Larry Luckey Sr and the fight for Florida history.
Earlier saw Larry Luckey II was elected to the Glades County school board Tuesday. That got me wondering how his father, Larry Luckey Sr. is doing. A search revealed a wonderful 5 part series of the Ortona area in Glades County by local radio/TV WGCU.
Part 2 of Larry Luckey Sr. is here:
https://news.wgcu.org/2024-04-02/forgotten-park-episode-2-cane-grinding-traditions
From there, you can access the rest of the series.
About 15 years ago we were working on a travel guide statewide which put us through Glades County. Tracy Whirls, head of the Glades EDC said, due to my interest in Florida history, I had to meet Larry. So, she arranged it and I went to the Glades Property Appraisers office. That’s what Larry’s title was at the time: Glades County Property Appraiser.
Glades County government office were in the old high school. The Property Appraiser’s office was pretty typical. Larry Luckey’s office was not. As Larry exudes history, so did his office. I didn’t even know where to start. The artifacts, maps and Florida history was everywhere. Larry start telling story after story of the Ortona Indian Mounds and the importance.
Larry was obviously was frustrated with so many not giving a care to any of it. Though, he was in an area of Florida that is little known and considerably less populated than the coasts east and west of him. What’s most little known is south central Florida is still very much the South. The Dixie Fried Chicken in Clewiston is just a clue. Another clue is “Gator” Sapp, who Tuesday was elected to a Glades County Commission seat. Larry has a Florida Cracker accent as most do in the area.
Luckey has fought for local Glades history through his life and his ’84 – 2021 tenure as property appraiser. It got to a point that he took it upon himself to create a park where indian mounds were in the process of being buried by an expanding dump. Eventually the park was named for Luckey.
It’s too bad we have had so few history mavericks getting things done in our Florida history. Larry is among few through our state’s history. I greatly admire him.
I’ve got photos from my meeting with Larry and hope to ocate those and post them soon.
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