiers and becoming a prisoner of war. His aging mind is beginning to lose these fascinating stories, but he and his 87-year-old wife, May, live with their son, Wally, and daughter-in-law, Robin, who helped Lum fill in the blanks.

Lum, a mild-mannered man, was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, and became a boat builder. The events that took place at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 inspired him to join the military, and he became a plane navigator.

“I flew both kinds — B-17 and B-24,” he said. He was in a B-17 the first and last time he ever had to bail out. It was his 18th mission. The date was Aug. 4, 1944.

Lum and six other soldiers were flying over Hamburg, Germany, when their plane was hit. The two starboard engines were on fire, and the pilot ordered everyone to jump out. The others began to bail, but Lum looked back at his bombardier, Joe Richter.

“My bombardier was hit,” he said, “and I had to help him.”

As the plane fell toward Earth, Lum patched Richter’s wounded leg, dragged him over to the side door and pushed him out.

“I had to get him out,” Lum said slowly, as if he was reliving the moment in his mind. “He was in bad shape. He would have died. I had to get him out. We trained together. He was like a brother to me.”

Now alone in the plane, Lum smelled gasoline. He turned off all the switches to make sure nothing sparked. Then, he strapped on his parachute and jumped.

Was he scared?

“Yeah, but I was more afraid of being blown up,” he said. “High octane gasoline — you know, it’s very dangerous.”

As Lum drifted toward the ground, the broken plane above him exploded. But that was only the beginning.

When Lum touched down and rejoined his group, the seven U.S. soldiers were surrounded by members of the German army. But, Lum said, they were lucky. If the group had been found by civilians, they probably would have been killed.

Lum and the others were taken to a prisoner of war camp in Sagan, Germany. It was dirty and cold, especially at night, he said. Prisoners often went hungry.

“Outside of that, they treated us fairly,” he said.

Lum was a prisoner for nine months, during which time he was moved from the camp in Sagan to a camp in Nurnberg, Germany. The prisoners were forced to march through the freezing snow, which Lum said was the worst part of his captivity.

“We tried to conserve our strength because just in case you had to go on a long march like that,” he said.

Another of Lum’s secrets to surviving: maintaining a positive attitude.

“I was never pessimistic,” he said. “You can’t afford to get down, down, down and feel like ‘I’m gonna die,’” he said. “Your body gets weak.”

In April 1945, German soldiers and guards started leaving the camp. They knew something was going to happen, Lum said after Wally helped jog his memory. Sure enough, tanks from Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army drove in and freed all the prisoners.

“It was a very nice feeling,” Lum said.

When Lum got back to the states, he married May, whom he had met on a blind date just before he had shipped out. She was from New York and was happy to see him return safely.

“I thought he was worth waiting for,” she said, and then smiled.

The couple had two children — Wally and his older brother, Wesley.

On Jan. 5, 1950, Lum was awarded an Air Medal for saving the life of his bombardier. Still, he doesn’t consider himself a hero.

“He is the most honorable man I’ve ever met,” Robin Lum said, “and to have my children grow up with him and learn the qualities you don’t see anymore in this generation is really cool.”

Lum also doesn’t feel bitter about what happened to him during the war or after. About 15 years ago, he lost his bladder to cancer. Doctors said the cause was likely linked to all the cigarettes he smoked in the POW camp. Prisoners didn’t always have enough to eat, but they were provided with plenty of cigarettes. Lum stopped smoking after he was freed.

“I’m lucky I’ve got my arms and legs and that they didn’t get shot off,” he said. “… I didn’t lose my marbles. A lot of guys had it bad.”

“I am a very lucky guy to live through that, and I didn’t have any major problems,” he later added.

Lum is an only child, and his father died when he was just nine months old. Lum’s mother wasn’t happy when she learned he would be going off to war. But Lum said he doesn’t regret his decision.

“When your country — if you lose, you’re in the dog house. You’re nobody. You lose everything, and I wasn’t going to take that,” he said. “I felt it was my duty.”

By Ashley Dunn

News Editor

WESLEY CHAPEL — Kimberly Taylor walked down the aisle to her soon-to-be husband, passing guests, pretty decorations and racks of women’s clothing.

Taylor and husband Owen Fullerton originally planned to get married on the beach at a Sandals resort. But they ended up trading sand and sun for polished floors and retail lighting when they tied the knot at Dillards on Nov. 8.

Taylor and Fullerton are both employed at the department store at The Shops at Wiregrass; Taylor is a manager in the makeup department and Fullerton works in the shoe department. After being together for five years, Fullerton proposed to Taylor over the store’s intercom on May 5. It was a unique idea that inspired Dillards store manager Kathy Appleby to approach the couple with her own unconventional plan.

Every Dillards store has a fall bridal event in which experts offer pre-wedding seminars and vendors showcase their products and services, Appleby explained.

“I thought, ‘If I’m going to do all the vendor stuff, I might as well just have a wedding,’” she said.

Appleby called Sheri Goldberg, executive director of the Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce, who connected her with Barbara Cruz, president and founder of Couture Wedding and Events Guild. Cruz acted as wedding planner, taking care of all the arrangements. Nearly all the items for the wedding were donated. Taylor and Fullerton only had to take care of their rings, marriage license and reception room.

“It has been a breeze,” said Taylor, of Land O’ Lakes, when asked what it was like to plan a wedding in a department store. “They have taken care of everything!”

An upstairs section of the store was roped off for the ceremony, and about 50 guests sat in white chairs with blue bows. Employees and a handful of shoppers stood between clothing racks to watch. The bride slowly strode down one of the main aisles in the women’s apparel department and met her groom on a stage near the gift-wrap section. After the couple said “I do,” exchanged rings and took part in a sand ceremony, their officiant pronounced them husband and wife. Three hours later, they moved the party to Mexican restaurant Cantina Laredo — also located at The Shops at Wiregrass — for the reception.

As for the couple’s honeymoon: “We don’t have any specific plans,” Taylor said. “We will have a main one next year after the retail busy season.”

“As far as we know, this is the first wedding there’s been at a Dillards,” said Appleby. “The store opened in 1938… It’s definitely the first in Florida.”

But it won’t be the last. Appleby said the store plans to have a bigger, better wedding ceremony at next year’s bridal event, which will take place on Sept. 12, 2010. Area couples will be able to apply for the opportunity, Appleby said, but those details are still being hammered out.

Taylor and Fullerton are now ready to begin their married life together. Taylor said she wasn’t looking for love when she met Fullerton, but she knew he was “The One” from the moment she saw him.

“We are each others soul mates,” she said, “and I didn’t think that existed!”

By Kyle LoJacono

Staff Writer

LUTZ — The Lutz Patriots have a strange problem by their standards.

“We have enough money for postage to send over packages to the troops for the holidays, but we don’t have enough materials to fill the boxes,” said member Bruce Hockensmith. “It goes back-and-forth, but we usually have it the other way around. But this time we need donations of materials so we can make the holidays a little nicer for our troops.”

Like all the men in the Lutz Patriots, Hockensmith is a U.S. military veteran. He is a retired Army sergeant who served from 1965 to 1968 in Germany, and his older brother, George, was in Navy.

The patriots have enough postage money thanks to the Oct. 3 charity car show that was arranged by Shawn Tyson of Tyson Printing and Graphics in Lutz. The Patriots received more than $1,000 in postage to send gifts to U.S. troops.

“We plan to have a backing party on Nov. 14 to send everything we have collected so that the boxes make it to the troops by the holidays, but we need the community, which has always stepped up and helped us in the past, to help us fill the boxes,” Hockensmith said. “I remember serving has a very young man and how much it meant to me just get a letter from home.

“We have troops in places most haven’t heard of doing the hardest things in the world to keep us safe. What they are doing is something I feel has to be done, so we can at least help them be a little more comfortable.”

To make donations to the patriots, e-mail (see the box below for a list of the needed items.)

The women of the group are just as dedicated to supporting the troops.

“We do little things to help those brave soldiers know we care,” said Barbara Mueller, of Lutz, who founded the group. “That’s why we started the patriots. We wanted to show troops we cared by sending what we can and to show the community we care for the troops with our actions.”

Mueller started the Lutz Patriots in March 2003 after the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The patriots have members from across northern Hillsborough and southern Pasco.

Besides sending packages to the troops, the patriots meet every Friday night to wave U.S. flags in front of the Old Lutz Schoolhouse on US 41 from 4 to 6 p.m.

Mueller is more connected with the armed forces than most. Her son, Matt, served for five years in the Marine Corps, reaching the rank of first lieutenant. He is currently a reservist living in South Korea.

Mueller’s husband, Bud, served in the Navy, and her father, Bob Elrod of northern Hillsborough, served in World War II. Bob’s cousin Henry “Tank” Elrod was a marine pilot who was given a Medal of Honor, and his story is featured in the History Channel movie “Wake Island: Alamo of the Pacific.”

The Patriots receive e-mails and letters regularly from troops thanking them for their donations, many with pictures included.

“Seeing pictures and reading letters from the troops lets us know that the soldiers are getting the gifts we send,” said member Judy McCray. “It’s always a thrill to see those letters.”

“They are over there serving this county, and as long as they are doing that, I want to help them,” Hockensmith said. “Sending holiday gifts is a little thing, but I know from experience how much those little things mean when you are serving overseas.”

Items needed by the Lutz Patriots for U.S. troops’ care packages

FOOD: beef jerky, crackers, hard candy, gum, granola and protein bars, nuts, chips, coffee, Crystal Light packets, power bars, Slim Jim’s, Oreo cookies, fruit snacks, nondairy coffee creamer, microwave popcorn, Little Debbi’s snack cakes

HYGIENE: deodorant, lip balm, razors, eye drops, body and foot powder, hand wipes, hand warmer, white athletic socks, wash cloths, dental care products, body lotion, sunblock, shampoo and conditioner, nail files, Q-tips, cotton balls, combs and brushes, bug spray

OTHER: board games, batteries, stationery, DVDs, CDs, CD players, fly swatters, puzzle books, crocs and flip flops, athletic balls and equipment, letters and cards from local people, bandanas, paper and pens, sewing kits, comic and joke books, magazines, small flashlights, disposable cameras and Frisbees