This is an interview with Mrs. Judy Barton. This interview is being conducted on September 10, 2010 at Mrs. Barton's residence, 7206 S. Patrick Street, Tampa, Florida. Mrs. Barton's family once owned the house at 5920 Florida Avenue that is now the iconic Seminole HeighJD restaurant, Front Porch Grill. Her grandfather, Henry Byron Broach, was also an important figure in Tampa history.

Interviewer: Jennifer Diaz (JD), Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library Systems’ Oral History Project.

JD: Good morning, Mrs. Barton. How are you today?

Mrs. Judy Barton (JB): Good. How are you?

JD: Very good. So, your family once owned and resided in the home which is now Front Porch Grill. Could you tell us a bit about your family and how they came to be in possession of the house?"

JB: Ah, I'm not sure if my great grandfather built the house. But, the house was built in 1896, and my great grandfather William Nelms and his wife, Montana Nelms resided in the house and they had, six children who were . . . One of the six children was Hadie Nelms, now Broach, or then Broach. And she is my grandmother, my maternal grandmother. And, the house to me was – my father was career military – so it was like the nucleus of my life. I knew no matter how far away we went we would always come back there. But what's another neat thing about the house is it was the nucleus for a lot of people's lives because back in the late 1800's and the early 1900's people would take friends or relatives in to live in the house.

The house has, at the time, had rambling, porches or verandahs on the upstairs and downstairs of the house. And these were really sleeping porches because, of course, back then there was no air conditioning. But, I can remember my grandmother always having a housekeeper and we had this old Polish guy named Equinox who lived in this little building in the back. And then, on the property – it's about an acre – and it's on the corner of Florida and Idlewild. It's always been 5920 until [pause] I guess in the '90s it became 5924 because there are two buildings on the property now. I'm not sure what they are, but at one time there was a florist, a CPA, an Asian market. And, on the corner, the building that was there when I was a little girl was a service station. But, back then we called them filling stations. And there was this big thing when they tore down the filling station about it being a hazardous waste place because of the opening where they would drain the oil and all that.

But, probably the most historic building on the property, which is no longer there unfortunately, was a little barbershop.

JD: Ohhh,

JB: Yes, and during the 40s and 50s, it was "the" place for all of the Hillsborough High School young boys and men to get their hair cut. And, I wish I had saved them, but they had the original porcelain barber chairs. And it would be such a, you know, neat thing to have.

And then the house – my grandmother died in the late 80s and my grandfather lived in the house by himself. And in, I think it was around 1993, he passed away and they sold the house. And it became the Tiffany's Tea Room. My grandmother would have loved it because they painted the house hot pink and it was all Victorian with the wallpaper. And, as a little girl, I thought this house. I guess, growing up in the military, you're very poor in the military. You don't realize you're poor, but you are. But that house to me was like a mansion. [JD: Opulent.] Opulent, and it had these high ceilings and these incredible porches and everything. And when I look back on it, you ask me how did it affect my life? All the 'firsJD,' my first tooth, my first steps, I was probably [pause]. All the real … the first bicycle I ever got, my first pair of roller skates. In fact, when the people that, bought the house and turned it into Tiffany's, there was a closet underneath the stairs, it's no longer there. They took it out to make the – you know, where you pay – the checkout place. And they found my skate key.

JD: Oh, my gosh.

JB: So, I mean. And, you know, during World War I they opened it up to – the whole upstairs was turned into bedrooms and the family lived downstairs and they had six kids. And, they had people staying there. A lot of policemen and firemen, you know, would stay. So it's been kind of a, you know, a nucleus or a safe haven even, you know, for a lot of people.

JD: For a lot of people. That's wonderful. So, your grandfather and owner of the house, Henry Byron Broach was an instrumental part of Tampa's history also. Could you tell us about him and his career?

JB: Yeah. I think what I'll do is - I did his eulogy when he died, and I wrote down a lot of things. So I'm just going to go through it so that, you know and then you can take whatever you want to on it. To begin, telling the story of his life, we shall begin at the beginning. Henry Byron Broach was born on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1895 in Crenshaw County, Alabama. I once asked him, who influenced his life the most and he said his dad did. Well, if you ask me who influenced my life the most, he did. Because when I was a little girl he told me that you can be anything you want to be if you're willing to work hard enough at it. And, number one, if you are willing to pay the price.

In 1911, he moved to Palm Harbor – Palm River, Florida. He was really very ill as a child and, never finished the fifth grade which amazed me because later in his life he was a salesperson and he could add up a column, a huge column, of figures faster than I could do it on a calculator, you know. In 1914 – this is really a neat story - at the age of 19, his first real job was with the S. H. Kress and Co. And, I believe the building is still downtown Tampa. And, he was a floorwalker and later a window trimmer. In other words, he did all the window displays. He was very creative. He quit his job the week before Christmas when he found out – this is amazing in 1914 – that the women in the company only were paid five dollars a month and he was paid fifteen dollars a month.

JD: Wow.

JB: The next day he got a job working in a grocery store, diligently saved his money, and in 1917 bought his own hat shop in Ybor City. And, he blocked and cleaned Panama haJD. So Ybor City was always a big part, you know, of our life as well as Seminole HeighJD.

Early in 1917, he had a blind date with Hadie Nelms, who was my grandmother. And, he proposed to her on the front porch in a swing. When I think about that front porch swing, I learned how to count in that swing because we used to sit there at night and count the cars, you know, as they went by. But, he married her in June of 1917 and they had three children that were all born in the house. My mother was born in one of the upstairs bedrooms in 1922. He moved to Arcadia during the Depression and then moved back and bought another grocery store on Henry Avenue which is right down from where the house is now. Much of his business back then was done on bartering and credit. And, my grandmother used to say that when she'd go to church people wouldn't look at her because they knew they owed my grandfather so much money. So, he was such a good man with stuff like that. I don't know about how that would be perceived today, but …

This is an interesting thing, too. In 1926 he played baseball for the City of Tampa League for a team called the Seminole Indians. He was paid five dollars a game to pitch. In 1927, he ran for the Seminole HeighJD seat on the Board of Alderman. Now it's called the City Council. And, he took office in 1928 for a six-year term. The positions that he held were Chairman of Public Buildings and Parks and Bridges, Chairman of the Police Department, and Committee Member for the Water District and Fire Department. During his tenure with the Board of Alderman, some of his most noteworthy accomplishmenJD were – now this is the way my grandfather would say it to me - 'Honey, I built the first bridge to Davis Island.' 'Honey, I brought the Cincinnati Reds to Tampa for spring training.' He also donated the, it used to be called Tampa Bay Hotel and this was in, I think, 1932, to the University of Tampa. And, when I was a little girl, he was a big member, you know, in the Lions' Club and all these other, and they would have meetings, you know, at the hotel and he would take me and I would ride my tricycle, you know, on the veranda at the hotel. And my first tea set – and I wish I still had it – was the demitasse cups from the hotel dining room. And, what's really interesting is I still go to the University of Tampa. I work for the H. B. Plant Museum as a volunteer. But I taught at the University of Tampa for ten years. I taught one course for the College of Business. And I was on staff at the University of Tampa. So, it's kind of neat that through him …

JD: Your entire family was connected.

JB: Yeah, our whole family, you know, is connected. Another big thing that he did, uh during his tenure on the Board of Alderman was the abolishment of bolita and the slot machines. Apparently they had these in, filling stations and grocery stores and all over Ybor City.

JD: It was huge.

JB: It was huge. And, I mean, he used to tell me – you know how you saw in the old movies how they took the machine guns out of the violin cases, pop, pop, pop. That actually went on in Tampa. So, he was very instrumental during his tenure, to abolish those slot machines and bolita. During his term of office with the Board of Alderman, he was paid fifty dollars a month. This wasn't enough money to take care of his family. So he started selling cemetery ploJD for Orange Hill Cemetery. My great grandfather who was his father-in-law, was one of the original – I don't know if he was an owner or what – of the cemetery, which is still here. He said he made three times as much money selling cemetery ploJD. He said, 'You see, I knew most of the policemen and firemen in the city,' because he was in chaJBe of the firemen and the policemen. He said, 'Honey, you've never seen so many policemen and firemen buried in one place as in Orange Hill Cemetery.' Because he would sell them to all of his friends.

This is just a little side thing. In 1983 on his 89th birthday, we had a party for him at MacDill Air Force Base which is another place that's very big in my family. My mother and father met at MacDill. I was born at MacDill. I met my husband at MacDill. My husband was a fighter pilot in the Air Force at MacDill and now he works for Central Command. So, MacDill was also a very big part of our life. So, we had a party out there for him. I knew Bob Martinez. He was the Mayor of the city who later became Governor of Florida. And, I asked him to do some research on my grandfather's tenure. He did this proclamation about his service to the City of Tampa and come to find out that he was the youngest man ever elected and he was the oldest living person on the Board of Alderman.

In 1934, and I remember him telling me stories about this, he ran again for, then it was, it became the County Commission. And, he didn't win. He said that that was the best thing that ever happened to him because he got out of politics and became a businessman and a salesman. He had another grocery store. During World War II in 1941, he went back to work for the Tampa shipyard and taught acetylene burning, torch burning at Brewster Technical School. He served in the U.S. Coastguard Auxiliary. And this is a neat, neat thingy – he used to tell me that he would ride the street car. There was a streetcar from Florida Avenue that went to Ballast Point. And, he would ride this streetcar – this was during World War I – and his job was to look for enemy submarines.

JD: I love it. [chuckle]

JB: I know. He's quite a character. In 1947 he went to work for his best friend, Terrell Young, at Consolidated Distributor, which was a wholesale liquor company. He was a salesman, I mean he was a traveling salesman. He sold liquor to pubs and bars and all this. When I was a little girl, a lot of my toys were like Johnny Walker Red [laughter] – the guy jumping over…

JD: The promotional materials.

JB: Yeah all the promotional, the lighJD and the ( ). And they laughingly would say that my first word was 'Corbies' which was…I don't even know if Corbies still exisJD. But it was, um ( ). But, you can tell from this that he was, you know, quite a character.

JD: A vibrant person.

JB: Yeah. And he and Terrell Young – Terrell was his best friend and Terrell's wife Lula was my grandmother's best friend. And they bought a summer home and property up in North Carolina. They have a house up there. My cousin has it now. It's called Totherside. So that's kind of, you know, the thing about my grandfather."

I think one of the neat things is my son, Brad, who is now thirty-six, when he was going to Coleman Jr. High this was ( ). [pause]

JD: I apologize about that Judy. We ran out of memory. Let's go ahead and pick up where you left off.

JB: The last part of the eulogy that I did was all about his memory and how that I hoped the people in our family would not only keep his memory alive, but remember all of the lessons, you know, that he taught us. Some of them were, 'have faith in yourself,' 'always work hard for your family,' – family was paramount to him – 'be loyal and never foJBet your friends,' 'whatever job you do, it's worth doing well,' 'take pride in your accomplishmenJD,' and above all, 'admit your mistakes.' The other thing that he always believed in, too, is 'you can take the sting of the bee away with a little bit of chewed up tobacco of the end of a cigar.' He always smoked cigars because he was big on the Tampa cigar business and all of that. I know when I was little, if I got stung by a bee, he would chew the end of his cigar and stick it … [chuckle]. And it really does work.

JD: Really?

JB: Yep. He always got plenty of sleep and exercised. When you have a cold you use kerosene and honey. I'll never forget, he came home one day from the filling station. He'd gone to get kerosene 'cause I had a cold or something. And he said, 'You know what, honey? Kerosene today is not fit for human consumption' - because the kerosene today is yellow. In his day it was clear. It was before they put in all the additives and all that. And I think one thing, you have to always every night eat a bowl of ice cream and drink a glass of elderberry wine. And, this is a man – and I'm not condoning smoking and drinking, but – this is a man who lived to be ninety-seven years old; drank elderberry wine every day; had his, you know, little cocktails and smoked pipes and cigars. So, there you have it.

JD: That's fantastic. This is leading into a bit about your own career. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your career and the award that you won.

JB: Oh. It's really kind of neat. The St. Pete Times came out with this thing in the nineties. It was called 'A Woman of the Nineties.' And they chose, I don't know, maybe three or four women to be Women of the Nineties. They asked you questions about your career and all of that.

I think my grandfather was such an incredible influence on me because I had always --. I didn't go to college. I had a 'putting hubby through' degree of college and most of law school. I was married for the second time and my husband decided he didn't want to be married any more. I had a six-week old baby and I worked for the Girl Scouts as an office manager. This was 1974 and I was making $9,800 a year. So, he left. I picked up the baby and drove over to my grandfather's house and said, 'What can I do to make money?' He said, 'Well, honey, there's only one way for a woman to make a lot of money.' And I'm thinking, Oh no! What is he going to tell me? He said, 'You have to go into sales.' I said, okay. He said, 'But, it's important that you sell something that you believe in.' I had always been like a secretary or office manager; so he said, 'Go back to your office and pick out the neatest thing in that office.'

So, I go back to my office. Now this is in the mid-70s. You probably weren't even born yet.

JD: Nope.

JB: But, I'm looking around the office and the sexiest thing in a business office in the mid-70s is a Xerox machine. [laughter] This was before computers or ( ). The electronic typewriter had – I mean electric typewriters had come out but not an elec.. you know, one with the little ball and all that. So, anyway I thought, 'okay,' you know, Xerox. I ended up getting an interview with Xerox. Xerox does not hire people that do not have college degrees. They typically recruit right out of college, you know; and I'm twenty-eight years old. I've got an infant. I went to JC Penneys and bought a little suit. And went to K-Mart and bought a scarf and everything. And I went on my little interview. To make a long story short, they told me no three times. That my qualifications did not meet their 'yada, yada.' So, I finally got another interview. I sent a telegram to the guy who had interviewed me, Joe Goodwin. I'll never forget him. To make a long story short, he hired me. I went on to be like the number one salesperson in the Southeast and number two in the nation. I kept hearing my grandfather's saying to me, 'You can be anything you want to be if you're willing to work hard for it and be willing to pay the price.' Well, back then the women who actually broke through the glass ceiling for all of the women today were willing to pay the price. And there was a price. It could be your family, your health. I mean, I was a single parent. I can remember my little boy who was five years old at the time, I was working on a big proposal for Xerox and he came in the kitchen and I said, 'not now, honey, I'm working on this.' And he goes, 'you know what Mommy? If I could be anything, you know what I would want to be?' I said, 'no, Brad, what?' He said, 'your client.'

JD: Oh no.

JB: That made me realize that when a woman works it's not juggling as much as it's balancing. And if you think about balancing plates on a stick, you know how they used to do that, juggling is easy. If you juggle balls and one drops it bounces and you catch it. But when you're a parent or a single working parent, if you think of it as balancing those plates on a stick, if a plate falls off a stick, it breaks. So ( ).

JD: There's more at stake.

JB: Yeah, more at stake. I ended up remarrying the absolute man of my dreams. If I had made a list of the last person in the world I would marry, it would have been him. He was in the military. My father was career military. My Dad was a Senior Master Sergeant. This guy was an officer. He was a fighter pilot. They are all egomaniacs. But, I was at a cocktail party at MacDill and this friend of mine talked me into going in to the bar. I had never sat at a bar. I'd been in a bar, but I'd never sat at a bar. So, I'm sitting at a bar and I turn around on the bar stool and this guy walks in in a flight suit. I said to my friend, 'I want that one.'

JD: You were sold right there.

JB: Six weeks later we were married.

JD: WOW.

JB: So it's been ..

JD: A whirlwind.

JB: It was incredible. I later went ( ). I was on the staff at the University of Tampa. I founded the Office of Professional Development, which was a non-degree program at the University. It was kind of like the ambassador from the University to the business community.

JD: Okay.

JB: I guess because I could walk across that bridge, and having been in corporate America, they understood. Al Austin, who built Westshore Boulevard, I mean the Westshore business district, was on the board of trustees. He was very influential in helping get that established. Ron Vaughn was the person that asked me to come to the University of Tampa, who is now president at the University of Tampa. But back then Ron was like just professor of marketing at the University. While I was there, a company called Right Associates called me and wanted me to go to work for them. They did corporate outplacement. I thought, 'What is corporate outplacement? Do you mean they pay you to take care of people that have been fired? I worked with them for ten years mostly doing corporate outplacement, leadership development, management training, that type of thing. When I retired from there, I mean, I had two offices, was a senior vice-president. If no one has ever been laid off or fired, they have no idea what the trauma…

JD: How devastating it is.

JB: Oh, totally devastating. And, of course, I dealt mostly with men because they were executives. You know, like when Eastern Air Lines fell out of the sky, we dealt with all of that. First Florida Bank. Barnett bank bought First Florida and then Nations Bank bought Barnett and then Nations Bank bought Bank of America. So all of this during the 80s and 90s was all about people losing their jobs. My job - not only selling and running the office – the staff was to be there when people got fired, like big executives. So, you can imagine somebody fires you and then I walk in to make it all better.

JD: Oh, my gosh.

JB: That's like crisis management. [JD: "Right"] So anyway, I woke up one morning and I looked at my husband and I said, 'I don't ever want to see another grown man cry.' So I left.

JD: I don't blame you.

JB: I left, right? And I retired and did mosaics for a while, but what I do now is I am an executive coach. I'm also an executive confidante. I kind of made that up because, if you're a president and/or a CEO of a company, you don't need a coach. I mean, your ego just, you know ..

JD: Takes care of itself.

JB: But an executive confidante. I mean somebody to share all of this with. Now, I do some coaching. I do a lot of volunteering, but my most favorite job is being a grandmother." And, when I became a grandmother, somebody told me that when you become a grandmother you have the opportunity to see your heart walk outside of your body.

JD: That's so sweet.

JB: And I just hope someday my granddaughter is sitting here with your daughter doing something like this and saying that maybe I was kind of an influence.

JD: A mentor in her life.

JB: Yes. Because I think things kind of go full circle. The way that my family has tied into my career with the MacDill and you know all of those different things.

When I was a little girl, my grandmother would dress me all up on Saturday and we would ride the bus downtown and we would go to Maas Brothers which was a big department store which is now Macy's. Maas Brothers was bought by Burdines who was bought by Macy's. So, the whole Tampa thing, you know, you just kind of comes full circle. And it's really funny because I'm back in South Tampa now. We lived in Town 'N Country and we lived in Odessa and now we're back here.

JD: How do you like it here?

JB: I love South Tampa. I live in faux South Tampa because I live in Port Tampa. A lot of people from South Tampa do not recognize that Port Tampa is, but this is another neat thing. This is where my grandfather used to watch for enemy submarines during World War I.

JD: That's great that you ended up back in this particular spot. That's really interesting.

JB: "I think we need to be careful because we never realize how we are going to influence a life. Whether it's in a positive way or a negative way. The son that's in the picture with the Cincinnati Reds was in junior high. He's a magician.

JD:Really?

JB: Yes. He had an incredibly high IQ and could have done anything he wanted to, but he had a great grandfather who told him that he could be anything he wanted to be if he was willing to work hard at it and willing to pay the price. I think that that's something that any person .. I just think that we get the wrong messages now. I'm so glad I grew up when I did. I'm so glad I can go sit on my grandmother's front porch even though it is a restaurant now. We still go there for family .. Like, we went one year for my mother's birthday. We took cupcakes. Pat who's the owner did a real nice dinner. So it's .. How many people can still do that?

JD: Not very many. That must be a surreal experience, though.

JB: Well, it is. I think being out on the porch is more of a memory to me than being inside the house because the house looks very small. When I was a little girl, it was huge. I mean, high ceilings and the Victorian furniture and the marble. Now it's a bar and grill. So, a lot of it has changed so much. When you see pictures of the house, originally it had all of these rambling verandahs on the top of the house ..

JD: I found it interesting looking at those pictures, also.

JB: Isn't that neat. And, the gables. But to think that house is still standing…

JD: Is kind of amazing in and of itself. Speaking of, I wanted you to bring up – I had it over here in my questions – that with the current owner you were telling me about people coming and telling tall tales.

JB: Oh yeah. I think he even had it on the front of the menu one time. Everybody wants that to be part of their house. They know the history of the house. He was telling me this one guy said that it was built from lumber down - that they got from the Hillsborough River. He was an older man that built the house. Well, he would have had to have been really, really old to have built that house. But, we've just heard through the years, different stories about people saying that the house used to be like a lawyer's office and, you know, like in Hyde Park where the lawyers. And, it wasn't. It has always been a family residence. It has always been in my family until it became Tiffany's Tea Room and then the Front Porch.

JD: Well, can you elaborate more going back to your grandfather. I know as you said, he was influential with the Bolito crime racket – bringing that down. And also, the Cincinnati Reds. Can you elaborate on some of what his role was in those different things?

JB: Well, because he was on the Board of Alderman and because his part – he was chairman of public buildings, parks and bridges. So being in charge of public buildings, the Tampa Bay Hotel fell into disrepair and was no longer a hotel, but the City of Tampa owned it. So what they did in 1932, he was instrumental in – I think the University of Tampa leases the building that is now called Plant Hall which was the hotel. The University rents it, the University does not own it. They still rent it from the City of Tampa. The part about the bridge to Davis Island, he was chairman of public buildings, parks and bridges so he physically did not build this bridge, but that's all in the way he would say it. Then he was chairman of the police department and so he worked very closely with the police. That's how – he was not a policeman – but, I can remember when I was a little girl that the chief of detectives lived upstairs in the house. They had turned the upstairs during World War II into apartments. So people, soldiers and people could live up there. His name was Ben Stevens.. Steve Stevens. He died during – I was about four or five. Apparently he died by falling down a flight of stairs. This was all during the last part of the crime mobs. What do they call that – the godfather?

JD: The Mafia.

JB: The Mafia. But, they called it something else. It's old Latin, La Costa Nostra. I'm not sure what it is, but, I remember him saying to me that no man could have been in the shape he was in by falling down a flight of stairs. And his wife, Mabel, the chief of detectives' wife, lived there upstairs until she died.

JD: Really? I was going to ask that too, since your grandfather had a role in that. Was he nervous about any of that going on?

JB: Well, that was in the 20s and 30s and I wasn't really born yet. So I don't really know other than what he told me. I used to talk to him an awful lot. There were eight of us grandchildren and my cousin Wyatt who lives in Tampa. He and I were the oldest so we were the closest to him and my grandmother. I feel bad about talking so much about him because my grandmother was such a neat, neat lady.

JD: Why don't you tell us a little about her?

JB: Well, she was just a mom and a grandmother. I am so conscious every time my son's car pulls up in front of my house. I think about my grandmother because when you walked in the room you felt like you were the most important person in the world. Her little face would light up; every time we would go to visit, like when they lived up in the mountains in North Carolina, she cried every time we left. She raised the kids and this day that my grandfather had me come over and do his eulogy or his obituary, he said to me .. He was sitting there and he looked at me, he was talking about his youth and this woman he used to date, then he just kind of paused and looked at me and said, 'You know what, sugar? Your grandmother was never on a pair of roller skates in her life. And I thought ..

JD: What a funny thing ...

JB: What a big, you know. In other words, she wasn't adventuresome like he was. And, I said, 'Well then, why did you marry her?' He said, 'Because I knew she would be a good mother for my children.' So, the things that we look at in mates today ..

JD: Our priorities are very different.

JB: Our priorities are totally different. But she was just .. and it's really interesting, in the family we refer to it as my grandmother's house. I don't refer to it as my grandfather's house. What was really interesting, one of the things I kind of left out, was they got married in 1918. They lived there with her family. Her mother owned the house. He told me that someday, he said, sitting out on that front porch, was that someday he was going to buy that house. Later he did. Not too much later. He bought the house from the heirs – my grandmother's brothers and sisters that were left and my great grandmother. My great grandmother lived there until she died. So people were born in that house. I think I was probably conceived in that house. People died in that house.

I remember them telling me that, I think it was my Aunt Cassie, who was my grandmother's sister, had her tonsils out on the dining room table. They used to do, back in the early nineteen hundreds they did everything at home. I mean the doctor came, my grandmother had a grapevine. They actually made wine. She had like a little arbor in the back of the backyard. If you go and you look at the property, some of it has been sold off, but it's pretty big.

JD: It's a pretty good chunk of land.

JB: It's an acre. I mean an acre is [JB: "Substantial."] That's why back then they didn't have the zoning and all that they have now. So, you had the house; there was a building behind the house where Equinox the caretaker lived; and they had a housekeeper who was his wife; but they weren't affluent. Just back then, for room and board, people would live in these little out buildings on your property or in the home. They built the little barbershop. Somebody must have come to my grandfather - I don't know; now I'm speculating – and said, 'You know HB, we should, I could do a barbershop right there.' So he builds this little building. It was the cutest little thing that was a barbershop. Then there was the service station. Then, on the other side of the property, I think it's still there, that's why the address was changed from 5920 to 5924 because before it was just A and B, 5920 A and B, these little businesses. But then, they had to have an address and all that, so it was changed. I really don't know much more about the Bolita because he talked about it a little, but I think that was a really hard time for him. That was a hard time for everybody. Especially in Tampa. Tampa is such an incredible city with the influence of the Cuban-American families and the people who came here. There were probably – I think there might have been twenty different cigar factories at one time. And, what was so funny, when I worked for Right one of my last clients before I left was Hav-A-Tampa Cigar. So it's so funny, that's what I'm saying, I'm so glad I grew up then because now there's no gold watch anymore. I mean, nobody's going to go to work for the railroad and twenty years later they're going to get the watch. Ten years from now, I doubt you'll be with the library. It used to be that you did go to work for the railroad [pause].

JD: So, we'll pick up where we left off. You were talking about people not staying where they are in a certain place or staying where they are with a career.

JB: I just think that the whole thing about families and careers and life, how many people have a house like that? How many people have a legacy or? I really wish I had written more things down and that's a real lesson. My mom died just within months and I had just started thinking about you know, I need her to fill in all these blanks and everything.

I think Tampa is such an incredible city that's evolved over the years with the University. If you look at the University of Tampa when I worked there and you look at it today. I'll give you one – the minarets were full of pigeon poop. They were green. They weren't pretty shiny silver like they are now. I did a lot of public speaking and I was speaking in Fletcher Lounge which was the dining room for the hotel. I was in there speaking and I had on high heel shoes and my heels literally went through the floor because the termites had eaten away at it. I had uncles who went to University of Tampa and my youngest son, Nick who gave me the granddaughters, was a sweat wiper for the basketball team. [laughter]

I think it's sad that more people don't have, have never really had a safe haven. A house can be that. I remember my mom and dad got divorced; they later remarried. But, I remember picking my mom up to bring her back to Tampa - they lived in Jacksonville - thinking, 'I will never be in my mother's home; mother and father's home, again.' I don't know if you have a grandmother that has a house that you can always go back to, but so many people don't have that.

JD: Yes, it's really hard to imagine that. I mean I have that in my own life, but it's .. most people don't, you're right. It's great that it's still there.

JB: Oh yeah. And so many people don't even want to be grandparents. I think it's the neatest thing in the whole world.

JD: That's fantastic. So, do you have any other stories or memories that you would like to share?

JB: Of Tampa? I can't think of …

JD: Or you could tell us about the Maas Brothers store that you were just telling me about.

JB: Well, this was back in the early 90s. Maas Brothers was probably one of the last of the family owned department stores. It was bought by Burdines. Then Burdines has been bought by Macy's. That's what was so neat about my career in the 90s was that was when the bottom just fell out of corporate America. I always said I wanted to write a book someday called, "When Corporate America Lost Its Soul." Because that's when the gold watch went away and that's when company loyalty went away. Even though these companies would hire a company like mine to take care of them. Eastern Air Lines went away. First Florida Bank went away. It was bought by Barnett Bank who went away. I always said if you had been in the bank sign business back then ..

JD: You would have made a living off of that.

JB: But I think that's kind of neat about what I do now in this coaching is helping people be the best they can be. What's neat about what I do now in coaching versus what I used to do, when I worked for Right it was all about fixing people. Now, it's more the life coaching. It's being the best you can be. Asking questions on what's the best way to manage up. People don't think about their boss and their boss' boss."

JD: So, do you work mostly with corporate type of people?

JB: I do. It's mostly around careers. When I'm the executive confidante, it's really talking because if you're at the top, who do you talk to?

JD: Who can you talk to?

JB: And, I coach on the people side of the business. Not the financial side of the business.

JD: That must be really interesting.

JB: It is interesting. What was interesting back when everybody was buying up everybody. Like Burger King was one of our clients. And now, Burger King is being bought. You had to be very careful because you had insider information. I knew when Maas Brothers was going to close. I knew when First Florida Bank was being bought by Barnett. Even before most of the people who worked there. So it was a really neat kind of, it wasn't a neat time, it was kind of a sad time. It just shows you how everything ..

JD: Comes full circle.

JB: Comes full circle.

JD: That sounds like your life here in general. Well, it's been really interesting. Thank you so much, Judy, for taking the time to sit and talk with us about your family's home and your life here in Tampa. I really enjoyed hearing about it.

JB: Thanks.

END OF INTERVIEW