A love that won't quit

Dorothy Brunson, 82, works for the FHSAA - it's her 65th year.

By JOEY KNIGHT
Published September 11, 2007

Dorothy Brunson sits amid stacks of papers in her FHSAA office in Gainesville.
	[Jarrett Baker | Times]

GAINESVILLE

One of the two loves of Dorothy Brunson's octogenarian life was taken from her on a September day in 1993. Buford Brunson, a retired automobile salesman, went to sleep in his easy chair and never woke up.

"He smoked a pipe; it was sitting there just perfectly upright," recalled Dorothy, who discovered her husband after several vain attempts to reach him by phone from her office. "The pipe was in his lap, the bowl was upright, and the tobacco had all burned out."

And so ended the shorter of Dorothy's two marriages. This one had spanned a mere 33 years.

Her other blissful betrothal - to a statewide entity known as the Florida High School Athletic Association - is halfway through its sixth decade. It appears only death will do them part.

"She lives for the association," said Jim Runyon, her stepson-in-law and a family-law attorney in St. Petersburg. "That's what it's been for her forever."

If longevity were benevolence, Dorothy Elaine Brunson would be Mother Theresa. As it stands, she's the 82-year-old matriarch of Florida's high school sports governing body.

On Aug.16, "Mrs. B," as she's known by everyone in her Gainesville office, began her 65th year of employment with the FHSAA.

Her tenure has spanned six FHSAA commissioners, 12 U.S. presidents and generations of social and structural upheaval in Florida prep sports. One of those commissioners, Floyd Lay, was best man at her wedding.

She has worked in five FHSAA buildings, excluding her alma mater, Gainesville High, from which the association was based when she was hired by then-commissioner Lafayette Golden - her fifth-grade algebra teacher - as a GHS senior in 1943. That was two months before current commissioner John Stewart was born.

"She's lived the history of this association," longtime FHSAA communications chief Jack Watford said. "Nobody else has."

Aside from some osteoporosis, low blood sugar and far fewer Saturdays in the office, there's no real sign Dorothy plans on becoming part of that history any time soon.

Tireless, if not ageless

"Basically, I don't want to retire because I'm too programmed to get up and do," she said over a recent lunch of Atlantic salmon, baked potato and mixed vegetables. "I don't want to be like a lot of these folks that don't care whether they get up until 12 o'clock, stay up all night and watch television. I'm programmed."

Any notion that Dorothy is a mere FHSAA figurehead with an honorary title is obliterated with one look at her desk. Reams of multicolored paperwork partially bury a black keyboard and obscure a photo of Buford. Christmas cards and family photos from various administrators throughout the state stick to a cream-colored row of filing cabinets. Her phone indicates 66 voice mails await her.

"I haven't been able to take 'em off," she says with a laugh.

It's from here that Dorothy still logs nine- to 10-hour days as FHSAA director of eligibility and compliance. Eligibility rulings, appeals of such rulings, hardship waiver requests - all come across her desk.

But her value far transcends her job description. Questions about the FHSAA's 87-year history or a bylaw number frequently go to the workaholic widow who loves Red Lobster, Books-A-Million and teaching vacation bible school at her small Baptist church.

"She's forgotten more than any of us know," said Sonny Hester, FHSAA associate commissioner for compliance and eligibility.

"I know when I've caught the phone and people can't get somebody else, they'll say, 'Just get me Dorothy, I know she can help me,'" added receptionist Susan Poole, who has worked with Dorothy the past 41 years.

FHSAA seems like family

The surrogate family Dorothy has bred inside the FHSAA's one-story office - a Tim Tebow spiral from Interstate 75 - is nearly all she has remaining. She and Buford had no children of their own, and all five of her siblings are deceased.

One of her two stepdaughters, however, lives in nearby Putnam County, and she still spends some holidays at the Runyon's home in St. Petersburg. And there's longtime housekeeper Virgie Latson, who still spends each Friday tending to Dorothy's north Gainesville home and pumping gas into her white Pontiac Grand Am Dorothy is allergic to petroleum products.

That Friday routine was nearly shattered five years ago. Dorothy was locking up her house to leave for work around 6:30 a.m. when a burly assailant took her purse before picking her up and hurling her across her carport.

She sustained a broken nose and dislocated left shoulder, and now can lift her left arm no higher than her forehead. Nonetheless, she spent less than half a day in the hospital - walking out on her own power - and was back at work the next Tuesday.

"I just don't believe in goofing off," Dorothy said.

Or slacking off, it seems.

She still works Saturdays, though in deference to co-workers who fear her being in the office alone, does most of it from her home computer.

Dorothy's megabyte memory, that ageless tenacity, that cerebral vault of association history beneath that neatly coiffured gray hair, will be irreplaceable when fate forces her departure. No one believes she'll retire while still in good health.

"The main thing is, her legacy will always be here," Hester said. "We wish she would enjoy life a little bit more, but her life is the FHSAA. Who's to blame her for that?"

Joey Knight can be reached at (813) 226-3350 or jknight@sptimes.com.

Ageless wonder

When Dorothy Brunson started work at the Florida High School Athletic Association on Aug.16, 1943 ...
-Al Lopez was playing cather for the Pittsburgh Pirates.
- Land O'Lakes football coach John Benedetto, in his 31st season with the Gators, hadn't been born. Neither had another famous Gator, a guy named Steve Spurrier.
- Only five of Hillsborough County'spublic high schools - Brandon, Hillsborough, Jefferson, Plant and Plant City - existed.
- Tampa Stadium wouldn't be built for another 24 years.
- Bobby Bowden and Joe Paterno, the two winningest coaches in major college football, were 13 and 16, respectively.
- Baseball lifer and Seminole resident Don Zimmer was 12.

Eyewitness to history

Florida prep sports has undergone more than a half-century's worth of evolution and growth since Dorothy Brunson went to work for the FHSAA. Here are what she considers the three most significant changes:

Influx of foreign-born student-athletes
"For ages and ages and ages, that didn't come up at all. ... But now we have the process of having foreign-exchange immigrant students who have been in this country with their parents for at least a year and have no visa. They are immigrant students."

Implementation of Title IX
"The girls programs are really and truly probably the biggest change that we had. When I first started, there was very little for girls athletics. Jacksonville schools basically had girls basketball, and then all of the sudden, we're getting soccer. For years, we didn't have a state soccer tournament; it was an invitational."

State growth in general
"The enrollment is tremendous now."

[Last modified September 11, 2007, 01:08:25]