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Farewell to a pioneer
By BILL COATS, Times Staff Writer
LUTZ -- As a child, John Crilly Jr. frolicked in Lake Stemper in the 1920s. As a retiree, he moved back to its swampy fringe in 1980. Last week, he said goodbye. Crilly spent a last night on his family estate. Then, on a gorgeous spring-like day, his family walked with him down a path that he helped build through the swamp with wheelbarrows of dirt 75 years ago. He stepped onto the family dock for one last look at his old swimming hole. "They took pictures of us by the lake, and we said farewell," he said. By Saturday, he planned to be on the interstate to a new home, a retirement villa outside Charlotte, N.C., near his daughters. Crilly is 83 now. He's witty and active, but has not escaped the hazards of old age. He's fought off prostate cancer. He's endured triple-bypass heart surgery. Last April, his wife, Catherine, suffered two minor strokes in quick succession. The couple seriously began thinking of North Carolina. A month ago, they sold their home and property to neighbors Charles and Marjie Hemphill. Although Crilly is known locally as a Lutz pioneer, he's lived lots of places. In 1923, Crilly's father bought 30 acres on the north side of Stemper. It eventually became Crilly Acres, the neighborhood lining Cypress Cove Lane. His parents were restless sorts, so he frequently bounced between his father in Lutz, his mother in Tampa and, mostly, his paternal grandmother. She lived in Tampa, then Lutz. After serving in the Coast Guard during World War II, Crilly entered a business career that wound from Tampa to Pensacola to Charlotte to Chicago to Atlanta. He retired as an executive for Continental Insurance Co., and returned to his boyhood playground on Lake Stemper. Crilly was grateful to find that Lutz still felt like a small town. But much had changed. Traffic was thickening on U.S. 41. Lake Stemper and its surrounding swamps had entered cycles of drought that Crilly had not experienced in his youth. A grove of maple trees and weeds had grown up off the family's dock. Fifty years before, "This was the favorite swimming hole in Lutz," Crilly said. At the end of the path, his father had built the dock and a bathhouse. He had erected a swing and a diving board. The lake was too shallow for diving there, so father and son dredged a hole with the outboard motor of their boat. "He took his kicker and worked it 'round and 'round," recalls Sam Brashear, an 85-year-old retiree who once swam there. The propeller created a ring of sand surrounding a deep pool, a watery amphitheater where children could sit after diving. "I guarantee you," recalls Crilly, "we had as many as 75 kids over here on a Sunday." He took the boat out for breakfast. With worms, Crilly would catch shiners among the lily pads. Then he would fish with the shiners in deeper water and haul in a bass. Moccasins were so common that no Crilly would go to the swimming hole or the outhouse without a hoe. His hound, Sandy, fought with them, but finally was bitten. He crawled under the house and died. Now, Crilly said, "I haven't seen a moccasin in 22 years -- not one." His greatest animal encounter was with an 81/2-foot alligator when he was a boy. In the 1920s and '30s, lakeside residents swam nonchalantly near gators. The alternative was never swimming. But Crilly's dad noticed a big gator watching the boys swim. "He'd sit there and look at us with those beady eyes," he said. John Crilly Sr. set a trap. He attached a shark hook to a rope and strung the rope over a low cypress limb, near an alligator nest. He hung several pork chops on the hook and left it dangling a few feet above the swamp surface. The next morning, the Crillys found the gator dangling from the hook, thrashing in the water. Crilly Sr. killed it with a neighbor's pistol. Then he posed his little boy on the dead gator and took a photo. More than 70 years later, that photograph graced the book jacket of a new local history book, Citrus, Sawmills, Critters & Crackers, by historian Elizabeth McManus and her daughter, Susan. The house in the photo is still there, its carport long ago enclosed for a dining room. A massive camphor tree has grown up in front. Last week, neighbor Don Hassinger carried a copy of the book to Crilly's house for his signature. He said Crilly's grasp of the past has made the neighborhood a nicer place. "John was like an anchor who could relate to us the history of what had gone on here," he said. On Monday, Crilly bid farewell to Brashear, his lifelong friend. "He had prepared me for it before," Brashear said. "This has been a hard week," Crilly said, "just saying goodbye to everybody." -- Bill Coats can be reached at (813) 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com .
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