Northpinellas: A great Floridian

A great Floridian

Ransom Olds had great plans for Oldsmar, but a recent honor makes some wonder whether he was a great person.

By ED QUIOCO

By some accounts, Ransom Eli Olds was a pioneer whose vision in the early 1900s was the foundation for the city he founded at the top of Old Tampa Bay.

He fancied Oldsmar, which was named after him, to become a bustling metropolis of 100,000. According to historical accounts, Olds invested $4.5-million in the community and used planners from Boston to design the city, which was modeled after Washington, D.C.

Sounds like a swell guy, right? Well, maybe.

He also spent $100,000 to drill an oil well that spewed only sulfur water. Local tales have it that oil was poured into the well each morning to con potential investors into thinking there was black gold under the city. When Oldsmar didn't grow as fast as he had planned and his investments failed to pay off, Olds sold his assets and abandoned the city.

"He saw the handwriting on the wall and the handwriting said, "Olds, you are 90 years too early' so he dumped it," said former Mayor Jerry Beverland, the city's unofficial historian. "Poor Oldsmar sat here for 70 years trying to stagger back after he left. It was just business to him."

Whether he was a visionary with bad timing or a rich opportunist just trying to make a buck, Olds is now officially a "Great Floridian."

Olds, with about 370 other figures around the state, has been named to the Great Floridians 2000 list, which is being compiled by the Florida League of Cities and the Florida Department of State. The project is an effort to commemorate historic personalities at the turn of the millennium.

"It's just a way of saying a posthumous thank-you," said Catherine Clark, Great Floridians 2000 coordinator. "They didn't have to be famous or rich or a household name, they just had to do something wonderful for the community."

Translation: The list isn't exactly an exclusive club.

The program is meant to be a feel-good recognition of people whose names may only be well-known in their communities. The criteria are relaxed by design.

The most important guidelines are that the nominee must be deceased and have a structure, preferably at least 30 years old, associated with him or her. Nominations must be submitted by a Florida municipality, which has to cough up $175 for a 1-foot, navy blue, circular plaque that will be affixed to the structure.

A seven-member committee of elected officials and residents decides if the nominees become Great Floridians. So far, the most common reason why the committee has turned down an application has been because the person is still living, Clark said.

The deadline to submit applications is Nov. 15. The Great Floridians will get their names along with a brief biography compiled into a booklet.

"It's a way to commemorate their good works," Clark said. "If they have done such important things that lots of people recognize them, who in our committee would say, "Well, this doesn't count?' "

So far, there are 20 Pinellas County figures whose names have been submitted for the honor. Half of those names were submitted by Tarpon Springs.

"We are the oldest incorporated city in the county," said Dr. Kathleen Monahan, director of Tarpon Springs' Department of Cultural and Civic Services. "We are involved in promoting our heritage."

The city's nominees range from Demos Megaloudis, a Tarpon Springs civic leader and aide to U.S. Rep. Michael Bilirakis, R-Palm Harbor, to one of the city's founders, Anson P.K. Safford, and his sister Dr. Mary Jane Safford.

Anson Safford is a former territorial governor of Arizona who is said to have known Wyatt Earp. Safford traveled to Tarpon Springs and represented a company that marketed 20,000 acres in Pasco, Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties.

"He was really quite a colorful character," said Phyllis Kolianos, curator of the Tarpon Springs Area Historical Society.

His sister was no slouch either.

Mary Safford was the first female physician to practice in Florida, sometimes traveling by boat to Clearwater to treat patients. She also was a Civil War nurse who treated soldiers in Cairo, Ill. Her care earned her the nickname the Cairo Angel.

Another legendary Pinellas figure nominated for the list is Safety Harbor's Odet Philippe, believed to be the county's first non-native settler. Settling here in the 1830s, Philippe's life has been romanticized by wild tales.

There's the one about Philippe being captured by the Pirate Gomez and then curing the sea-bandit of illness with the healing water of Espiritu Santo springs. And the one about him being the long-lost son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette and a surgeon in Napoleon Bonaparte's army.

Olds may not have such colorful stories attached to his name, but his legacy still burns in the memories of some old-timers. Albeit, some of those memories may not be that pleasant.

"I'm glad he developed Oldsmar, but I wouldn't call him a great Floridian," Beverland said. "He's more like a great carmaker."

Beverland recalled a story about how Olds persuaded the family of former mayor and city council member, Charles H. "Bud" Lister, to move to Oldsmar. Olds talked Lister's father into operating a conveyor belt business in Oldsmar and offered to finance the venture.

Using the family's land on Lake Kissimmee as collateral, Lister's father agreed to the plan. But the business went sour about the time Olds decided to abandon the city. He took the Listers' land with him.

"Bud Lister is turning over in his grave right now," Beverland said. "I wish Bud was here to tell you what he thought of Olds. He screwed Bud's father out of three miles of land."

About a month after he died in 1998, Beverland persuaded city officials to name the city's wastewater treatment plant after Lister. That's a small consolation considering what could have happened if his family had kept the land.

"If Bud Lister's father would have held on to the land, the family could have been multigazillionares," Beverland said. "R.E. Olds was always a sore spot for him."

Olds dangled the prospect of cheap labor to encourage Northern companies to relocate to Oldsmar. After persuading workers from his plant in Michigan to move to Oldsmar, Olds built housing for them without proper sanitary facilities, according to a 34-page booklet, Reflections of Oldsmar, published by the Friends of the Oldsmar Library in 1996.

"R.E. Olds was not a particularly well-liked man," according to the booklet.