![\"\"](\"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/MrMrsLehigh-Acres.jpg\" "\\"MrMrsLehigh-Acres\\"")
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Written by\u00a0Stephen Brittain<\/p>\n
Good afternoon, I\u2019m Stephen Brittain.\u00a0 I moved to Lehigh Acres with my family in January of 1962 as a 4 \u00bd year old and spent my first summer here having my tonsils removed at Lee Memorial Hospital in Fort Myers.\u00a0 My first organized schooling experience was at Frances Barbour\u2019s kindergarten on Lee Boulevard.\u00a0 There I would meet friends, some of which, I would spend the next 13 years with.\u00a0 Steve Ranke, Gary Dahlke, Charles Kessler, Jeff Boswell, Dalton Drake, Susan Hart, Mark Bateman, Jimmy Friedlander, Donna Marie Williams \u2013 this little group started and finished school together here in Lee County.<\/p>\n
Lehigh Acres was a company town.\u00a0 Land owner turned real estate developer Lee Ranter knew that the 12 square miles of the Lucky Lee Ranch would best yield a profit if turned into quarter acre home sites.\u00a0 So this working ranch was divided into some 144,000 \u00bc and \u00bd acre lots and sold starting around 1955.\u00a0 The ads ran during the evening news in New York City telling prospective buyers that for 10 dollars down and 10 dollars a month, you could own a home site in Lehigh Acres, Florida.\u00a0 I am told that bags of mail were delivered to the Miami offices of Lehigh Acres Land and Title Company, daily, as people mailed in their checks.<\/p>\n
Soon a small motel complete with a pool, restaurant and a bar opened, followed by an auditorium, golf course, water and sewer treatment plant and a youth center.\u00a0 A shopping center was built and a local businessman, Al Hitzing, was lured to Lehigh to open Al\u2019s grocery store.\u00a0 Which had a luncheon counter and housed the post office!<\/p>\n
Lehigh had a small gas station at the corner of Alabama Road and Homestead Road in what is now the Suncoast Schools Federal Credit Union building.<\/p>\n
Homes were being constructed at an alarming rate.\u00a0 A 924 square foot home with 1 bathroom and 2 or 3 bedrooms complete with a lot – was around 6100.00 dollars in 1960.<\/p>\n
What is most amazing about this is that all these things that we needed in order to live here were supplied by \u201cThe Company\u201d as we called it.\u00a0 Lehigh Acres Development Incorporated knew that in order to sell lots and houses residents needed a place to shop, buy food, they needed water to drink and sewer systems to get rid of the water.\u00a0 The new Lehigh Acres resident would want a country club and a pool and golf course \u2013 so very wisely the powers that be engaged several amazing men to do this job.<\/p>\n
Mr. James Friedlander was brought on board to head the water and sewer plant and oversee its new facility off Coolidge Avenue.<\/p>\n
Mr. Dave Langford was instructed to start building roads and bridges that would amount to about 1200 miles before he was finished.<\/p>\n
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Mr. Jim Richmond, who actually worked at the original ranch, was retained to fill a variety of roles in the sale force.<\/p>\n
Mr. Arthur Kessler had a primary role in promoting new business and to bring businessmen to the table to see what they might offer the citizens of Lehigh Acres.\u00a0 Shopping centers, banks and other services can be directly traced back to his efforts.\u00a0 Additionally, he was a wonderful supporter of things like Little League and other youth activities.<\/p>\n
Mr. Gerald Gould who came as the first president of \u201cThe Company\u201d would oversee the plan as a ranch would become a town.<\/p>\n
I knew all of these men personally as a youngster and later worked with some of them as an adult.<\/p>\n
This team of men, along with their wives and children, poured their life\u2019s blood into this community.\u00a0 When Hurricane Donna hit Lee County in September of 1960 many roofs were torn off homes and 100\u2019s of trees were downed \u2013 once the storm passed Jerry Gould instructed company trucks be dispatched to Fort Myers to hire laborers to help clean up the town.\u00a0 The cleanup was done in a matter of days.\u00a0 It was a real \u201cGet er done\u201d approach.<\/p>\n
The \u201cCompany\u201d also had a policy of offering an acre of land to any church that wanted to form.\u00a0 In the early 1970\u2019s I recall a billboard that boasted 17 churches \u2013 in a town of less than 10,000 people.<\/p>\n
The company wasn\u2019t just building homes it was building a community.<\/p>\n
Early in the life of this new community about 15 miles from Fort Myers, it was obvious that a school in our own town was going to be a necessity.\u00a0 The local school board was approached and asked to please build a school here in Lehigh Acres.\u00a0 The school board listened and agreed that getting children to Fort Myers or Alva Elementary School (which was 10 miles away) was a bit of a problem \u2013 but there was no money in the budget for buildings, buses and teachers.\u00a0 Their answer was, \u201cNO\u201d<\/p>\n
The company people weren\u2019t taking, \u201cNo\u201d for an answer and returned to the school board with an offer.\u00a0 They agreed to build 3 houses and not finish the interiors so that these could be used for school rooms.\u00a0 There would be no bedrooms, no kitchen, just one big room with a smooth cement floor and a bathroom and big crash bar doors out to a black topped back yard.\u00a0 The school board did send 3 teachers and later a 4th teacher and a portable building that was erected between the 1st and 2nd building.<\/p>\n
So now we had a school and teachers but no way to get to school.\u00a0 There was no money in the school board\u2019s budget for a bus and bus driver.\u00a0 Not to worry \u2013 the company had a bus and once in the morning and once in the afternoon they operated the bus and shuttled the children to or from school.<\/p>\n
Each morning beloved Principal Betty Ratliff would pick two kids and have them walk the black top swinging a copper cow bell on a rope.\u00a0 This is how we started classes.\u00a0 Sometime during the morning two kids would be asked to take the metal milk crate to the 3rd house where Mrs. Ratliff was teaching 6th grade \u2013 she\u2019d stop what she was doing and count out enough cartons of milk, one for each child, to go in the box and then you\u2019d walk back to your class room.\u00a0 We had No lunch room or kitchen \u2013 so everyone packed a lunch every single day.<\/p>\n
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When I was asked to tell this story to you today \u2013 I kept trying to figure out what made this experience so special.\u00a0 What was different about this school?\u00a0 I think that the answer is that this school was one of the major things that made Lehigh Acres a real legitimate town.\u00a0 It gave the community purpose and gave us our own identity.\u00a0 The people who lived in Lehigh Acres when to a school IN Lehigh Acres.<\/p>\n
The school board saw that the area was growing and growing fast.\u00a0 In 1962 they bought this property right here and built a bridge over the Able Canal (did you know it was called the Able Canal?)\u00a0 In the summer of 1964 my father brought me and my siblings here to see the building still under construction.\u00a0 It was huge!\u00a0 It had yellow doors with grey trim.\u00a0 It had a bus ramp where 3 buses could pull up at the same time.\u00a0 WOW, 3 buses we would never have 3 buses in use at the same time.\u00a0 It had 8 class rooms, teacher\u2019s lounge, a clinic and administrative offices!\u00a0 We would never use 8 class rooms at one time!\u00a0 It had 3 water fountains in the main hall way.\u00a0 It is interesting to note that none of the school had air conditioning.\u00a0 The classrooms each had a big closet in the back of the room and on top of the closet was a big belt driven fan.\u00a0 When the teacher turned on the fan, the air bounced off the walls and blew ALL the paper off your desks every single time.<\/p>\n
First day of school in 1964 the entire school lined up at the bus ramps and in class room order we were led to our new rooms.\u00a0 There were 31 of us 2nd graders lead by Mrs. Persons.<\/p>\n
The combination cafeteria and auditorium called \u201cthe Cafeatorium\u201d was not finished on the first day of school so everyone had to bring their lunch for several months.\u00a0 The library was not finished yet either but soon it was ready.<\/p>\n
So that\u2019s the story of how this place came to be.\u00a0 I doubt that I will be able to be here for the next 50th year celebration because I\u2019d be 107 years old.\u00a0 The school doesn\u2019t really look much like it did back then because things change and more class rooms were needed but it\u2019s still Lehigh Acres Elementary School and the good memories never change!<\/p>\n
Congratulations on 50 years serving the community and its students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Written by\u00a0Stephen Brittain Good afternoon, I\u2019m Stephen Brittain.\u00a0 I moved to Lehigh Acres with my family in January of 1962 as a 4 \u00bd year old and spent my first… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}