FloridaFuture
July 6th, 2007, 03:02 PM
A historic tour through Tampa trivia
After 32 years with the city, author Fred Hearns is retiring to live out his dream of creating a bus tour through its rich history.
By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published July 6, 2007
The tour begins before we hit the elevator.
"This building was built in 1917, " Fred Hearns says. "Andrew Carnegie donated $5, 000 to the city to build this building."
We are in the Free Library, a Tampa Heights landmark where Hearns' office is based. He retires this summer as director of the Tampa Department of Community Affairs, where he's worked 32 years.
At 58, he's hanging it up early, he says, for his dream: a Tampa bus tour business.
A one-time journalist and working author who grew up in East Tampa, Hearns has spent much of his later life researching the city's history as a hobby. And by the endless stream of Tampa trivia that spills from his mouth at every turn, it's clear this is a passion. He's always learning new things, such as the fact that Helen Keller visited the Tampa Lighthouse for the Blind, something he found out just last week.
What Hearns has to offer, he says, is a tour that's both scenic and informative. He wants to show people the city's rich history - both white and black, the latter of which Hearns feels is underplayed.
His business, Tampa Bay History Tours, planned to host a special tour on July Fourth but won't officially open until October. He recently gave a Times reporter a sneak preview of several stops.
- - -
"I'm going to show you where Billy Graham started his ministry, " Hearns says at the corner of Franklin and Fortune streets. "Right there at that corner."
"Billy Graham began here, " says a city landmark marker. Hearns says America's most famous evangelist went to a Temple Terrace Bible college in the 1930s and spent his weekends here, preaching to people on skid row.
But the area holds more history, Hearns says. Fortune Street was named for Fortune Taylor, a black woman who owned 33 acres along the Hillsborough River. She earned a fortune as a baker, among other things, and went by Madame Fortune Taylor. She had a downtown bridge named after her later renamed for Laurel Street.
Hearns is like a point and shoot camera. Point to a corner, and he can rattle off a snapshot of the past.
- - -
Charles "Fred" Hearns was born in the Bronx but grew up in Tampa. He attended Middleton High School in the 1960s when it was segregated and helped lead a movement that reopened it as a high school about 30 years after integration had turned it into a middle school.
He documented the struggle to reopen Middleton as a high school in the book, Getting It Done! Rebuilding Black America Brick by Brick, released earlier this year.
Hearns is working on two more books, including a Tampa tourist guide. He doubts he can ever write fiction.
"There's so much truth people need to know, " he said. "There's hundreds of untold stories I want to tell."
- - -
The car passes police headquarters, and Hearns mentions how the site was home to Tampa's first four courthouses. American Indians burned the first in 1838, he says.
The current courthouse on Twiggs Street was named for George E. Edgecomb, Hillsborough County's first African-American judge.
"Now Ashley Drive, " Hearns says, "was named for William Ashley."
William Ashley, the city's first clerk, was in love with his slave, Nancy Ashley, who carried William's last name but could not marry him. They lived together as man and wife, Hearns says, and were buried together.
On Kennedy Boulevard, named for the president who visited Tampa days before his assassination, is the Henry B. Plant Museum.
Known for its unique minarets, it's the result of a race between railroad magnate Henry Plant and fellow tycoon Henry Flagler, who tried to outdo each other building Florida luxury hotels.
Before it became part of the University of Tampa campus, the then-Tampa Bay Hotel hosted Booker T. Washington, who spoke to an integrated crowd inside its grand casino. John Philip Sousa's band played in the hotel, too.
A few hundred yards away is a marker where Babe Ruth hit his longest exhibition home run in 1919 at Plant Field.
But at least one side of the field's historic moments hasn't been recognized, an oversight that Hearns plans to correct on his tours.
"What you won't find is that Jackie Robinson played a game here on the same field, " Hearns said.
Justin George can be reached at 813 226-3368 or jgeorge@sptimes.com.
Fred Hearns
Age: 58
Family: Four children, four grandchildren
Current gig: Director of the Tampa Department of Community Affairs
Soon-to-come gig: Owner of Tampa Bay History Tours
Author: Getting It Done! Rebuilding Black America Brick by Brick
Quote: He doesn't write fiction. "There's so much truth people need to know, " he said.
Stops on the Tampa Bay History bus tour
Cotanchobee - Fort Brooke Park/Channelside
Cotanchobee Park ("Where the big water meets the land") honors American Indians, including Seminole chief Osceola, who occupied this region prior to 1824, when Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson selected the site for a fort named for its first commander, Col. George Mercer Brooke.
Jose Marti Park
Freedom fighter Jose Marti raised more than $100, 000 from cigar workers and others for the 1895 war in Cuba. When in Tampa, he lived at Eighth Avenue and 13th Street in the area called Vicente Martinez "Ybor" City.
Perry Harvey Park
Central Avenue, a string of some 100 businesses during most of the 1900s, was home to singer Ray Charles and hosted Cab Calloway, James Brown and many others. Songwriter Hank Ballard discovers "the twist" dance here. The park that replaces Central Avenue is named for longshoremen union president Perry Harvey, who coined the term "Headstart" program.
Oaklawn Cemetery/Confederate & Slave Burial Grounds
This is the seventh-largest Confederate burial ground in the United States. Graves include: American Indians who died 2, 000 years ago, slaves, Union soldiers, V.M. Ybor, Gov. Henry Mitchell and gambling's "Bolita King" Charlie Wall.
Tampa Bay Hotel/H.B. Plant Museum
Built in 1891 for $3.5-million, railroad baron Henry B. Plant's hotel featured 500 rooms filled with 41 carloads of furnishings from all over Europe, including a sofa said to belong to Marie Antoinette. Guests included Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, Gloria Swanson, Babe Ruth, Sir Winston Churchill and speaker Booker T. Washington.
Bayshore Beautiful
Bayshore Beautiful began in 1891 when New York's Chester and Emilia Chapin purchased 110 acres and built a trolley line to Ballast Point. Today Bayshore features the world's longest continuous sidewalk and is home to the world's only fully rigged pirate ship, the Jose Gasparilla, commissioned in 1954 and named for Jose Gaspar, "a gentleman lieutenant of the Royal Spanish Navy."
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/06/Citytimes/A_historic_tour_throu.shtml
After 32 years with the city, author Fred Hearns is retiring to live out his dream of creating a bus tour through its rich history.
By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published July 6, 2007
The tour begins before we hit the elevator.
"This building was built in 1917, " Fred Hearns says. "Andrew Carnegie donated $5, 000 to the city to build this building."
We are in the Free Library, a Tampa Heights landmark where Hearns' office is based. He retires this summer as director of the Tampa Department of Community Affairs, where he's worked 32 years.
At 58, he's hanging it up early, he says, for his dream: a Tampa bus tour business.
A one-time journalist and working author who grew up in East Tampa, Hearns has spent much of his later life researching the city's history as a hobby. And by the endless stream of Tampa trivia that spills from his mouth at every turn, it's clear this is a passion. He's always learning new things, such as the fact that Helen Keller visited the Tampa Lighthouse for the Blind, something he found out just last week.
What Hearns has to offer, he says, is a tour that's both scenic and informative. He wants to show people the city's rich history - both white and black, the latter of which Hearns feels is underplayed.
His business, Tampa Bay History Tours, planned to host a special tour on July Fourth but won't officially open until October. He recently gave a Times reporter a sneak preview of several stops.
- - -
"I'm going to show you where Billy Graham started his ministry, " Hearns says at the corner of Franklin and Fortune streets. "Right there at that corner."
"Billy Graham began here, " says a city landmark marker. Hearns says America's most famous evangelist went to a Temple Terrace Bible college in the 1930s and spent his weekends here, preaching to people on skid row.
But the area holds more history, Hearns says. Fortune Street was named for Fortune Taylor, a black woman who owned 33 acres along the Hillsborough River. She earned a fortune as a baker, among other things, and went by Madame Fortune Taylor. She had a downtown bridge named after her later renamed for Laurel Street.
Hearns is like a point and shoot camera. Point to a corner, and he can rattle off a snapshot of the past.
- - -
Charles "Fred" Hearns was born in the Bronx but grew up in Tampa. He attended Middleton High School in the 1960s when it was segregated and helped lead a movement that reopened it as a high school about 30 years after integration had turned it into a middle school.
He documented the struggle to reopen Middleton as a high school in the book, Getting It Done! Rebuilding Black America Brick by Brick, released earlier this year.
Hearns is working on two more books, including a Tampa tourist guide. He doubts he can ever write fiction.
"There's so much truth people need to know, " he said. "There's hundreds of untold stories I want to tell."
- - -
The car passes police headquarters, and Hearns mentions how the site was home to Tampa's first four courthouses. American Indians burned the first in 1838, he says.
The current courthouse on Twiggs Street was named for George E. Edgecomb, Hillsborough County's first African-American judge.
"Now Ashley Drive, " Hearns says, "was named for William Ashley."
William Ashley, the city's first clerk, was in love with his slave, Nancy Ashley, who carried William's last name but could not marry him. They lived together as man and wife, Hearns says, and were buried together.
On Kennedy Boulevard, named for the president who visited Tampa days before his assassination, is the Henry B. Plant Museum.
Known for its unique minarets, it's the result of a race between railroad magnate Henry Plant and fellow tycoon Henry Flagler, who tried to outdo each other building Florida luxury hotels.
Before it became part of the University of Tampa campus, the then-Tampa Bay Hotel hosted Booker T. Washington, who spoke to an integrated crowd inside its grand casino. John Philip Sousa's band played in the hotel, too.
A few hundred yards away is a marker where Babe Ruth hit his longest exhibition home run in 1919 at Plant Field.
But at least one side of the field's historic moments hasn't been recognized, an oversight that Hearns plans to correct on his tours.
"What you won't find is that Jackie Robinson played a game here on the same field, " Hearns said.
Justin George can be reached at 813 226-3368 or jgeorge@sptimes.com.
Fred Hearns
Age: 58
Family: Four children, four grandchildren
Current gig: Director of the Tampa Department of Community Affairs
Soon-to-come gig: Owner of Tampa Bay History Tours
Author: Getting It Done! Rebuilding Black America Brick by Brick
Quote: He doesn't write fiction. "There's so much truth people need to know, " he said.
Stops on the Tampa Bay History bus tour
Cotanchobee - Fort Brooke Park/Channelside
Cotanchobee Park ("Where the big water meets the land") honors American Indians, including Seminole chief Osceola, who occupied this region prior to 1824, when Maj. Gen. Andrew Jackson selected the site for a fort named for its first commander, Col. George Mercer Brooke.
Jose Marti Park
Freedom fighter Jose Marti raised more than $100, 000 from cigar workers and others for the 1895 war in Cuba. When in Tampa, he lived at Eighth Avenue and 13th Street in the area called Vicente Martinez "Ybor" City.
Perry Harvey Park
Central Avenue, a string of some 100 businesses during most of the 1900s, was home to singer Ray Charles and hosted Cab Calloway, James Brown and many others. Songwriter Hank Ballard discovers "the twist" dance here. The park that replaces Central Avenue is named for longshoremen union president Perry Harvey, who coined the term "Headstart" program.
Oaklawn Cemetery/Confederate & Slave Burial Grounds
This is the seventh-largest Confederate burial ground in the United States. Graves include: American Indians who died 2, 000 years ago, slaves, Union soldiers, V.M. Ybor, Gov. Henry Mitchell and gambling's "Bolita King" Charlie Wall.
Tampa Bay Hotel/H.B. Plant Museum
Built in 1891 for $3.5-million, railroad baron Henry B. Plant's hotel featured 500 rooms filled with 41 carloads of furnishings from all over Europe, including a sofa said to belong to Marie Antoinette. Guests included Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, Gloria Swanson, Babe Ruth, Sir Winston Churchill and speaker Booker T. Washington.
Bayshore Beautiful
Bayshore Beautiful began in 1891 when New York's Chester and Emilia Chapin purchased 110 acres and built a trolley line to Ballast Point. Today Bayshore features the world's longest continuous sidewalk and is home to the world's only fully rigged pirate ship, the Jose Gasparilla, commissioned in 1954 and named for Jose Gaspar, "a gentleman lieutenant of the Royal Spanish Navy."
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/06/Citytimes/A_historic_tour_throu.shtml