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Vivian Blessings Oral History · Winter Park History Museum's "A Stroll Down Park Avenue"

• 0:00
  INTERVIEWER: November the 2nd, 1987. Vivian Wycoff-Blessing, one of the old timers of Winter Park, is going to tell us about her family and her early memories of Winter Park as it was developing.
• 0:21
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Well, let me see, I guess I’ll start with... She asked me to start with uhm... my patriot, the Wycoff who came to this country in 1632 from Holland. Uh... He was a farmer. He had... He was also a uh... property manager for large acres of farm land in Holland and he came over alone to the New World, the United States, and landed in – finally landed – in what is now– what was know then- and is still known as Flatbush, Brooklyn.
• 1:20
  INTERVIEWER: Oh, oh, one of the early ones.
• 1:25
  VIVIAN BLESSING: And so he got a job with...
• 1:29
  INTERVIEWER: Do you remember the date?
• 1:31
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Yes, I just told you, 1632.
• 1:35
  INTERVIEWER: 1632?
• 1:36
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Uh, huh. And, uhm... no... was it 1632 or 1622? 1632 I think. Well, anyway, he came over uh... and settled in Flatbush, Brooklyn where he got a job as an overseer for a man who owned quite a bit of property. And he took care of this land for a number of years and while he was here he met another Hollander. I don’t know her last name but her first name was Gertrude. But it wasn’t spelled Gertrude it was spelled Gerte or something like that, the Holland. They were married and he continued on supervising this land. Eventually, through the years, he was able to purchase this farm and he became a pretty well known person in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Of course it wasn’t called that in those days. And the Peter Stuyvesant Church in Flatbush is where he is- where he is buried, underneath the church.
• 2:48
  VIVIAN BLESSING: And he started building his home with his wife and he started having children and as they did, they added one room to another. Today, that house is the oldest house in the state of New York. It’s the oldest house in the city of New York and it has been refurbished by the Wycoff family, we’re called cousins, who contribute some money toward the upkeep of the house and New York State and the city of New York, who decided that it was such a national shrine, that they would help with a great deal of money which they have done.
• 3:40
  VIVIAN BLESSING: They are now conducting tours through the house for all the schoolchildren in New York,
• 3:49
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: Long Island, Astoria, so forth. They also have people there, volunteers, Wycoff cousins, who live in the surrounding area who teach these children in classes about what went on during the time that my ancestor and his family lived in the house. It is being furnished by the cousins throughout the country. And uh... in other words, it’s a landmark of New York.
• 4:33
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: It’s a pretty house. I’ve seen it. Unfortunately, it is in a what you’d call a middle-class black neighborhood. And it was funny, the first time I went to visit the house I couldn’t find it. And we drove up to a filling station and a black man who owned it came out and we asked him if he knew or ever heard of the Wycoff House. He says “yes, it’s right around the corner.” So he knew all about it too. But anyway it’s quite famous and we’re very proud of it. A lot of the-- [Interruption/tape glitch] A lot of the Wycoff’s uh... from that start- starting generation moved to Ohio, to Indiana; some stayed in New York and uhm... my father, as he was known, Willis Burly Wycoff’s uh... family, moved to Ohio.
• 5:41
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: They had a farm and my father’s father died when he was eight years old so my grandmother had to sell the farm, uh... kept the house, which was in a very small community and started a boarding house. And that’s the way she took care of my father and his sister.
• 6:08
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: Uhm... My father went into the electrical business at a very early age because he had to help support the family. And he served as an apprentice and then became a full fledged master electrician. Uh... He went into partnership with a man from Indiana and they eventually had electrical appliance and electrical contracting stores in Ohio, Illinois and Indiana.
• 6:36
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: This continued for several years and all of a sudden we- my father heard about the Florida boom and he decided that that’s what he wanted to do to invest his money in property and move to Florida. But in the meantime, he was offered a job in South America and it was to be realized in about a two-year period. So he sold his partnership to his friend, his part of the partnership, and with that money moved the family toward south and South America. Well, we were in Nashville, Tennessee and my-- one of my sisters became very ill and we had to be there for a period of about six months. And from there we went to New Orleans and we stayed there for about eight months. Uh... My father had already sent his money to Florida, bought the land, didn’t see it, in good faith, just turned over his-– practically everything he had.
• 7:57
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: Anyway, we stayed in New Orleans for about a year and then headed for Florida and it was about time for the job in South America to develop and he wanted to see his land.
• 8:11
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: Well, we ended up in Daytona Beach. My mother didn’t like Daytona, so from there we moved to Orlando. In the meantime, he found out that the land that he had purchased was under water, so everything that he had was gone. He had to start all over. He had five children.
• 8:33
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: And it was rough. He got a job helping to wire the old Fort Gatlin Hotel and during that period, we moved to Winter Park.
• 8:43
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: We moved to a placed called a-– I can’t remember the name of it but it was a tourist camp. In those days they didn’t have motels; all they had was a room that you could rent for the night with breakfast, the old-- the- the new thing, bed and breakfast. But with five children you know that’s hard to do.
• 9:09
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: So we were lucky to get a small house in this tourist camp. And there were a lot of people there from all over the United States. They too had in-- had invested their money in poor land, some under water, some worthless. And so they had to start all over. Well, we had a glorious time in that tourist camp. We met a lot of people who became long life friends until they passed away or whatever.
• 9:46
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: And uh... then we moved to a place on Orange Avenue. We got a nice little house there.
• 9:55
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: And at that time, my kid sister was on the way so we stayed there until she was born and mother was able to move again and we moved to Winter Park. And we got a little two story house and we stayed in that for a few years and then my dad bought the Jackson Estate house on Comstock Avenue. Across the street were the tennis courts and everything was just great. In the meantime, we were all going to school at the Park Avenue Elementary which was from kindergarten through high school and uh... the 12th grade had their classes above the city hall. They had a room large enough up there to accommodate these students.
• 10:51
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: Then they built the-- what they called “the high school”. There was no such thing as middle school and all that stuff. And I was in the 6th grade about to graduate when that school was finished. So when it was done all of the 6th graders marched– all the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th students marched over to Huntington Avenue where the new high school stood. And we were all thrilled to death.
• 11:28
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: We had a lot of fun at that school. Uh... We had a good football team and uh...
• 11:37
  Brooklyn, and places on the Island: we had a big barren field before they built the-- I don’t know what you’d call it, the--
• 11:46
  INTERVIEWER: Gymnasium?
• 11:48
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Gymnasium, yeah. Uhm... We used to have all sorts of activities in that barren field and then the built the gymnasium, we had big basketball teams, and we had tea dances in the afternoon which were a lot of fun. We’d get all dressed up.
• 12:12
  VIVIAN BLESSING: We’d go over there and try to dance with our best beau. Had a lot of good memories about that. While we were living on Comstock, we were close to Central Park and uh... it wasn’t unusual for all the children living near the park to go down there and play. [Clears throat] Excuse me. And we would play until it became dark. It was safe and nobody bothered anybody. The chief of police was always sitting on the bench in the park, or his assistant.
• 12:59
  VIVIAN BLESSING: The chief was Mr. Overstreet. And also on the park bench was Foster Fanning, who had Fanning’s Plumbing. And Dr. Hotard whose office was right across the street. And Dr.
• 13:16
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Gary who owned Gary’s Pharmacy. And Dr. Burke, another doctor in the community.
• 13:24
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Dr. Hotard more or less catered – or took care of – all of the people in Winter Park with the exception of the black people and Dr. Gardner took care of them. He didn’t make much money and he and his wife lived over the drug store, Doct-- uh... Gary’s drug store.
• 13:52
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Dr. Gardner would take anything that was given him and naturally they had a very meager income. Shortly before doctor– the doctor retired, a few of the local townspeople got together and collected enough money to buy him a brand new automobile. And he was in seventh heaven and he dro- drove that car until he died.
• 14:24
  VIVIAN BLESSING: His wife stayed on in the apartment after his death and every night, you could see her standing in front of Gary’s Pharmacy drinking a Coca-Cola. That seemed to be the highlight of her life. She was very active in the Eastern Stars and she had a lot of friends.
• 14:51
  VIVIAN BLESSING: But other than that, she didn’t participate in many of the community activities.
• 14:59
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Winter Park, when we came here, was a very small town. We had wooden sidewalks, we had clay streets. We had-- Where the Barnett Bank is today was the old Hinkle Building. It was made of wood, two-story and there was a bookshop there run by Belle Thompson’s father and she eventually ran it.
• 15:29
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Next to that was a chocolate shop, a little restaurant where you could get an excellent meal, soup to nuts, for $.75 which in those days was a lot of money but people that could went there and enjoyed the best food in town. And next to that was a shoe repair and further up the street was the old Baby Grand Theater. And a block past what is-- what was then known as Taylor’s Pharmacy, was the post office.
• 16:18
  VIVIAN BLESSING: The bank stood on the corner of Interlochen and Park and it’s still there. It now houses, I believe, the mortgage department, part of the mortgage department of Barnett Bank.
• 16:37
  VIVIAN BLESSING: I worked in that little bank. In fact, I did a lot of things before I went to that bank.
• 16:47
  VIVIAN BLESSING: I was cashier at the Baby Grand Theater. I didn’t get much money but I got to see the movies for free. I cashiered at the Annie Russell Theater and it was there that I met Dorothy Lockhart, a splendid woman, very brilliant; sometimes hard to get along with but other than that a good friend.
• 17:18
  VIVIAN BLESSING: And in between, I worked on Saturdays at the bakery. And at the end of the day, which
• 17:27
  was at 10: 00 at night, we were allowed to take over the-- take home the leftovers which was wonderful. It was during the Depression that all this was happening and things were hard; hard times for all of us. I know our Garden Club provided the flowers and part of the food for our junior/senior proms which were held at the Women’s Club.
• 18:06
  was at 10: A lot of the students felt that they couldn’t go because they didn’t have adequate clothes to wear. There just wasn’t any money. So people, certain women in the community, made sure that they had nice clothes to wear so they could enjoy this-- these festivities.
• 18:37
  was at 10: One of the highlights I think of growing up in Winter Park was watching the winter people come to the community between January and the last of March; very, very wealthy people.
• 19:00
  was at 10: They either stayed at the Old Seminole or the Old Alabama. They brought their big cars and they all had chauffeurs and you could walk down Park Avenue and see the line of these old, huge automobiles. And the chauffeur- chauffeur, dressed very elegantly with gloves, hat, et cetera, and these women would shop at the little stores that were...
• 19:45
  INTERVIEWER: Phillips Block, wasn’t it?
• 19:49
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Phillips Block, North Park Avenue.
• 19:51
  INTERVIEWER: Across from Jacobson’s?
• 19:53
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Across where Jacobson’s now is. Uh... Before Jacobson’s, there was uh...
• 19:59
  VIVIAN BLESSING: the Winter Park Hotel was there, and uh... it was a family hotel. I never was in the building, but we all knew that it was the Winter Park hotel.
• 20:12
  VIVIAN BLESSING: But anyway, back to these winter people. They brought a lot of money into the community and the shops that we had at that time were mostly from Ogunquit, Maine. We had a shop called Barney’s Linen. They were from Petoskey, Michigan. And I’m going way back when things were rough, very little money-- Linens were quite inexpensive, but in Barney’s it was nothing to pay $140 for a tablecloth or $50 for a set of towels.
• 21:03
  VIVIAN BLESSING: These money-- these people had the money to buy all this stuff.
• 21:12
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Eve Proctor had a small lingerie shop in that block and at the end, a lady ran a hat shop. She made the hats herself. They were quite elegant and very, very expensive. These merchants made enough from the three months that they could live the whole year. That’s how nice it was for them.
• 21:42
  VIVIAN BLESSING: For we town people, we didn’t go in the shops. They were more-- too, too expensive.
• 21:51
  VIVIAN BLESSING: But we enjoyed watching the parade and that’s what it was when these people came. And after they left, the town was just desolate.
• 22:05
  VIVIAN BLESSING: In high school we had a camaraderie with Rollins, especially the freshmen, and we’d often participate in a lot of their activities off campus. When the Rollins Tars would have a football game they’d have a big bon fire and we’d all rally around that and then we’d have a snake dance down Park Avenue.
• 22:28
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Oh, and another thing we used to have in Winter Park, the old train station. I hated to see that torn down it was really something to see, but there was a circle in front of the old train station and very often, we would have street dances in front of the station. And I’m going back to the days when we did the Charleston and all that sort of stuff. And even though I wasn’t really grown up, I uh... anticip-- I participated in the dancing and they had a contest for the best Charleston dancer and the best this and the best that. The whole community depended upon one another and it seemed in those days that everything we did, we all did together. For instance, we had a good baseball team. Everybody would go out and watch 'em play at the old Harper Shepherd Park. It wasn’t beautiful like it is now. In fact, I don’t think we even had bleachers. We may have but I can't remember ever sitting in them.
• 23:42
  VIVIAN BLESSING: A man by the name of Francis Harper started a bar. And the night he opened, all of us left the baseball game — all of us old enough – and went to Harper’s. He had uh...
• 23:58
  VIVIAN BLESSING: one room open, he only served beer, he had barrels for tables, he had red-red checkered tablecloths and I think beer sold for a nickel – a glass of beer for a nickel – I’m not quite sure but it was very cheap.
• 24:18
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Gradually, Francis enlarged the bar, got a liquor license, and he added a big dining room which is now Cordon Bleu. And in the back of the bar was a big dance hall.
• 24:33
  VIVIAN BLESSING: And if you didn’t go there on Saturday night you just weren’t anybody.
• 24:39
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Buddy Ebsen used to come there and even after he left Orlando and went out to Hollywood or to New York on the stage, and then eventually to Hollywood-- Whenever he’d come home to visit his parents he would bring his wife and they would dance and it was fun to watch him. He was known to all of us. He used to water ski on Lake Virginia.
• 25:06
  VIVIAN BLESSING: He didn’t have the skis like they have today. It looked like an old--[Interviewer's question inaudible] Well, it was just a- an old flat board with a rope around the top and that’s the way you water skied in those days.
• 25:22
  INTERVIEWER: [Inaudible] go back to high school prom.
• 25:26
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Well, we approached Buddy Ebsen to dance at our high school prom and he told us that it would cost us $5.00. Well, we didn’t have $5.00 and we said you’ve got to be kidding. He said “I’m a dancer and I’ll get paid for it.” Well, we eventually raked up the $5.00. Where we got it, I’ll never know.
• 25:52
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Uh... He used uh... Another thing that we used to do-- and we’d all go swimming down
• 25:59
  at Rollins. Mother would pack our lunch about 8: 00 in the morning and all six children
• 26:06
  would go down to Rollins and we’d swim from 8:30 in the morning 'til about 5: 00 at night.
• 26:14
  would go down to Rollins and we’d swim from 8:30 in the morning 'til about 5: In high school we had a lot of our swimming meets there. They had a 30 foot tower.
• 26:22
  would go down to Rollins and we’d swim from 8:30 in the morning 'til about 5: We had diving contests. We had everything going on in Winter Park. It didn’t cost much money to do anything. It was just the fun of living here, growing up here and being here during all these times.
• 26:38
  would go down to Rollins and we’d swim from 8:30 in the morning 'til about 5: [Interviewer's question inaudible]
• 26:40
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Another thing I remember vividly about Winter Park, we had a May Day celebration on the grounds of the Behre Estate. He allowed the community to use the grounds, and if I’m not mistaken that today it is now known as Chismond Terrace. But before all those houses were built it was just acres and acres of land on the water. It was a beautiful place and we’d go over there. We had May dances. It was like a- a picnic and the whole town attended. And at the end of the afternoon, when all the festivities were over, they’d have a person in a canoe paddle down along the shore and they called him Chief Osceola.
• 27:41
  VIVIAN BLESSING: I was at a DAR meeting not long ago and one of our speakers was a young Indian girl who is studying at Rollins and her purpose in life is to help other Indians because they stray from being educated. They- they resent it, they don’t like it. And these Indians that are going to school are doing just that in order to try to get their people to continue their schooling. The reason I brought this up was because she was a direct descendent of Chief Osceola and I wanted desperately to talk to her after the meeting but she had to leave early to attend classes.
• 28:38
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Anyway, that was another big event that we had in Winter Park and as I say the whole town participated. We had some-– Getting back to my classes in high school, we did a lot of great things. We had operettas, we had musicals, we had class plays, and we had a great deal of talent. Our class was very, very small and during World War II, we had about six or eight members of our class killed in the war. They were mostly all airplane pilots and it was very tragic. We felt like something had been taken away from us, and it was. When we had our 50th class reunion, the names of those members who were not there were brought up and it was very sad. Even though we’re practically over the hill you remember those good old days.
• 30:10
  VIVIAN BLESSING: At the Women’s Club in Winter Park, they didn’t have many younger women as members, so Edith Tadd-Little, an outstanding citizen of our community, decided that we should have a Junior Women’s Club. She got the ball rolling and the members were very much– the uh...
• 30:32
  VIVIAN BLESSING: the members of the club were- were very much against it. They- they just felt that bringing in kids as they called us was ridiculous. But anyway, we were between the ages of 18 and maybe 22. Well, she got the club to realize that maybe we would have some good ideas; at least we’d have a lot of energy. So they accepted us and we built up a very fine group of gals. A lot of them are still here in Winter Park.
• 31:13
  INTERVIEWER: Can you name some of them?
• 31:17
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Well, there was– Well, maybe there aren’t a lot here in Winter Park.
• 31:24
  VIVIAN BLESSING: There was Gwen Patterson, she lives here in Winter Park. And there was uhm... Celia Gary who’s father had the drug store. I think she now lives in North Carolina or some place.
• 31:42
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Well, there are quite a few.
• 31:45
  VIVIAN BLESSING: We uh... survived for about three years I guess and we weren’t accepted unanimously by the senior women. So it started to disband and Edith Tadd-Little was just furious. About that time, the representative from the Junior League was in Orlando to start a Junior League in this area. And all of us who were members of the Junior Women’s Club were asked to go to the meeting with the intent of maybe joining the League.
• 32:24
  VIVIAN BLESSING: I guess two or three members did join but at that time I was busy working, I was going to Rollins, and I just couldn’t fit into the picture of the Junior League.
• 32:42
  VIVIAN BLESSING: We had a gal in Winter Park by the name of Loretta Sammon [ph]. She was quite an influential lady. I knew her – now I didn’t know her real well – but she was president of the Women’s Club for two years. She was president of the Garden Club for two years. She served on Red Cross drives, community drives. She did everything; she participated in every activity in the city and was very well known and well liked. She lived on Interlochen and uh...
• 33:22
  VIVIAN BLESSING: I remember her house; she had a little garden in the front. And when--
• 33:29
  INTERVIEWER: Was that right across from the Cloisters?
• 33:33
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Yes, it's-- it was right across from where the uh... right across from the Cloisters. When I was-– I finally married in 1945 to Jerry Blessing and we had a son, Wayne. And when he was six years old, about to enter the first grade, I happened to be in the bank one day making a small savings deposit and the president of the bank, Ray Rosenfelt, stopped me and asked me if I’d like to work in the bank. I said I don’t know anything about banking. He said "Well, you go home and think about it." I went home and talked it over with my husband. He said "Absolutely not, you’ve got a child to take care of and even though we don’t have much money, I don’t see any way that you could possibly work." More I thought about it, the more I was determined to work in the bank.
• 34:49
  VIVIAN BLESSING: We had recently borrowed from the bank the sum of $800 to pay for a lot that we bought on Hampton [Hamden] Court. Uh... We were gonna build our house there eventually. And I thought well I’ll take this job and work long enough to pay off that loan.
• 35:19
  VIVIAN BLESSING: Well, I got in the bank. My first job was a messenger girl. I would have to go around to everybody employed in the bank. The bookkeeping department was upstairs; downstairs was the president and the cashier office and the tellers and the vault custodian.
• 35:48
  I had to take a cardboard box and go around to all these people about 10: 00 and ask them what they would like to drink or eat. They’d give me the order and I’d go down to the old O’Brien’s Drug Store, get the order filled, bring it back and sometimes I got my money and sometimes I didn’t. I hated to ask for it so finally after about three weeks of doing that little job I told the head bookkeeper “I can’t afford to work here.
• 36:27
  I had to take a cardboard box and go around to all these people about 10: I’m feeding these people and I’m not making that much money.” So they devised a new system.
• 36:35
  I had to take a cardboard box and go around to all these people about 10: I continued in the bookkeeping department until they built the old First National Bank.
• 36:44
  I had to take a cardboard box and go around to all these people about 10: Well, it was the Florida Bank where the Hinkle Building stood. And by the time I got over there, they put me on a different type of machine. I was a fast learner and I was promoted, finally made the teller line which was, to me, the height of my ambition, to be a teller in a bank.
• 37:22
  I had to take a cardboard box and go around to all these people about 10: Back to the little old bank where we worked. It was real funny; they had a little old pot bellied stove where we worked downstairs which heated the bank. And in the winter time all the heat would go upstairs. We in the bookkeeping department just about died.
• 37:41
  I had to take a cardboard box and go around to all these people about 10: In the summertime, we had to use fans. We didn’t have computers and all of that sort of stuff. Everything was done by hand. And uh... papers would fly all over the place.
• 37:54
  I had to take a cardboard box and go around to all these people about 10: Checks would fly all over the place.
• 37:57
  I had to take a cardboard box and go around to all these people about 10: Up there in the bookkeeping department was a large glass dome and it in sat Mr.
• 38:04
  I had to take a cardboard box and go around to all these people about 10: Laird with a long shotgun and he stayed in that cubicle from the time that hank opened until it closed. He was our protection.
• 38:14
  I had to take a cardboard box and go around to all these people about 10: Well, we moved across the street. It was a big affair. Everybody in town came and shortly after we were in there -– well maybe it was a year I guess or two -– they decided some improvements could be made to the interior. They brought in Edith Tadd-Little. Now I cannot say for sure that she was an interior decorator but she knew enough about colors and materials to give the bank a lot of ideas, which she did. She worked very hard, she did a good job and we were all very proud of our new bank and new facilities.
• 39:12
  I had to take a cardboard box and go around to all these people about 10: Over the years, I went up the ladder and I finally became a senior vice president.
• 39:21
  I had to take a cardboard box and go around to all these people about 10: I had a- a wonderful job. I was in marketing and public relations. I traveled all over the country going to bank meetings, meeting other bankers -– women that is –- and it was a fantastic career. But the years were beginning to wear on me and uhm... I decided I’d take an early retirement, which I did. But I put in 29 years there and I got to know everybody in the community and as the community grew, I grew right along with it and got to know all those new people.
• 40:14
  I had to take a cardboard box and go around to all these people about 10: I’d visit 'em in their homes. When they were building the Cloisters, I used to go over every day and greet someone new who was about to move in there. Of course I was there on business, strictly to get banking business. But I got to know 'em and they got to know me and then I’d go back to the bank and order a small plant for their first apartment.
• 40:50
  I had to take a cardboard box and go around to all these people about 10: And about two weeks ago, I had an occasion to visit an ex-client and a friend in her apartment and as we were going out the door, I noticed this huge plant and she said “You don’t recognize the plant do you?” And I said no. She said “Well that’s the tiny little thing you sent over to me the day you-– after you called.” So, I don’t know but memories do keep on.
• 41:29
  INTERVIEWER: Fast forward tape to the end and turn it over...