The lives they led

---

INSIDE

WEEK OF DEC. 26-JAN. 1, 2013

www.FloridaWeekly.com

Vol. VI, No. 39 • FREE

A man in a tutu Enough said. C1 X

d le y e h t s e v i l e h T

Holiday House Society photos. C24 X

REMEMBERING

THOSE WE’VE

LOST THIS YEAR STORIES BY EVAN WILLIAMS

~A8

The business of helping Teaming up with the Salvation Army this season. B1 X

EWILLIAMS@ FLORIDAWEEKLY.COM

Honoring, thanking all who have served Portrait project especially points to World War II BY ROGER WILLIAMS rwilliams@floridaweekly.com

BERNADETTE LA PAGLIA / FLORIDA WEEKLY

The portraits awaiting their debut at the unveiling reception at IberiaBank on Marco Island.

This is the st ory of a thank y ou in art, delivered in the brilliant hues of the heart from a few talented and civic-minded baby boomers to the Gr eatest Generation, as

PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID FORT MYERS, FL PERMIT NO. 715

television newsman and au thor Tom Brokaw characterized the men and women who endured and triumphed in World War II. That planet-altering conflict is no w almost 68 y ears behind us, and the last of the g eneration fading away. But in the minds of Mar co Island portr ait painter Malenda Trick, her husb and Clark Shaw and Keith Dameron, a Mar co Island IberiaBank manager, the Gr eatest Generation might be represented by any men or

ROGER WILLIAMS OPINION ANTIQUES HEALTHY LIVING

SEE PORTRAIT, A6 X

A2 A4 A10 A22

PETS MUSINGS BUSINESS REAL ESTATE

A25 A27 BI B9

ARTS EVENTS SOCIETY CUISINE

Fluffy challenge Kids’ author heads up writing contest. A16 X

Download our FREE App today Available on the iTunes App Store. X

C1 C6-7 C24 C27

A8

NEWS

WEEK OF DECEMBER 26-JANUARY 1, 2013

The lives they led REMEMBERING

SINCE HIS WIFE CATHY DIED ago, Gary Curtis said he has been “haunted by trailers and snippets,” fragments of their life that play across the silver screen of his memory, a cinema verite movie of the mind that starts up whenever it wants to, whenever it is queued by what reminds him of her. Those things surround him: cats, a house, this town. In one snippet, he notices her for the first time, an attractive young, blonde woman at a golf club. In another, he sits by her hospital bed just before she has (successful) brain surgery. We all have our snippets and trailers, in their ways just as moving and real as the people they’re about. With that in mind, it is Florida Weekly’s tradition to publish short profiles about people we lost this year, remembering

EIGHT MONTHS

THOSE WE’VE

LOST THIS YEAR

Mack “Pat” McCutcheon

PAT MCCUTCHEON’S WIFE, RUTH, WAS decorating her Christmas tree last week in the big front window of her home on Lafayette Street in Dunbar with the help of their close friends and caretakers, Willie “Jack” and Minnie Jackson. Mrs. McCutcheon and her husband both graduated from Dunbar High School in 1940, nearly 30 years before segregation ended in Lee County schools. They were married two years later after meeting in study period. “When he asked would I be his wife I said, ‘well, I guess so,’” she said. “I liked him but didn’t have no idea of no men.” When he died on Feb. 5, at age 91, their 70th year together, it was the conclusion of a long commitment both to his wife and to a community that, while deeply, fundamentally divided, he helped bridge in many ways. It’s hard to imagine the world he came from. Mr. McCutcheon once recalled, but was reluctant to dwell on, an incident from his youth. Two black teenagers were roped around their necks and towed behind a “shiny T-model Ford” in broad daylight down what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The reason: they’d been seen swimming in a pond with white girls. Mack “Pat” McCutcheon was born in Fort Myers on Oct. 21, 1921. His father was the white son of a plantation owner from South Carolina, Mr. Jackson said; his mother, Gerstalla, a black servant. His father moved here to run a farm crew and helped establish the family financially, while his mother was a housewife. Throughout his life, Mr. McCutcheon looked for common ground between distinctly separate black and white communities here, Mr. Jackson said. An article about him in The News-Press, circa 1970, read that he sometimes drew criticism for “…cooperating with white politicians. “Although he frequently is seen on television newscasts haranguing the

them all the more vividly in their absence. The selection process is always somewhat arbitrary in part by necessity — so many died, and we’ve chosen four to include in this edition. As in past years, some are larger-than-life figures who impacted public policy or sentiment. Others are relatively unknown; we read a brief obituary in the newspaper and wanted to learn

more. There’s never enough time to get to know them before deadline, it seems, so these pieces are in themselves snippets or trailers of our subjects, a kaleidoscopic look at some of the most interesting people you may have never met. Their friends and loved ones helped us remember — couldn’t help but remember — who they were. — Evan Williams

county commission, after the same public meetings, he can be seen in the halls of the courthouse with a commissioner’s arm draped around his shoulders.” The article also credited him with getting a Tice firehouse open, promoting a voter registration program and pressuring officials to adopt policies that benefited the black community. Earlier, in the 1960s with segregation still in effect, he had worked as a Lee County sheriff’s deputy. In 1980, a time when no black candidate had ever won a public office here, he ran for the Lee County Commission and lost. “It gave people courage and the feeling that they could (run for office), although the system in Lee County makes it almost impossible for a black person to run,” Mr. Jackson said. At different times, he was a nightclub owner, a landlord, and ran a men’s clothing store. According to local memory, he helped book now legendary musicians Count Basie and Duke Ellington, among others, at a local club in the late 1930s. “He was strictly business 99 percent of the time,” Mr. Jackson said. The other 1 percent of the time? “He was a teddy bear if you got to know him,” said Mr. Jackson’s wife, Minnie. “But not many people got to know him that way.” As an adult, he created a truly epic model train setup in his backyard, including a giant switchboard from which he controlled it all. Infested with termites, the structures were dismantled after his death. If Pat McCutcheon were still alive, Mr. Jackson said as Mrs. McCutcheon continued to decorate the tree, he’d likely be there at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper. He glanced back at the empty table for a moment. Mr. McCutcheon’s absence filled the room. ■ ■ ■

Catherine M. Curtis CATHY AND GARY CURTIS LIVED THE good life, a sustained fairy tale that nothing seriously interfered with, Mr. Curtis said, until she was

diagnosed with a brain tumor in February 2008. They met 21 years ago at Fort Myers Country Club, and had their first date golfing there. In 2000, she ran for and won the office of Lee County Tax Collector, overseeing roughly 200 employees who help us do the things we’d rather put off, like paying property taxes and getting our car tags renewed. He built prosthetic limbs. Life ticked along with relative ease. The only argument he recalled them ever having was something about money. “For most of the years we were together it was about our careers and each other,” he said. “It was really that simple.” Besides work, there was golf, boating, and plenty of cats. Mrs. Curtis always had a heart for felines, said her brother Daniel Reihm, who lives in Texas. Her first cat was a Siamese named Mimi. Back then, he recalls, she was an athletic, pretty, popular high school student. “She started collecting cats when she was a tax collector,” Mr. Reihm said, “She would have a big heart and say, ‘yeah I’ll take it for you.’” Her second-in-command at the tax collector’s office, Larry Hart, remembers her devotion to animals, too. More than once she asked him to bring food to a cat stuck under the imposing black glass building where they worked in downtown Fort Myers. Describing her as “very smart and very driven,” Mr. Hart added, “She was such a dear friend and a great boss.” Catherine M. Curtis was born on Nov. 25, 1959, in Fort Walton Beach, Fla. She moved every three or four years because of her father’s position in the Air Force. She graduated from high school in England and college at the University of Maryland’s Munich, Germany campus. Later she finished a bachelor’s of business administration from Northeast Louisiana University. Her first love was the arts, her brother said, but sketching and drawing didn’t pay the bills. Also, adds Mr. Reihm, a math major in college, “we’re all sort of numbers related. It runs in the family.” Mrs. Curtis moved to Fort Myers in the summer of 1989 to begin a career as a certified public accountant. She moved on to government work in Collier County, then as a budget and finance director in Fort Myers before deciding to run for tax collector, a job she held until shortly before her death.

www.FloridaWeekly.com

FLORIDA WEEKLY

Later, after she met her husband, he became her closest confidant. Most of all, he said, “We talked. That’s the thing I miss the most. We constantly communicated. We had lunch all the time. We traveled and talked. She was a best friend. We were tight.” About five years ago, after Mrs. Curtis complained of headaches, a doctor found a small tumor near the front of her brain. She underwent brain surgery the same day. Mr. Curtis waited beside her gurney just before she was wheeled in for the operation. “We were politely nervous, you know, trying not to scare each other,” he said. Her cancer went into remission after surgery and radiation treatments, and she returned to work for several years, but “when it came back at the beginning of this year it just came back fast and hard, and that was it,” Mr. Curtis said. A doctor at Duke University Medical Center, where they sought treatment, told him the tumor was out of control: “He said, ‘Gary, there’s just not enough real estate (in the brain). It’s only so long before it hits a nerve that kills you.” Like everything else, the couple discussed the disease that ultimately took her life at age 52 on April 4. “She didn’t want to die,” Mr. Curtis said. “She never gave up and that was with everything she did. She was a horrible golfer but she never gave up. She knew her limitations to a point but she was bound and determined to be the best.” Meanwhile, left to cherish her memory, he sometimes wonders, why her? Nothing about her lifestyle or genetics indicated that cancer would be part of the bargain. “I’ve thought about it for eight months,” he said. “Life’s a real mystery and I get to try to figure it out.” ■

■

■

Gilbert Thomas “Tommy” Williams III

TAKE COLONIAL BOULEVARD TO TREELINE Avenue and Treeline to Ben Hill Griffin Parkway and Ben Hill to Corkscrew and stay on Corkscrew to Imperial Street. Take Imperial to Bonita Beach Road, turn right and stay on it until you arrive at the Lani Kai on Fort Myers Beach. Tommy Williams and the other boys would often ride that route on their sportsbikes, said his friend Eric LewisGonzalez. For a memorial ride held for Mr. Williams, custom shirts were made that read, “Hey, Shawty!” That was his traditional catcall to girls at Fort Myers Beach at the end of a ri de. The responses he got ranged from laughter to middle fingers, Mr. Lewis-Gonzalez recalls, but it was all in fun. “He was one of the few people I’d roll with no matter where we went,” Mr. Lewis-Gonzalez said. Mr. Williams was a professional tattoo artist, but that passion was second to biking, said his fiancée, Taylor Mosley. He “lived” at Superbikes and Ski on Fowler Street, where a mentor, mechanic Scott Morich, has been working for 18 years. A plaque on the wall at the shop reads Tommy Williams “LT” (Little Tommy) and under that, “Gone But Never Forgotten.” Gilbert Thomas Williams III was born on April 28, 1991, in Fort Myers. He lived for a while in Southern California and moved back to Lee County in 2003. His father Tom Williams and stepmother Carla are both bikers as well, Mr. Morich said. His mother, Michele

FLORIDA WEEKLY

www.FloridaWeekly.com

Lindquist, is a hairstylist. He had four sisters and three brothers. Mr. Williams started to hang around Superbikes to observe and ask questions about bike repair that Mr. Morich — noticing a bright, interested student — was happy to answer. After earning his G.E.D., Mr. Williams was planning to attend Motorcycle Mechanics Institute in Orlando, a roughly 35-week, $25,000 course of study for which he had applied for financial aid. If Mr. Williams was once a risky, wheelie-popping adventurer — he once rode the entire span of the Cape Coral Bridge on one wheel, his friend said — falling in love had re-created him in the years before his death. “You could tell he had changed a lot since he met Taylor and found Jesus,” Mr. Morich said. Taylor Mosley met Mr. Williams on Sept. 18, 2010, and decided in a week he was the one. They were engaged on Oct. 9, 2011, and planned to marry Nov. 10. But on Sunday, Aug. 15, about three months before their wedding day, Mr. Williams was riding his new bike to pick her up, Ms. Mosley said, when he was hit and killed by a driver on Metro Parkway. (She insists she doesn’t blame the driver or Mr. Williams, that it was simply a terrible accident). “I don’t know how you go from planning a wedding to a funeral in 2.5 seconds,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears. Life can end in a blink, it seems, bu t memory may be more durable, and Mr. Williams gave his fiancée enough of those to last a lifetime. He shocked Ms. Mosley’s more conservative family when they first met, she recalled, a group with “no tattoos, no piercings, no bikes.” If her fiancée had some rough edges, he was also “goofy as all get out.”

WEEK OF DECEMBER 26-JANUARY 1, 2013

“On our first date, he was so nervous he had the hiccups the entire date,” Ms. Mosley remembers, now smiling. “The entire movie. It was terrible but it was really cute at the same time.” ■

■

■

Charles Lee Bigelow Jr.

Charlie Bigelow was a pro-development lawyer, vigorously defending clients who bulldozed our mangroves. He was one of Lee County’s premier environmentalists, an elected commissioner who made behind-the-scenes compromises to preserve the land we love. He was a loner and a vociferous gadfly. He commanded a rich faculty of language that he used to elucidate complex ideas and possessed a visionary’s eye for our county’s long-term growth. He was a hardheaded curmudgeon who made pointed comments that angered people, including family members. He illustrated what the poet Walt Whitman observed about any person, that they “contain multitudes.” Mr. Bigelow died of a heart attack on Tuesday, Dec. 11. In his 74 years, he became a figure that will loom over both this county’s history and future growth for some time. It’s hard to overestimate the effect he had on Lee’s landscape, suggests County Commissioner Frank Mann, a former adversary, then colleague and friend.

“The bottom line is, Lee County’s lucky he came along when he did,” Mr. Mann said. Mr. Bigelow was a key author of the county’s rules for land development, the Lee Comprehensive Plan written in the 1980s. Among other environmental protections, it restricted roughly 20 percent of the land here from full-scale development, an area called the DR/ GR (Density Reduction/Groundwater Resource). “He was the key person in resolving litigation between the state and the county by agreeing to set up all these very strong protective measures,” said town planner Bill Spikowski, who worked as growth management director for Lee County during Mr. Bigelow’s term. “I was there, I was the guy who carried his briefcase.” More recently, Mr. Bigelow helped found Reconnecting Lee County, an issues think tank that is a proponent of alternate transportation such as rapid transit and commuter rail lines. The Lee County Metropolitan Planning Organization is currently completing a feasibility study for rail plans that would integrate freight and passenger rail with more compact building codes associated with New Urbanism. But Mr. Bigelow in his later years remained dissatisfied with his and the county’s efforts to rein in growth. “We created a sprawling, inefficient community — inefficient economically, inefficient in the way we use natural resources, and inefficient in

NEWS

A9

many other ways,” he told Florida Weekly in 2011. Charles Lee Bigelow Jr. was born in 1938 in Lee County and he attended Fort Myers High School. After earning a law degree at the University of Florida, he was nicknamed “Chainsaw Charlie” for his fierce defense of developers. At that time, “he wasn’t one of our favorites,” said the town planner, Mr. Spikowski. “When Charlie decided to run for county commission, his campaign plank included firing me and most of the other county planners. When he got elected, and suddenly he was my boss and miraculously I still worked there, that’s when it became really obvious to me what a visionary he was. He was someone who thought more deeply about Lee County’s future than many of us who were paid to do just that. That was humbling.” Mr. Bigelow’s term on the commission began in 1986 and was disrupted during a meeting in July 1989. Federal officials arrested him on the spot for failing to file his income tax returns. He resigned that winter after spending four months confined in a “lightweight prison setting,” said Commissioner Mann, who called the arrest “melodramatic.” He added that Mr. Bigelow simply kept putting off filing a return as he did with numerous chores. “Charlie is a classic absent-minded professor,” he said. “One of the ironies of his life is he was so smart but he was almost dysfunctional on getting the little mundane things of the world done. “Anybody else if it wasn’t a public official they would have gotten their hand slapped and paid a fine. But they made an example out of him.” ■

William M. Figlesthaler, MD, FACS y Board Certified urologist y Expert in prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment y Over 3,000 daVinci® robotic prostatectomies and procedures y Extensive experience in recurrent and persistant prostate cancer y Preservation of sexual function and bladder control y Over 15 years experience in Naples y Castle Connolly’s Top Doctors™ y Featured on Bravo for accomplishments in robotic surgery y Available for consults for elevated PSA’s, abnormal prostate exams, prostate cancer and second opinions

NAPLES t BONITA SPRINGS t MARCO ISLAND t FORT MYERS t CAPE CORAL

www.SpecialistsInUrology.com | (239) 434-6300