Ethel Nix is woven into the fabric of her Keystone neighborhood, as a bus driver to the first desegregated schools to elder adviser with a love of history.
By JOSH ZIMMER
Published May 21, 2004
KEYSTONE - Few people can take a short walk and still find themselves at the very center of their universe.
When Ethel Nix, 86, sits on covered park bench at Peterson Road Park, her entire life surrounds her.
The park is named after a man she knew well, a pioneer of the black community she's called home for nearly 70 years. First Missionary Baptist Church of Keystone, which she attends several times a week, is across the street. Much of her family still lives within several hundred yards of her house.
Nix, wiping caterpillars off her clothes, comes from a different time. Like a healthy plant, she feeds off the same rich soil year after year.
"I'm about the oldest thing in this community," she says proudly. "The Lord blessed me to get around and do what little I do."
Heading home, using an umbrella for support, she walks east down Peterson Road in a slow, but steady, rhythm of footsteps. She's strong enough to visit the park and the church almost every day. One way to beat age, she says, is to just keep moving.
The route is covered by an apse of lofty oak trees, which weren't nearly so big when she arrived for a visit during the Great Depression.
Born in Georgia, she became a stalwart of a thriving black community centered around Peterson and Copeland roads. Deeply religious, she raised two children with her late husband, George. She drove a school bus for Hillsborough County during and after segregation. Following her retirement, she became a local historian, of sorts.
Nix' affection for the neighborhood oozes like warm honey. Her three-bedroom house, guarded by a rottweiler, is one of the tidiest on the block. In the back is her prized possession - a large vegetable garden.
Funny how she would gladly have returned to Fort Valley, Georgia all those years ago.
Born in 1918, she grew up on her grandfather's farm about 30 miles from Macon. Her grandparents were strict but kind, teaching her and her siblings the value of hard work and a good fishing hole.
"We had enough farm to grow whatever we needed," she says.
It wasn't enough to keep everyone in place, however. Her widowed father came to this area in 1927 looking for work in the saw mills and turpentine camps. Left behind with the other kids, Nix eventually married a man who also would seek a better life in Keystone.
"I kept begging, "I want to go home,' " Nix says. "He kept saying, "Let's stay a little bit longer.' It was nothing but woods. He never did tell me why he never did want to go back."
He found work as a school board mechanic. She started driving buses.
Relatives say they admire her kindness, honesty and directness. It draws chuckles from her half-brother, Daniel Jones, her brother-in-law, Robert Ford, and neighbor, Willie Natiel.
Daniel Jones, 56, remembers acting up one day on the school bus. Nix stopped and made him walk home.
"Oh man, you didn't play on there," said Jones, who lives two houses west of Nix. Students "loved her though."
When black kids starting going to school with whites, Nix applied the same firm approach.
"I said there's no black and white on the bus," she recals telling them. "We're just people and we're going to get along because we've got to respect each other. I had a lot of fun riding."
Respect for the people she's known feeds her passion for history, which blossomed during the writing of the second and latest edition of the History of Keystone, Odessa and Citrus Park. The book contains a much lengthier accounting of the local black community than the first edition.
The editor-in-chief, Hank Binder, says Nix's determination was instrumental in getting many in her neighborhood to overcome their initial reluctance and open up.
"I don't know if they were intimidated or they just didn't want to participate," he said about the first volume. "I was so disappointed. This go around, I said we're really going to try to cater to the Nixes, The Jameses, the Madisons, all those people who live on Peterson Road. If you look at book two, there are some wonderful articles."
Nix, he says, is a "wonderful person, salt of the earth."
She speaks often of God - and godlessness. Society seems self-centered and mean-spirited these days. She worries about young people.
"Up to 5 or 10 years ago we never put a lock on the door . . . because people respected what you had," she says.
But the younger people in the neighborhood respect her.
Raymond Rembert, a Hillsborough sheriff's deputy who lives in the house at Peterson Road Park, got to know her when his two kids would stay at her house after school.
"She would watch them, and I would pick them up," he said.
These days Nix enjoys the simple pleasures of retirement.
While showing off her garden of the tomato, okra, pea and hot pepper plants, she discovered an unpicked, fully grown yellow squash on the vine.
"We'll I'll be," she said, reaching down to grab it. It was destined that very day for the pot. You don't need to add water, she says. The natural juices create enough liquid to cook in.
"I'm so happy," she said. "I love watching things grow."
- Josh Zimmer covers the University of South Florida area, Keystone and Odessa and Citrus Park. He can be reached at 813-269-5314 or zimmer@sptimes.com
