Mary Jane Whitaker
Among the first of these was Mary Jane Whitaker, wife of William Whitaker, Sarasota’s first pioneer settler.
As gutsy as she was small she stood in at 5 feet tall the diminutive Mary Jane was fearless. Besides contending with the hardships inherent in surviving life on the frontier, she faced danger from marauding Seminole Indians who burned her Yellow Bluffs home down in a raid.
Later, she went toe-to-toe with Union soldiers during the Civil War who threatened to burn her second home down. Legend has it that Mary Jane handed the officer in charge a match, saying, “I want to look in the eyes of a man who can stoop so low as to burn the house of a helpless woman and her children.” He and his men rode off leaving the Whitaker home standing.
“We always called it The Big House,” said Gayle Oreto, the homeowner’s sister. “And we all loved spending time there. I have four children who are married and have children and we’ve all made it a tradition to gather in Sarasota at The Big House for Thanksgiving, Christmas and brief vacations during the year. My husband and I lived there for eight months while our home in Bradenton was under construction and that’s the longest that anyone has stayed in that home. We’ve had weddings and rehearsal dinners there, baby showers, anniversary and birthday parties, reunions of 25 people or more. We’ve made so many memories at that house. One we treasure is my daughter’s wedding rehearsal dinner. I made rice and made far too much. We ended up eating it for days, right through the wedding vacation. My daughter’s special occasion has gone done in family history as The Rice Wedding.”
In Sarasota, “Money talks, history walks.” I remember when there was a push to save Sarasota High School, long before Dr. Larry Thompson raised the funds to engineer a fantastic makeover of the Collegiate Gothic school which served generations of locals, myself included.
A group of former students devised a bumper sticker that read, “History Cannot Be Bought.” I still have one. On the sticker attached to my car I crossed the “not” part. Indeed, Sarasota history CAN be bought. And has been often, and for quite some time.
But concurrent with the losses, there have been important saves. In Part 1, I mentioned the Sarasota Opera House, opened in 1926 as the Edwards Theatre, the Sarasota Terrace Hotel, built by Charles Ringling and opened the same year, the Orange Blossom Condominiums, built in 1925. All assets to the community also serving as reminders of our storied past.
After the bank failed the building was transformed into the Orange Blossom Hotel, and welcomed guests for many years; today it serves as exclusive Orange Blossom Tower Condominiums. Interestingly the 1920s era Otis elevator is still operational.
One of the threads that runs throughout Sarasota’s history though, is a singular disregard for those places which made this area so unique and desirable.
It does not matter if the site in question is on the Local Register of Historic Places, or the National Register of Historic places.
Nor is it a concern that organizations such as the Historical Society of Sarasota County, the Sarasota Alliance for Historic Preservation, the John Ringling Centre Foundation, the Friends of Friendly Oaks, and STOP form to prevent historic losses. Community outcry has never stopped demolition. The deafness of city leaders underscores the city hall statue by Jack Cartlidge, “Nobody’s Listening.”
LAKEWOOD RANCH – Since its inception, Lakewood Ranch, with its premier golf courses, out-of-this-world mansions, cute shops and perfectly crafted, insulated villages, has been an idyllic place to live for those who can afford it.
But from a tourism standpoint, it hasn’t always been clear where this booming master-planned community fits as a place to bring visitors to the area.
“We’ve been looking regionally at how we can bring tourism awareness to east county, specifically Lakewood Ranch,” Elliott Falcione, executive director of the Bradenton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, said. “It’s a 35,000-acre master-planned development, No. 1 in the country – how do we showcase that?”