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Letter to the editor

Service was big part of life

Leslie Dennison 1929-2008

By BILL COATS, Times Staff Writer
Published January 11, 2008

LUTZ - Leslie "Pete" Dennison, a venerable civic leader who personified Lutz's rural past, has died following a long illness.

As a young adult, Mr. Dennison reacted to a local fatality by helping launch an ambulance service for Land O'Lakes. Through middle-age, he helped lead the growing Lutz Volunteer Fire Department. Even when he grew old and frail, Mr. Dennison made a point to hug every widow at the Church of Christ.

"He had a servant's heart," said Bill Nesmith, fire chief with Hillsborough County Fire Rescue.

Mr. Dennison died a week ago at age 78. On Monday, the day of his funeral services, Nesmith ordered all county fire stations to lower their flags to half-staff.

Mr. Dennison was a member of Lutz's oldest and largest pioneer family. He and most other Lutz Dennisons are descended from James Madison Cooper and Elizabeth Ann Cooper, who became the first white settlers in the Lutz area in 1832, according to Citrus, Sawmills, Critters & Crackers, a book about Lutz's history.

Mr. Dennison was born in October 1929, the same month that the stock market crashed, triggering the Great Depression.

" Times were so hard you couldn't even catch a gopher," he quipped in an interview in 2001.

He soon entered the area's leading industry, tending citrus groves. At one point, Mr. Dennison's company, Tom Law Inc., managed 7 square miles of groves. The work left Mr. Dennison scarred by skin cancer.

Over the years, he may have become best known in Lutz for his 27 years as a fire department volunteer. Mr. Dennison joined in 1973 after his own house caught fire, said Jerry Goins, the fire department's longest-serving member. Mr. Dennison quickly rose to be chief and served for more than a decade as president of the fire association.

Goins said Mr. Dennison transformed the department into a social hub. Firefighters wrestled on the lawn. They devised hose-spraying stunts. They played pinball near the fire trucks.

Beneath it all lay a worthy motive. Making the fire station fun meant more volunteers hung out there, available to rush to an emergency. Nesmith credited Mr. Dennison with recruiting countless young people into professional firefighting.

"Pete was the type of person that you would follow him anywhere," Goins said.

In 1993, backed by firefighters, Mr. Dennison won Lutz's whimsical post of guv'na as the result of a fundraising competition. He was the community's third guv'na.

"He loved food," said Mr. Dennison's daughter, Debbie Wright. "He loved to laugh. He loved being with people and talking."

Bill Coats can be reached at coats@sptimes.com or 813 269-5309.

[Last modified January 10, 2008, 07:24:42]