Zephyrhills, state have lost two great men

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© St. Petersburg Times
published February 8, 2002

There is a confused mockingbird, thinking it is spring and not aware that it should be shivering and huddled together with other birds for warmth, singing outside my office window.

Incongruously, with that sign of hope and renewal at hand, I find myself writing about loss.

While I dealt with a personal loss last week, fate had similar blows in store for Zephyrhills and for all of Florida.

Gordon Winters, the man who founded Zephyrhills' first mobile home park and ran it like a large extended family, died Sunday, as did Hampton Dunn, a name synonymous with Florida journalism and history for most of the past six decades.

Mr. Winters was one of those very few people in Zephyrhills who never had to be identified by title. All you had to say was, "Gordon Winters is coming" or "Gordon Winters said."

The only reason you had to use his first name was to differentiate him from his son, Bob, a former City Council member. The elder Winters had served as president of the Chamber of Commerce, was a founding director for Zephyr Haven Nursing Home and Citizens Bank of Pasco, and was named "Citizen of the Year" in Zephyrhills in 1981.

I last saw Mr. Winters about a year ago at "Scratch Coffee" -- an early morning gathering of Zephyrhills movers and shakers, and mover-and-shaker wanna-bes where the humor can get raucous and hardly anyone is spared. But Mr. Winters had reached such stature by then, he was usually treated with respect.

Two things, his business and the nursing home, leaped immediately into mind when I heard Mr. Winters had died. There are more than 100 mobile home parks in and around Zephyrhills, but unlike other areas where there is a constant undertone of complaint and bickering between tenants and owners, Zephyrhills is usually peaceful in that regard.

I think it is because Mr. Winters -- whose park was the first -- set the standard, and I don't recall ever hearing a complaint about his operation. Similarly, when a group of reporters was investigating nursing homes back in the '70s, one of the reporters on the team called me to point out that there had to be a story in Zephyr Haven, then operated by the city because nobody had ever lodged a complaint against the nursing home . . . an almost unheard of situation.

Mr. Winters came from a school of thought that believed in doing business the right way even if it wasn't always the most inexpensive.

I don't think there is a reporter my age, or even considerably younger, in Florida who doesn't owe some debt to Hampton Dunn, who started in the newspaper business, literally, as a child in Floral City.

During the Depression he published a one-page newspaper there, went on to work at a Georgia newspaper while in college and later became a reporter and managing editor for the Tampa Daily Times.

When he left journalism, he became a public relations executive for the AAA Auto Club, and at the same time the state's expert emeritus on Florida history.

When I first began to cover Citrus County, I learned that one of his 18 books -- a Citrus County history titled Back Home -- was an indispensable tool. I was so taken with one story in it that I called Mr. Dunn and asked him for permission to use large portions of it. He was characteristically gracious in his response, and I looked him up at the next Strawberry Festival in Floral City to thank him.

A few years later a friend called to tell me I should see that month's Tampa Bay Life magazine. Mr. Dunn was quoted as naming Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Frog Smith, Harry Crews and, of all people, me, as his favorite Cracker authors. I was thrilled to have my name thrown around in such company, especially since I am a dyed-in-the-wool Crews fan, but was even more surprised and pleased that Hampton Dunn had ever read anything I had written.

My guess is that if you made a list of other writers who have received similar supportive nudges in their careers, there wouldn't be space to print it.

I once read a piece about how when old journalists die, their names are remembered for only a few days. I suspect Mr. Dunn's legacy, like the darkened grain in a hand-rubbed cypress knee lamp, will last much longer.

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