Winter Park in the ’60s is a Blast From the Past

by Randy Noles

When Dorothy first laid eyes on Oz, she famously told Toto that “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” I felt the same way in the summer of 1966, when my family moved from Florence, Alabama, to Winter Park, Florida. My dad had been sent by his company to manage the Winter Park Sun-Herald, a long-established weekly newspaper it had just acquired.

In this exotic outpost, the bumpy streets were brick but the homes were concrete, which seemed entirely backward. The trees were choked with what I later learned was Spanish moss, and the hoity-toity shops – many of which closed in the summer – didn’t seem particularly welcoming. And there were Yankees everywhere.

The Sun Herald office was on South Park Avenue, where The Gap is now, so I spent much of my time roaming the downtown area’s not-so-mean streets. I soon grew accustomed to the town’s quirks and was enchanted by its beauty. Now, 45 years later, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

That’s why I’m excited about the Winter Park Historical Association’s planned exhibition, “Park Avenue in the ’60s and ’70s,” slated to open Oct. 14. Organizers are seeking merchandise, labels, restaurant menus, photographs and other memorabilia of the era to be displayed.

Talking about the project with Susan Skolfield, the association’s executive director, got me to thinking about growing up in Winter Park during those turbulent years. Well, at least they were turbulent years everywhere else; in Winter Park, not so much.

Most people who now live in the aptly named City of Homes likely arrived since the ’80s. Still, I thought newcomers and long-timers alike might enjoy a jaunt down a brick-paved Memory Lane.

You know you were a Winter Park kid if...

You were taught to swim by the legendary Fleetwood D. “Fleet” Peeples, swimming instructor and Director of Aquatics at Rollins College for 50 years and then the first swimming coach at Winter Park High School. Fleet is said to have taught more than 20,000 children to swim in Winter Park’s lakes, saying that his drown-proofing technique was to “love them across the lake. You have to love them into doing what you want them to do.”

You bought the latest Marvel comics at Irvine’s Drug Store on Park Avenue and, if you had an extra 50 cents, you ordered chocolate malt at the soda fountain. But you didn’t linger. After all, this was a business, not a damn library, kid. The marble-topped counter, by the way, is still in use a few blocks south at the Briar Patch.

You danced to the music of the Rocking Roadrunners or We the People at the Winter Park Youth Center off Lakemont Drive and adorned your room with incense, black-light posters and lava lamps from the area’s first head shop, the Infinite Mushroom at Colonial Plaza. You bought your back-to-school bellbottoms and desert boots at Ivey’s or J.C. Penney in the Winter Park Mall, which was the largest enclosed shopping center in the Southeast when it opened in 1964.

Your first date involved sliced roast beef sandwiches and tater tots at Beefy King, near the corner of Park and Fairbanks avenues, followed by a movie at the Colony Theater and a banana split at the pink-and-white Yum Yum Shoppe. You may even have been served by an earnest young counter attendant named Gary Brewer, who would become mayor in 1994.

You celebrated special occasions at the Villa Nova on U.S. 17-92, owned and operated by Joseph “Papa” and Antonetta “Mama” D’Agostino. Or you might have chosen Park Avenue’s Beef and Bottle, where you were greeted by assistant manager Arthur “Pappy” Kennedy. Kennedy would become Orlando’s first black city council member in 1972.

You had Sunday dinner at the homey Imperial House, overlooking Lake Killarney, “where the royal rib reigns supreme.” Genial owner Dick Higley called it “the Im-pur-al House” in his television commercials. Caricatures of Central Florida luminaries adorned the walls, and an organist provided background music. For a juicy burger and a thick shake you went to Roper’s Drive-Inn, on U.S. 17-92 where a Steak ‘n Shake is now, and were served by pretty female carhops on roller skates.

Your dad took you to Miller’s Hardware on Fairbanks to gather the supplies required for you to complete your Saturday chores and for him to repair the ever-balky Family Truckster. Miller’s, still in the same location, is now the oldest continuously operating retail business in Winter Park.

You avoided gritty Hannibal Square, in those racially uneasy times, and would have laughed had anyone suggested that it would one day become an uber-trendy shopping and dining district.

You snapped pictures of the preening peacocks along Genius Drive, where the Windsong subdivision now sits, and bought groceries at family-owned Gooding’s, which technically was in Maitland but was much nicer than no-frills Pantry Pride. Your parents sipped cocktails at the swinging Langford Hotel and caught a set from Misty and Jack (“Tennessee Birdwalk”) at The Everglades, at the corner of Orange and Michigan avenues.

I could – and have – gone on and on. But the point is, if you have items that the Winter Park Historical Association could borrow for its exhibition, call (407) 647-2330 or send an email to museum@wphistory.org. They’ll be happy to arrange to pick up your items if necessary.

Me? I don’t have anything to share but memories. And I just shared some of them with you.