Connecting the Community; 2919; 450 Years of Pensacola History

Welcome to Connecting the Community. I'm Robin Rashard. Well, if you haven't received your personal invitation, then let me be one of the first to invite you to the birthday party of the year. Every one of you plus your extended family is invited to Pensacola's 450 gets birthday celebration on August 15th to help blow out 450 candles for each year of the settlement of Pensacola, when Don Tristan Deluna landed in the Pensacola Bay, establishing the first European settlement in the United States. Tonight, we'll celebrate Pensacola with the little history, and you're seeing that on the screen now. We'll tell you where the rest of the celebrations are, and we'll show you some pictures of the parties before the party. With us tonight are members of celebrate Pensacola, the local nonprofit organization, spearheading the events over the last year. We're joined by Georgia Smith, a local historian, author, and teacher, and a member of the Celebrate Pensacola

Heritage Committee. And Alan Nicholson, a local banker, and the Treasurer and Fundraze and Chairman of Celebrate Pensacola. If you have a question about Pensacola's history or how you can still be a part of the 450th income to the great birthday party, we'll invite you to call us at 4841-223 or 1-800-239-WSRE. Georgia Smith, the obvious question is, why Don Tristan Deluna and why Pensacola? Excuse me. Pensacola was chosen because the Spanish feared that our parties were going to attack their ships coming from Mexico, that was loaded with gold and silver. Each year the Spaniards would dig the gold and silver out of Mexico, and annually they would send these loaded ships back to Spain, and they felt that pirates would be here at Pensacola, so they decided the best thing to do was to colonize our Pensacola so that they could

watch and see who was here. So Deluna was not coming directly from Spain to Pensacola is what it's what I thought and what I'm sure a lot of people thought he was going to get the goodies from Mexico. Mexico at that time was called New Spain, the Spanish had come and colonized. So this was a aqua highway if you were a little bit between Spain and Mexico or New Spain. And so the royalty wanted to protect their interests or the government then wanted to protect their interests and establish a colony here at Pensacola. And Jamestown in St. Augustine were established during this same period, I'm not sure if that was all of this sort of water transportation. Then was this sort of an age of exploration for Spanish and for some of the other Europeans. But Jamestown and St. Augustine came later

the first people to first European to colonize the Americans to colonize what is now the United States were the Spanish. And later the French came to Mobile and the English came up in Charleston and later Georgia. And these were the ones that the Spanish feared. And so that's the beginning of Pensacola, the city of five flags then? 1559. Okay Columbus was a little bit before the first one as far as we know, one of the first Europeans to come to America. But he did not come here to what is now the United States instead. He was down in the Caribbean's in the Bahamas and other Haiti and other islands. But after he came back to Spain, other people started coming over.

And the trail has not stopped out there. That's what brings us here to the 450th. How did all of these folks come together now? It seems like and we'll talk about the executive committee in a second. But how did all these folks come together and say that we want to celebrate 450 years? Well this was something that has actually been a long work in process here. It was obviously we had a celebration of belief. I was not alive at the time. Actually we had a 400th anniversary. Obviously 50 years ago I believe Mr. Appuyar was part of that process. And this was something we recognize as being the oldest settlement here in the United States. We wanted to celebrate and bring attention to. And really the process started over six years ago. And there was a committee put together prior to the committee that we have in place now. And unfortunately they had a lot of works going. They had a lot of hard work put in. And obviously we all know what happened with Hurricane

Ivan coming through. And I've been kind of set back that organization. The committee obviously there's other focuses that came to light just trying to rebuild the city. And so once that happened and everyone focused on rebuilding the city and we obviously did a very good job of that. We refocused on Celebrate Pensacola and trying to bring the 450th celebration to the city. And Coy Urban who's our co-chairman kind of brought everyone together. And from that time we tried to bring a big group together as you said and we wanted to make it as diverse as possible. Because it is a diverse city and diverse celebration we want to do. We wanted to bring as many people from all ethnicities, ages, sexes, everything to the celebration. And so we tried to focus on that and bring people in from different areas throughout the city. And was that organization the Fiesta 5 flags? Were they one of the organizations who? No. We are actually completely separate organization from Fiesta. I know that often times we are kind of grouped together but we are actually a separate organization and we have partnered together on some activities. But we are completely

our own 501c3 certificate and operate as a standalone entity. So I did something separate. And the list of executive committees and members like the Georgia Smith as a part reads like a variable who's who of Pensacola. Why was it so important to get that diversity and age and sex and race and ethnicities and all of that? And I agree. I think that speaks volumes for our city and for how we all come together for celebrations like this. I think you mentioned we have various committees. We have eight or nine different committees made up of about 100 roughly 120 different individuals on those various committees. So we have a widespread arm that we have within the organization which it is very diverse and that the focus on that was to bring different ideas, visions, focuses. We all have different specialties, different backgrounds and we want to bring as many people to the forefront as possible and we figured by my being as diverse as we

are we can reach anyone and everyone within the city. And obviously we want to make this statewide celebration as well. So that was the focus on it. And we'll talk about tourism here in just a second. Georgia, he mentioned diversity. Tell me about the diversity of the folks coming over on the ships. Those sort of explorers. Who would have been on the ship with Delona? Okay. Delulu bought soldiers. He bought women and children and he also bought prisoners who helped to build the fort when they settled here in Pensacola. And what did each one of those, I mean some of that may be obvious, but what did each one of those facets do? The soldiers were bought to build and to protect and to protect and to the fin and I'm sure to watch for pirates. Which was that really the objective to watch

for pirates. And the women and the children were they bought specifically to settle the area. Yeah, they want to colonize. They want this to become, Pensacola to become a permanent colony. They want people, they want people living here. So they bought, you have to have, if you want people to stay for a while, you have to provide a place for a family. So they would be kind of hard for a single man to deal with that. He wouldn't be too happy about his family. So they were going to colonize here. But what happened is they got here in September and in August and Storm came and it blew away 10 of the Luna's 13 ships. He only had three ships left. And that meant a lot of the supplies was going to, when it wants to storm the straw at the ships. So they stayed on for a while. I think for about two years. And then finally they left Pensacola and the Spanish came back, I think in

1698, almost 100 years later. And we settled here permanently. And then the prisoners, now that's an interesting phenomenon. Having the prisoners coming here is almost like the prisoners coming from or the sort of unwanted, coming from England. They bought them here to do the work. They said, okay, come on, you can come and work. You know, as part of your penalty, you can come and help us work. You can build a fort help us build a colony. And how many of those folks then would have stayed? I mean, maybe no one would want to claim that a prisoner is part of their heritage here claiming, but how many of those folks would have stayed in settle? I imagine about 75% of them would have stayed in settle. They had to have that storm. Once the Spanish went to San Augustine in 1565, they stayed in settle there. That's why San Augustine gets the recognition for being the oldest city in the United States, is because

it was a permanent settlement. Once they got there, they stayed with Pensacola. The Spanish here at Pensacola was not permanent. It was destroyed. And it was 100 years later before the Spanish returned. I think it was 1698. If only we'd have those hurricane covenants then, huh? Right. Okay. Alan, talk about some of the events that I've been celebrated this year. Well, obviously, there's been some big focal events. I think the one that's garnered the most attention is the royal visit by King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia was a huge, poor guy, consider a huge success. They came in for a whirlwind. I think it was about 18 hours. They flew in in February. I think it was February 18th and came in and we're a little concerned. They came in and it was pouring down rain just at this torrential downpour when they arrived. And so it was a little concerning to see them arrive and have the rain coming

down as hard as it was. But luckily, the very next day, it was an absolute perfect day. Like I said, in mid-February, it was 65 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. So it turned out to be a beautiful day. We had to think it was about 5,000 people in the Jackson downtown Plaza. He and the Queen had an announcement to the crowd and we had a great showing. And we had a big lunch and form out the Navy base as well, which we had a very good turnout. And really, he went from here. He went down to Miami. And from what we were told, he enjoyed his visit here much more than he did Miami. And even apparently he pulled Governor Chris Decide. We had the governor, Charlie Chris here as well. And Chris went down to Miami also. And he pulled him aside, even and said how great of a visit he had here in Pensacola. And so we had the Pensacola did a great, great, great job in showing, you know, our excitement here and having him and our excitement about our heritage. And it was a very, very big success. And in addition to that, we just had the Alcono, the Spanish call shift that

was here. I guess it left a week ago tonight, actually. And we had, I believe, the reports were about 13,000 people showed up over the five days that was here, which again, I believe record turnouts for the ship. And we did have good weather that probably helped the turnout a little bit. But we had people waiting in line for three hours at a time. And which is unheard of here in Pensacola and families, children, people of all ages coming in from what I envision all over, not just Pensacola, but to have people waiting in line for anything here in Pensacola for three hours is unheard of. And so, so again, that shows the success that everything's had here. And then we've had some other things as well. We had the Spanish food and wine festival. We had Battle Pensacola, Reenachment, Back in May, otherwise known as the Galvez battle. We have currently going on at the Art Museum, Zapata, exactly. We have the Spanish artist Zapata that has an exhibit going on. We also had another artist that we commissioned in from St. Augustine of all places that came

up and we commissioned him for 10 paintings. And what he's doing with the 10 paintings is going back to the beginning when Delina landed and over the course from the top 15-59, all the way up until the present day Pensacola, doing 10 different painting significant paintings kind of going through the history of Pensacola. And he's not finished yet, but we should have those here shortly and hope to unveil those to the public very soon. So, very exciting events. And that brings to mind that a lot of these events have been family oriented and very educational to them. And I know there is a separate education. And that kind of sticks to kind of our mission as well. You kind of alluded to it perfectly with being educational. That was one of our main focuses is to make sure it is educational. I mean, it's mainly it's educational to me. I mean, the history of Pensacola, it's a very diverse history. And a lot of people don't know about including people that here in Pensacola. But we're trying to educate not only Pensacola citizens, but people throughout the country about the history of Pensacola. So, it is very diverse history and a great history.

And so, we're bringing that into what we're trying to do here and also bring it into the school system. And like you said, the children and all these events are family oriented, which, again, we're trying to reach out as far as we can and make it as diverse and bring in as many people as we can. George, you were on the Heritage Committee. And part of that, part of your purpose there was to keep alive the history and all of the different facets. How did you aim to do that? When history is so diverse, how do you compile all of that? Well, I'm going to go back to what he was saying about the King and the Queen of Spain when they were here. I'm the kindergarten teacher. So, I have my kindergarten students to write about the King and the Queen of Spain. I told them we have many fairy tales. And these fairy tales usually have kings and queens in them, but they are not real. And here was a chance to see a real King and King. Wow. And to elude on that, too, in talking about the children aspect, I think the King

and Queen kind of made a comment on it. When they were coming in from, I stayed out of the Pensacola Beach. Coming in, even on their motorcade, they had the streets were lined up with children, waving with flags, with everything from kindergarten to fifth grade or all ages. And they're just lined up in the streets, waving to the King and Queen just to see for two seconds. And that's all they were going to see is this waving tomb. As they drove by and the King was thrilled to see that, thrilled to see the kids out and about. They had flags, you know, Spanish flags, they were waving and everything else. And so, I think the school system did get behind it very much. And both of Santa Rosa County and Escamia County. And so it was great to see, you know, the kids getting behind it and the excitement that they generated as well. Georgia, what else did you do on what the Heritage Committee brought in the kindergarten specifically in your class, but how did the Heritage Committee broaden that to the other cultures and the other ethnicities?

Well, I know that we were talking about the different groups that came into Pensacola after the Lulu. For example, the Swedish people who came in and the Greeks and they were not and the people from Ireland. So we were talking about them, including some sort of celebration to honor these groups who had come in to settle here. Does the Executive Committee feel that you've done a good job of including those, the diverse European and African and Mexican ethnicism and cultures and everything? And we, as Georgia is saying, we've reached out to several different organizations that have all the different cultures involved and we've extended out invitations for them to take part. Unfortunately, we did have a Heritage Festival that was scheduled. That was kind

of the bring all that together as well. And for various reasons, we had to postpone that. We still might get that together, but that was going to bring a lot of those cultures together as well. And again, that kind of brings back to the Lulu 2 before with the committee members and everything else like that. We've extended invitations to various committees to bring in the different cultures and ethnicities and everything else to make sure that they are involved and get their input to make sure, not only to get their input to get their input to how we bring in other groups like them. And so we feel we have been very successful with that. And I know we're going to talk about August 15th as well, but we hope August 15th does that. That's going to be a huge, as you mentioned, huge birthday party and we hope to bring anyone and everyone from all ages and sexes and ethnicities throughout the country down to that. And so we're doing our best to make sure we have different events and excitement for that to bring them all down here on August 15th. Georgia mentioned that there were 1,500 men, women, and children and now found it out prisoners on the 13th shift. Now, as a treasurer, I suspect that it feels like a similarly

enormous challenge to fund that sort of venture. Talk about what it takes to keep a celebration like this. You started at 400 or almost 450 days ago to do this and we'll talk about the plaza statue here in a second, but talk about the finances that it takes. And it must be pretty tough, too. It is. It is. It is a bank or two. That's exactly right. It is extremely, extremely difficult. Unfortunately, at the time, there's nothing we can do about it. And we did start, as we mentioned, four years ago, really tried to start seven years ago with the hurricane hitting. And so there's a lot of planning involved. It wasn't just put together in the past year. And as you said, we kicked it off for 150 days prior to the 15th. But the funding has been a constant challenge. It still is a challenge. We're

still seeking donations, as we speak, to help with all these events. There's kind of a false perception that we have a lot of money behind this. Obviously, we brought the king and queen in town, tried to do a fundraiser for that with the luncheon, et cetera. And unfortunately, that brings a lot of costs with it. Yes, it did have a lot of brought in some funds, but unfortunately, it basically just paid for the event itself. And so we're kind of going event by event almost. It seems, and so we're still actively seeking sponsorships actually today. And we have marketing sponsorships that are out there through billboards and radio ads, et cetera. And we're trying to reach out. It's a one-time cause. It might be a once in a lifetime thing. I'm younger. I hope to be around for the 500th anniversary. But I might not be. And so I hope to say, you know, if I'm calling people and asking for money, it's very much assured that I will not be calling next year for the same cause. Obviously, it's a one-time event. So we're trying to see donations in the amount of $45, $45.50 or $4.50 or $4.50. I mean, anything anyone can give where we're trying to take.

Do you take it in pennies if I give? We will take it in pennies. We will take it in Spanish polling. We will take it. And anything people have, I will come pick it up myself. I will spend the gas money to come pick it up. I might spend more in gas money to come pick it up, but I will come pick it up. What's the basis of the funding? How did celebrate Pensacola start? I mean, it had to get funding from someone. Well, the city has been a very big help. And so we've leaned on them a little bit. We thank them very much. Obviously, we're hoping we're bringing some tourism dollars to the city, of course. And we've had some other sponsorships as well. So that's kind of been the saving grace as kind of we're getting it. Like I said, we're getting by event by event. And the city was kind of the seed money if you want to call that. And we did have some other grant money that came in, some seed money. And from there, we've just been going by trying to get various sponsorships. A lot of us more. We've got some incontonations of course, through some marketing and things like that.

What's the value of having the 450th here? I mean, what can people expect for either a donation or even just showing up? What's that value? A lot of that. Unfortunately, I probably need someone in the tourism business, probably a better answer to that question. Someone in the, from the visitor information center because I think he can't add trader can put a dollar amount on that because obviously the event and the focus is to bring attention to Pensacola and bring tourism to Pensacola. And so we're hoping that I believe we are doing is bringing people in from out of town and that are staying in Pensacola. They're staying in the hotel. They're staying in the beach and they're coming to see our history. They're seeing about it. There's been great publicity nationwide. We've had publications in, I believe it's 42 states, 13 different countries where Pensacola has been mentioned. Obviously, a lot of that has been helped by the royal visit, of course, but recently we've had feature articles in the Smithsonian magazine, feature article in USA Today, which is a number one period article here in the country.

And so we hope of things like that and articles like that bring people to Pensacola. And of course, more people you bring to Pensacola, the more dollar impact it has on our economy here. So then the expectation is that you will have, you will be getting a return on the dollar long after August 5th, without question. Yes, that is the primary goal and that's the focus. Yes. Okay. There were other areas and you talked about that. There are other areas in Pensacola and often they sometimes feel slight at the north end of the county. Maybe even Santa Rosa County even just saying Pensacola, how did you include the other areas surrounding the Pensacola in a metropolitan statistical area? We've brought them in, again, through imitations, through bringing them in on our committees. Now, admittedly, a lot of the focus is on the historical aspect of Pensacola. And unfortunately, that is more in the downtown district. So that is what the focus is going to be on. I mean, the primary goal is to talk about the history of Pensacola. And we're not not only

are we trying to bring in people from Gulf Breeze or other areas within the scheme of the county, but we're trying to bring in people from Miami, people from St. Augustine, people from Washington, D.C. We're trying to bring people in throughout the country and other people trying to bring people in from Spain. So not only is it the focus on just our area here in Pensacola, but this is truly a nationwide focus. And we're hoping again with the August 15th coming up, we feel that we're hoping to bring national attention to that. And again, we've had governor Chris that's been behind this. We've had both senators, state senators that are involved. We've had many trips to Washington, D.C. to get them involved. And so we feel we've done a good job in trying to bring as many people as we can into the equation. Georgia, let's say that you're living in 450 years. What will your story of history be then for this 450 years now? Well, I guess, my story would be that we've made a very good effort to bring attention

to our history here at Pensacola. And Pensacola has some very significant sites for people to see. For example, the boards, we have original boards, the forensics and board pickings. These will be built in the 1830s by slaves from New Orleans. And if you go to Mobile for a kind, it's just a reproduction, but afterwards, a real. And that's what I wish people to see. And what will the books say then? So we'll have this originality on our force. But what else will the books say about the area? And that it was settled by Spain. It is one of, it is the oldest city in the United States. And James Town won't beat us anymore? No, James Town won't beat you anymore. Because English didn't get there until, I will say the pickings that are at Plymouth. They didn't get there in the 1620. But we, the Spanish were here in Pensacola in 1559. So no, James Town won't beat us anymore.

All right. Alan, what can people expect on August 15? Tell us about this big old party we're going to have. Yeah, August 15 is kind of the big culmination to what we're trying to do. And obviously, the significance behind that, it is a Saturday, which works out in our favor, of course. But that is the actual celebration date, the actual 450th anniversary, as you say, the 450th birthday. And so we are planning a big event. A lot of the, we're still trying to get the exact details down. But we are then started off actually with the celebration on the beach in the morning. As George probably can explain better than I can, they came in on the water, of course. We're then do, we're then kind of doing reenactment from that. We have someone kind of row in a boat and come to the shore. We're going to have a mass out on the beach that morning, which there's a map. I'm going to have to cut you off there. But I think people can go to celebrate Pensacola.com to get the rest of those details. Correct. Yeah. So we'll, we'll, we'll tell you, go to celebrate Pensacola.com. And that's all the

time we have for our show. We'd like to thank our guest Alan Nicholson and George Smith with celebrate Pensacola. You can check us out online at w s r e dot o r g for more educational, educational, informative, and fun topics. And from all of us here at w s r e, I'm Robin Rashard encouraging you to read a book.