A merman rests

He and the audience held their breath the day Weeki Wachee opened 60 years ago. The waters ran deep for Ed Darlington.

By Lu Vickers, Special to the Times
Published January 4, 2008

ADVERTISEMENT [Photo courtesy of Bonnie Georgiadis] Ed Darlington attends a mermaid reunion at Weeki Wachee in 1983.

Florida has lost one of its kings of kitsch.

Ed Darlington, 77, died on Dec. 21 in his hometown of Holiday, just 20 miles from Weeki Wachee Springs, where he made his debut as a merman the day Weeki Wachee opened for business in 1947.

The small obituary in the paper did not mention his years underwater. Nor did it do justice to his place in state history.

"Ed the Great," as he called himself, was Weeki Wachee personified, but he was more than that. He was old Florida, a Florida that didn't need million-dollar special effects to hold an audience's attention. He symbolized the Florida that wowed people with its beckoning billboards, deep blue springs - and real live mermaids who ate bananas underwater.

I met Ed and his sister, Mary Darlington Fletcher, in 2000 when I went to Weeki Wachee to do research for a novel. I arrived at the theater to find a group of former mermaids, ages 40 to 75, performing "Tails of Yesteryear." I watched, enthralled.

After the show, Mary and Ed perched on stools wearing their navy blue tails, posing for photos. To me, standing before them was like getting an audience with Elvis - they were the original Weeki Wachee mermaid and merman, for gosh sakes. They were royalty.

I decided to put my novel on hold and write an article about these performers. Mary and Ed invited me to return in a couple of weeks, promising they'd introduce me to the gang. "Look for Ed's Winnebago," Mary said. "The mermaids will all be there."

Two weeks later, Ed greeted me at the door of his RV, barefoot, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned. I asked why he still swam at Weeki Wachee at 70.

"Did you ever do something as a kid that you enjoyed and wished you could do again?" he said. "That's what it is. Plus," he said laughing, "we didn't eat all the bananas back then so we're still eatin' them today."

Ed and Mary grew up on a poultry farm in what is now Holiday. One day in 1947, they drove Ed's Model A Ford to Weeki Wachee to go swimming. They ran across Newt Perry, who was developing the natural spring into a tourist attraction. Ed and Mary couldn't go in because Perry had roped off the spring with a "Do Not Enter" sign.

But he offered them a chance to swim later, in his show. Perry planned to teach his swimmers to do synchronized ballet moves underwater, with the aid of an air hose. Ed was one of the few male recruits.

"There were a couple of other guys at the time (but) they fell by the wayside," Ed told me. "It takes durability and stamina to maintain this rapport with the spring."

Ed performed at Weeki Wachee for two years, then went on to a career in the fertilizer business. He and his wife, Nell, had two sons. After Ed retired, he returned to Weeki Wachee to perform as an alumnus.

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The day I visited him there, a storm blew up during the afternoon show. The mermaids can't perform when it's lightning, so Ed took to the stage, barefoot and wet-headed, and told stories about his early days at the spring.

He told how the crew of the film Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid sank a castle into the spring in 1948 and how he'd carried star Ann Blyth's shoes while she was carted around on a stretcher wearing her mermaid tail.

He remembered an underwater hot dog stand that was part of his act: "I can still see my friend Ned Stevens with his elbow on the counter watching the mermaids go by and letting his pot boil over," he said.

Two hours went by and the rain slowed but the audience never moved. We were mesmerized by Ed's soft voice, by the pictures he made with his words.

Last year Ed had an aneurysm that nearly killed him. I enlarged a photo of him wearing a wig and a mermaid tail and sent it to his hospital room, telling him to put it at his bedside so the nurses would know who they were dealing with.

In July 2007, Weeki Wachee celebrated its 60th anniversary, and somehow Ed made it there. Nell drove right up to the entrance of the park and helped Ed out of the car. She pulled his walker out of the trunk. The photo I sent him was hanging from the front of the walker.

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His funeral service in Holiday was packed with friends and family. Along with his golf buddies were a half-dozen former Weeki Wachee performers who swam with Ed in the reunion shows that began on the 50th anniversary in 1997.

Former mermaid Dawn Douglas told a story about one of the reunion shows. The mermaids always take hot showers after emerging from the icy water of the spring, and Ed always wanted to join them instead of showering by himself.

He got his chance on his 70th birthday. The mermaids gathered in the showers and called for Ed. When he ran in, they presented him not with their birthday suits, but with a birthday cake sparkling with 70 candles. It wasn't exactly what he had in mind, said Dawn, but he was thrilled anyway.

There is talk now of the state taking over the spring and running it as a state park. Word is that the mermaid show will remain, but some are concerned things will change. I spoke to Ed's wife, Nell, at the memorial service. As if speaking for Ed, she asked me, "What's going to happen to Weeki Wachee?"

We'll see. But it won't be the same without Ed.

Lu Vickers is the author, with photo editor Sara Dionne, of "Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids: A History of One of Florida's Oldest Roadside Attractions."

[Last modified January 3, 2008, 10:12:47]