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A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P Q S T V W Z
Choose the first letter of a city name to see its Great Floridians.
Keystone Heights (Northeast)
William M. Beam, was born August 15, 1923 in Kearny, New Jersey. He graduated from Penn State University with a degree in engineering, and moved to Keystone Heights in 1950 with the E.I. DuPont Corporation. In 1960 he was elected to the Keystone Heights City Council. From 1960 to 2000 he served seven terms as mayor and six terms as a councilman for Keystone Heights. He was instrumental in the funding and construction of a new City Hall. Beam spearheaded the formation of the Keystone Heights Senior Center and served as chairman of the city’s Public Works Department, overseeing a major paving and drainage project for all unpaved streets within the city. He was a member and former officer with the Keystone Heights Volunteer Fire Department and was instrumental in establishing the state’s first volunteer emergency medical rescue squad. William M. Beam died August 12, 2000. His Great Floridian plaque is located at the Keystone Heights City Hall, 555 South Lawrence Boulevard, Keystone Heights.
John Edward Larson was born June 27, 1900 in Brookston, Pennsylvania. He entered the University of Florida Law School, graduating in 1927 with an LLB degree. In 1925, he was elected school trustee and served as mayor of Keystone Heights from 1925 to 1927 and as a Clay County commissioner from 1927 to 1928. He was elected Clay County representative for the 1929-31 legislative sessions and in 1933 served as Florida state senator. In 1933, he was appointed Collector of Internal Revenue for Florida by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and served until 1939. He was elected state treasurer in 1940 and was re-elected six consecutive times. In addition to his duties as treasurer, he served as State Insurance Commissioner, State Fire Marshall and Administrator of the Automobile Financial Responsibility Law. John Edwin Larson died January 24, 1965. His Great Floridian plaque is located at the Melrose Lodge No. 89 (Masonic Lodge Building), 290 Palmetto Avenue, Keystone Heights.
Key West (Southeast)
Howard S. England, a civilian architect for the Navy, was born in 1914 in Key West. In 1968 he was assigned to investigate and report on Fort Zachary Taylor, at that time an overgrown dumpsite. On his own time, and using his own resources, he began to research the fort. He uncovered the largest collection of Civil War armaments in the United States, including cannon, guns, a de-salinization plant and thousands of cannon balls and projectiles. He voluntarily continued his research for nine years and discovered how the armaments came to be buried. In 1971, Fort Zachary Taylor became a National Historic Site, a National Landmark in 1973 and, in 1985, a state park. England created a museum for the artifacts, wrote his memoirs and donated them to the Friends of Fort Taylor. Howard S. England died in 1999. His Great Floridian plaque is located at Fort Zachary Taylor State Historic Site, end of Southard Street and Truman Annex, Key West.
Mel Fisher was born in 1922 in Hobart, Indiana. In 1950 Fisher moved to California and opened the state’s first dive shop. Shortly afterwards, he and his wife, Dolores, began to lead diving expeditions around the world. In 1964 the Fishers came to Sebastian, Florida where they began to dive on the remains of a Spanish treasure fleet from 1715. With an experienced team of divers and engineers, they formed Universal Salvors, later renamed Treasure Salvors. By 1968 they decided to look for the lost galleons of a 1622 treasure fleet which had reportedly sunk in the Florida Keys. One ship, the Nuestra Senora de Atocha, was described as one of the richest shipwrecks ever lost. In 1973 Fisher found a silver bar inscribed with numbers that matched the Spanish manifest of the Nuestra Senora de Atocha. Over the next ten years, thousands of gold coins, jewelry and the stern section of another of the 1622 galleons, were discovered. On Memorial Day weekend 1985 Mel Fisher’s Treasure Salvors discovered the Atocha’s "motherlode." Estimates of the wreck’s value ranged from $200 million to $400 million. Salvaged were 127, 000 silver coins; more than 900 silver bars averaging 70 pounds apiece; 700 high-quality emeralds; and 250 pounds of gold. In 1982 Fisher founded the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society to display and protect the artifacts he had discovered. The Society’s Key West museum contains the richest single collection of 17th century maritime antiques in the hemisphere. Mel Fisher died in 1998. His Great Floridian plaque is located at the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum, 200 Greene Street, Key West.
Ernest M. Hemingway, was born July 21, 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. In 1917, he took a job as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star. The next year he left to serve in World War I with the Red Cross. After being wounded in Italy he returned home, married and moved to Paris as the European correspondent of the Toronto Daily Star. In Paris from 1925 to 1929 he produced the short story collections In Our Time (1925), and Men Without Women (1927) and the novel, The Sun Also Rises (1926). In 1927 he divorced and married Pauline Pfeiffer. The couple left Paris the next year for Key West, where they bought an antebellum home. They furnished their Key West house with rugs, tiles, chandeliers and furniture they had brought from around the world. In Key West, Hemingway completed A Farewell to Arms (1929), Death in the Afternoon (1932), The Green Hills of Africa (1935) and To Have and Have Not (1937). While living in Key West, Hemingway met Martha Gellhorn, divorced Pauline and married Martha. As part of the divorce, Pauline got 51% of the Key West property and continued to live there. In 1944 Hemingway went to Europe to cover World War II. Here he met Mary Welsh, who became his fourth wife. The couple moved to Cuba. Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea was published in 1952 and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In 1954 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Ernest Hemingway died July 2, 1961 in Ketchum, Idaho. His Great Floridian plaque is located at the Hemingway House, 907 Whitehead Street, Key West.
Walter Sayers Lightbourn was born in 1861. His father came to Key West from Turks Island, one of the Bahamas. Walter S. Lightbourn was reared in Key West. At 15 he decided to learn the art of cigar making. After several attempts, he established the Cortez Cigar Company, which employed more than 300 cigar-makers. The company’s slogan was "Cigars—For Men of Brains." In addition to his business affairs Lightbourn was a Mason, an Odd Fellow, an Elk and a member of the board of governors of the Chamber of Commerce. He also owned tobacco plantations in Cuba and it was there that he died, August 10, 1906. His Great Floridian plaque is located at La Pensione, 809 Truman Avenue, Key West.
Harry S Truman was born May 8, 1884 in Lamar, Missouri. In 1890, the Trumans moved to Independence. Following high school graduation in 1901, Truman worked at a variety of jobs including farming, oil drilling and banking. During World War I he served in France, reaching the rank of captain. After failing in the haberdashery business, he ran for judge in Jackson County, Missouri, a post he held until 1934 when he ran for the U.S. Senate. He remained in the Senate until President Franklin Roosevelt, seeking a fourth term in 1944, named him as his running mate. On April 12, 1945, less than three months after becoming vice president, he was sworn in as 33rd president of the United States following the death of President Roosevelt. Truman lived at the Little White House in Key West for 175 days during his presidency from 1946 through 1952. In 1947, he dedicated Everglades National Park. Harry S Truman died December 26, 1972. His Great Floridian plaque is located at the Truman Little White House, 111 Front Street, Key West.
A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P Q S T V W Z
Choose the first letter of a city name to see its Great Floridians.