Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Oral history, tonsils and all

Clearwater is preserving history with interviews that will be posted on its Web site.

By MIKE DONILA, Times Staff Writer
Published December 30, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT Video Memories of Clearwater [Bill Serne | Times] Owen Allbritton tells of having his tonsils removed.

CLEARWATER - When he was about 5, Owen Allbritton had his tonsils removed in the old downtown Coachman building, back when it was a doctor's office.

Now 81 and retired, he joked that the doctor told him he chucked the tonsils out the window when he was done.

"I wanted to keep them in a jar," the long-time Pinellas-Pasco circuit judge said, chuckling at the memory. "I don't think he thought it was a good idea."

The city is documenting stories like Allbritton's, saving them as part of an oral history project that preserves the memories of well-known Clearwater residents about their community, important events and life in general.

City leaders say the project will help market the city, give residents a sense of place and create a tool for scholars.

The plan is to create 30-minute video clips of residents chatting about their memories. The interviews will be posted on the city's Web site, www.myclearwater.com, and will be searchable by topic and by speaker.

The city also hopes those interviewed will supply photos and documents to be displayed with the oral recollections. Those interviewed do not have to be Clearwater residents, officials say, but they should have some tie to the city and be able to talk about its history.

Since April, more than 50 folks have shared their stories, touching on everything from the downtown in the early 1920s all the way through today's tax issues and how businesses feel they are being unfairly taxed under the state's "highest and best use" property appraisal formula.

Howard Hamilton, 75, whose family owns the popular beachside Palm Pavilion restaurant and inn, recalled that when he went to the prom at the Fort Harrison Hotel, the old building "was like a taste of the big city."

Someone else discusses Scientology. Another talks about the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team coming to town for spring training. And a yet another recollects a time when he would fish in the bay and actually catch something.

The unedited videotaped interviews run from 45 minutes to almost three hours, but will be shortened. So far the city has collected almost 70 hours of interviews.

In them, former educator and Clearwater Commissioner Bill Justice, 86, talks about how teenagers would meet on Saturday mornings at the intersection of Fort Harrison Avenue and Cleveland Street - "the center of downtown" - if the local football team had won its game Friday night.

And Joan Coachman Bates, 67, a member of the pioneering Coachman family, strolls down memory lane with a tale about how youngsters used to visit a movie house on Cleveland, and for 12 cents they could catch a couple of cartoons, a serial movie and the main feature, "typically a B-grade western."

Many talked of the Brown Brothers soda shop.

"I don't know if this will ever get wrapped up," said Shawn Stafford, the city's TV station manager and director. "It might go on forever, just like history."

Stafford, who is overseeing the project, said eventually the city will put the videos in closed-caption form, so viewers can search for key topics. He said the first videos should be up and running sometime early next year, most likely by March.

The project, in theory, has been in the works for more than a year, and was spearheaded, in part, by Mayor Frank Hibbard after hearing about oral history projects while listening to a National Public Radio broadcast.

"It just triggered with me that it's something we should be doing," he said. "It's important that we remember our past and we memorialize it in some way to pass it on."

The city initially applied for a state grant to help cover the expenses to put the videos into closed-caption form, which costs about $180 an hour. The city did not get the grant and will apply again this year. Stafford said so far the project hasn't cost taxpayers money, since it's being done in-house.

Some important residents - such as former Mayor Gabe Cazares and Willa Livingston Carson, who founded the North Greenwood Community Health Resource Center - died before the city could interview them.

"They were a big piece of Clearwater history that we were not able to capture," city spokeswoman Joelle Castelli said. "Now all we're able to do is capture their stories through their family members, newspaper articles. ... That's not the same as talking to Willa and Gabe themselves."

Times researcher Shirl Kennedy contributed to this story.

FAST FACTS

To share your story

To recommend someone to participate in Clearwater's oral history project, e-mail cnews@myclearwater.com

On the Web

For excerpts of oral histories taped as part of Clearwater's project, visit pinellas.tampabay.com.

Key points in Clearwater's past

1830s: Fewer than 20 families are first settlers.

1890s: Gains reputation as a resort community.

1906: Officially named Clearwater.

1915: Incorporated.

1921: Real estate boom begins.

1940s Philadelphia Phillies begin spring training.

1950: Population reaches 15,000 residents.

1966: City turns down an offer to buy Sand Key for $3-million.

1968: Sunshine Mall opens as one of Florida's first enclosed shopping malls.

1976: Church of Scientology establishes spiritual headquarters.

1988: Clearwater loses battle to dredge what was then called Dunedin Pass, which closed to create a solid beachfront from north end of Clearwater Beach to Caladesi Island.

1990s: Controversial roundabout built on Clearwater Beach.

2005: City population tops 110,000.

[Last modified December 29, 2007, 21:41:36]