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MICHAEL CANNINGPhil Bourquardez Park: The longtime elected official's French roots were planted in a park on the old family homestead.
It may look Spanish at first glance, an easy assumption in a town with deep Latin roots. But the name Bourquardez is actually French.
In fact, some Tampa tongues say it with a Spanish accent.
"I pronounce it bah-CAR-dee, like the rum," Phyllis Gates said. The French might take issue, but as a native Southerner whose maiden name is Bourquardez, she's entitled to a little phonetic regionalism.
Gates' father, Phil Bourquardez, was the son of a pioneer Tampa family. His grandfather, Constant Bourquardez, immigrated from Lorrine, France, and homesteaded near downtown Tampa on the Hillsborough River sometime between 1847 and 1850. Phil Bourquardez was born in 1885, one of 14 children.
He had little formal education and as a young man took up carpentry, a family trade. He married Mittie Tucker in 1916. Their first daughter, Camille, was born in 1920 and died at age 8. Phyllis arrived in 1924.
During the Great Depression, Bourquardez served as a jailer at the Morgan Street Jail. In 1933, he was elected Tampa's city clerk, a job he held for 22 years.
Although he was reserved, everyone liked him, Gates said. An avid hunter, Bourquardez took yearly trips to the Gulf Hammock in Levy County. "He had one of the finest gun collections in Tampa," Gates said.
He was a member of the Knights of Columbus, the Elks Lodge and the Seminole Heights Methodist Church. He died in 1958 at age 73.
Gates, an 80-year-old retiree of the Alascom telephone company, lives in the Bourquardez House at 5806 N Branch Ave. in Old Seminole Heights, which her father built from 1918 to 1921.
A fine example of Japanese bungalow style, it stands as testament to Bourquardez's carpentry skills.
Shortly after Bourquardez died, the city named a park after him at 1810 N Tampa St. in Tampa Heights. Part of the park occupies his original homestead.