Northpinellas: A century of Thanksgivings

A century of Thanksgivings

By BETSY BOLGER-PAULET

Dorothy Fulton Burt celebrates a big milestone today: her 100th birthday.

The first Thanksgiving of the new millennium is especially important to Dorothy Fulton Burt.

She has 100 good reasons for celebrating. Today she becomes a centenarian.

"It's amazing. I don't feel like I'm 100 years old," she said with a bright smile.

A long and healthy life is enough reason to be thankful for Mrs. Burt, who moved with her family to Tarpon Springs in 1910 and has lived at On Top of the World retirement community for 31 years.

Mrs. Burt still walks a mile or more several times a week, reads without glasses, loves to shop at Upper Pinellas Association for Retarded Citizens Value Village and remains active in clubs and activities at the retirement community.

Her only health complaint is being slightly hard of hearing.

A modest woman, she said she wants "to let my birthday pass by. No fuss and bother. But they won't let me."

Instead, she found herself at the center of attention several times this week. Tuesday, when she thought she was going to see her dentist, James Pitts, for her appointment, she discovered that she was greeted with birthday cake rather than dental tools. Then she was feted by friends and neighbors at her retirement community.

There were myriad cards and letters from family and friends -- and the president. (An avid Republican, Mrs. Burt cut off the signature). Today, she is the honored guest at her family's traditional Thanksgiving celebration.

Long life runs in her genes. A brother, Albert Roy Fulton, who killed 80 rattlesnakes helping clear land for the golf course across from Helen Ellis Memorial Hospital in Tarpon Springs, lived to age 97. A sister, Edna Wyatt, wife of a Tarpon Springs dentist who pulled teeth for a dollar or less during the Depression, died just short of her 100th birthday.

Mrs. Burt was born in Burgettstown, Pa., on Nov. 23, 1900. Ten years later, her parents brought her and her eight siblings to 10 acres just northeast of what is now the Riverhouse Restaurant on the north side of Anclote River. They paid $200 for the property where they established and operated the Riverside Dairy ranch until the Great Depression.

"I've seen a lot of changes," said the petite centenarian, who still drives her car for nearby shopping runs, so long as they don't involve U.S. 19.

She remembers when Tarpon Springs was a small village of pioneer families, and the names of friends and fellow pioneers: Campbells, Gauses, Douglases, Clarks and Seeleys.

"I was in the fourth graduating class, and my sister Bessie in the first class," she said. "Back then, there were no Greeks in school. The sponge industry was just beginning."

The social scene was simple in those days. Activities revolved around school or First Presbyterian Church, where the family worshipped.

Wearing a bathing suit her mother made, she learned to swim and dive in the pristine water of Wall Springs between Palm Harbor and Crystal Beach.

After graduating from Tarpon Springs High School, she studied one year at Florida State College for Women (now FSU) in Tallahassee, until the money ran out. After leaving Tallahassee, Mrs. Burt earned a teaching certificate in a two-year program at University of Florida and then taught elementary school for two years in Gainesville.

"Teaching was okay, but I soon realized my real interest was nursing," she said.

She graduated magna cum laude from Walter Reid Hospital School of Nursing, Baltimore, and became a government nurse in the Panama Canal Zone. That was where she met her husband, Donald George Burt, a graduate and instructor of naval engineering at Annapolis Naval Academy, Bethesda, Md.

One of her fondest memories is of the time her husband "took me for a ride through the canal on a submarine. We even submerged. That was exciting."

They had a daughter, Edith Annette, and a son, Donald G. Jr.

After traveling to several states, the family settled in Moorestown, N.J. But in 1957, they returned to the town where she grew up, Tarpon Springs, and she worked as a nurse for the Pinellas County Health Department.

The couple moved into the "Old World Spanish" building at On Top of the World in 1969. It was the second of two buildings in the complex, which now boasts 96 buildings.

Her husband died in 1972.

Mrs. Burt recalls the days of oil lamps and outhouses, hauling water and lots of walking.

"It was a harder time," she said. "Back then, we didn't get a shower every day and we wore hand-me-downs and were lucky to have shoes. But the people were true blue. We may have not had much but what we had was the best. We had love and family and caring. I have a lot to be thankful for."