Notebook

Two win top honors in DAR essay contest

BRANDON -- Sarah Carpenter and Garrett Brown haven't reached high school, but they can probably tell you what it felt like to spend the winter of 1777 at Valley Forge.

Carpenter, an eighth-grader at Mann Middle School, and Brown, a fifth-grader at Alafia Elementary, were awarded top honors for their essays on that very topic from the Alafia River Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution in a Feb. 6 ceremony in Brandon.

Students in the competition were asked to write an essay titled "A Letter from Valley Forge: Winter 1777-1778," commemorating the 225th anniversary of the winter encampment there.

Brown and Carpenter will have their essays entered in DAR's state contest, where they'll be up for a silver medal and a chance to compete for the national essay contest.

The DAR also awarded a Good Citizen medal to Tizza LeClair, a senior from Riverview High.

LeClair was selected on the basis of her academic and extracurricular efforts, as well as on the strength of an essay. She plans to attend Florida State University in the fall, major in criminology and become a special agent in the U.S. Air Force.

Former motel for farm workers is sold

GIBSONTON -- The Red Gables Barn Restaurant and Motel, closed since last spring, has been sold. Exit Realty Consultants announced that it sold the property in December, for $325,000 to a group of investors called Kotyark LLC. Henry Brosnaham, listing agent with Exit Realty, said the group plans to fix up the landmark motel on U.S. 41 S just south of Bullfrog Creek.

Also known as the Red Gables/Gardenville Motel, the property includes 4 acres beside the motel. Lifelong Brandon resident Robert McCord bought the Red Gables in the 1970s, renting rooms, mostly on a monthly basis, to migrant farm workers who worked in Ruskin. In the early 1980s, he leased the property to various motel operators so that he wouldn't have to deal with the daily maintenance, said Terry McCord, his daughter.

McCord passed away in 1999, and his three daughters put the motel on the market in April. The buyers did not return phone calls, but Brosnaham said improvements are ahead. "It's pretty run-down, an eyesore. But it's going to be beautiful."