Chloe Coney is serious about hats - and her passion to rebuild one of Tampa's poorest neighborhoods.
By JAN WESNER CHILDS
Published May 30, 2003
EAST TAMPA - Chloe Coney is a woman of many hats.
Leader. Mentor. Crusader.
Purple feathered. Black sequined. Blue derby.
The first ones relate to her job. The others, her trademark.
All are her passion.
"Going back and looking at the women I admired and the role models I had in church, they wore hats," Coney said during a recent tour of East Tampa, her focus area.
Coney, 52, runs the Corporation to Develop Communities of Tampa, a nonprofit foundation that promotes jobs, education and rebuilding in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods. One day, she hopes her successor will find strength standing on her shoulders.
Atop those shoulders, almost always, is a hat.
She bought her first one about 10 years ago, as she hit her 40s and was thinking more about her roots.
"When a woman wore a hat to church, it was like she was crowned from her head to her toe," Coney said. "They looked very elegant. That's what I saw through the eyes of a child."
Today her collection numbers more than 200 and inhabits three rooms of her house southwest of Temple Terrace.
"As somebody said to me, "You really have to know who you are to wear hats everyday,' " she said. "You have to be unique. Not a lot of people wear hats. You have to be a risk-taker."
Her favorites are her church hats, ones fancy enough to wear to Sunday service. When she wears her black one with feathers and rhinestones, she feels like royalty.
She grew up attending Beulah Baptist Church on W Cypress Street in West Riverfront. Her husband, Ernest, started his own church two years ago. They have been married 33 years.
Coney was inspired by her grandmother, a bus driver and school principal in Punta Gorda, and her mother, who raised her on Spruce Street in Tampa. Both wore hats.
She points out that they aren't alone, as evidenced in the book Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats. A spinoff calendar features stunning portraits of black women in fancy hats.
Thelma Shuman, who runs Sure Faith Designer Fashions on E Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, says Coney is a natural in a hat.
"Everybody can wear a hat," Shuman said. "But not everyone feels comfortable in a hat."
Coney visits Shuman's shop two or three times a month and rarely leaves empty-handed. She usually leans toward black or red headpieces.
Over the years Coney has inspired others to don fine millinery. She gave Susan Sykes, a prominent South Tampa resident and supporter of Coney's organization, a hat to wear to an awards banquet where Coney was honored.
Besides making her feel regal, Coney uses her hats as a gimmick in her work. They help her stand out when she attends events or strolls around her neighborhood.
"I've been in conferences and somebody wanted to meet me and they've said, "Go in there, find the woman in the hat, that's Chloe,' " she said.
When Coney isn't wearing a hat, people often ask her why. Like a security blanket, it's usually close at hand.
Coney graduated from Florida A&M University in 1972 and has held jobs with the state Department of Corrections, Florida Power and Light and Hillsborough County.
In 1992, she helped start the Corporation to Develop Communities of Tampa, known as the CDC.
Coney hopes to persuade South Tampa residents to shop, eat and do business in her organization's "target zone," which includes the East Tampa neighborhoods of Jackson Heights, Sulphur Springs, Belmont Heights and Ybor City.
The blocks around the former College Hill public housing area are especially blighted, and the CDC has helped open several businesses there, including Shuman's.
"It's not easy to sell this community," Coney said. "Not many people know this exists."
She is fond of quoting Nehemiah 2:18, a passage from the Old Testament that talks about rebuilding a burned and broken Jerusalem. That's what she hopes to do in East Tampa.
"Leaving a legacy, I guess I could say that's the thing that has truly motivated me," Coney said.
As for the hats, she says, she'd like to leave those to someone who will carry on that tradition, too.
"I want a woman who will be able to wear those hats and talk to the next generation."
Chloe Coney
TITLE: President, chief executive officer of Corporation to Develop Communities of Tampa.
FAMILY: Husband, three children, one granddaughter.
