By DAVE NICHOLSON | The Tampa Tribune
Published: May 07, 2012
Updated: May 07, 2012 – 8:56 AM
LITHIA –
Farrell Wood recalls a childhood when each day started with breakfast before daylight, family prayer and farming chores – all before the school bell rang.
The 72-year-old retiree, born in south central Georgia, moved to the Plant City area when he was a teenager. It was an era where many children walked to school and most farmers plowed with mules instead of tractors.
“It was the way of life for everybody,” the 1958 Pinecrest High School graduate said.
A written version of Wood’s memories, from birth in Hazelhurst, Ga., up through today, will be available at the Plant City Photo Archives and History Center when it hosts a traveling Smithsonian exhibit, Journey Stories. Dozens of people are being interviewed as the Photo Archives seeks to preserve their life stories for future generations.
The nonprofit wants interviews with folks from all walks of life.
“Everyone has a story to tell,” archives Executive Director Gil Gott said.
Wood was interviewed by his nephew, Brent Houston, who is in his freshman year at Hillsborough Community College. His instructor, Kara Lawson, asked students in her American history classes to interview two people each for the archives’ project.
Many students interviewed family members or friends. Houston, a 35-year-old former Marine, chose a retired school administrator and his uncle.
Houston spent more than an hour with Wood at his home in rural Lithia. Wood told Houston that he was the oldest of six children born to Ed and Jean Wood, who raised tobacco, cotton and other crops in Georgia. They moved to a Plant City area farm in 1955, where family crops included strawberries and vegetables.
The days started with breakfast before daylight, chores and family devotion before he was off to classes at Pinecrest High, where he played football and other sports.
Wood joined the Army National Guard in 1958, the same year he went to work for Agrico phosphate company, where he worked his way up to supervisor. He has attended Mulberry Church of God nearly his whole life. He and his wife of 36 years, Joyce, have two sons, Billy and Paul, and five grandchildren.
Since his 1998 retirement, he has stayed busy with church, his cattle operation and his grandchildren. He said he’s seen a lot of changes in Plant City, mostly related to more people moving to the area.
“Over the years the economy has grown and there are more opportunities. It’s always been a great place to live,” he said, listing close ties to family, friends and church as the factors in his love for the area.
In all, Lawson was expecting her students to turn in nearly 100 interviews, which are being recorded before being transcribed in written form for the Photo Archives.
Her students have talked to a range of people, from veterans of the war in Afghanistan to a black woman who helped integrate Plant City’s library in the 1960s, she said.
The students also interviewed Lawson, who has taught at the HCC Plant City campus for eight years, and her brother, Ken Lawson, a former federal prosecutor who was last year named secretary of the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.
Gott said many people in the community have heeded a call by the Photo Archives to submit their life stories, including Donald R. “Rob” Yoho, a retired Air Force colonel who told his family’s story through his middle-school aged son’s perspective.
The stories will be compiled into books available for visitors to read during the traveling Smithsonian exhibit, which will be on display from May 26 to July 7 at the archives, 106 S. Evers St.
The Photo Archives is also holding storytelling nights, where residents can tell their stories in front of an audience.
The remaining storytelling nights are Thursday at the Bing Rooming House and Museum, 205 S. Allen St.; and June 19 at Hillsborough Community College’s Plant City campus, 1206 N. Park Road. Both sessions start at 7:30 p.m.
For information, call (813) 754-1578 or email info@plantcityphotoarchives.org.
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