Tom Jackson

Resetting U.S.-Russia relations, one hug at a time

June 15, 2016 By Tom Jackson

A long, long time ago, in a country far, far away, a new president’s secretary of state presented her Russian counterpart with what clever minds at Foggy Bottom must have imagined was simple genius: a “reset” button, symbolizing the Obama administration’s desire for a fresh start between our nations.

We’ve seen how that worked out.

Anyone seeking an enduring USA-Russia reset needs to program his GPS for a low-slung block house off 20 Mile Level Road in Land O’ Lakes. There, amid the managed chaos and loving clutter of a makeshift family, is the nerve center of a genuine international coming-together.

Daniil Shcherbinin and Sam, a rescue coonhound mix, in the woods near their Land O’ Lakes house. (Photos courtesy of Eric Wilson) — Daniil Shcherbinin and Sam, a rescue coonhound mix, in the woods near their Land O’ Lakes house.
(Photos courtesy of Eric Wilson)

Four boys from St. Petersburg, Russia, have spent their coming-of-age school years here under the guidance of transplanted Hoosier Eric Wilson. And, they enjoyed value-added assistance from the village network that is nearby Academy at the Lakes, the lads’ welcoming school.

The quartet — Gleb Barkovskiy, Maxim and Tioma Stepanets and Daniil Shcherbinin — has shrunk, through graduation, to a duo of Tioma and Daniil. By late August, the household will shrink again to Wilson and Tioma, plus languid Sam, the rescue coonhound mix. By then, Daniil, 18, will have been dispatched to Springfield, Ohio, and Wittenberg University.

How are the other alumni doing?

Barkovskiy, the son of a former Soviet nuclear submarine captain and a rising senior at Bucknell, is interning at Goldman Sachs. Max Stepanets is a rising sophomore at Alma College in Michigan, where he’s a member of the football team and majoring in business.

As for Shcherbinin (“Sher-ben-in,” but for simplicity’s sake, hereafter Daniil), he anticipates a summer of unofficial occupations. Here on a restrictive student visa, this perfect prospect for stocking the top shelves at Publix — he’s 6 feet 5 — ruefully concedes he can’t collect “a regular paycheck,” but he needs to save for college expenses.

So he’ll mow lawns, paint houses, help out with the household’s pooch-sitting operation, “move really heavy furniture” and do whatever other honest odd jobs come his way. After all, if he’d wanted to be idle and tempted into troublemaking, he could have stayed in Russia.

That depressing prospect is the future Katerina Ilina, a real estate agent in a perpetually tough market, was hoping her only child could avoid when she presented him nearly 10 years ago for evaluation by an associate of the Renaissance Project.

The plan was to identify promising St. Petersburg boys and invite them to attend a posh private school in Boca Raton, where they would be groomed to become citizen ambassadors for America back home.

Daniil Shcherbinin with his mom, Katarina Ilina, at an airport.

Alas, the original plan soon collapsed. By then, however, Wilson wasn’t just on board, he’d become a passionate believer and the boys’ best advocate. Long story short, he found a like-minded administrator at Academy at the Lakes, and through a combination of scholarships, fundraising schemes, donations, a generous landlord, philanthropic medical professionals and stretching Wilson’s teacher’s paycheck, they’ve made it work. (Read more about their efforts here: http://renproject.org.)

It hasn’t hurt that each of the Russians has been an exemplary student and — as much as any teenager is capable — a model citizen. Daniil captained the football and basketball teams, served as student body vice president and played Mr. Darling in the school’s springtime production of “Peter Pan” — notably, without attempting a British accent.

The amateur thespian explains: “When I try to do an English accent, my Russian really comes out.” (Not that he hasn’t waxed the Volga boatman when it might charm an American girl, or get him out of a tight spot with a teacher, he concedes.)

Otherwise, looking for highlights in an eventful senior year, two stand out: First, the March afternoon he learned he’d been accepted, with generous underwriting, at Wittenberg. Second, the recent two weeks he spent here, with his mom, during Katarina’s first visit to America.

What did she learn? Americans are uncommonly welcoming to newcomers. “Everyone is so friendly,” she says. “Everyone wants to hug.” Maybe, she says, it’s the residue from Stalin, an era of suspicion, but Russians are rarely so open to strangers.

Experiencing it for herself, Katarina came to appreciate how this kid from a factory district —where V.I. Lenin once lectured on communism — had become upbeat and open-hearted, phonetically, “dobriy” in Russian. What a contrast to his somber, pessimistic peers back home.

Here she saw real evidence of that elusive reset. And, for those back home who fret their countryman has gone native, not to worry. When he’s not fetching and lifting this summer, Daniil will be immersed in Russian literature, Mikhail Bulgakov’s fantasy parable, “The Master and Margarita.”

“I am proud to be Russian,” he says flatly. “I never want to lose that.” Neither does anyone else in the Renaissance Project. They like him just the way he’s turned out.

And, so this happened. On the day of the open house on 20 Mile Level Road, when teachers and friends came to celebrate Daniil’s graduation, they brought presents for him, and for Katarina.

Gifts for the graduate Katarina understood. But for her? Why? “We brought you gifts,” explained one of the moms, her eyes shining, “because you shared your gift — your only son — with us.”

They hugged and wept happy tears. Because that’s what moms, wherever they’re from, do.

It’s from such embraces, real, lasting resets emerge.

Tom Jackson, a resident of New Tampa, is interested in your ideas. To reach him, email .

Published June 15, 2016

Appreciating Joe Hancock’s legacy

June 8, 2016 By Tom Jackson

To begin to appreciate the sudden and shocking loss of Joseph Neal Hancock — legacy grove owner, ubiquitous volunteer, Southern historian and, poignantly, amateur bicycling enthusiast — you begin here, a half-mile and then some from Townsend House Cemetery.

Here, if you weren’t among the earliest arrivals, is where you park, on the edge of another of Pasco County’s narrow, unpaved roads, among the four-wheel-drive SUVs and pickup trucks. So very many pickup trucks, signaling something else important: This is a funeral for a working man.

Joseph Neal Hancock was a man of achievement, generosity, reflection. (Courtesy of Hancock Family) — Joseph Neal Hancock was a man of achievement, generosity, reflection.
(Courtesy of Hancock Family)

And so, despite the morning’s rising heat, you slip into your sport jacket — respect must be paid — and strike out around the bend, kicking up dust in pursuit of the old final resting place for some of the east county’s most notable pioneer families: Johnstons, Eilands, Bellamys and, by the dozens, Hancocks. So very many Hancocks.

It was inevitable, then, Joe’s earthly remains would wind up here, on this shaded hill overlooking gentle pastureland and sparkling Middle Lake beyond, beneath the canopy of moss-draped oaks. It’s just the timing that was all off.

Joe Hancock, the son of the son of the son of farmers, was just 57 years old — the new 35, as every baby boomer knows — and hardy. We mentioned the bicycle. With cycling pal Jim Pavek pushing him and their families’ scalloping adventures waiting at the other end, he could make Steinhatchee, a 140-mile trip, in two days. He’d been known to pedal to North Carolina and beyond.

And, he thought nothing of putting in a quick 10 miles most any morning before work … which is what he was doing that fateful Saturday at the end of May when things went tragically awry: Desiree Michelle Nathe, 20, state-champion high jumper, cresting a hill on Lake Iola Road in her Hyundai Accent and finding Hancock in her path, knocking him off his German Focus bike and into eternity.

He leaves behind Jane, his first, foremost and lifetime love, three sons — Jimmy, 29, his business partner; Jackson, 18, who graduated high school Friday; and Jeb, 11 — and countless scores of friends, most of whom appear to have stories that begin, “You can’t put this in the newspaper.”

They gathered a dozen deep around a simple maple casket last Wednesday morning, serenaded by nature’s summer sounds: the electric buzz of cicadas, cheeping cardinals, cooing doves, the mournful cry of a distant loon — all God’s creatures forming a proper soundtrack behind the brief narrative of an outdoorsman’s life as told by Bill Scaife, who pastors Wilderness Lake Church in far north Land O’ Lakes.

Hancock didn’t lend, Scaife noted. He gave, because relationships were more important to him than balanced ledgers. He didn’t laugh or roll his eyes when a suburbanite new to country life insisted on burying a week-old calf with a blanket and a bottle she’d used in a hopeless attempt to keep it alive.

And, not much more than a week or so before, on a moonlight tour of their grove in the company golf cart with Jane by his side, he spoke as a philosopher about divine blessings, regrets — he had none — and their life together. It was all good, he said.

The lad who once declared his intention to become “a legend in his own time” had grown into a man of achievement, generosity, refection and perspective.

None of this is to suggest that anyone besides his Creator would have suggested Joe Hancock’s work in this mortal realm was even remotely complete. He was, it bears repeating, only 57 and, by every account, vibrant.

There’s no telling what might have accomplished with another 30 years — which isn’t out of the question, based on the lifespans of the other Hancocks buried up on the hill — but even if it was only 30 years of adoring Jane, doting on grandchildren and inhaling the perfume of orange blossoms, so what?

Instead, we are left to grapple, prematurely, with what he has bequeathed: yet another sad lesson about bicyclists lured to east Pasco’s tight, curvy, hilly back roads and motorists who happen upon them unexpectedly.

“I don’t know why,” says Pavek, Hancock’s riding pal, “but I just think something good is going to come from this, for Joe’s sake.”

What that something might be, Pavek can’t say for sure. Adding broad shoulders to the roads that attract cyclists from around the region would cost millions the county doesn’t have. Pasco’s emerging trail plan doesn’t stress the hilly routes cyclists love. And, even Pavek says there is more than adequate signage to alert drivers about the likely presence of bike riders.

What, then? Maybe people will be more mindful now, he says. This is more likely the ephemeral wish of a bereaved friend, but within it is the nugget of an opportunity.

To make alertness stick, a perpetual reminder would be helpful. And, if that reminder is low-cost, so much the better.

So how about this: Lake Iola Road, where a good man reared his boys, loved Jane, caused to prosper the family business and met his untimely end, gets an honorary second name: Joseph N. Hancock Memorial Highway.

And, near the spot of the crash, a suitable plaque, affixed to a German Focus. So we remember, always, and drive, or cycle, accordingly.

Tom Jackson, a resident of New Tampa, is interested in your ideas. To reach him, email .

Published June 8, 2016

From ‘Wallflower,’ the perks of repetitive learning

June 1, 2016 By Tom Jackson

On the topic of what is suitable reading for students of impressionable ages, the recent action attempted by a handful of parents at Pasco Middle School is instructive mostly because it is terribly familiar.

Every couple of years, it seems, certain grownups will flex their preferences in an attempt to assert preemptory authority over what youngsters are either assigned or even allowed to read.

Tom Jackson rgb In 2014, it was a John Long Middle School parent who created a stir when John Green’s popular and well-reviewed “Paper Towns” landed on the mandatory summer reading list.

Now, the book in contention is Stephen Chbosky’s 1999 novel, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” which falls into the same genre: a coming-of-age tale. This one is told from the perspective of a bright, sensitive 15-year-old who, despite his willingness to simply observe from the sidelines, is summoned to experience virtually every cynical, malevolent or simply awkward social situation known to modern America.

Somehow, “Wallflower” became assigned reading for Pasco Middle School seventh-graders taking advanced language arts. That’s “somehow,” because the book got into students’ hands almost totally unvetted.

Pasco Middle’s copies came courtesy of a spend-it-or-lose-it philosophy rampant in taxpayer-supported enterprises. The school had dollars lingering in its materials fund at the end of the last fiscal year and, rather than return them to the cash-strapped district, they were hastily spent on the recommendation of an assistant principal and teacher who’d seen the 2012 movie and had read the publisher’s tout sheet, but not the book itself.

With a box of books that benefited from Hollywood branding just lying around, it was inevitable “Wallflower” would become part of somebody’s curriculum, which it did a few weeks ago.

Luckily, the teacher assigning the book is a long-term member of the faculty who has a reputation for thoroughly reviewing materials assigned students. Oh, wait. The complete opposite of that. The deed was perpetrated by a long-term substitute who also had not read “Wallflower.”

I am confident Pasco’s public school staffers are fans of handing out homework. Is it possible they do none of their own? How do you buy for a middle school population, let alone assign to a passel of 13-year-olds, a book no one has read?

No, forget reading. That could devour an entire weekend. How do you buy or assign a book no one has so much as subjected to an internet search? Within an otherwise glowing description, Wikipedia notes “Wallflower” was banned by some school districts. Some? Further investigation reveals “Wallflower” is a perennial target of angry parents and appalled school board members across the nation.

This does not mean the critics of “Wallflower” are correct, necessarily, or even that Chbosky’s work doesn’t have an appropriate age-group audience. Still, when a cursory search triggers caution flags, it’s a sure sign other education professionals should proceed warily.

Alas, wariness did not prevail at Pasco Middle, which had money to burn and at least one class with late-year time to kill. Small wonder parents staggered by the book’s frank descriptions of suicide, masturbation, drug use and homosexuality were not salved by the methods employed by an administration and faculty they want and need to trust.

Listen, it’s easy enough to rebuke red-faced parents and committees that issue tut-tutting opinions over questionable material as collections of rubes and yahoos. Try to make an argument on behalf of pulling books out of the hands of students or off library shelves without conjuring images of ignorant villagers mobbed up with pitchforks and torches, ready to deliver swift and permanent retribution to some poor, misunderstood innocent. It’s almost impossible.

But what I wrote in June 2014, the last time something like this came up, applies now: Generally speaking, banning books is a bad idea. On the other hand, virtually every rule has an exception, and so it is with this.

When it comes to what goes into a youngster’s mind, parents are the ultimate source authority. You might not approve of what mom and dad choose to withhold or endorse, but you know what? Tough.

If parents oppose exposing the teens under their care to the rough-and-tumble of life you know is out there and, in your wisdom, you think those shielded kids are being ill-served, well, good for you. Also, it’s none of your business.

Meanwhile, it’s on each school at every level, from the classroom teacher to the principal to the superintendent, to be mindful about the individual pace of exposure to the world their parents are willing to endure.

Pasco Middle School failed that fundamental assignment at every turn. Its sadder-but-wiser lesson applies across the region.

Tom Jackson, a resident of New Tampa, is interested in your ideas. To reach him, email .

Published June 1, 2016

Sandy Graves: All aboard the — shudder — ‘Trump train’

May 25, 2016 By Tom Jackson

The picture leapt off my Facebook feed as though it were spring-loaded. Right there among the cat videos, awkward jokes and advertisements for Jaguars, among the goofy quizzes and the “mind-blowing facts you weren’t taught in school,” there she was: Sandy Graves, Land O’ Lakes historian and voice of reason, in a trademark Donald Trump ball cap. Garish red, with TRUMP emblazoned in navy across the crown and below it in white the celebrity billionaire’s trademark slogan, “Make America Great Again.”

See for yourself. It’s right over there, next to all these words.

Debbie Hannifan, of Polk County, left, and Sandy Graves, of Land O’ Lakes, sport ‘Trump Make America Great Again’ ball caps at the quarterly session of the Republican Party of Florida meeting in Tampa on May 14. (Courtesy of Sandy Graves) — Debbie Hannifan, of Polk County, left, and Sandy Graves, of Land O’ Lakes, sport ‘Trump Make America Great Again’ ball caps at the quarterly session of the Republican Party of Florida meeting in Tampa on May 14.
(Courtesy of Sandy Graves)

But, it wasn’t the hat so much as what was below it that held my trained eye: Graves was not grimacing. Not in the least. Instead, peering over the shoulder of her pal Debbie Hannifan, Polk County’s Republican state committeewoman, Graves was immortalized in the process of — there is no other word for this — beaming.

In that cap. That garish red, shouting cap.

This was — is — not the look of one of those establishment Republicans resigned to fate. It’s not even the look of a party regular who has examined the most likely choices for November and, as a GOP regular might who’d been force-fed John McCain or Bob Dole, shrug that, her nominee is the better of two disappointing choices, the lesser of two evils.

Nope. There’s genuineness in those eyes beneath that curved brim, and a sincere turn to the corners of her mouth. Our Sandy might have boarded the — ugh — Trump train late and even reluctantly — it surely was both, as we shall see — but now that she’s found her seat, she’s ready to make the argument on behalf of the reality TV king.

She concedes there’s obligation at work here. “As a state committeewoman,” she says, “I always was going to be for the last one standing.” And, she’s not reluctant to play the any-of-our-guys-are-better-than-their-guys (or Hillary) card.

However, in a year with an electorate fairly bellowing out a theme of disgust and discord from the left and right, November’s winner will need more than “the other one is worse” working for him/her. At last, Graves says she’s ready to make the “more” argument.

It bears noting she started the campaign a fan of Carly Fiorina. “I thought it was time for a woman,” Graves says, echoing a sentiment with which certain Democrats will readily agree, “but it had to be the right woman.”

The former head of Hewlett-Packard was the briefest of shooting stars across the crowded Republican firmament. There was the glittering performance at the first kids’ table debate that boosted her to that memorable a face-to-look-at-that-face Trump beatdown when she made the main stage. But, like the brightest meteorites, she quickly flamed out.

And Trump? Says Graves, eyes rolling, “He was in my top 18.”

On the other hand, Graves didn’t start out a Ronald Reagan fan, either. She volunteered early in 1980 for former Texas Gov. John Connolly, famous for having been wounded in the front seat of the limousine when President Kennedy was assassinated.

“Lots of Republicans didn’t want Reagan,” she says. “He did some things in California [as governor] that weren’t conservative at all.” That’s true. Google “Republican liberal California governor.”

“But, look how that worked out,” she resumes. “Ronald Reagan surprised a lot of people. It could happen again.” For the sake of argument, let’s play along.

What’s Graves’ anatomy of Trump’s appeal? For openers, he stuck up for then-candidate Ben Carson at a debate when the good doctor noted it had been long time between questions for him. “That showed me he’ll have our backs.”

She admires his children, none of whom show the slightest symptoms of “affluenza” — dopiness that comes from being an indulged child of privilege.

She thinks he’s right to demand toughness on border security and immigration, issues she considers pivotal, no matter how far down the list they’ve ranked in primary election exit polls.

Graves also gives him credit for calling out international trade deals, and for pushing allies to pony up for the cost of their national defense.

This being so very much not the place to argue the important nuances of either issue — Trump doesn’t do nuance anyway — let’s turn, instead, to what, in the final analysis, might have illuminated the smile under that cap.

After eight years of a president who has treated the country he leads like the title of a turn-of-the-Millennium Broadway musical — “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” — arrayed against the prospect of at least four more entrenching years of his policies, Sandy Graves is finally aligned with Donald Trump because “I believe [he] loves America.” Without hesitation or qualification.

And so she wears the hat. Happily.

Tom Jackson, a resident of New Tampa, is interested in your ideas. To reach him, email .

After professional death, a glimmer of life

May 18, 2016 By Tom Jackson

The abrupt unpleasantness that recently befell The Tampa Tribune is still very much with me. It is sure to linger for quite some time. The newspaper had been my home for nearly a quarter-century, and I had grown attached.

The Tribune was more than a place to work and draw a steady paycheck. It wasn’t a place for punching time clocks. It was a calling, and it was family. I may recover the former; I shall always grieve the latter.

I was a kid reared near the Hillsborough River who left town only as a result of the death of the afternoon paper — the Tampa Times — where I’d cut my journalistic teeth. So, yes, I was on staff when both Tampa papers died. Believe me, that was not the sort of history I set out to make when, just 17, I fell in love with the business at the sight of my first byline, seven stilted paragraphs about a high school basketball game.

I wandered a bit after that first closing: a shade shy of three years in Washington D.C., almost seven on the Left Coast. The Tribune brought me home from far-off Sacramento, where the time zone never quite fit me, and you had to change planes to see family — as even seventh-generation Californians said, quaintly — “back East.”

And back home is where I stuck, most of seven years downtown on the river, a dozen winding miles downstream from my boyhood stomping grounds, then roughly 18 years and a month in Pasco County, watching it grow and change.

Understand this about newspapers, whether they are dailies publishing urgently about the prior day’s events, or weeklies such as this one that reflect, provide context and project what’s ahead: They are woven into the fabric of their communities.

When they perish, as they increasingly do — the dailies, anyway — squeezed by forces beyond their command, it diminishes the localities they once served. That loss is felt, even after the newspaper’s readers have readjusted and moved on, their memories of the old broadsheet dulled by time, and the fast rush of the endless news cycle streaming on their mobiles.

Am I suggesting the demise of a newspaper is somehow more devastating than when an air conditioner manufacturer or a giant cookie factory packs up and heads to Mexico? No. That would require hubris beyond even me.

Carrier and Nabisco gave jobs and life to Indianapolis and the southwest side of Chicago, and it’s hard to imagine anything soon arriving to replace them. While the Tribune also gave jobs and life, and reliably reported the pulse of its coverage areas to the very end, fans of the printed page can turn to reliable substitutes. You have one before you now.

That conceded, I am rooting, hard, for my colleagues who find themselves without jobs, without ready conduits for their skills and talents, without the thrum of deadlines organizing their lives.

As they scramble to resume, in some fashion, careers battered by difficult facts, I am fortunate to have landed here, to have reclaimed the blessing of filling white space with my words, even if it is just one day a week. At least for that one day, I will have the chance to feel normal. Normalcy after a life-shattering upheaval is a welcome blessing.

Some of you know me. After 18 years and a month, I know many of you. But, in this debut column I am not going to presume anything. Instead, I am going to rely on the example set for me some 30 years ago by a friend who inevitably reintroduced himself at nearly every encounter.

Never mind that our wives and daughters were great friends, that we frequently visited each other’s homes and, in fact, that we spent a year teaching Sunday school together. Until the December day we set out bound for Tampa, he’d inevitably greet me with his right hand extended and an introduction on his lips.

In that friendly spirit, hello. I’m Tom Jackson.

I like (in no particular order) cake donuts with chocolate icing (not jelly-filled, no matter what my wife and the heir-apparent think), pulled-pork barbecue, thunderstorms, the Florida Gators, the St. Louis Cardinals, smallish government, low taxes, Paula O’Neil’s glow, Mike Fasano’s fervor, Jack Mariano’s goofy grin, honorary mayor’s races, the Beach Boys, the unflagging sincerity of retiring Toys for Tots leader Bob Loring, golf, Friday night football, the plans for the interchange at Interstate 75 and State Road 56, Chris Nocco’s handshake, energetic border disputes, Ted Schrader’s accent (yours, too, Kurt Browning) and the triumph of ordinary folks over life’s daunting challenges.

Yes. Especially triumphs. Especially now.

By Tom Jackson

Tom Jackson, a resident of New Tampa, is interested in your ideas. To reach him, email .