Oranges, orchids flavored her life

Scrubland and hardscrabble times gave her a love of foliage and a measure of grit.

By STEPHEN NOHLGREN
Published July 18, 2007

ODESSA - Her heart was planted in the piney, sandy, lake-filled scrub north of Tampa Bay. She loved the land.

Her father, a pioneer, bought hundreds of acres where Pinellas, Hillsborough and Pasco counties converge, long before golf courses and nudist colonies came along. He cut down pine trees to make turpentine and planted orange trees to create groves. During the Depression, he died of an infection after a tooth operation. Back taxes claimed most of the land.

Emogene Riek, then 12 and the only child of a young widow, had to learn to depend on herself.

She graduated from Hillsborough High School and earned an economics degree from Florida State University, back when only women attended and young men from Gainesville, like Dewey Riek Jr., would beat a path to Tallahassee on weekends.

The two met at a dance.

She worked 30 years for the Seaboard System Railroad at different jobs; Dewey Riek (sounds like "seek") was an accountant. They still had about 80 acres of family orange groves but never earned much off farming, their son Mitchell says. They sold most of the acreage right around the time Dewey died in 1991.

That was before rural prices took off, but the land helped keep the family close. Mitchell got a slice for his house. Daughter Carleen Burnett Gunter lived next door. Emogene kept her house, garden and 5 acres.

"She loved pine trees. She loved growing things - roses, lily plants, orange trees," Gunter said. "She loved all manner of foliage."

Late in life, Emogene took up orchids. Until her stroke in April, she drove friends to shows in her 2007 Lexus. She was the one with the good eyesight. And her lead foot got them there quickly.

Other than college or vacations, she never left Odessa. She served as president of the Elfers Citrus Growers Association and helped found the Keystone Presbyterian Church, whose Web site boasts "The Best Small Church Choir in the USA."

She didn't hesitate to speak her mind. When her daughter's soon-to-be-husband fell off a new motorcycle recently, she rose from her chair and gave him what-for, Gunter said.

"She told him that her daughter was not going to ride on any of those murdercycles."

She was gorgeous. "She used to say that when she was in college, she had legs that could stop traffic," Gunter said. "I have a picture of her in those short-shorts they wore in the 40s, and I understand exactly."

Emogene's fondest memories dated back seven or eight decades, when she romped among her father's barrels of sticky, smelly pine resin.

But she never wanted anyone - not even her best friends - to know how old she was. Don't even tell after I'm gone, she cautioned. But her daughter figures it was a life well lived.

Emogene died Saturday. She was 85.

BIOGRAPHY

Emogene Riek

Born: Feb. 1, 1922.

Died: July 14, 2007.

Survivors: Son, Mitchell Riek, and wife, Donna; daughter, Carleen Burnett Gunter, and husband, Paul Gunter; grandchildren Tracy Alarcon, Michael Riek, Christopher Burnett and Joshua Riek; and two great-grandchildren.

[Last modified July 17, 2007, 23:47:37]