His granddaughter hopes she can help Clearwater understand the imprint he left on the city.
By ANGIE GREEN
Published August 10, 2003
CLEARWATER - The granddaughter of the late city pioneer Ross B. Norton still drives by the recreation complex and park named in his honor and softly utters the nickname she used to call him.
"Hi, Ba-Ba," Suzann Birchall whispers.
To Birchall, Norton was a big, gentle, wonderful grandfather. To Clearwater in the first half of the 1900s, he was a man who shaped the city.
That's why when Birchall, now 52, read that some neighborhood residents want to strip his name from the facilities, she became furious.
"I was mad, very mad," she said rising in her chair.
In the 1930s and '40s, Ross B. Norton served on the city's first planning board, developed some of Clearwater's first bridges and roads and served as a city commissioner. After moving from St. Petersburg in 1919, he served Clearwater for nearly 40 years.
After Norton's death in 1958, the City Commission wanted to pay tribute to a man many say was a town hero. The following year, the commission named the park as a tribute to his relentless service. Commissioners named the recreation center after him in 1964.
Duke Tieman, the president of the area neighborhood association, said he understands Norton's significance. But he wants a new identity for the neighborhood, which has for years been referred to as South Greenwood. Tieman wants the neighborhood, its rec center and its parks named after Lake Belleview.
If Tieman gets his way, he plans to place a monument in the park to honor Norton.
Tieman said the association, which meets weekly in the Ross Norton Recreation Complex on 1426 S Martin Luther King Jr. Ave., will mail and hand deliver petitions asking neighbors for name change approval in January.
After reading of the association's plans in the St. Petersburg Times, Birchall searched local libraries and called newspapers for records on what her grandfather had done for Clearwater. She wanted to uncover his legacy, beyond his name.
"Who is Ross Norton?" she asked recently, her face showing her passion. "Was he just like Ed Wright, who donated the land (for another park nearby)? No, he was somebody who was groundbreaking for Clearwater."
Memories of Norton are still vivid for Birchall, who lives in her grandparents' home off Turner Road. As a 6-year-old, Birchall remembers her grandfather smoking cigars on the house's front porch. She would come and sit at his feet.
Norton would pick Birchall and her mother up from the family's business off Cleveland Street and walk them home.
"He was wonderful. Kind, gentle, wonderful. And big."
Birchall, the youngest of the five grandchildren, said she was Norton's favorite.
"He would spoil me rotten."
Norton wasn't just influential in his grandchildren's lives. When he moved to Clearwater in 1919, he became a supervisor at the Seaboard Airline Railroad. Three years later he organized the first Chamber of Commerce in Clearwater and served as president or on the board of governors for more than 20 years.
"He did such a good job nobody wanted to push him out of the way," said longtime Clearwater resident David Perkins, who remembers Norton.
Norton had his hand in getting Courtney Campbell Parkway and Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard. He was a leader of the citizens committee that paved the way for building the $1-million Memorial Causeway Bridge, erected in the late 1920s. When an early developer of the Florida west coast sold his Dunedin holdings, Norton talked him into building the Fort Harrison Hotel.
"He put his whole heart and soul into improvements he thought they (the city) needed," said Perkins, who is on the Clearwater Historical Society Board.
"Everybody knew him," said Perkins, 84. "He was up and down that Cleveland Street. That's where everything happened."
Perkins remembers the straw hat, the cigar. "He was quite a character."
An article in the Clearwater Sun says Norton developed a love for and faith in Clearwater, so much so he refused promotions to other cities from the railroad. Perkins remembers seeing Norton's passion, but he also remembers his joviality.
"He was a nice guy to be around," Perkins remembers. "A good friend to so many people."
In order to change a name on a historic recreation facility or park, the City Commission will have to approve it, said Parks and Recreation Director Kevin Dunbar.
Dunbar said the process works this way:
Residents would make a formal request to the commission to consider a renaming.
The commission could deny the request and stop the process there, or ask the Parks and Recreation Board to hold a public hearing to gather names.
The Parks and Recreation Board, made up of seven volunteers appointed by the commission, would take names suggested at the hearing, rank the top choices and deliver them to the commission.
The commission could reject all names, or it could vote to rename the facility.
The whole process could take four or five months, Dunbar said, adding that he said he is uncertain how likely a name change is.
But he said picking one name to characterize the entire area is a good idea.
Within several hundred feet of the Norton center and park sits Ed C. Wright Park, along with a horseshoe park, Lake Belleview and baseball fields. Dunbar said he would prefer a name for the area that binds the attractions together.
"What we would like to see is ultimately the collection of the facilities being named a regional name, to give it an identity instead of having a bunch of little pieces in one area," Dunbar said.
"In terms of the name, I don't have a preference."
Most recreation facilities are named after a region or a street, Dunbar said, such as the North Greenwood Recreation and Aquatic Complex or the Countryside Recreation Center and Community Park. Ross Norton facilities are different in that regard, he said.
Still, Dunbar said, changing the name of a facility that honors a historic figure has never been done by the City Commission.
"One of the things that the city takes very serious is ... it's history," Dunbar said.
"There were certain reasons why the center was named after Mr. Norton."
Norton's granddaughter said she can still feel his presence in the park.
And many say renaming a historic facility could start an ugly cycle, dishonoring the past.
Sitting inside her screened porch, Birchall's elbow rested near her grandfather's rusted old ashtray as she summed up her case.
"This is a man," she said, her voice rising. "This isn't Bayview Gardens kind of name."
Then her voice softened and her chest rose.
"And he was my grandfather."
- Information from the Clearwater Sun, Clearwater Historical Society and Clearwater city documents was used in this report.
