County lost leaders in 2011 [Tampa Tribune, Fla.]

Jan. 01--TALLAHASSEE -- A pillar of the Dade City community, a former state lawmaker, a former county attorney from San Antonio, a Dade City doctor and a man known as "Mr. Dixie Youth Baseball" were among the notable deaths of Pasco County residents in 2011. The Pasco Tribune looks back at some of the more well-known community leaders who died:

LOWELL HARRIS

Those who knew Lowell Harris well said he got angry only if he overheard someone speaking poorly about his friends or about Dade City, his beloved adopted hometown.

A longtime pharmacist, the Georgia native died Jan. 14 at age 76.

Harris was known for years as an upbeat presence behind the counter at Kiefer's Pharmacy, which was as much a safe, local hangout as a trusted drugstore.

Ralph Cumbee, president of First Community Bank of America in Dade City, grew up in Harris' Boy Scout troop. He characterized Harris as the "archetypical community person."

"He was really one of the pillars of the community, and that's putting it lightly," Cumbee told The Pasco Tribune after Harris' death in January.

Harris served on the city's Board of Commissioners and was a longtime member of the First United Methodist Church on Church Street.

He was involved in Rotary, served on the Community Aging and Retirement Services Inc. board of directors, volunteered with East and Central Pasco Habitat For Humanity and was involved with Dade City'sChamber of Commerce.

"He was on all the boards, big in Rotary, and he was involved in (Boy Scout Troop 402 in Dade City) for probably about 40 years," Cumbee said.

Local lawyer Hutch Brock said he had known Harris since he was a small child. Brock later served with Harris on the city commission.

"My first job was at Kiefer's Pharmacy," Brock said. "What a great guy to work with. He had fun behind the counter and he knew everybody by their first name.

"He was a steward of so many causes," Brock added." You probably couldn't think of one thing that's been successful (in Dade City) that he wasn't involved in."

Brock said Harris had precisely one fault.

"He was a Georgia Bulldog fan," he said with a laugh. "He bled red and garnet, or whatever that color is. As a Florida graduate and staunch Gator fan, we always had a good time of it in that regard."

ROBERT SUMNER

Robert Sumner was described as an affable character, a Southern gentleman and a community leader with a legal mind as keen as his sense of humor.

Sumner, a two-time former county attorney and banker who also served on the Pioneer Florida Museum and Village's board of trustees, died May 25 after a battle with cancer. He was 76.

Upon his retirement as county attorney in January 2008, Sumner recalled in an interview many of his victories, including: Pasco's conversion from a code enforcement board to a court citation system; the adoption of construction impact fees for schools, libraries and parks; and a moratorium on billboards.

At the time, he told The Pasco Tribune that he also was proud that during his leadership, the county had a "minimum" number of lawsuits, most of them minor.

"He was a great man, and he'll be greatly missed," Pasco County Administrator John Gallagher said last May. "He was a great asset to me, and we used to have some lively conversations. He was very ethical and extremely smart."

Eddie Herrmann, a childhood friend who knew Sumner most of his life, remembered camping with Sumner and other friends at Moon Lake Dude Ranch, owned by Sumner's father.

As adults in the 1970s, Sumner and Herrmann each served on a committee to raise money for the Pioneer Florida Museum.

"We knocked on doors and asked for donations," Herrmann said in a May interview. "He was an outstanding leader and really knew how to bring people together."

Sumner, a Pasco High School graduate, worked at his father's grocery store in Zephyrhills and at American Can Co. making containers for orange juice concentrate, before enrolling at Florida Southern College in Lakeland. He received a bachelor's degree in accounting with a minor in economics.

After graduating from Stetson University College of Law in 1964, Sumner joined a mentor, Judge W. Kenneth Barnes, in private practice in Dade City. He later bought the practice and specialized in banking, probate and eminent domain cases.

In 1967, he took what then was the part-time job of county attorney. He left the post for the first time in 1972, when the position became full time, and returned to private practice.

Sumner returned as county attorney in 1999 and retired in 2008, when he was named president of Florida Bancshares Inc., a Dade City-based holding company that owns First National Bank of Pasco.

Kerry Westbrook, senior vice president and chief financial officer at First National Bank of Pasco, described Sumner as a results-oriented boss who was admired by employees for his warm, caring manner.

JACK JONES

Jack Jones was known as "The San Ann Strong Man" and "Mr. Dixie Youth Baseball."

Jones helped establish the San Antonio Dixie Youth League in 1955, served in the Marine Corps during the post-World War II occupation of Japan and worked for years at American Can Co. in Dade City. He died of lung cancer on Jan. 25 at 82.

The Dixie Youth League is now known as the San Antonio Sports Association. A baseball field run by the association is named after Jones, and the 2011 Kumquat Festival 5K and No-K races were held in Jones' honor.

Last January, Jack Vogel of San Antonio, who owns a company that manages timberland across the Southeast, recalled his former Little League coach 55 year ago: "I never once saw him ask for anything. He always gave and just always did what he could for other people, never seemed to work for himself."

Jones also was a founding member of the Junior Chamber of Commerce, known as the Jaycees, about 1955, as well as the Optimist Club and King Lake Fishing Club.

Longtime friend Gerald Newton said Jones was a skilled middle infielder as a younger man and played with semi-professional baseball teams in the area.

"He was a very outgoing, friendly gentleman," Newton said last January. "I watched him coach and play and never saw him get highly upset. He was known around here as 'Mr. Dixie Youth Baseball.' He was just a real good man."

Jones was born and raised in San Antonio, where he worked regularly during his youth in a sawmill his father owned. Although he never had seen a typewriter before entering the military, he became a military cryptographer after the occupation of Japan.

Loraine Lachance, Jones' daughter, described her father as a "cut up" and very patient.

"He wasn't strict; I don't remember ever getting a spanking in my life," she said. "One time when I was about 5, it got to be love bug season and he came home with all those bugs on his car. I decided I was going to ground them all out with a Brillo pad.

"When he saw what I'd done, he just kind of gritted his teeth and said, 'Thank you, sweetheart.' He always took the time to teach."

MARCELINO OLIVA JR.

Marcelino Oliva Jr. was as comfortable telling stories around a campfire with hunting buddies as he was navigating the high-stakes worlds of medicine and politics.

A devoted family man known for his elegant dress, gift of storytelling and passion for treating the sick, the well-known Dade City doctor died July 8 after a battle with multiple myeloma, a cancer found in bone marrow.

He was 75.

A native of Cuba who was raised in Tampa, where his family ran the Oliva Tobacco Co., he opened his medical practice in Dade City in 1965 and was considered a pioneer in the field of osteopathy.

"He was always doing things no one asked him to do, helping some indigent person who no one knew about," said longtime friend and neighbor Hjalma Johnson, a Dade City banker, during a July interview. "We lost a great one in 'Dr. O.' He was always outreaching for the underserved and those who can't help themselves. He took anyone who walked in."

Oliva served as president of the Florida Osteopathic Medical Association and was the first minority president of the American Osteopathic Association. Family and former colleagues said he was instrumental in influencing osteopathic medical policies.

Osteopathic physicians complete four years of medical school and may practice in any specialty of medicine. However, they spend up to 500 additional hours studying "hands-on manual medicine and the body's musculoskeletal system," according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Steve Winn, executive director of the Florida Osteopathic Medical Association, knew Oliva for about 40 years and considered him a mentor.

"When he first started his practice in Dade City, osteopathic physicians were not allowed privileged positions in hospitals," Winn told The Pasco Tribune in July. "He took that to the district court of appeals and had them change it. He opened up osteopathic medicine, not only in Florida, but nationally, because of his commitment and knowledge.

"The osteopathic profession is today part of the health care system; that's why you call him a pioneer."

"We're very proud of him and his heritage," his daughter Marcie Oliva-Newton said in July. "Coming from Cuba, he taught us how important family values were and that family is the most important thing. He made us very proud of our upbringing. He was a strict disciplinarian but always with love and admiration.

"He could mix with the most affluent people, but with his hunting buddies was where he liked, sitting around the campfire, eating great food, smoking cigars and telling stories."

Oliva-Newton said her father spoke no English when he came to Tampa from Candelaria, Pinar del Rio, Cuba, at age 10. But he adapted quickly.

He attended Jesuit High School in Tampa and studied at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Ala. He received his osteopathic medical degree at Kansas City College of Osteopathic Medicine in Kansas City, Mo.

Oliva also took politics seriously, twice campaigning for state-level offices as a Democrat. In 1992, he lost to incumbent Chuck Smith in the Democratic primary for state Senate District 10. Two years later, he narrowly lost to Republican Mike Fasano in the state House District 45 race.

Oliva retired from practicing medicine in 2000 but continued lobbying for the osteopathic profession until his death.

THOMAS A. "TOMMY" STEVENS SR.

In his decade as a state representative, Thomas A. "Tommy" Stevens Sr. helped secure money for school construction in Pasco County, worked on issues related to juvenile delinquency and co-sponsored a bill that required junkyards be enclosed.

And then there was the time he supported an increase in the price of automobile tags. The money was targeted to support education, but many of his constituents let him know they weren't thrilled about paying more to register their cars.

That one, he later told a newspaper reporter, "caused me a lot of trouble."

Stevens, a Dade City native who served in the Florida Legislature from 1962 to 1972, died Nov. 5 in Tallahassee. He was 80.

Stevens, described in one 1960s newspaper article as a slender and mild-mannered legislator, represented Pasco, Hernando, Hillsborough and Citrus counties during his tenure.

In addition to his time in the Legislature, Stevens served in the 1970s as executive assistant to the chairman of the Florida Public Service Commission.

Although a native of Pasco, Stevens had not lived in the county since the late 1970s. He and his wife, Henrietta, moved to Key West in 1978, where they bought Key West Insurance Inc. and spent more than 30 years in business.

More recently, he had lived in Tallahassee.

Stevens was a Democrat during his days in the Legislature, a period in which that party dominated both the state House and Senate. Later in life he switched to the Republican Party.

A Pasco High graduate, he also attended Saint Leo College and the University of Florida.

Public service ran in his family. His grandfather, Archie James Burnside, was the Pasco County clerk of court for several decades and was succeeded by his son, Stanley Castle Burnside.

"I've been interested in politics as long as I can remember," Stevens told a Tribune reporter in 1967.

Stevens said in that same interview that research by an aunt showed 18 of his relatives had, up to that point, held public office in Citrus, Pasco and Hillsborough counties.

Stevens' lawmaking days came during a period in Florida's history when NASA was launching missions to the moon and Disney World opened, changing the state forever.

His focus, though, tended to be on topics similar to those legislators face today.

In 1965, he introduced legislation that made $1.4 million available for school construction in Pasco.

He also was active during that 1965 legislative session in the passage of a construction program in Pasco to build a county jail, a juvenile home and two health centers. Money for the expansion of the West Pasco County Courthouse annex also was secured during that session.

One significant issue of statewide impact that Stevens zeroed in on was the problem of juvenile delinquency. A committee he served on helped develop a program to provide guidance to former juvenile offenders who had not adjusted on their return to society.

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