St. Augustine Report

Published by the Department of Public Affairs, City of St. Augustine. Florida April 19 2011

Peck property transfer official

Spanish Quarter section to be Castillo interpretive center

St. Augustine's City Commission in special session Monday officially turned over the former Mary Peck property in the Colonial Spanish Quarter to the National Park Service (NPS), which plans a Castillo interpretive center on the site.

New Spanish Quarter dropoff The transfer will be coupled with a state-owned parcel to provide a site for a Castillo Orientation Center.

NPS delayed the transfer until a new sightseeing vehicle drop-off for the Spanish Quarter, on the bayfron adjacent to the site, was completed.

City Attorney Ron Brown noted the quit claim deed "includes a Restrictive Covenant and a Reverter Clause which would return the property to the City should the NPS not commence construction of the Visitor Orientation Center by midnight of December 21, 2015."

The deed also excludes the westernmost 15 feet of the conveyed parcel for pedestrian and vehicular movement between two Colonial Spanish Quarter parcels.

While the original park service plan was for a $4 million Castillo Orientation Center, the city and University of Florida are hoping for a larger $10 million center to provide a holistic introduction to the city's history.

The university manages 34 state-owned historic properties here.

Sunrise Service

opens Easter

A traditional Sunrise Service opens Easter Day at 6:45 a.m. Sunday on the green of the Castillo de San Marcos.

The service will be presented by the Christian Ministerial Alliance of St. Johns County and the Christian Motorcycle Association Chapter 701.

Another tradition, the annual Parada de los Caballos y Coches (Parade of Horses and Carriages), will step off at 3 p.m., following a route from the Mission of Nombre de Dios, along the bayfront, Cathedral Place, and Cordova Street.

At 12:30 in the Plaza, Easter finery takes center stage with the annual Promenade featuring fun and prizes for all ages. Registration can be made at the Promenade.

Ceremonies mark start of Riberia rehabilitation

Brief ceremonies Monday morning marked the end of five years of planning and the beginning of two years of rehabilitation of Lincolnville's Riberia Street. Riberia Street ceremony

Among the attendees, Lincolnville's "Mayor" Linda James, who acknowledged she'll have to be patient a bit longer.

Phase One of the $8.2 million project, from King to Bridge Street, will cost an estimated $3.4 million and is scheduled to be completed in January 2012. The second phase, from Bridge Street to the end of Riberia, is estimated at $4.8 million and is scheduled to be completed in January 2013.

James joined Public Works Director Martha Graham, Mayor Joe Boles, and other officials in ceremonial commencement shoveling.

Improvements include a new road surface along with new sidewalks, underground power crossings and a new stormwater management system to help prevent flooding.

Details on the evolution of the project are on the city website.

King exhibit opens April 26

An exhibit featuring the original fingerprint card of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. following his arrest here in 1964, and video interviews with the arresting officer and a companion civil rights demonstrator, will be dedicated next Tuesday at 1 p.m. at Excelsior Cultural Center on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.

Sheriff David Shoar, contributing the exhibit, says, "Some people thought we should send (the card) to Atlanta, but it's our history - good, bad or indifferent, it's a story that happened here."

Dr. King was arrested after attempting to eat in the Monson Restaurant June 11, 1964.

France a player in 450th

Maisonneuve

France's role in the earliest history of St. Augustine wasn't the most pleasant for France: its Fort Caroline captured and surviving soldiers massacred by Spain's

Pedro Menendez in 1565.

Nonetheless Gaël de Maisonneuve, Consul General of France in Miami, looks forward to presenting France's significant role in our history, and stopped by Monday to say so.

In May 2012, Alliance Francaise de Jacksonville plans a commemoration of the 450th anniversary of French Heritage in Florida, he said, recognizing both Jean Ribault's establishment of Paris Island (now Jacksonville) in 1562 and Rene Laudonnière's establishment of Fort Caroline in 1565.

Battle cry for community

"We can't depend on anyone or any entity. We must re-gain control of our community! We must re-gain control of our conditions! We must lend our success to empower our community!"

A battle cry from Pastor Ron Rawls, St. Paul AME Church, as he announced a second Pastors' and Community Mobilization meeting for Thursday, April 28, at 7 p.m. at New St. James Missionary Baptist Church on Rodriquez Street. Pastor Rawls

Rawls, who with five of the six pastors at a first session last month does not live in the St. Augustine area, said, "I've heard of the history of Lincolnville and West Augustine that it was, at one time, vibrant and striving with numerous Black businesses throughout its communities.

"But our community seems to be going backwards."

Pastor Michael McConnell of First Baptist Church noted pastors "fighting against one another" but added a newly formed Pastors United has been organized to address concerns and issues that have plagued the community.

And Pastor Byron Hodges of St. Mary's Missionary Baptist Church asked, "Where are the local pastors that live in St. Augustine?"

At that first session, Rawls noted the possibilities of Lowe's Hardware opening a store in St. Augustine, and Northrop Grumman hiring over 1,200 new workers.

"We want to be in a position to have them hire some of the locals who are desperately in need of employment," he said.

A strong continuing focus is utility expansion in West Augustine, a mostly county area but serviced by city utilities. That will be a major item in a joint city/county workshop expected in May.

History's Highlight

The altar was older than the hearth

4 years, 4 months, 21 days to St. Augustine's 450th anniversary

Based on Altar and Hearth: The Coming of Christianity 1521-1565, by Michael V. Gannon, while director of the Mission of Nombre de Dios, St. Augustine

There were missionary efforts from the earliest days of exploration of the land that would become America, fromPonce de Leon in 1521 to Lucas Vazquez de Ayllón in 1526, Panfilo de Narvaez in 1527, Hernando de Soto in 1538. . .

Mass was said to hallow the land and draw down the blessing of heaven before the first step was taken to rear a human habitation. The altar was older than the hearth," John Gilmary Shea wrote in 1886.

It was for Pedro Menendez to establish a mission presence as enduring as the colony he founded, St. Augustine. Chapel at Mission Nombre de Dios

The royal patent given Menendez on March 20, 1565, plainly charged him with a missionary as well as a military responsibility:

"As we have in mind the good and the salvation of those [Indian]souls, we have decided to give the order to send religious persons to instruct the said Indians, and those other people who are good Christians and our subjects, so that they may live among and talk to the natives there may be in those lands and provinces of Florida, and that [the Indians] by intercourse and conversation with them may more easily be taught our Holy Catholic Faith and be brought to good usages and customs, and perfect polity."

Chief among Menendez' passengers were "four secular priests with faculties to hear confessions." In these four lay the Church's hope of planting the Cross permanently in Florida's sands.

Menendez wrote home to Philip II three days (after founding St. Augustine): "As for myself, Your Majesty may be assured that if I had a million [ducats] more or less, I would spend it all upon this undertaking, because it is of such great service to God Our Lord, for the increase of our Holy Catholic Faith, and for the service of Your Majesty. And therefore, I have offered to Our Lord all that He may give me in this world, all that I may acquire and possess, in order to plant the Gospel in this land for the enlightenment of its natives; and in like manner I pledge myself to Your Majesty."

The Spaniards christened their landing site Nombre de Dios-Name of God - by which name it is still known today. Shortly after the landing, Menendez and his priests erected there the first Christian mission to the American Indian.

From that place, for 198 uninterrupted years, priests and laymen would carry Christianity and civilization into the wild interior: first diocesan, then Jesuit, and finally Franciscan missionaries would drop their lamps into the darkness as far as Virginia to the north and Texas in the west, and write their names into one of the least known but heroic chapters of American and Catholic history.

The story of their labors must be pieced together from royal decrees, memorials, reports, letters, and fragments of a similar nature. But there is enough information of this kind to support the judgment that the Spanish mission system in Florida, which could count 26,000 Christian Indians by 1655, was one of the most successful efforts for the material amelioration and spiritual development of backward peoples that the American nation has experienced.

The St. Augustine Report is published by the Department of Public Affairs of the City of St. Augustine each Tuesday and on Fridays previewing City Commission meetings. The Report is written and distributed by George Gardner, former St. Augustine Mayor (2002-2006) and Commissioner (2006-2008) and a longtime newspaper reporter and editor. Contact The Report at gardner@aug.com