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Friends pay their respects to McKethan
By DAN DeWITT "Not coming by would be inconceivable," said former UF president John Lombardi of the visitation for the Hernando pioneer. BROOKSVILLE -- The former and current presidents of the University of Florida -- John Lombardi and Charles Young -- arrived together at Alfred McKethan's visitation Wednesday afternoon. McKethan, Lombardi said, "represented the very best of the spirit of our alumni. . . . He's just one of our heroes. Not coming by would be inconceivable." Eunice Compton was also there. She, like McKethan, has been a member of First Presbyterian Church of Brooksville for decades. In recent years, she said, he parked his wheelchair for each service at the end of one of the front pews. On a windy Sunday just a few weeks ago, she remembers, he asked her if his hair looked okay. "He was always very friendly. Very down-to-earth," she said. Dozens of people -- from Brooksville and all over the state -- filed through the church on top of the hill on Bell Avenue Wednesday afternoon. The visitation will continue today, from 3 to 7 p.m. The funeral, scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at the church, is expected to draw a similar crowd. State leaders such as citrus grower Ben Hill Griffin III and Doyle Connor, former commissioner of agriculture, will be there; so will ordinary Brooksville residents who went to church with McKethan, had an account at his bank, or served with him as a Mason or Shriner. Their presence demonstrated one of the most remarkable aspects of McKethan's career: that he was able to exercise statewide power from the office of a small town bank. He was able to do so, said family members, partly because of his personality and partly because of the times. Pulling strings as strong and far-reaching as he did from Brooksville is probably impossible today. When McKethan was at the peak of his power, from the 1940s through the mid 1960s, the most powerful men in the state came from towns similar to Brooksville. "Ocala was a center of power. Starke was a center of power. Perry was a center of power," said McKethan's nephew, Brooksville lawyer Joe Mason. Rural lawmakers -- the so-called "Pork Chop Gang" -- controlled the state by controlling the legislative districts. Many of them, including former Senate President James E. "Nick" Connor and former Gov. Fuller Warren, were McKethan's close friends, Mason said. He was able to establish these friendships because the state supported only a few really big industries -- citrus, banking, cattle and mining, said Jim Kimbrough, McKethan's former son-in-law, who succeeded him as the head of SunTrust Bank/Nature Coast. And McKethan, Kimbrough said, had his hand in every one. His brother, John W. McKethan, was a cattleman who formed Brooksville Rock Co. with Alfred McKethan's help. Alfred McKethan was a citrus grower who served as director of Florida Citrus Mutual and a banker who was the youngest ever president of the Florida Bankers Association. Those were extremely powerful organizations at the time, Kimbrough said, and many of the same influential men where active in all of them. The state was much smaller then, Kimbrough said, "and that was a small fraternity. You'd go to the Florida citrus convention and see all your buddies. Then you'd go to the Florida cattle convention, and your friends would all be there. The same thing when you went to the bankers' convention." But, McKethan's position in these businesses alone didn't give him power, Kimbrough said. McKethan went after it. He hired very capable bank executives, including Mason's father, Joe Mason, to manage the daily affairs of the bank, which was then called Hernando State Bank. "They really ran the bank, while he did what he enjoyed most, which was politics. He loved politics. Loved politics," Kimbrough said. He could be stern in bargaining. "I've never seen him really, really mad, but he could get focused. He could get focused," Kimbrough said. But he mainly developed and maintained contacts simply by being a good friend, said his grandson, Robert Buckner. He held dinners and lunches at his home for friends. And Buckner, who as a boy traveled all over the United States in his grandfather's recreational vehicle, remembered that every town meant another visit. "If we went to Tampa, he would make a point of stopping to see somebody he knew in Tampa. It was that way all over the country. I remember going to Beckley, W.Va., and we stopped to see somebody he knew. He was really good about calling on friends and making an effort to see friends when he could. That was standard operating procedure."
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From today's Hernando Times |
