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Floral City man dies as car runs into trees

Emergency workers think that Jimmie Hutton, 75, had a heart attack while driving after dropping off his grandchildren at school.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published October 4, 2005

BROOKSVILLE - Jimmie Hutton cooked homemade waffles for three of his grandchildren Tuesday morning at his Floral City home. He drove them in his white Lincoln Town Car down U.S. 41 and dropped them off at school at Hernando Christian Academy. Then he turned around to go back home.

The Class of 1949 Hernando High School grad never made it.

According to an accident report from the Florida Highway Patrol, Mr. Hutton's car was traveling north when it left U.S. 41, traveled across the east shoulder and struck some trees.

He died at the scene.

He was 75.

Emergency workers think he had a heart attack, the report says, but the cause of death was not official on Tuesday.

Mr. Hutton, those who knew him said Tuesday, was a Brooksville boy, a wonderful son, a family man, a married man for 55 years, a churchgoer, a former police officer and sheriff's deputy, a lover of food and animals and lots and lots of Christmas lights.

"One of the best people who ever lived," his wife, Bette Lou Hutton, 71, said by phone.

She was 14 when they met.

"I used to flirt with him when I was in the line at the cafeteria," she said. "I'd smile at him.

"He'd say he fell in love with me when he saw me get on the school bus the first day of school."

They went steady in the late '40s, when they were students at Hernando High, going on dates in Brooksville to the movies at the Dixie Theater and to the Cottage Dinette for french fries with vinegar. She worked as a soda jerk at the Lily Del Ice Cream Parlor, and he'd come in and flirt, she said.

He was the quarterback and captain of the football team his senior year, she said, and she played the bells in the band.

They were married in 1950. He was 20. She was 16 and still had a year left of school.

"He's from a good old family around here," said longtime Weeks Hardware proprietor Joe Weeks, who was a few grades ahead of Mr. Hutton. "He worked at the A&P when he was a kid. He was like a stock boy."

Mr. Hutton grew up to be a police officer in Leesburg for 10 years, his wife said. He was a deputy in Hernando County for two years. And he worked in security at Community Hospital in New Port Richey for more than 20.

For the past 24 years, Jimmie and Bette Lou Hutton lived in their tan, three-bedroom house in Floral City in Citrus County.

There, he let the plants grow natural and kept good care of the lawn, which he had just mowed Monday.

He set up birdbaths and birdhouses and bird feeders in the back and built what he called a "dog condo" with screens and shingles for his big brown mixed-breed named Buddy.

He loved Christmas lights, said David Stauffer, his pastor at Spring Lake United Methodist Church east of Brooksville, and put them in his trees, on his bushes, on his fence and on his house. He was planning to start putting them up next week for the coming holiday season.

He loved to cook big meals for lots of people. "Not one or two vegetables. Six vegetables," Stauffer said. "And two or three kinds of meat."

He sang in the church choir. Bette Lou Hutton is the choir director.

When they were both retired, they traveled in their Fleetwood motor home to Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, Ohio. Everywhere. On one trip 10 years ago, Mrs. Hutton said, they took seven weeks and went all over the country.

For 10 years, until she died two years ago, he took care of his bedridden mother who lived next door.

"So you know he was a good man," his wife said.

They had two daughters: Georgine Anne "GiGi" Vitola, 44, who's married to Brooksville lawyer John Vitola and lives in Woodland Waters north of Weeki Wachee, and Cheryl LaRosa, 40, who lives in Tampa.

They had six grandchildren, too. From Vitola: Lindsay, 20; Brandon, 17; David, 13; Jared, 10; Elizabeth, 5. From LaRosa: Talia, who was born just four months ago.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

Stauffer said that friends and family gathered in Floral City were taking solace in this: "His last hours," the pastor said, "were spent doing what he loved with those that he loved."

Mr. Hutton made those homemade waffles for David, Jared and Elizabeth, the way he almost always did when any of them were up for a visit.

He didn't have any.

Neither did his wife.

"I was waiting," Bette Lou Hutton said, "for him to come home. To eat with him."

Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified October 4, 2005, 18:29:07]