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Lacoochee crawls out from sorrow's shadow

"Bo' Harrison's shooting death came to symbolize a greater tragedy in Lacoochee. But, a year later, people there see a reason to hope.

When sheriff's Lt. Charles "Bo" Harrison was shot, friends grieved over the death of a good man. But they also mourned the loss of a bridge to a community that symbolizes poverty, crime and hopelessness.

Harrison spent most of his 31-year law enforcement career in east Pasco. In Lacoochee, an area where some people cast a suspicious eye on the Sheriff's Office, Harrison was looked on with respect.

When a Lacoochee teenager, Alfredie Steele Jr., was charged in the shooting, the Harrison story became enmeshed in the story of life in Steele's neighborhood. To this day, there are those who consider Harrison's death and Steele's arrest part of the same tragedy.

At Harrison's funeral, his best friend, Willie Broner, asked that people honor Harrison by caring about people as he did.

"I challenge each of you," Broner said, "to make sense of this timeless and senseless death by living your life in peace, harmony, love, with dignity, and with caring. This is the life Bo lived daily."

In the year since then, some have risen to that challenge:

The Circle of Hope Community Partnership wants to build a community center in Lacoochee as an alternative to the streets or bars.

The Greater Trilby Community Association aims to lure industry to provide jobs.

The TriCommunity Fellowship hopes to turn an old store into a coffee shop, where residents can grab a cup of coffee, play games or listen to Christian music, without tobacco or alcohol.

Perhaps most notably, an educator will open a school for young adults in September in hopes of making them ready to handle the responsibilities of the workplace and raising children. The educator's name is Judy Bergantino, and her program has a clear record of success in some North Florida communities that bear a striking resemblance to eastern Pasco County.

Downtown Quincy looks a lot like downtown Dade City. A domed courthouse sits in the center of town. Shops and restaurants line the square.

To the north, the similarities continue. Busy small-town charm yields to remote countryside and hamlets that haven't fared well, despite boom times in other parts of the state. Between the Gadsden County cities of Quincy and Chattahoochee, in the countryside north of Tallahassee, the side roads are often dirt. The housing is run down. There are few jobs. It could be a copy of Trilby, Trilacoochee and Lacoochee.

Five years ago, Bergantino decided to do something about the problems she saw in Gadsden County.

She launched a comprehensive school in Quincy for high school dropouts with children, aiming to break the cycle. The program, called Diamond Academy, has flourished, branching out with a second school last year in Chattahoochee.

Bergantino said the Lacoochee area needs what she can provide: an educational program that encompasses not just reading and writing, but also job readiness and child care.

"I refer to what we do as wraparound service," Bergantino said. "We do whatever it takes, but you've got to do your part."

Bergantino said her schools work because her students know it is a chance to make their lives better. She targets high school dropouts, ages 16-25, who have children. The program doesn't compete with public schools, she said. It's aimed at dropouts with children who often won't return to a regular school. Most students are in their 20s.

Diamond Academy provides day care, something young parents can't afford, and she and her staff focus not just on schoolwork, but also on parenting skills, decisionmaking, computer literacy and self-improvement. Skills they can also apply to the workplace.

The rules are simple.

First, attendance. Diamond Academy provides a van to pick up and drop off each student and their preschool-age children. Get up, get dressed and get to school, Bergantino advises. It's like having a job.

Miss more than 15 percent of the school days and you're out.

Second, nobody pushes, shoves or verbally abuses anyone else. Children aren't criticized, and students aren't permitted to put down each other or their children.

Third, treat school property as if it were your own.

"I tell them, "Everything you use is bought and paid for by people who work and have jobs. You need to respect that.' "

While it is important to help students earn their GEDs or high school diplomas, it is also important to help them cope with the struggles of child care, of dealing with tantrums. They need to learn to navigate red tape, whether it's forms for government assistance or a driver's license. Bergantino said some people start out struggling with dressing appropriately and being on time. "We're talking about things as basic as phone manners," she said. "You don't give someone a transfusion of class; it's got to be pervasive."

Armed with social skills, better vocabulary and grammar, and a diploma, Bergantino said her graduates are prepared to get a job and keep it.

Students' progress provides the program's best testimonial, Bergantino said. Noemi Guadarrama is an example:

After packing her 9-year-old son off to school, Guadarrama arrived for a recent morning session on a Diamond Academy van with her 3-year-old daughter, Keisy. They have been in the program less than a year, and Guadarrama, 25, still struggles with English after emigrating from Mexico.

But, through an interpreter, she says she wants to work, and hopes to earn a nursing degree.

Program coordinators helped her land a part-time job helping a Chattahoochee man paralyzed from the neck down. The school van provides transportation to his house, then returns her to school for English classes.

Her patient, Mickey Whiddon, is 33. He was paralyzed in a diving accident when he was 15. Since then, his mother, Johnnie, cared for him. Each morning, he must be washed and shaved and tended to before he is lifted into his powered wheelchair.

But Whiddon is a man now, and his mother, 75 years old, isn't as strong as she once was. Having Guadarrama's young arms to help takes strain off the family, Mrs. Whiddon said.

"She's been a blessing to us," she said.

The job pays Guadarrama $10 an hour, and she gets experience in working with disabled patients.

Back home, after a day at school, Guadarrama faces a half-mile walk up a rutted dirt road to the house where she waits for her son to come home.

She leaves the children with a friend at night and heads off to her second job making pizza.

Someday, she said she will go to nursing school and buy a better home for her children.

Sabrina Davis, 18, is another Diamond Academy success story. She works at a Subway sandwich store at an Interstate 10 truck stop.

She earned her high school diploma through the academy and started computer programming classes at Tallahassee Community College this month. Her future was less bright when she came to Bergantino more than two years ago. She was 16 and had a daughter, Lakira. A fight with her mother left her homeless.

For three months, Davis lived at the academy. She has since reconciled with her mother and plans to open her own business after she graduates from college.

Bergantino, 54, didn't set out to be a social worker, educator, charity coordinator or a life changer.

When her husband died in 1982, the couple were developing two west Pasco County condominium complexes, the Pines and the Wilds. Hours after his death, Bergantino said she had no choice but to take over the company. By noon that day, the company made payroll on time.

With her children grown, she went back to school. She earned a master's degree in mental health counseling from the University of South Florida in 1994 and moved to Gadsden County to try running a ranch.

The ranch failed. But Bergantino had lived in Gadsden long enough to see a need.

She said she went knocking on doors in Tallahassee to see what was available. She found money through a federal program administered by the state called the Even Start Family Literacy Program.

She named her program Diamond Academy because she said her students are "diamonds in the rough."

A vacant house a block off the town square in Quincy became the school's first home. The second branch opened a year ago in Chattahoochee in an old campground the city owned. City Manager Lee Garner said when he and his City Council learned of Bergantino's work, they were eager to help.

Garner said he doesn't know how much the city spent renovating the camp - it was thousands of dollars - but it was money well-spent.

Without Diamond Academy, generations of people were feeling worthless, Garner said. At the school, students are learning to be productive.

"When I see those parents feeding their children, see them learn to be mothers and fathers, it was something we couldn't turn down. We're proud of it," he said. "I want to see it grow even more."

The same grant that seeded Diamond Academy in Gadsden landed Bergantino $312,000 this year to start an academy aimed at helping the Trilby and Lacoochee areas. The grants are automatically renewed each year, provided the school shows progress.

At work, Bergantino is a whirlwind. The moment she takes something in, she finds a use for it.

As Bergantino described her schools, Antoinette Ross stopped by her office to introduce herself. Ross was involved in a project to link tenants with homes that were a step above public housing projects.

Bergantino jumped on the idea as a way to help emerging students move out of environments filled with the old temptations, old boyfriends and old friends who might not have embraced change.

"It's like they've worn the wrong shoe size all their lives," Bergantino said. "You give them the right shoes, and they don't want to wear the wrong shoes again."

Minutes after Ross left the office, Bergantino was pitching the idea to a student.

Bergantino came to Pasco at the end of this month to scout a location for her new school. Driving the back roads of Trilby and Lacoochee, she looked for a building that meets Department of Children and Families standards for a licensed day care. The hunt continues.

She wasted no time hiring the director of the new school, Maryruth Shuflata of Danbury, Conn.

Shuflata, 57, was active in west Pasco events in the early 1990s before moving, and she said she was happy to return, especially with a chance to take part in the growing program.

"It's so important. It's changing families, changing lives, one person at a time," she said.

Bergantino said the encouragement of County Commissioner Ann Hildebrand, a longtime friend, was key in bringing Diamond Academy to Pasco.

"I call her the godmother of this center," Bergantino said.

The school is scheduled to open in September, she said. She is looking to hire seven staffers, including a van driver and qualified adult education and child care coordinators.

"I do not believe in handout programs," Bergantino said. "I don't think a group hug ever solved anything. We need real, constructive answers. We build ourselves up, we say "We can do this,' and we take a step forward. I'm a believer in that."

Around Lacoochee, others share her passion for action.

The Circle of Hope Community Partnership was formed in July with a goal of building a community center for the Lacoochee area, a place that would offer an alternative to hanging out on the street for children and adults.

The group struggled in fits and starts to organize, armed more with ambition and optimism than a road map for achieving goals, organizers said. But the group now says it's ready to move forward.

The group's president is Isa Blanford, the 45-year-old Family Self-Sufficiency Coordinator for the county public housing department. She briefly stepped down in the spring, mostly because of fatigue and some disappointment. But after a May meeting, she reassumed leadership with a new vision, she said.

First up, the group hopes to open a community-owned coin laundry in Lacoochee. Blanford said residents without their own washer and dryer have to drive to Dade City to do wash. Money raised from a community-owned facility would stay in town, and some of the profits could go toward a community center. She said the group is looking for anyone, either a charity organization or an individual, who would like to invest $1,000 in the project. She figures it will take a minimum of $10,000 to start.

Other ideas expand the co-op ownership to include an ice cream store and eventually a franchise restaurant.

"We believe that getting into the co-op business is what is going to help us along the way," Blanford said.

While others focus on improving the community's social life, Trilby native Denny Mihalinec is working to boost its economic prospects.

Mihalinec said he hopes the newly founded Greater Trilby Community Association can spotlight changes that could bring jobs and wealth.

Mihalinec, 31, is a part-time student and a full-time stay-at-home dad for his four children, ages 1-9. He is also a community activist, busy with Habitat for Humanity projects, development of the Withlacoochee Trail State Park, crime watch and Adopt-a-Highway efforts.

But the drive to bring jobs to his hometown, he said, could be his biggest challenge.

"I'm trying to be a force in keeping the Pasco Economic Development Committee, the county, the state, whoever else will listen, interested in keeping up with Lacoochee," he said.

Lacoochee was an employment hub for the first half of the 20th century, when the Cummer & Sons Cypress Co. mill buzzed, and trees from around the state were hauled in by rail for processing. But the plant closed in 1958, and when the jobs went away, there was nothing to take the mill's place.

Working with Mihalinec, farmer Wilton Simpson said the Trilby/Lacoochee area could be the economic center of four major areas. Tampa, Lakeland, Orlando and Ocala are all about an hour's drive or less, he said.

The Cummer mill site is zoned for industry. The area is served by a rail line and has access to U.S. 301 and Interstate 75, but without vital wastewater disposal infrastructure, it can go nowhere.

"This area could be the hub of industry," he said. "But we need that commitment from the county or Dade City to come in here and build that facility."

Roger Kaminski said it started with a dream.

He kept waking in the early morning, seeing someplace comfortable and inviting. A coffee house where people could sit and share ideas, meet their neighbors, listen to music.

And it had to be in Lacoochee.

"I kept seeing the kind of place you'd walk into and say, "This is Lacoochee?' " he said.

In October, Kaminski and friends formed the TriCommunity Fellowship. It started as the TriCommunity Fellowship of Christian Leaders, but that's being changed.

"Yes, we're faith-based," he said. "But we don't care if you're Catholic or Protestant or Jewish or nothing at all. We're not even nondenominational. We're just faith-based."

The vision Kaminski and 20 to 30 friends share is to turn the old western wear shop at U.S. 301 and Trilby Road into a coffee house. In the dust and debris of a full-scale renovation, it's taking shape.

"This," he said with a grin, "this took six months!"

He was waving a white sheet of paper. Across the top were the words "Building Permit."

All around him was the dust and wood chips and paint cans that go along with construction.

Exterior doors have to be reversed so they open outward, to meet building codes. Exit lights have to be added. Restrooms with access for the disabled are required. It's a lot of work.

"We keep at it," he said.

Kaminski, an audio/visual technology supervisor for Pasco County schools, and his wife, Marion, live in Dade City. But Marion Kaminski grew up in Lacoochee, and her mother still lives there. She still feels for the community.

Roger Kaminski said construction should be done by mid summer. When it's ready, the coffee house would be open from 7-10 p.m. Fridays with live music, and again Sunday nights for an open-mike night.

So far the job has been filled with surprises.

Some residents donate part of their wages to the organization as they would to a religious mission. A yard sale raised $900, and another raised $300. A pizza sale netted a few hundred more, and gifts of labor and time are valued, Kaminski said. The drive also has seen unusual sources of support.

Before the doors even opened, the Fellowship is finding a need. The group is sponsoring a 4-H Club that meets in an auxiliary building next door.

Another member of the Fellowship, Brian Webb, said Kaminski's ideas speak to him.

"He told us about the vision; it caught hold of me," Webb said. "It's exactly what this area needs, what we don't have."

"The main thing we want to do is bring people together," Kaminski said. "We want anyone to drop in. People who have lived here all their lives could come in, start up a conversation with someone they don't know, and all of a sudden, they find out all these things they have in common. It's building a community."

Applications for Pasco positions can be mailed to Bergantino at Diamond Academy, 100 S Madison St., Quincy, FL 32351.