Lutz Elementary 1953 first-grade class return home
By Kyle LoJacono
Members of the Lutz Elementary School’s first-grade class of 1953 are organizing a reunion this summer to reflect on the last 57 years.
“I’m not big on high school reunions, but I thought it would be kind of fun to get the class together that went to first grade in the old brick school in front of the current elementary school,” said Robert Jackson, who has lived in Lutz his whole life and is organizing the reunion.
Jackson said the date and plans for the reunion are not yet set, but hopes the group will be able to do something like a barbecue at the Old Lutz Schoolhouse on US 41. Anyone living in the area who went to the school for first grade in 1953 and wants to attend should e-mail Jackson at .
Jackson, 63, estimated there were 45 people who started first grade in 1953 in Lutz. Of those he has located 28. At least seven of those have died and six, including Jackson, still live in the town.
“I’m the third generation of my family to live on the homestead here,” Jackson said.
The remaining 21 told Jackson they would come to the reunion, even those from places as far as Michigan. He said the date of the event will not be set until he can find the time that allows everyone to attend, which he thought would be in midsummer.
One who attended the school with Jackson is Jim Kilburn, 62, who moved to Lutz when he was 7-years-old. Apart from his early days and nine years from 1990 to 1999 when he lived in Atlanta, Kilburn has called the town home.
“Lutz is a great place to live,” Kilburn said. “I grew up on a lake so I had great entertainment swimming, fishing and hunting.
“The area was so self contained that you knew everyone and were good friends with the whole town,” Kilburn continued. “We did all of our shopping here. My father built a Phillips 66 gas station where (Felicitous) is now and there was only one other gas station in the area.”
That close-knit community likely had its advantages, but not for children getting into trouble.
“Everyone knew each other by face and name. As a kid you couldn’t get away with anything,” Jackson said jokingly. “When one adult heard about whatever trouble you got into it wasn’t long before your parents knew.”
In the 1950s in Florida, students stayed in elementary school through sixth grade, went to junior high school for seventh through ninth grade and spent the last three years in high school.
In Lutz the students in fourth grade and below went to school in the old schoolhouse and moved to the older portion in the back of the current elementary school for fifth through sixth and some even through seventh grade. Jackson then attended Adams Junior High for eighth grade and the class was then the first at the current Buchanan Middle for ninth grade.
“We all went to Chamberlain for high school,” said Vernon Wynn, 63, who also went to Lutz Elementary with Jackson and Kilburn. “It was different from walking to school each day to the Lutz school to busing to school each day.”
Wynn has lived in Lutz his whole life and his grandparents came to the town in the 1920s.
All three men remember Lutz as a much different place than it is today. For one thing the only traffic signal was a blinking caution light at the intersection of US 41 and W. Lutz-Lake Fern Road. At that time, both US 41 and Dale Mabry were two-lane highways. Neither the Sunset Point Shopping Center nor the Sunset Plaza existed and there was nothing but woods and orange groves along Van Dyke Road.
The Lutz Branch Library also was not built in the 1950s and the fire station was in a smaller building across the street from its present location. The three remembered a baseball field where the library is now with a bandstand and tennis courts to its west.
“That was the center of town and everyone would get together to watch the kids play baseball,” Wynn said. “I’ve got nothing against libraries, but I’m still sad to see Bullard Park without the ball field.”
When asked why he wanted to be a part of the reunion, Wynn said, “I’d like to see some of the people I grew up with. The main objective is to reach out to those who have meant something to us.”
1953 Lutz Elementary first grade reunion
When: this summer
Where: TBA
Members of the class interested in attending should e-mail
