DeLand, Florida
June, 1983
STETSON UNIVERSITY
HISTORY DEPARTMENT NEWSLETTER
Dear Alumni and a few others:
DELAND CALENDAR: The Newsletter returns after an absence of two years. This
has been a busy year, celebrating Stetson's Centennial. It seems rather egotistical
(and is) to tell the Stetson story by telling you the things that BETTY and I have
done, but that's what I'll do.
SEPTEMBER: My year began with a portrayal of HENRY DELAND at the rededication
of the one hundred year old building, DeLand Hall. I felt faintly ridiculous in a
frock-tailed coat and top hat. A few months later the building was designated for the
National Historic Register.
OCTOBER: The fall party for history students at our house had a good turn-out
with PAUL STEEVES showing his slides of his winter term trip to the U.S.S.R.
NOVEMBER: KEVIN O'KEEFE and I attended the Southern Historical Association which
met in Memphis.
RICHARD LANGFORD, M.A. '59, asked me to be his guest at the bash at the Kirchman
Castle in Altamonte Springs for major donors. Having gotten my nose into the tent,
DOUG LEE, Vice President for Planning and Development, invited BETTY to come too, but
she stayed home with the "flu." DICK and I tooled down (I'll get cited for bad word
usage in his newspaper column) in his classic Mercedes. The group gathered at the
Kirchman Corporation to be ferried to the castle. You have never seen so many Stetsonites festooned in outlandish garb of the nineteenth century—carrying out the centennial motif. General JOHN BOWLEY, of the Development Office, looked dashing in his
frock-tailed coat and top hat. The Kirchman Castle was all that the newspapers have
said about it, and the weather behaved beautifully. Before dinner the School of Music
offered a program which included two of my favorite singers, CAROL ANN EDWARDS and
RENEE LAWLESS. There was more singing inside the tent where a gourmet buffet was served.
At our table were CHRISTINE and DAN JOHNSON, parents of DAN JOHNSON, JR., '82, of Jacksonville, now a law student at Cornell, as well as MAITLAND KNOX, Chairman of the First
Banker's Corporation of New Smyrna, which now has an office in DeLand. I felt a little
out of place in not being properly dressed for the occasion, but in the subdued light
it was hardly noticeable.
As a department head I was invited to the meeting of the Board of Visitors of the
College of Liberal Arts, a newly constituted body. The luncheon featured a marvelous
lobster salad, and we had a chance to see DEANNA PITTMAN, Miss Florida, who was a guest.
Miss Florida was wearing a roaring twenties outfit with a floppy hat that made her look
as Daisy Miller of The Great Gatsby might have looked. I sat with LIBBY WEST, '39, and
MARY McNAMARA, Hon. '82. MARY, wife of "BIG CHIEF" McNAMARA of Orlando Pontiac fame,
talked sadly of their long association with JOHN DeLOREAN, which went back to the day
when DeLOREAN headed the Pontiac Division of General Motors. MARY offered us a ride in
the DeLorean, which McNAMARA Pontiac handles as well as the Pontiac line. In the meeting with my committee, HYATT BROWN, former Speaker of the Florida House, warmed my heart
when, discussing the decline of numbers in liberal arts majors, he said that he wished
he had had another major rather than the business major that he had at the University
of Florida—perhaps Chinese history, he concluded. One of the more interesting recommendations was one presented by REID HUGHES, who had recently been defeated by BILL
