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Roots in Heartland, but hearts in Pasco

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published February 20, 2005

LAND O'LAKES - Like generations of Midwesterners drawn to Florida's endless sunshine and warm winter bliss, Carl and Florine Strong left their native Indiana for a better life.

In 2003 they traded 28 acres of their farm outside Fort Wayne for two houses side by side in the Groves Golf and Country Club in Land O'Lakes.

One house for themselves.

Another for their daughter and son-in-law.

Here's the rub, if you could call it that.

Carl is 87.

Florine is 84.

At an age when many people - forced by poor health or dwindling minds - live out their last days in retirement or nursing homes, the Strongs remain hearty as Midwestern sweet corn on the Fourth of July.

"We know we may not have that many days left," Florine says, "but you know, we make the best of it."

The pair live in a two-bedroom, two-bath 1,928-square-foot house across the street from a sparkling lake about as big as the pond on their old farm with its green-roofed century-old farmhouse and barn.

The house is decorated with the modest, no-nonsense frugality embraced by those who have spent a lifetime in the heartland. The floors are mostly ceramic tile for easy cleaning; the furniture is simple, and the walls are devoid of fancy art or bright color.

Beauty, in the Strongs' world, is shaped by the human hand.

Their living-room shelves are filled with the smooth-as-a-baby's-skin wooden bowls Carl makes in his wood shop in the garage next to the golf cart. He turns some from hackberry and Kentucky coffee wood, but mostly they are products of his newfound Florida environment: "I get a lot of wood from the Dumpsters around here that the builders throw away," he explains.

In fact, new home building in their neighborhood is marching along at such a brisk clip, they're waiting to decorate the front den after "the dust settles," Florine says.

The Groves, which bills itself as an active adult community for people 47 and older, already boasts 450 homes out of the 755 that eventually will be built here. Prices range from about $150,000 to the high $300,000s, says Susie Brown, whose husband, Scott Brown, developed the property with his two brothers, Bob and Steve Brown.

Scott, who died of melanoma at 53 on Easter 2003, dreamed of a community where people in their 40s could live side by side with residents like the Strongs, who might be 80-somethings, but have a lot of life left in them.

"The beauty of this development is that being around neighbors in their 40s surely keeps people like the Strongs active," says Susie Brown, who staffs the concierge desk in the Groves' elegant clubhouse.

Also, she says, the development's relatively affordable real-estate prices allow for a resort lifestyle on a budget.

"Even if you can't afford a country club, you can have a country club life here," she says. "People who have worked hard all of their lives can enjoy the fruits of their labor."

The Strongs are a textbook example, eager to show a younger visitor a framed aerial photograph of their land where for 50 years they grew corn, soybeans and wheat in soil so rich and fertile it almost appears to breathe.

A rectangular swatch next to the house was devoted solely to their fruit and vegetable garden.

Both survivors of the Great Depression, they never shied from hard work: In addition to farming, Carl worked as a tool and dye maker for General Electric; Florine made toys in a factory.

"We know the Depression because we lived it," she says.

Married for 66 years, they neither smoked nor drank and got all the information they needed from Reader's Digest, which they still keep stacked on their living room table. They can count the things they have in common: mainly a past that few in America know anymore.

Both were raised on farms and educated in one-room schoolhouses.

They met at a country Methodist church social. When they courted, they drove the dirt roads of DeKalb County, Ind., on Carl's Arrow Scout Indian motorcycle.

"A real nice motorcycle," Carl recalls. "I wouldn't mind having one now."

(Note the rolling of Florine's eyes.)

"He doesn't need one," she says.

When they married, they saved their money to honeymoon at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Though they've traveled the world, and even lived in Hawaii for a time during World War II (Florine served as secretary to the commanding officer at a naval air base) they always returned to their farm in Indiana.

In what might be their last adventure, they've come to live in south central Pasco County.

Carl estimates they paid about $146,000 for the house when you count the enlarged lanai where they can soak up the mild February weather and watch the crop of houses sprout behind them.

Frankly, they've never seen anything like it before.

"When we first came here there was nothing," he says. "Now, it just gets bigger every day."

-Elizabeth Bettendorf can be reached at ebettendorf@hotmail.com My House is a regular feature that offers a look at the people behind the area's housing boom.

[Last modified February 19, 2005, 08:08:05]