The Summer of '47

Sunland Tribune Volume 24 Article 5 1998 The Summer of '47 Gary R. Mormino Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/sunlandtribune Recommended Citation Mormino, Gary R. (1998) "The Summer of '47," Sunland Tribune: Vol. 24 , Article 5. Available at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/sunlandtribune/vol24/iss1/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sunland Tribune by an authorized editor of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE SUMMER OF ‘47 Gary R. Mormino That summer, a surging economy ignited by pent-up consumer demand and cold It was the summer of our discontent, a war anxieties buoyed the spirits of seedtime of change. In Washington, an Floridians. An optimism borne of victory embattled Democratic president blamed and postwar prosperity swept Tampa a "do nothing" Republican Congress for Bay. But the demons of the southern the nation's woes, while a resurgent GOP SDVW VHJUHJDWLRQ SRYHUW\ DQG pledged to return America to family QDWXUH FODVKHG ZLWK GUHDPHUV YLVLRQV values and limited government. A prying of a new Tampa. press greatly annoyed the President and First Lady, who attempted to protect In 1947, the ghosts of World War II still their only daughter from publicity. In lingered. Following the conflict, Hollywood, a handsome actor testified Congress had drastically slashed the that the movie industry was controlled military, shutting down most of Florida's by subversives holding un-American military bases. But for some crisscrossed views; critics charged that the fading runways, Henderson Field, located in movie star was more interested in sparsely-settled northeast Hillsborough Washington than Hollywood. In the County, became a memory. In Middle East, Palestinians and Jews peacetime, Henderson Field's 2,000 battled in the streets, while in England, acres served new purposes. The federal royalty blazed anew as the public fell in government deeded the scrubland to love with a young princess. Hillsborough County. Within a decade the area served as home to two breweries In far-away Florida, summer ushered in and the University of South Florida. a season of controversies. Red tide and overflowing sewers lapped the shores of Fortune also favored Tampa when the U. Tampa Bay, while overhead, military S. government decommissioned Drew aircraft sprayed chemicals to combat Army Air Field. Emblematic of World new and old pests. When students War II's galvanic impact upon the returned to classrooms, they discovered region, Dale Mabry Highway was built "portables," visible symbols of to connect MacDill and Drew Fields. In overcrowding. In Tallahassee, the summer of '47, Drew Field named lawmakers faced angry taxpayers and after businessman John H. Drew faded frustrated educators. A combative "He into history, when officials renamed the Coon" governor announced plans to facility Tampa International Airport. The improve Florida's educational system. city inherited a $20 million windfall.1 Tampans squared off in an ugly debate over the "big league" image of its MacDill Army Air Field alone survived football stadium. It was the summer of the postwar blues. In September 1947, 1947. the Army Air Corps officially became the United States Air Force, a move which strengthened MacDill's profile. Cold War tensions in Latin America and Technology seemed to hold out a daz- the Caribbean assured MaeDill's survival zling future to residents of the Tampa in the 1940s and 50s. Indeed, the mood Bay area. In August 1947, thousands of in Congress swung dramatically from shoppers flocked to the Maas Brothers' isolationism to containment in 1947, Franklin Street showcase to gaze and with the declaration and passage of the ponder the meaning of a brand new Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine. The medium: television. The department Cold War and the Military Industrial store sponsored an exhibition of the Complex funneled millions of dollars latest technology; shoppers watched with into the Tampa Bay economy. fascination as images of local singers and talking heads magically appeared on World War II wrought a technological a six-inch screen.3 Alas, since Tampa revolution, and the war's weapons and Bay had no television station in 1947, experiments reappeared in the skies and residents could not watch the magical stores of 1947 Tampa. Jet planes roared November wedding of Great Britain's overhead, eventually cracking the speed Princess Elizabeth and Lt. Philip of sound that year, while DC-3s whisked Mountbatten. passengers from New York and Havana to Tampa. C-47s and other military The year 1947 introduced another new transports also circled the skies, PHGLXP )0 UDGLR :'$( RZQHG E\ dumping copious amounts of DDT along the Tampa Daily Times SURPLVHG WKH Tampa Bay bayous and backyards. The area's 5,000 radio listeners who owned enemy was the omnipresent and FM receiving sets static-free reception. omnivorous mosquito. Developed to Twenty-five years earlier, WDAE had combat the native predators of the South become Florida's very first licensed AM Pacific jungles, DDT quickly became a radio station.4 panacea for Florida's other insect scourges. Floridians rushed to apply the The bewitching new witches brew, but some began to WHFKQRORJLHV ''7 WHOHYLVLRQ DQG )0 question the new cure. A lethal dose of UDGLR SURPLVHGDEHWWHUGD\IRU7DPSD red tide, however, reminded residents of Bay. Technology also lured visitors to nature's revenge.2 Florida with the modern comforts of air travel, sleek postwar automobiles, and Two years after Hiroshima and air conditioning. The future seemed Nagasaki, atomic technology continued now. to preoccupy Tampa residents. Hurricanes also haunted residents, thus Historically, tourism serves as an accu- on June 24, 1947, The Tampa Tribune rate barometer of public confidence and asked Courthouse Square strollers the the state's fiscal health. In 1947, tourism following question: "Would you like to reinforced America's love affair with see a scientific test made to discover Florida, but profound changes in the whether 'baby hurricanes' could be killed marketing and nature of tourism were by [atomic] bombs?" Strollers endorsed occurring amidst the honky-tonk of old the idea. Florida. In 1947, bulldozers cleared a site on U.S. Highway 19 between the isolated settlements of Homosassa Springs and Spring Hill. Newton Perry, a and that slum areas "beggared a Mexican former Navy frogman, called the new Peon village."8 attraction Weeki Wachee, named for the glorious springs. Weeki Wachee's pro- In Tampa, old economies and new real- motion of "live mermaids" anticipated ities collided in 1947. "Cigar City" the marketing strategies used by future struggled to redefine itself. Thousands of theme parks.5 cigarmakers, many of them pioneers from the handrolled heyday of Ybor City Older tourist attractions SULVWLQH as the capital of premium cigars, beaches, bass-filled lakes, and alligator remained unemployed. The Great IDUPV OXUHG UHFRUG QXPEHUV RI ZLQWHU Depression and the popularity of cheap visitors in 1947. The sheer number of cigarettes during the war D WRQLF IRU visitors so impressed local and state ZDU QHUYHV KDG VHULRXVO\ HURGHG WKH officials that economists predicted with market for Tampa's finest. Most notably, giddy optimism that tourism would fashionable men no longer smoked someday become a twelve-month a year cigars.9 industry.6 Air conditioning, still rare in 1947, eventually helped fulfill the Still, the moniker "Cigar City" lingered. tourism-in-August prophecy. In 1947, Tampa was becoming a city though famous for cigars, more The economic boom was driving the important for phosphate and shipping, price of Tampa Bay beachfront property construction and services, military higher and higher. From Pass-a-Grille to defense and organized crime. Old firms Clearwater Beach, a postwar prosperity and first families held power and drove the price of gulf property threefold controlled civic affairs, but a new in just a few years. In a decade the generation of businessmen and leaders Pinellas beachfront population had emerged after the war, typified by Jim grown 700 percent. In Tampa, city Walter, Sam Gibbons, Tony Pizzo, and officials bemoaning Hillsborough Julian Lane. County's paucity of sandy beaches, began to convert land along Ben T. In an earlier era, a local bromide held Davis Causeway (now Courtney that when Ybor City caught a cold, Campbell Parkway) into a municipal Tampa contracted pneumonia. The beach. 7 1940's Tampa economy, however, depended upon the comparative health Reinventing a city's image proved even of military defense spending, small-scale more difficult than creating public manufacturing, retail service spending, beaches. In tourism, image is everything. agricultural products, and the Thus, when editors of the influential housing-construction business.10 Holiday magazine came to Tampa, boosters rejoiced. Quickly, jubilation If homebuilding supplied the oxygen for turned to lamentation. Holiday released Tampa's postwar boom, the G.I. Bill pro- an advance copy, bluntly commenting vided the fire. The sounds of hammers that Tampa smelled, that its Gasparilla and saws disrupted the peaceful summer Festival smacked of "slapstick comedy," of '47, as homes went up in new developments and old neighborhoods. An older bungalow in Hyde Park or a overcrowded conditions. Everyone Mediterranean Revival in Suburb seemed aghast at the state of education Beautiful could be purchased for less in Tampa, but the roots of the crisis than $10,000, but most buyers preferred required little research. Hillsborough a new home, a ranch style with large lot County, for reasons of austerity and in the fast-growing suburbs. depression, had failed to build a single Unincorporated Hillsborough County new school since 1927. The portents of boomed. Brandon, famous for its future crises were everywhere, as serenity and strawberries, took off in the pregnant mothers carried with them late 1940s.

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