The Laker/Lutz News

Serving Pasco since 1981/Serving Lutz since 1964

Withlacoochee River

Moonshining had a colorful history in Pasco County

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At least two Pasco County Sheriffs — Isaac Washington Hudson Jr., and Frank Leslie Bessenger — were known to be on both sides of the law when it came to making moonshine in Pasco County.

During a recent presentation at the Pioneer Florida Museum & Village, there was a general consensus that it wasn’t always easy to separate the good guys from the bad guys.

Bessenger, for example, had a blind black man who sold the sheriff’s liquor “…but if you handed him money he could tell if it was a one-dollar bill or a 20-dollar bill” according to Wayne Carter, who remembers helping his family make moonshine when he was a child.

Pasco County Sheriff Isaac Washington Hudson Jr., left, and his deputies confiscated 164 moonshine stills during Hudson’s his first six months in office. (Courtesy of Pioneer Florida Museum & Village)

The speakers at this event, Madonna Wise, Susan Shelton and Carter, explained that people from all walks of life got themselves in trouble for selling moonshine in Pasco County — including a former slave, who was thought to be 105 years old at the time of his arrest.

Also, there was Mayor George J. Frese, of San Antonio, who was out on bond after his arrest for running a moonshine still on the second floor of his residence. The home was described as being on “the most prominent corner in town,” according to a news article at that time.

The making of moonshine in Pasco County was a family affair and, in fact, children were known to be used as decoys to lead intruders away from the stills, speakers during the museum presentation said.

Selling moonshine became a source of revenue after Prohibition became the law of the land, through the passage of the 18th Amendment to the United States.

It was illegal to make or sell alcohol after Jan. 16, 1919. The law took effect on Jan. 1, 1920, according to History.com.

The result? Illegal moonshine stills began popping up.

Federal agents, known as “revenuers,” were charged with enforcing the law, often intruding into the lives of moonshiners, such as Preston Overstreet, according to Shelton, the great-granddaughter of Overstreet.

She explains how Overstreet had stills hidden in the woods and swamps along the Withlacoochee River in East Pasco County.

Moonshiners used copper stills to ferment and distill corn, sugar and water into liquor recalls Carter.

“You need 150 pounds of corn and 150 pounds of sugar to make about 5 gallons of moonshine,” he added during his part of the presentation at the museum.

Sometimes, efforts to enforce laws against moonshining turned deadly.

Around 1931, 19-year-old Lonnie Tucker watches for revenuers. He is pictured in Wesley Chapel with his moonshine still. (Courtesy of Madonna Jervis Wise)

In October of 1922 — three years after Prohibition began — Federal Agent John Van Waters and Pasco County Deputy Arthur Fleece Crenshaw were killed, east of Dade City according to The Dade City Banner.

In an Oct. 6, 1922 account, “Prohibition Agent Waters and Deputy Sheriff Crenshaw Killed,” the Banner reported that the Pasco County Commission put up a $5,000 reward for “the arrest and conviction of the slayers” of Waters and Crenshaw.

Several suspects were questioned.

Overstreet was charged with first degree murder.

His trial began on Dec. 4, 1922.

After deliberating for 45 minutes, jurors found Overstreet not guilty.

“The two men who did shoot Waters and Crenshaw were very close friends to the Overstreets and later married into the family,” explains Shelton. “Both men later became Baptist preachers!”

According to her family’s history, “The Overstreets of East Pasco County (1828-1981),” Preston was an excellent marksman who could hit a 50-cent piece with one shot — and refused to pay monthly “insurance” in the amount of $50 to Sheriff Hudson.

In early February of 1925, Hudson’s chief deputy and the sheriff’s son, also a sworn deputy, had staked out the Overstreet family stills and were hiding in the palmettos according to Shelton’s family history.

Spotted when arriving at his stills, Overstreet suddenly heard, “You are under arrest!”

Before he could turn around, Overstreet was shot in the back.

Gravely wounded, he died shortly later in the woods.

Shelton writes: “The deputies put the body of Preston Overstreet in his car to take into town. On the way in, they stopped at Preston’s home and showed his wife Lizzi what had happened to her husband. Two of his daughters recalled watching the deputies as they opened the back door of Preston’s car and seeing their daddy’s arm hang out that open door.”

In her book, “Images of America: Wesley Chapel (2016),” Madonna Wise describes a “rugged history” of moonshiners in Pasco County and identifies Stanley Ryals as one of that area’s leading moonshiners.

With sugar and whiskey in the house, Ryals had a sleepless night, after spotting a revenuer who was on his property in an unmarked car.

Ryals, like most other moonshiners, decided to get out of the business for good.

“We got rid of everything,” Ryals recalls in Wise’s book. “Well, I might have used the rest of that sugar, but I was done making whiskey.”

Published March 23, 2022

Cummer Sons Cypress played huge role in Lacoochee

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Two events occurred in 1923 that would have a significant impact on the community of Lacoochee, in Northeast Pasco County.

Arthur and Waldo Cummer — as the grandsons of Jacob Cummer — brought the Cummer Sons Cypress Company to the county.

The fully electric cypress sawmill and box factory would go on to become one the largest sawmill operations in the United States.

The company also would play a role in providing jobs for survivors of the Rosewood Massacre, which occurred in January 1923.

Nearly a century ago, one of the largest sawmill operations in the United States was located in Lacoochee, in northeast Pasco County. (Courtesy of Bob McKinstry)

Contemporary news reports said that massacre — which destroyed the tiny Black community in Levy County — resulted directly from a white woman’s false claims that she’d been raped by a black man.

In his book, published in 2005, author William Powell Jones recounted how managers for Cummer “arranged for a train to drive through the swamps, picking up survivors of the Rosewood Massacre and offering them housing and employment in the brand-new colored quarters in Lacoochee.”

Arthur and Waldo Cummer’s father, Wellington Wilson Cummer, first arrived in town with his riding gear, complete with jodhpurs and boots, holding a riding crop under his arm.

“It was strange attire compared to the casual dress (of the day),” noted Nell Moody Woodcock, a long-time resident of Lacoochee and later a reporter for The Tampa Tribune.

Woodcock’s name is among nearly 100 links on the Pasco County history website, Fivay.org — featuring people sharing memories of the Cummer Sons Cypress Company.

Jacob Cummer, known as “Uncle Jacob” to family and friends, had vast timber holdings in several states.

Arthur Cummer explained why the company chose to locate in Lacoochee, in testimony given before the U.S. Interstate Commerce Commission, in 1934.

“We located the sawmill plant at Lacoochee in order to be in reasonable reach,” Arthur Cummer said.

Described as a point of entry for what is now known as the Green Swamp of Florida, logs arrived at the new Lacoochee sawmill from land that totaled more than 50 square miles in Pasco, Sumter and Polk counties.

Bill McKinstry, a company manager for the Lacoochee sawmills, rides a logging train to Lacoochee on April 25, 1939. (Courtesy of Bob McKinstry)

The Green Swamp is one of the state’s largest watersheds as the headwaters for the Peace River, Withlacoochee River, Ocklawaha River and Hillsborough River.

In the 1920s it was “a vast reservoir of 100-year-old cypress trees,” as described by Woodcock, in her recollections on the Cummer mills in Lacoochee.

At its peak, workers lived in approximately 100 homes along sand streets with wood sidewalks in Lacoochee.

Cummer was the largest employer in Pasco County with more than 1,100 employees, and it was one of few employers across the country that provided jobs during the Great Depression.

Having the largest payroll in the county made the Lacoochee office a prime target — and the company fell victim to three masked bandits who escaped with $11,700 in cash.

The work was grueling.

Ronald Stanley, who was put on a logging train by his father one summer in the early 1940s, was among the workers.

He described the tough working conditions he faced, recorded on the Fivay.org website.

He awoke at daybreak and spent hours waist-deep hauling sawed-down cypress logs out of the swamp.

It was hot, and there were mosquitoes, and the danger of snakes and alligators.

“For all this summer fun, I was paid $.45 per hour (typically under $5 per day),” Stanley recalls on Fivay.org.

One of three steam shovels that had been used to dig out the Panama Canal later was purchased by the Cummer lumber company to haul logs at the Lacoochee sawmill. (Courtesy of Pioneer Florida Museum & Village)

During World War II, Cummer employed 50 German soldiers from the prisoner of war work camp in Dade City.

One POW was 18-year-old Arthur Lang, a tank commander from Erwin Rommel’s famed Afrika Korps.

He was smitten by a teenaged girl named Mildred.

He managed to exchange handwritten notes to Mildred when no one was looking. She worked with her mother at the Cummer’s crate mill.

“I regret it to this day that on the last day there, I could not shake her hand,” Lang wrote after he was back in Germany, after the war.

At Lacoochee, the Cummer operations were immense for this self-contained company town.

The sawmill alone measures 228 feet by 45 feet. The mill also included a veneer plant, which was 228 feet by 45 feet. It also had a crate factory, of 200 feet by 100 feet; and a lathe and shingle mill, with a capacity of 60,000 lathe per day, according to the story “Big Cypress Mill Completed at Lacoochee, Florida,” published in The Manufacturer’s Record on Nov. 22, 1923.

From 1934 to 1940, the Cummer mill in Lacoochee averaged 13 million board feet each year. The company set a record in 1937, producing 25 million board feet.

To make sure that it was not all work and no play, the company sponsored a semi-pro baseball team called the Lacoochee Indians.

That team won the Central Coast championship in 1947, in a league that also included San Antonio, Dade City and Brooksville.

James Timothy “Mudcat” Grant recorded memories of his father working at the Lacoochee mills. He later became the first black American League pitcher to win a World Series game in 1965.

Mudcat also recalls weekend movies starring Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.

“Every time I go to Angel Stadium, Gene (Autry) comes through, and we get a chance to speak,” Grant told the St. Petersburg Times on April 9, 1989. “The first thing he says is: ‘How is everything in Lacoochee?’”

Autry was the owner of the Angels Major League baseball team from 1961 to 1997.

Alyce Ferrell, who worked at the Lacoochee Post Office, met her future husband at a dance at the armory in Dade City.

He would fly low over Lacoochee in his Corsair F4U fighter aircraft and dip one wing of his plane. That was a signal to let Alyce know he needed to be picked up at the Army/Air base in Zephyrhills.

In 1945, Alyce married that instructor for Marine fighter pilots: Edward Leo Peter McMahon Jr.

Years later ‘Ed McMahon’ would begin a 36-year career as the announcer and sidekick for television talk show host Johnny Carson.

During the decade of the 1950s, the Green Swamp was heavily logged by the Cummer Sons Cypress Company.

The company, which hummed along for decades, finally came to its end near the close of the 1950s.

“It took time to process all the logs which had been gathered at the Lacoochee sawmill, but the last cypress was finally milled on June 5, 1959,” wrote historian Alice Hall for The Tampa Tribune on July 14, 1984.

Although the community voted against incorporating as a town in 1954, several companies have attempted business operations at the old Cummer site including Wood Mosaic Corporation, Interpace, GH Lockjoint, and Cal-Maine Foods.

A precast concrete plant is currently up and operating as a supplier for major road projects in Florida. The Dade City Business Center bought this site in 2019 for $1.2 million and is leasing the land to the concrete plant. Nearly 100 new jobs are expected, once the plant is running at full capacity.

Doug Sanders has a penchant for unearthing interesting stories about local history. His sleuthing skills have been developed through his experiences in newspaper and government work. If you have an idea for a future history column, contact Doug at .

Published August 18, 2021

Glimpse Florida’s ancient past at the Green Swamp

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Living on Florida’s densely populated coast, it’s almost impossible to believe that a 37,350-acre wilderness exists just an hour or so inland.

Giant, old oaks line the main hiking trail in the Green Swamp West Tract, just 5 miles from downtown Dade City. (Karen Haymon Long)

Known as the West Tract of the 110,000-acre Green Swamp Wilderness Preserve, this environmentally protected land offers glimpses of what Florida used to look like, and, hopefully, will look like way into the future.

This important natural treasure is a vital recharge area for the Florida Aquifer and contains the headwaters of four Florida rivers – the Hillsborough, Withlacoochee, Peace and a fraction of the Ocklawaha. It reaches into not only Pasco, but Polk, Lake, Sumter and Hernando counties.

Just 5 miles from downtown Dade City, the swamp’s West Tract offers 65 miles of trails for hikers, bikers and horseback riders.

On our recent visit on a Monday, we walked a half-hour from the parking lot on an unpaved service road just to get to the hiking trailhead that leads into the woods. This stretch, a section of the Florida National Scenic Trail, winds through dense woods overshadowed by giant old oaks, soaring slash and longleaf pines and mature magnolias.

The Green Swamp West Tract is open to hikers, campers, bikers and horseback riders who want to escape into the wilderness.

I’ve hiked all over the country, in many state and national parks, and have never seen so many ancient oaks in one place. For the next hour, we were alone in the peaceful woods, often with ponds and grassy waters on both sides of us.

The Green Swamp is known for its wildlife – white-tailed deer, hogs, bobcats, turtles, turkeys, raccoons, gray squirrels, alligators and all sorts of wading birds, but on our visit, we saw just birds – little blue herons, white ibis, a great blue heron and osprey. We did see evidence of hogs in one stretch of trail, where they had foraged in the muck.

Part of the trail we took is a section of the Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail, and, on just about the whole length of our hike, we heard a chorus of birds calling back and forth.

The trail was easy to follow — thanks to orange paint slashes on trees along the way — so we never got lost. Twice, we had to climb over or walk around huge trees that had fallen across our path.

While I called the trail “wild,” my husband described it as “primitive,’’ but we both liked it that way.

The Green Swamp’s West Tract has picnic tables where visitors can enjoy a picnic lunch on the edge of the vast wilderness. The tract has no concessions, so come prepared.

We saw cypress domes ghosting from water.

Vast swaths of brown grasses swayed in the breeze.

We watched for snakes in clumps of brilliant green saw palmettos, and admired stately cabbage palms, Florida’s state tree.

And, just around every turn, we saw ponds or pools of water, some of it green, but some tea colored, too.

The Green Swamp is technically not a swamp, but “a mosaic of several different ecosystems,” according to the story anthology, “Rivers of the Green Swamp.”

One of Florida’s two largest wetlands – along with the Everglades – the Green Swamp is managed by the Southwest Florida Water Management District (SWFWMD). Much of it is considered an environmentally sensitive habitat, and visitors are urged to stay on designated trails.

A map available at the tract entrance and online left much to be desired, with some roads bisecting the trail not marked or named and no trail lengths. We figured since the Florida Legislature long ago designated the Green Swamp “an area of critical state concern,” the state may not want hordes hiking in the area, so purposely makes maps vague.

Orange paint slashes on tree trunks lead the way through the main hiking trail in the Green Swamp’s West Tract. The trail is part of the Florida National Scenic Trail.

If that’s true, that’s fine with us. The fewer hikers the better to enjoy the solace of a good, long walk.

By chance, the trail we took was dry the day we went and closed to hog hunters. Dates when it is opened for hunting are posted at the main gate next to the parking lot and on SWFWMD’s website. (See Tips for the Trip).

We had read online that trails are sometimes too boggy to take, and, in the summertime, mosquitoes can be lethal. So we chose a dry, cool day to walk, and we were glad we did.

It was amazing how few people we saw – just one other hiker, two men on bikes, one with a dog on a leash, and a few men in pickup trucks driving on the service roads. We didn’t see anyone on horses. They are not rented out there, but horse owners are welcomed to bring them in if they stay on designated trails and carry proof of their horses’ current negative Coggins test.

The West Tract also has equestrian and primitive campsites, with pit and portable toilets, picnic tables and grills. Free permits are required, and campers are given the front gate lock combination so they can drive their gear into the campgrounds. There are no concession stands, so visitors should go prepared.

We don’t know if we would go back to camp there, but we’d like to return, maybe next time with our bikes.

Even now, I think of the quiet, of the watery beauty, and of those magnificent oaks — some older than our own state of Florida.

This map of the Green Swamp’s West Tract is more detailed than the ones online or available at the tract’s entrance. This one is posted near the tract picnic area.

Tips for the Trip
The Green Swamp Wilderness Preserve West Tract is at 13347 Ranch Road (off the U.S. 98 Bypass) about 5 miles from downtown Dade City, in East Pasco County.

  • Admission is free and trails are open daily, except when hunting is permitted. Before going, be sure to check on those hunting dates at tinyurl.com/y6m2wtsa.
  • Hours are sunrise to sunset. Maps are on the above website and at the tract entrance.
  • Picnic tables, portable toilets and campsites are also in the West Tract. Kayakers and boaters can put into a stretch of the Withlacoochee River, just down the road from the West Tract entrance.
  • For tract details, see tinyurl.com/y6m2wtsa, or call (352) 796-7211, ext. 4470.
  • Another place to visit the Green Swamp is Colt Creek State Park, at 16000 State Road 471 in Lakeland. For details, see FloridaStateParks.org.

For details on campgrounds, call 1-800-423-1476 (toll-free, Florida only) or (352) 796-7211, ext. 4470, or email .

By Karen Haymon Long

February 20, 2019

Larkin’s legacy goes beyond ‘tough guy’ reputation

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William M. Larkin’s reputation for being a tough character outlasted his lifetime.

Known as “The Meanest Man in Pasco County,” some people still recall that moniker applied to the Dade City man, nearly a half century after his death in 1973.

William M. Larkin is photographed on his land that was later donated to the Pioneer Florida Museum and Village.
(Courtesy of Rabun L. Battle Collection)

Larkin reinforced that image by keeping a single-shot .22 rifle in the gun rack of his truck — a statement that often left a lasting impression with young cowboys.

“Someone once wrote a letter to him, but they didn’t know his address,” said Bobby Tesar, recalling Larkin’s legendary reputation. “So, they addressed the letter to “The Meanest Man in Pasco County”—and he got the letter!”

But, Larkin is known around Pasco County for much more than being considered a man with a difficult disposition.

During his lifetime, he was a cattleman and lawyer, a member of the Pasco County School Board and the chairman of the Southwest Florida Water Management District.

He established the first Santa Gertrudis herd in Florida in the early 1940s.

“He gave the first bull “Rex” water and hay while penned in his side yard on Church Avenue,” said Ray Battle, who is Larkin’s cousin.

Larkin transported Rex from Texas, in a trailer he pulled with his own car.

Larkin’s neighbors soon would learn all about Rex and about Pancho, a 6-foot tall sire brought to Dade City from the world-famous King Ranch in south Texas. That ranch, founded in 1853, now stretches into six Texas counties, encompassing 825,000 acres.

U.S. 98 split the Larkin Ranch after its construction in the early 1950s, but it still has two cattle underpasses, similar to the one pictured here. William M. Larkin came up with the idea, to herd his cattle from Polk County to Pasco County.
(Courtesy of Doug Sanders)

The Larkins made frequent trips to King Ranch, to expand their cattle herd in Pasco County.

In 1940, the United States Department of Agriculture recognized what Larkin already knew: Santa Gertrudis was a distinctive beef breed, adaptable to most climates.

“A Santa Gertrudis female can remain in production well past her 12th birthday and may stay in the breeding herd as long as 18 years,” reports the current Santa Gertrudis Breeders International website.

Gaining additional calves over other cattlemen in Pasco County was perhaps a key reason that Larkin began searching for more land.

Another primary reason was the success of his law practice that he operated along with his brother, E. B. Larkin.

This painting of ‘Pancho,’ the Larkin’s most prolific Santa Gertrudis bull, hung for many years at the Crest Restaurant in downtown Dade City.
(Courtesy of Doug Sanders)

Larkin’s law practice enabled him to begin extensive land buying, including acreage along the Withlacoochee and Hillsborough rivers, Battle said.

“He also had his eye on some rich land north of Dade City, which he got from 41 different property owners,” Battle added.

With hundreds of acres along County Road 35-A (Old Lakeland Highway) and the Atlantic Coastline Railroad, Larkin would complain that the exit to his ranch was blocked whenever the train was parked there for long periods of time.

At breakfast one morning at the Crest Restaurant, Larkin told Charles Edwards that the train had pulled away that day with nearly half of the cars left behind.

“He said that he disconnected them!” Edwards recalled.

“I asked him about it a few months later, and he said they hadn’t parked there again,” Edwards added.

Larkin used the railroad to his advantage when unloading large bulldozers at the depot to help begin constructing levees on that rich land north of Dade City.

Draining the swampy marshes with high hammocks into improved pasture “required a dragline and expensive labor,” Battle explained.

Purchased in 1924, the Larkin home on Church Avenue was originally built as a three-room cottage in 1884. It was part of a 10-acre spread that was later platted as one of the first subdivisions in Dade City.
(Courtesy of Doug Sanders)

Larkin also brought seven pumps with 28-inch propellers from South Florida to discharge water into what became the Duck Lake Canal.

The canal remains a major drainage system, along with the Larkin Canal, for the greater Dade City area and that rich land still known as “The Little Everglades Ranch.”

Larkin was responsible for drafting the fence law for the Florida Legislature, and because of its 1949 passage, Florida remains a ”closed range” state — making cattle drives through the state’s towns and cities a thing of the past.

To abide by the ruling and to keep cattle on his own land, Larkin fenced 15,000 acres, stretching from north Dade City to south of the Polk County line.

So in addition to his reputation for being difficult, Larkin was known for quite a few accomplishments.

Plus, not everyone believed he was mean.

Kitty Register Fisher recalls the time when her father was in the hospital and her mother had just lost a baby.

“We were getting really low on food, and Mr.  Larkin showed up with food to help us.

“To my family he was a good man,” Fisher said.

Could it be — that beneath that tough exterior — William M. Larkin, of Dade City, was actually a nice guy?

Doug Sanders has a penchant for unearthing interesting stories about local history. His sleuthing skills have been developed through his experiences in newspaper and government work. If you have an idea for a future history column, contact Doug at .

Published March 22, 2017

Tree farm plays starring role in annual tradition

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The first thing you need to know about the Ergle Family Christmas Tree Farm is, you have to be going there to get there. Nobody leaves the house for a gallon of milk, or a package of screws, or to drop off a donation at the neighborhood church and comes home with an Ergle tree.

Visiting the Ergle Family Christmas Tree Farm provides a great photo op for the Webers, of Lutz. Shown here are Kyle, Kelly, Sophie and Aria, along with photographer Cortney Pieus.
(Tom Jackson/Photos)

No, unlike the neighborhood big-box retailer and those ubiquitous pop-up lots, experiencing Debbie and Tony Harris’ rolling 25 acres on U.S. 301 above the north bank of the Withlacoochee River — like yoga or a “Gilmore Girls” marathon — requires commitment.

Nonetheless, for 25 years — longer if you include the original Ergle farm, a converted citrus grove nearby founded by Debbie’s late father, Omar Ergle, the Pasco-Hernando Community College provost — seekers by the thousands have found their way to this out-of-the-way place in the country to retrieve their centerpiece symbol of the season.

Once there, visitors browse from a menu that includes choose-and-cut Florida-hardy species in the field, or familiar imports from Michigan and North Carolina — Scotch pines, Douglas firs, blue spruces, Fraser firs and more — turning the farm into nothing less than the region’s yuletide crossroads, where evergreens and old-fashioned seasonal merriment are dispensed in equal measure.

Breathe deeply, the sign says. They’re making oxygen.

Piper (in front), Vesper (in the wagon) and Kemper Streets have come from Lakeland to visit the Christmas tree farm.

“You have to give customers what they want,” says Tony Harris, silver hair under an ever-present ball cap, and in his experience, about 70 percent of them want trees from up north, even though they cost about 80 percent more (about $10 a foot versus $6 for farm-grown trees). “But, for an old Southern boy like me, going out in the woods to cut down a red cedar and haul it home — that’s Christmas.”

Similarly, for most of the spread’s customers, treating the experience not like just another hurried household errand, but instead like a time-honored ritual, seems to be what it’s all about.

“It’s a tradition,” says Wesley Chapel entrepreneur Ben Alexander, founder of Balloon Distractions. “Coming out here” — as he did with his wife, Rachel, and daughters Claire, 19, and Grace, 17, on a recent Thursday — “harkens back to a time when people did stuff with their families.”

For the Delaneys of Treasure Island — Pete and Paula and their 28-year-old daughter Amanda, plus leashed Pomeranians Nick and Gabby — tramping around with a bow saw in search of the perfect tree (while Pete preserves the day on a 12-year-old Sony video recorder), followed by a picnic lunch, defines the Christmas season.

For Susan Zygmont, 81, from Connecticut by way of New Port Richey, every bit of the experience, from the moment her son, Bob, picks her up until they’re back home, is an eagerly plotted adventure.

Debbie Harris holds a wreath. Among the reasons she has to celebrate is the fact that she’s a cancer survivor.

“On the drive out here, you see so many things you don’t ordinarily see,” Zygmont says, “and then on the way home, we always stop at a little diner in Brooksville. It’s tradition. It’s Christmas.”

Virginia Michael Tokyro, from just up the road in northern Ridge Manor, likes that Tony will cut the price on a potted tree — which she’ll use for Christmas, then plant outside — in exchange for fudge.

Then again, it’s not just any fudge. Family lore holds that a San Diego grandmother came into possession of one of the recipes used by Los Angeles-based See’s Candies, and they’ve been whipping it up, now, for four generations.

As it turns out, the farm isn’t just for picking out trees. Area professional photographers — among them Wesley Chapel High digital media specialist Cortney Pleus — are pitching the place as the ideal location for Christmas card portraits.

So, here came the Webers of Lutz — Kyle, a Wesley Chapel High School history teacher; Kelly, a Sand Lake Elementary assistant principal; and their daughters, Sophie, 5, and Aria, 3 — to pose in the slanting light piercing the farm’s Choctawhatchee sand pines.

“We’ve known Cortney a couple of years,” says Kyle Weber, “so when she tells us she’s found a great place for pictures, we believe her.”

Nick Speigle is handy with a saw.

Happily, for the Harrises, this time of year few things shout “Hallelujah!” more boldly than a ceiling-scraping evergreen erected in the family room.

“I knew it was going to be a good year,” Tony said on a recent hopping Friday night. It bears noting the man is the essential optimist, a Gibson Les Paul-strumming, Harley-riding, boat-driving, Jimmy Buffet-celebrating free spirit.

But, December brought upbeat news, even by Tony’s hopeful predisposition. Diagnosed with breast cancer in August 2014, Debbie’s recent follow-up biopsy revealed no traces of a recurrence. More important, she reports she feels terrific.

All that said, then, “How could it be anything but a good year?” Tony says. Still — and he rarely is one to reveal proprietary information — this one is feeling exceptional. “It could be a record,” he says.

Accordingly, he ordered a second delivery of more than 1,000 trees from his supplier in western North Carolina, whose mountaintop farm, though not threatened, is within sniffing distance of the recent, raging wildfires.

More than 1,000 newly cut trees? In the second week of December? From a guy whose crew’s work is occasionally interrupted based on the wind direction?

As Alexander, the Wesley Chapel balloon guy, says, “It’s the holiday for love, the holiday for joy.”

This year, especially, those who come to bathe in the full Ergle experience are rewarded with both.

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

Published December 14, 2016

Local man was ‘Destined to Serve’

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Whether in law enforcement, military or ministry, Barry White has always been destined to serve.

In 2014, the Land O’ Lakes resident detailed his 37-plus years in public service in a self-published 218-page memoir, “Destined to Serve.”

Barry White (Courtesy of Barry White)
Barry White
(Photos courtesy of Barry White)

In the book, White chronicles key moments during his work for the Tampa Police Department, the Florida Wildlife Commission and the U.S. Army.

“It’s really about what I think are some very interesting things that happened to me or around me when I was in law enforcement or when I was an army chaplain,” White, 67, said. “A lot of the stories — especially the ones where I was in law enforcement — are very usable in some messages to drive home a point or an illustration.”

Some tales are exciting, some comical. Some are sad and others, heartbreaking.

Most of the book’s 17 chapters focus on his military experience, most of which he described as “super rewarding.”

His duties as an army chaplain took him to places like Guantanamo Bay— “a really unique experience”— and Seoul, Korea— “a neat place.”

Yet, the most challenging portion of the book to write, he said, focused on delivering military death notifications. As an army chaplain, he was required to inform next of kin when a loved one had passed away.

He figures he delivered about a dozen — “a dozen too many”— death notifications in his 23 years as a chaplain.

Barry White served as a soldier-chaplain in the U.S. Army for 23 years, before retiring in 2010. A majority of the book focuses on his time in the U.S. Army.
Barry White served as a soldier-chaplain in the U.S. Army for 23 years, before retiring in 2010. A majority of the book focuses on his time in the U.S. Army.

“It’s the last thing in the world I want to do,” White said. “I honestly and truly would rather be involved in some sort of a (police) shootout — as long as I have protection—than to have to experience those types of emotions. Just imagine having to go tell somebody — it’s just a very difficult thing to do.”

In fact, the emotion of telling people their loved ones had passed away was the most difficult he ever experienced in his career, White said.

“I’d rather have to do law enforcement than to go back and do that again,” he said.

The most enjoyable chapters to write centered on his years in police work, and when he worked as a state wildlife officer, patrolling the Tsala Apopka Chain and the Withlacoochee River.

“The Florida Wildlife Commission was a lot of fun,” he said. “You’re outdoors all the time, and even in hot Florida, you’re out there among nature.”

White noted that being a state wildlife officer was “definitely less stressful” than his three years in the Tampa Police Department.

Barry White also worked as a state wildlife officer from 1977-1979.
Barry White also worked as a state wildlife officer from 1977-1979.

“We didn’t have that many problems,” he said about working as a state wildlife officer. …“Even if you catch someone doing a crime — like shining (a light) at night — usually you were on top of them before they even knew it. There’s adrenaline, but it was a good kind of adrenaline, whereas the police department, you were scared because there could be a riot, a gang or a bunch of folks who were all drunk, and you had no backup.”

He continued: “Times have changed in law enforcement, but even then, there’s moments where you’re right in the middle of something and it’s like, ‘What am I doing here?’ It wasn’t so much that I hated the (police officer) job, but there were fears there.”

White now presides over funerals at the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell. He also fills in as a chaplain on Holland America cruise line.

Destined to Serve can be ordered on Amazon.com.

Q&A with Barry White, author of ‘Destined to Serve’
How did you get interested in law enforcement?
“I was inspired to go into the (Tampa) police department by my brother, so I really started getting the bug. …I think by end of my three years in the police department, I was already getting a little burned out. I wasn’t as happy there as I thought I’d be. I met some very good friends, one of which was a state wildlife officer, and he helped get me excited about that.”

Did you experience a lot of negativity as a law enforcement officer, particularly working with the TPD?
“Just individual times. When you were in certain neighborhoods, there was definitely animosity. My problem was that my heart is too big. That’s one reason why I wasn’t happy. It seemed like the officers that I worked with, if they had a particularly difficult person, they’d call me. It didn’t always work, but sometimes it did because I just had a way of connecting. But, that also can cause you a lot of problems, too. Like today, it’s so hard to let your guard down.”

How different is the Tampa area today since your family moved here in the mid-to-late 1950s?
“There was nothing out here. We used to go camping where the (University of South Florida’s) Sun Dome is. It used to be a big borrow pit where they took lime rock out, and we would go camping there. That’s where we did hikes as Boy Scouts. USF had two buildings when we moved here. Even here in Land O’ Lakes, between Collier Parkway and Camp Indianhead Road, there’s now a subdivision that used to be a camp.”

Barry White bio
Barry White was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1948. He moved to Tampa in 1957 and served in the U.S. Navy from 1967-1971. He worked for the Tampa Police Department, 1974 to 1977; was a state wildlife officer from 1977 to 1979; and, was a soldier-chaplain for the U.S. Army from 1987 to 2010.

Published August 31, 2016

Bradley Massacre makes history in Pasco

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A Seminole war party led the attack
Various accounts, published on the historic website Fivay.org, tell the story of the Bradley Massacre, reportedly the last Seminole war party attack on a settler’s homestead east of the Mississippi River.

Capt. Robert Duke Bradley was one of the first white settlers to live south of the Withlacoochee River, according to those reports.

He wasn’t feeling well on May 14, 1856, and was awaiting supper with his wife and children that evening.

Barracks and tents at Fort Brooke in Tampa Bay, around 1840. In 1824 Fort Brooke was a military post established at the mouth of the Hillsborough River in present-day Tampa. It had as many as 3,000 soldiers and would take part in all three Seminole Indian Wars. The fort was decommissioned by the U.S. Army in 1883. (Courtesy of South Florida Library)
Barracks and tents at Fort Brooke in Tampa Bay, around 1840.
In 1824 Fort Brooke was a military post established at the mouth of the Hillsborough River in present-day Tampa. It had as many as 3,000 soldiers and would take part in all three Seminole Indian Wars. The fort was decommissioned by the U.S. Army in 1883.
(Courtesy of South Florida Library)

The captain, who was bedridden on his farm, was a veteran who had fought against the Seminole Indians as far north as the Suwannee River.

He had resigned his commission, because he was no longer a healthy man.

The skirmishes he’d been involved in had damaged his lungs, and for the rest of his life, he would require medical services from the army doctor stationed at Fort Brooke.

Bradley had personally surveyed a homestead in a remote area that would be later known as Darby, a community in Pasco County.

It was frontier country with its share of moccasin tracks, but the good news was that no Indian sightings had been reported for many years.

But, the evening of May 14, 1856, would forever change the 53-year-old’s life.

Bradley — who had always been willing to defend his land granted under the Armed Occupation Act — suddenly heard sounds of a war whoop and gunfire of a Seminole war party.

The attack would be recorded as the last attack on a settler’s homestead east of the Mississippi River.

After meeting with U.S. President Millard Fillmore at the White House, Seminole Chief Billy Bowlegs initially agreed to surrender. The U.S. government later offered Bowlegs $10,000 to relocate to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Bowlegs had led his warriors on sporadic attacks, which may have included the Bradley Massacre. (Credit: Harper’s Weekly, June 12, 1858)
After meeting with U.S. President Millard Fillmore at the White House, Seminole Chief Billy Bowlegs initially agreed to surrender. The U.S. government later offered Bowlegs $10,000 to relocate to the Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. Bowlegs had led his warriors on sporadic attacks, which may have included the Bradley Massacre.
(Credit: Harper’s Weekly, June 12, 1858)

Bradley’s 11-year-old daughter, Mary Jane, was quickly shot through the shoulder and heart. The captain saw her come into his bedroom, where she collapsed and died.

Fifteen-year-old William Brown Bradley was shot on the porch of the log house.

An Aug. 4, 1922 Dade City Banner story recounting the raid, reported that Nancy Bradley, the captain’s wife, “…rushed out on the porch, picked up the wounded boy, and carried him into the room and laid him on the bed. He (William) got up, grabbed a rifle, and fired through a crack between the logs, handed the gun to one of his brothers, saying, ‘fight till you die’ and fell to the floor dead.”

News of the 15-year-old’s injuries reached as far north as the Macon Weekly Telegraph, which on June 24, 1856 reported: ‘His body had been pierced by two balls.”

When Bradley realized the Indians had reached the steps of his front porch, he heard his wife yell: “They are coming in!”

What happened next was reported as far east as the Palatka Democrat, which published a May 22, 1856 account:

“Captain Bradley, who was prostrated on his bed with sickness, arose and returned a fire on the Indians with two or three guns which he had in his house, which caused them to withdraw,” according to the Palatka Democrat report.

The Banner’s 1922 article indicated that “one of the boys shot at two Indians who were trying to hide behind a tree and afterwards more blood was found there than anywhere else.”

Bradley counted at least 15 Indians attacking his log cabin.

The Palatka Democrat reported: “Captain Bradley was of the opinion that the Indians were about his house all night.”

Because he was a known Indian fighter, there are several historical sources that describe the Bradley attack as an act of revenge.

During the Second Seminole War (1835-1842), a major strategist and leader for the Indians was Thlocko Tustenuggee– or better known as “Tiger Tail” to the white man.

And, it was Captain Bradley who had tracked down and killed Nethlockemathlar, the older brother of Tiger Tail.

At the time of the Seminole raid, the Bradley residence was approximately a mile north of the location of this historic marker off Bellamy Brothers Boulevard. (Doug Sanders/Photo)
At the time of the Seminole raid, the Bradley residence was approximately a mile north of the location of this historic marker off Bellamy Brothers Boulevard.
(Doug Sanders/Photo)

Reaching the Bradley homestead the next day from Fort Brooke, Capt. Thomas C. Ellis and a group of men went into the surrounding woods to hunt for the Seminoles. “The camp of the redskins was found in the big cypress swamp and nearby the grave of the Indian killed by Captain Bradley,” according to the Dade City Banner.

As the Bradley attack produced more sightings and fears of the Indians, Gen. Jesse Carter at Fort Brooke received a letter from a citizen’s committee dated May 31, 1856. It said, in part:

“… we therefore most respectfully ask that you will, at the earliest practicable moment, send to our relief a force sufficient to protect us from the cruel barbarities of this insidious foe…”

With the frontier on alert, Bradley and his wife laid to rest their son and daughter in unmarked graves. This was done to prevent the Indians from returning and desecrating the burials.

The family would learn later that the Indian war party was pursued as far south as Fort Mead “and the entire band either killed or captured,” according to one newspaper account.

Called “The Bradley Massacre” by a historical maker erected by Pasco County in 1979, the killings that night 160 years ago was one of several events that ultimately forced Chief Billy Bowlegs and the last of some 100 Seminole warriors to leave Florida at the end of the Third Seminole War in 1858.

Armed Occupation Act
Granting 160 acres to any head of a family, the Florida Armed Occupation Act of 1842 required a settler’s house to be built in one year, the clearing and growing crops for five years, and defending the homestead.

By Doug Sanders

Doug Sanders has a penchant for unearthing interesting stories about local history. His sleuthing skills have been developed through his experiences in newspaper and government work. If you have an idea for a future history column, contact Doug at .

Published March 23, 2016

The Florida Wildlife Corridor Expeditions reveal Florida’s wild side

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Motorists zipping along Interstate 4 between Tampa and Orlando can’t see from their ribbon of asphalt how close they are to the wild side of Florida.

But the Green Swamp is all around.

Bear biologist Joe Guthrie snorkels at the Manatee Springs Park. In winter, manatees come to the spring in large numbers to enjoy its warm waters. (Photos courtesy of Carlton Ward Jr.)
Bear biologist Joe Guthrie snorkels at the Manatee Springs Park. In winter, manatees come to the spring in large numbers to enjoy its warm waters.
(Photos courtesy of Carlton Ward Jr.)

Often called the “liquid heart” of the state, the swamp is headwaters for four major rivers: Peace, Withlacoochee, Ocklawaha and Hillsborough.

Natural habitat, hiking trails, blueways and wildlife corridors spread across Polk, Lake, Sumter, Hernando and Pasco counties.

“This is wild Florida history in plain site,” said Carlton Ward Jr., a conservation photojournalist whose photographic art captures the beauty of the state’s wild side and its Cracker history of cowboys and ranches.

On Sept. 15, more than 100 people filled the Selby Auditorium on the campus of Saint Leo University for a presentation on the Florida Wildlife Corridor Expeditions, in 2012 and 2015.

Saint Leo’s School of Arts and Sciences, departments of Language Studies and the Arts, and Mathematics and Science sponsored the event.

Expedition members set up camp along the Apalachicola River, under a clear, star-studded night.
Expedition members set up camp along the Apalachicola River, under a clear, star-studded night.

“He is a very accomplished speaker, combining words and pictures that allow us to hear clearly the importance of conservation,” said Mary Spoto, the dean of Arts and Sciences. “It’s something good for our students to hear and also the public.”

The first expedition of 1,000 miles in 100 days traversed peninsular Florida from the Everglades National Park to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in southern Georgia.

The most recent expedition of 1,000 miles in 70 days began in January, following a path from central Florida, across the Panhandle to Alabama, ending at the Gulf Island National Seashore. Along the way “trail mixers” were held to invite the public to join in the trek.

The goal is to bring awareness about the need to protect and connect Florida’s rural lands, its waterways and the natural paths to habitats traveled by Florida’s diverse wildlife, including the Florida black bear and the Florida panther.

Ward sees his photographs as a way to connect art’s inspiration with science’s knowledge.

Nature photographer Carlton Ward Jr.
Nature photographer Carlton Ward Jr.

He collaborated with bear biologist Joe Guthrie and environmentalist Mallory Lykes Dimmitt on the “Florida Wildlife Expedition Corridor,” a book chronicling the 2012 expedition. A second book on the 2015 expedition will be published in November.

“I’ve always had a connection to conservation,” Ward said.

But he didn’t think of Florida first as his focus.

As a graduate student, he traveled on the first of nine trips to central and western Africa. But each time he came home, he noticed Florida’s changing landscape.

“There was a part of Florida that I knew was missing,” Ward said.

He began photographically to tell the story of Florida’s conservation through its cattle ranches, handed down through generations. He published “Florida Cowboys: Keepers of the Last Frontier” in 2009.

That multigenerational stewardship kept some of Florida’s wildlife habitats intact, said Ward, an eighth-generation Floridian.

“Some of the ranchers I’ve met are some of the best conservationists I know,” Ward said.

It was once possible, he said, to hike and camp for two to three nights without seeing a fence. But Florida’s population, which numbered about 2 million in the 1940s, is now about 20 million. Pressures from development are increasing, Ward said.

Early on the 10th day of the expedition, Carlton Ward Jr., set up his camera on shore and paddled along the Chassahowitzka River.
Early on the 10th day of the expedition, Carlton Ward Jr., set up his camera on shore and paddled along the Chassahowitzka River.

Research on the Florida black bear in 2010 revealed the disconnects along the wildlife corridors and the vast distances that are traveled during a life cycle.

A black bear, tagged with a GPS tracking collar and known as M34, went on a 500-mile walkabout through Florida from Sebring to nearly the Green Swamp in the Orlando area. The bear halted at I-4, in a location, where other species ended up as road kill trying to cross over to what should be natural habitat for bears.

But Ward said, “That bear couldn’t find a safe path to get there.”

Instead, it retreated southward somewhere near Fort Myers, where the collar automatically dropped off.

Ward remains optimistic, however, about the future.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Ward said. “We can accommodate a lot of people and sustain natural corridors.”

Wildlife underpasses and overpasses, for example, can preserve natural pathways and keep corridors connected.

“It’s not just about buying land,” he said. “It’s about incentivizing compatible land uses.”

His optimism springs also from the heroes he has met on the expeditions.

The Aucilla River flows from Georgia on the east side of Red Hills between Thomasville, Georgia, and Tallahassee.
The Aucilla River flows from Georgia on the east side of Red Hills between Thomasville, Georgia, and Tallahassee.

M.C. Davis, who died recently, created the Nokuse Plantation, which contains the largest pine leaf forest in the southeastern United States. Davis acquired more than 50,000 acres for his pine leaf restoration project, which borders Eglin Air Force Base in the Panhandle.

Davis partnered with Eglin and the Florida Department of Transportation to build three wildlife underpasses on U.S. 331.

Another hero is Kendall Schoelles, a third-generation oysterman. “That man is committed to a life from generations past,” Ward said.

In 2016, Ward said he would continue to focus efforts on preserving the wildlife corridor. One issue for Ward and other environmentalists is Amendment 1, which voters overwhelmingly approved in 2014. The constitutional amendment potentially could bring $700 million in real estate taxes into the state’s coffers to acquire conservation land.

However, lawmakers stirred controversy when they approved a budget with $88 million earmarked for land purchases.

“We have to stay loud about it for sure,” Ward said.

For information on the expeditions and the Florida Wildlife Corridor, visit FloridaWildlifeCorridor.org.

Published September 23, 2015