STETSON UNIVERSITY
DeLand, Florida 32720
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History Department
Newsletter
March 1985
Dear Alumni and a Few Others,
The azaleas are in blossom again on "this sceptered isle" of DeLand, and
they prompt us to forget the hardest freeze that the town has suffered since
the 1890s when Henry DeLand was establishing this village. It is a village no
longer, although its growth is slower but steadier than cities to the south.
DeLand civic leaders have been active in planning to restore and redevelop the
downtown area. The center of the town will include a large county governmental
complex, and a new office building will replace the old Hunter's restaurant at
the corner of the Boulevard and Rich Avenue. The Cloisters, a total care community, is being built on Howry Avenue east of Amelia Avenue. A fine arts center housing a theater and the DeLand Museum of Art is planned, with the old art
deco Masonic Hall (or Babcock Building) as its core and embracing adjacent property. DeLand, like a girl awakening to her beauty, has begun to appreciate its
cultural heritage and to restore its historic buildings. Perhaps we can again
justify the slogan "the Athens of Florida."
"We have a new face," said MARGIE DUNCAN, secretary to CHARLES GRANGER, '55,
as she walked across the campus dotted with workmen. The staid campus has yielded
to the ministrations of landscape architect DAVID RIGSBY, who has planted scores
of trees—including what will in time be a pine thicket between Chaudoin Hall and
the Print Shop. The University has used gifts together with the remainder of receipts from the bond issue that financed the now completed maintenance building
at the corner of Minnesota and Garfield, to spruce up the campus. A new kiosk
with a shingled roof to match the newly-cleaned mansard roof of Stetson Hall will
serve as an information booth and bulletin board. Street lights, reminiscent of
the gaslight era, now ring the loop from the Ferrell gate to the front of the
Carlton Union, and the area between the Library and Stetson Hall is a landscaped
pedestrian mall. Much of the campus paving has been resurfaced.
DELAND CALENDAR
The Phi Alpha Theta history fraternity dinner in March 1984 featured
Jack Sweetman, '61, Professor of Naval History at the United States Naval Academy, who spoke of the sinking of the German warship of World War II, the Bismarck.
MALCOLM WYNN, long-time faculty advisor to Phi Alpha Theta, was in charge of the
program. Jack has just published American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology
of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.
In the summer of 1984, I attended a seminar on national defense held at the
Freedoms Foundation in Valley Forge before teaching one summer course, as well as
a few independent study students. In August, Betty and I travelled to Guyane (the
old French Guiana), Manaus (the onetime rubber capital of Brazil), and Caracas,
Venezuela, as attractive a city as you might see.
