Central Florida: Orlando, Ocoee and Pinehills

 

ORLANDO – Oakridge

 

Chuck, Doug and I moved in to our new place at the Oakridge Apartments on Oakridge Road on August 1, 1980. (Years later it was called “Cypress Glenn” and in March of 2003 I went by there and saw that it had yet another name). While living here, I became acquainted with Doug’s family and they became like a second family to me. Doug’s mother brought us over a plant from the Nursery that was next door to their house (the Mathis’ Nursery). I was a Schefflera, and I gave it a name: “Shelby the Schefflera.”  Which was ironic since while living there we met Shelby and Diane who were brother and sister and were both deaf. I also had a lot of Cuban friends while living at Oakridge, none of whom spoke much English, except for José Carmenate. José  was a good friend for many years, but I lost touch with him. I got back in touch with José around 2003/04 when he contacted me by email. He as since gone off the radar again. I hope it is not due to his health problems.

 

Doug was working for Florida North Hospital as a Lab Tech, but shortly after moving in he got a job with K-Mart in their “Management Training” program.

 

Chuck’s enlistment in the Navy was coming to an end about this time and he was not sure what he was going to do. If he re-enlisted, he would be shipped out. Doug and I could not afford the apartment, so that was a worry. If he did not re-enlist, we did not know if he would be able to get a decent job soon or what would happen. So we decided to move out into a smaller apartment of our own.   As it turned out, Chuck worked a short spell for Disney World before deciding to re-enlist in the Navy. He was stationed in New Orleans, LA, for a while and later in Norfolk, VA. He retired as a Chief and at the time of this writing had retired (but still working) and living in Tampa, FL.  We are still good friends and remain in close touch.

 

ORLANDO – Haystack

 

Doug and I moved on April 13, 1981, into the Haystack East Apartments (later named “The Briarwood Apartments). These apartments were located on East highway 50 (also called Colonial Drive) where Hiawasee Road intersects.

 

The next May, Mom came out to visit us. I did not have a car, so we could not get around much. But we did take a bus to Tampa where we visited Busch Gardens. That was a fun trip. She stayed for about a week or so, then Doug and I took her to the airport to see her off on her return to Washington and home. I would never see her again, but again, I had no idea. I remember the day well. I was wearing a pair of white shorts and a dark gray tank top. My hair was bleached blond, I wore tennis shoes, and had on blue striped tube socks. Mom wore a red skirt and vest with a white blouse, and a straw hat with a red scarf around it.

 

Shortly after this, Doug lost his job with K-Mart. I don’t know for sure what happened, but he said that he was accused to stealing money. He was indignant and angry at the accusation and quit on the spot. Frankly, I think probably did steal the money and was fired. I will probably never know. Times were getting rough and only my income with Orange County was keeping a roof over our heads. Finally, Doug got a job at a new steak house (Quincy’s) which had just been built down the road from us. He was working as a dishwasher, but that was better than nothing. A few weeks later he told me that he had been “promoted” to a cook’s position and that it meant a slight increase in pay. I remember that day so well because we bought a cheap bottle of André Champaign to celebrate and he call his mother (from a pay phone, since our phone was disconnected) to tell her the good news. It was about a week later that I tried to reach Doug at work for some reason and was informed that he no longer worked there. The day that he told me he had been promoted was all a lie. He had just walked off the job and never came back. I could not believe he could do something like this. When I confronted him with it, he said he thought he could find another job and be working again before I found out.

 

I took a part-time job while living at the Haystack Apartments to try to make ends meet. It was an evening job unloading trucks at Winn Dixie. It was very hard physical work, it did not pay very much and the working conditions were unpleasant, but I had to do what I had to do. My financial situation was now getting dire and I could not afford even the small apartment that we had. We finally had to move.

 

ORLANDO – Parliament House

 

On January 1, 1982, Doug and I moved from the Haystack Apartments to the Parliament House, or the “PH” as we usually called it. The PH was once a Holiday Inn, but in 1975 it was bought and remodeled in to a large disco, bar and motel complex. Some of the rooms were rented out on a weekly basis and so Doug and I moved into room 135 for $64 per week. This was a very bad period in my life. It was a constant party and was very tiring. Doug had become very alcoholic was making my life miserable. He spent much of his time finding dropped cigarette butts which he would tear apart until he had enough tobacco to roll a cigarette. He was quite pathetic.

 

My main pastime during this period was playing a video game in the bar call “Stargate Defender” I became very good at it and usually had my full name spelled out across the screen as the champion. I actually had calluses from playing the game so much.  No one could beat me at it… I was so good.

 

I remember it was the January that we moved in to the PH that I learn of my great-grandmother’s passing. Ethel Elnora (Riddle) Watts, my mother’s, mother’s, mother. She was 81.

 

Circumstances with my job changed also. We opened up a branch office for County Probation out by the Juvenile Courthouse on Michigan Street. The office was set up in what used to be a house. The bedrooms were offices, the livingroom was the front office where my desk was and the kitchen was still a kitchen (with a stove, refrigerator, and such). I was not really happy with my move since I was taken away from the word processor that I had studied and trained myself on so diligently; and from the system that I had designed. I was highly insulted by our new manager, Richard Daigneault, who had the audacity to say that he did not feel that I was using the system to its fullest.

 

Next door to our new probation branch office was also a branch office of the Orlando Federal Credit Union. I had a bank account with ComBank (which became Freedom Bank) at the time, but I opened up a savings account with OFCU while I was at this office.

 

Meanwhile, back at the bar (i.e., home) I was getting some competition on the video game! Someone else with the initials of JEL was working his way up the ladder and was about to beat my high score. He finally did and I got to see his full name of “Jackie E. LaPlante” across the top of the screen where my name should be! I spent more quarters and in short order I put the upstart in his place by beating his score and replace his name with mine. The next few weeks were a competition between the mysterious Jackie LaPlante and myself as we contended en absentia for top billing on the Stargate machine. One evening as I was standing at the video game waiting for a chance to play, I realized that the person playing was not finishing the game as quickly as most players do. I started to pay attention and realized that he was really quite good. Almost as good as me, maybe. To my amazement, this turned out to be my opponent, Jack. I introduced myself and we became great friends almost immediately. I had no idea at the time what a good friend he would be and for how long we would be acquainted; but he is like a brother to me today!

 

ORLANDO – Arlington

 

In June of 1982 I met Robert (Bob) Wood, a CPA, who owned a home at 812 West Arlington. Bob’s house was just a few blocks away from where I was living at the PH. Doug was such a mess, and I could not deal with his problem any longer, so when Bob told me he had a small room for rent, I took advantage of the opportunity and moved in to his place. It was either just before I moved that I got my first pet (or pets) in many years. I had a pair of parakeets, which I originally named “He” (the blue male), and “She” (the green female). She tended to bite a lot, and I renamed her “Bitch.”

 

My life started to get better after moving to Bob’s house. I finally decided to take advantage of my G.I. Bill benefits and enrolled in Valencia Community College. I was just taking basic courses at this point and had not chosen a major.

 

Then my job changed again when County Probation opened up another branch office. This was in downtown Orlando at 46 East Robinson on the third floor of the Post Office. I was transferred to this new office along with two probation counselors, Bill Flater and César Melecio.

 

It was also right about this time that I bought my second car. My Camaro died in October of 1979 and I sold it to a junkyard for about $70. My new car (don’t laugh) was a light blue, 1978 Ford, Pinto. It cost me about $1,200.00 and I would not have been able to purchase it, except that Bob Wood co-signed for it.

 

So my life was going along great at this time. I was attending college, collecting GI Bill benefits, driving a car again, my debts were paid or caught up, I had credit cards and a decent credit rating again. I even bought my first computer, a TI-99/4-A (Texas Instruments). I was not much, but it was impressive in its day.

 

Around December or January of 1982/83, Doug started to get his life together again convince Bob and me to let him move in with us. He got a job working for Walt Disney World and Lake Buena Vista as a busboy. He was not making all that much, but I was steady work and had good benefits.

 

Things were going well between Doug and I and he was nearly like family to me to me, despite the mean things he kept doing. I was not really happy living with Bob and the living arrangements were cramped. (I got rid of the parakeets somewhere around this time; I don’t remember what I did with them though).

 

ORLANDO – Laurel Hills

 

On August 1, 1983, Doug and I moved out and once again had our own apartment. We moved to the Laurel Hills apartments off of Balboa drive in Pine Hills.  It was a very nice duplex apartment with a skylight in the bathroom, a front and back yard… very nice. I was able to get a second VISA credit card, which I designated specifically for purchasing furniture and other necessities for the new place. This time, I actually planned on an Asian style décor with a bamboo design on the 3 piece sofa/love-seat/chair combo and oriental fans to decorate the walls. Life was looking good at this time, and things were getting better.

 

At the end of August of 1983, I quit my job with Orange County, and started my new position with the City of Orlando on Tuesday, August 23, 1983. This was a major jump in pay for me. I had been making $5.10/hr with the County and I was maxed out. I could not make more than this in my position with the County. My job with the City of Orlando as the Administrative Assistant to the City Attorney of Orlando Florida started off at about $7.13 per hour. This was a major increase in pay to me. (My predecessor was named Marjanet Ford, by the way. She would reappear in my life a few years later).

 

On October 3, 1983, with my new income, I was able to purchase my first brand-new car. This was my third car, and I bought I from Sun State Ford on Colonial Drive. My new car was a beige-colored 1984 Ford, Tempo. I had it financed through the Orlando Federal Credit Union and it was handled personally by Carl Anderson, the President of OFCU (and for whom Anderson Street is named). Carl was a good friend with my boss, Bob Hamilton, who was not only City Attorney, but Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Credit Union as well. Things were going very well at this point and I was very happy with where I was in life. At school I had decided to change my major from Legal Secretarial Science to Data Processing. I was getting very good with the Wang Word Processing system used by the Office of Legal Affairs, and was in fact the System Administrator over the system by this time.

 

While living at Laurel Hills, my little sister, Calisa, got married and soon was pregnant with her first child. She was due to give birth in July of 1984. But things were about to change for us again and I had idea of the tragedy that lay ahead.

 

Meanwhile, back in Oklahoma, my younger brother, Skip, was 13 years old and having some behavior problems. Mom wrote me a letter, which I received on Monday, April 23, 1984, in which she told me that Dad was planning on putting Skip in a special Christian school where he would live and be taken care of. She also told me to give her a call on the next Sunday so she could update me on events. Apparently, the next Saturday, April 28^th, he did this and took Skip to the Tipton home. I did not know yet what was going on, since I had not spoken to Mom yet. I did not have a telephone at that time and on Saturday I was down the street at the Magic Market and stopped at the pay phone. I started to call Mom then, but her letter had specifically asked me to call her on Sunday since I would be calling her collect and her billing cycle started over on Sunday. I did not want to cause a problem with her phone bill, so I put the phone back down and have regretted doing so ever since.

 

The next day, April 29^th, a Sheriff Deputy came to the front door and ask if there was a “Kenneth Terrell” living there. I told him that was my older brother’s name and that he lived in North Carolina. He said that he had a message from a Bradford Lewis and I told him that was my name (he had the message all backwards!)  Then he told me there had been a death in the family and that I was to call Kenneth immediately. I got in the car and drove down to the pay phone right away. I was fairly certain it would be my grandmother, Nana, who had passed away. I knew Mom would be upset by this since she had just been out to NC at Ken’s house about a month before that to be with Nana while she had a by-pass operation.

 

I arrived and the store and picked up the pay phone. I decided I should call Mom first, but no one answered the phone. I had such a feeling of foreboding wash over me and redialed to Ken’s house. Nana answered the phone. Her words still ring in my ears, “…your Momma’s dead.”  To say I was in shock would be an understatement. The entire time is blurry to me. I loved my mother so much and we were very close to each other. She had been fine just a day before and now she was gone. A heart attack (and/or brain aneurysm) had struck her unexpectedly in her sleep. Don came home and found her in bed; she was already gone. She passed away at approximately 2:00am on Sunday morning of April 29^th, 1984.

 

I took out a small cash loan from the credit union and took a train to Washington for the funeral. Before leaving on Tuesday, May 1st, I had my left ear pierced in Mom’s memory. I traveled through Washington, DC, Chicago, Montana, and then down to Washington. It was a four-day journey and I did not have sleeper car. It was on one hand a wonderful and interesting trip. Especially traveling through Yellowstone National Park in an observation car. But I was grieving, in shock and very depressed. I kept hoping I would wake up and find this had all been a horrible nightmare. But it was all too frightfully true.

 

Funeral of Daisy Colleen (Dabbs) Lewis

On Saturday, May 5th, I arrived in Pasco. It was early in the morning and the sun was just coming up. After storing my luggage in a locker at the train station, I walked down to The Top Hat, a restaurant that Mom and I ate at on several special occasions.  I a big breakfast, then walked to The Navy Homes to where Maria Pacheco lived. She told me the funeral would be that day (Saturday) and let me lay down to rest for a while. I got up in time to walk back down to the train station and get my luggage… BUT THE BUILDING WAS LOCKED UP! They were closed! I was still wearing the same clothes I had been wearing for several days and could not get to my luggage. We tried calling several authorities, but with no luck. I ended up going to Mom’s funeral wearing the same clothes I had left Orlando in. But I was so grief-stricken that I barely cared. Nana, Ken and Darlene were able to attend the funeral also. Calisa was unable to attend due to being near to term with her baby (which she came close to losing due the shock of Mom’s death). Skip was, of course, unable to attend since he had just been placed in The Tipton Home. He had something of a double whammy with his mother dying and getting “institutionalized” all in one weekend! Mom was laid to rest in Columbia Memorial Gardens in Kennewick, WA. Her grave site over looks the Columbia river and the Horse Heaven Hills. I think she would have like the view. After the funeral, we all went to the Palms Tavern where Don worked, and where Mom used to go to play pool (she was a captain on two different pool teams!). We all drank beer, and there were a lot of eyes filled with tears.

 

I traveled back to Florida and had to get on with life. I had dropped out of my classes at Valencia to go to the funeral, so I had to pay back all the money I received for that semester. By the time I got the money paid back, my GI Bill benefits ran out. I still had 16 credit hours to go to get my degree, but never could finish them. I was very depressed and felt lost. These problems also caused my to bounce a rent check (by only $2). This was the second time this had happened and the management decided they did not want to renew my lease. I tried to explain the extenuating and extreme circumstances, but they were cold and business like about the situation and had no mercy. OCOEE   In June of 1984, Doug and I left our nice duplex apartment behind and moved to 1003 Doreen Avenue in Ocoee, FL. We were much closer to his parents’ house here, which was a good thing, but we were pretty from downtown Orlando where I worked.   While living in Ocoee, I bought my very first VCR. We had gas for heating and for hot water, but an electric stove. I was continuing to work for the City of Orlando.

Keri - Calisa - Stephanie - Calais Colleen's daughter, Calisa, and granddaughters Visiting her final resting place in Pasco, WA

 

While living in Ocoee I received the one and only letter that I can ever remember Daddy sending me. We had a discussion about his not being my father. Since my mother had passed, he felt he could tell me that he was definitely not my real father. It was fairly well known that Alvin Elroy Terrell was my actual father; or Roy Terrell. I had seen my birth certificate, which had my name on it as “Bradfurd Lee Terrell” and had Roy Terrell listed as the father, but I had been told for years that this was all a mistake. I was lied to for years.

 

During our time in Ocoee, my friend Jack, now my best friend, hit on hard times and for a short time he came to live with Jack and I. We lived in this house for a year. Meanwhile, we were searching for a new place to live closer in to town. We found an apartment at Georgetown Apartment complex in Pine Hills. These apartments were next door to another complex named “Forest Village”. Doug’s sister Cindy and her friend Lynn had just recently moved in there, so there would be “family” nearby. Just before we moved from Ocoee, Doug was successful in getting a job with the City of Orlando too. He got a position with the Harry P. Leu Gardens working as a grounds keeper. He had already lost his job at Lake Buena Vista (I don’t remember why). He had been working at a local plant nursery on Hiawasee Road for a while, but it was hard work and did not pay well. The job with the City was a great move providing benefits, medical coverage and such.

 

PINE HILLS

 

In July of 1985, we moved to 5602 Silverstar Road into a nice 2-bedroom apartment at the Georgetown Apartments, in Pine Hills, FL.

 

It was in the summer of 1985 that Jack decided to move to Key West. He did not have a driver license, so he asked me to drive the U-Haul truck for him. We left Orlando around 7:00pm and finally arrived 10 hours later in Key West at Jack’s new place in Old Town. There are two things I most remember about that trip. One was running over a ‘possum and feeling it crunch under the truck. That was very disturbing occurrence.  The second thing was the fact that the U-Haul truck had governor on it and would not go over 55mph. It seemed to toke forever to get there!

 

I had been having some problems with my boss, the City Attorney, at work. The problems accumulated and in October of 1985 I was forced to resign my position. I was actually trying to get another position within the City, but my new prospective boss, Jim Kutcher, was on vacation. So I resigned my position as Administrative Assistance to the City Attorney of Orlando effect October 18, 1985. I was technically unemployed for thee weeks while I continued to pursue the new position of Word Processing Support Analyst in the Bureau of Office Systems, Administrative Department, City of Orlando. On November 11, 1985, I accepted to position, which was offered to me by James D. Kutcher, my new Bureau Chief. Thus began my new career in the field of Information Systems technology. For the past 10 years I had been a “secretary” (and proud of it). There were only three of us in the entire Bureau, including Joyce Carmichale, our secretary. I was much happier in this new role than I had been in a long time.

 

On October 18, 1986, my life changed again when my brother, Skip, who I had not seen in 10 years, moved, moved in with us. He had just turned 18 and I was now 29. Doug was 30 now.

 

Nine months later in July of 1987, Doug and I decided to take on the responsibilities of pet ownership. His job with the City was going well, although he was transferred to the Parks Department and later to Street and Drainage. He still had a good job with excellent benefits and it was doing wonders for him. So we went to the animal shelter on Americana Boulevard and found a tiny and absolutely the cutest little Lhasa Apso mix. We had to have him. On the way home we discussed a name for him. We stopped at the fair grounds on Colonial drive and the poor little thing got sick and threw up. We finally chose the name “Thor” (the Norwegian God of Thunder) as his name.

 

On August 15, 1987, another major change in my life took place when I traded in my 1984 Tempo, for a candy red 1987 Toyota, Celica. It had 9 miles on the odometer when I rolled it off the show room floor of Englander Toyota (now Orlando Toyota) which is across the street and down a few blocks from Sun State Ford (where I bought the Tempo). That was such a good feeling! There was some confusion at this time since I actually decided to buy a different car, a blue Celica, but I got coerced and tricked by Englander. They had me sign power of attorney over my Tempo without my realizing it, and notarized it out of my presence. They then got rid of the Tempo without my expectation, knowledge or consent and I was stuck with the red Toyota. However, it was a great car and lasted me for many years.

 

In May of 1988, two major events took place. First, Doug and I signed paper with Moronda Homes to begin construction of a house! We chose property in Deltona, FL, at 1815 Trumbull Street where were going to have built the “Patriot A” home. We were so excited. My bills were all caught up and Doug and I both qualified for a joint VA loan. The house would have 3 bedrooms, a great-room, a living room, a dining room, 2 full baths, a 2-car garage, a quarter acre of land, bronze tone frame work on the windows, and intercom system, volume ceilings…. and spacious!

 

Unfortunately, this wonderful news was countered when I was notified that Dad had passed away from a sudden massive heart attack. Darlene was staying with him at the time and she says they rushed him to the hospital, but he was pronounced DOA. Skip and I were unable to make it to his funeral, but ‘lisa and Darlene did. I sent a huge spray of yellow roses for his casket, which I was told, was very impressive, but I did not get to see it. I was sent a picture of Daddy in his casket and I had could see the casket spray in the picture, but I fear I have since lost those pictures. I was a strange feeling to know that I now had no parents, except for Roy Terrell (my biological father) out there somewhere.