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Ruskin Marks 100 With Centennial Celebration

Photo from the Ruskin Historical Society

Adaline Dickman Miller founded the first post office in Ruskin on Aug. 7, 1908 on the campus of Ruskin College. The post office is shown at the left of this woman's dormitory.

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By LOIS KINDLE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 6, 2008

RUSKIN - Perhaps the best measure of Ruskin after 100 years is its people. Forged by pioneer families who plucked a living from land and sea, the community has an enduring character that, in many ways, remains the same, despite encroaching development.

And many of those pioneer families and other highlights of the area, which is basing its founding on the opening of the first post office on Aug. 7, 1908, at Ruskin College, will be celebrated starting Thursday at the Ruskin Woman's Club.

Retired farmer Lucien Villemaire, delivered by a midwife, was born here 85 years ago.

"Ruskin was all palmettos, rattlesnakes and dirt roads," he said, recalling his early childhood. His grandfather, Adelard, a French-Canadian, had come to the area in 1919, and his father, Alfred, followed in the early 1920s.

Villemaire attended Ruskin Elementary through the fifth grade and then was sent back to Canada to be educated through college. Before marrying Paulette Villeneuve in 1944, he bought 14 acres next to 40 his father had purchased to farm.

"Ruskin was still mostly palmettos, rattlesnakes and dirt roads," he said, smiling. "There was a wooden bridge over the Alafia River and a brick road to Tampa. The Coffee Cup restaurant was here, and Fred Linder was the postmaster."

Over the years, Villemaire and his brother Lionel built two farms that encompassed 300 acres in Ruskin and 600 in old Sun City. The brothers grew tomatoes, citrus and strawberries and raised cattle until 1987, when the last farmland was sold.

Paulette Villemaire has described Ruskin as a great place to raise a family: six children - Martha, Louise, Richard, Jilles, Claude and Pierre - 16 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. Another is on the way.

Although the Villemaires retired to Sun City Center, they have family members who remain in Ruskin.

"Ruskin has changed, but it's still not the big city," Paulette said. "Ruskin will always be in our hearts."

Another early family was the Councils, a farming family that moved from Terra Ceia to Ruskin in 1934 to escape saltwater intrusion on their property in Manatee County.

The patriarch, Columbus Lee "Whit" Council, and his wife, Margaret Dole Council, had four children - Emmett, called "Bub," Buford, Robert and Hilda - who worked on the farm alongside their parents. Eventually, the family owned about 5,000 acres in the Ruskin area, where they grew crops and citrus and raised cattle.

"Ruskin is home," said Betty Jo Council, 69, the oldest of Whit's 12 grandchildren. "It's a unique community. We have the river, the bay, the farmland. Even now, there's still the close connection to the people you grew up with. So many people have stayed here or live close by. It's a good place for families.

"Lord knows Ruskin needs to change, but I don't know when it will," she said with a laugh.

Council said almost half the members of her 1957 graduating class from East Bay High School celebrated their 50th reunion last year.

"We meet every May," she said.

"I always liked Ruskin," said her sister-in-law Sonja Council, 60. "When I came here in 1971, it felt like home right away. The Coffee Cup was an integral part of the community. Thriftway and Lambert's were our only grocery stores. It was a lot smaller then.

"Even though it's grown, Ruskin is still a wonderful place. It still has that welcoming, small-town feel."

William C. "Hooty" Buzbee's father, Buddy, was born in Ruskin in 1904. His mother, Della, now 94, came to the community in 1926 and married Buddy, a commercial fisherman, seven years later.

"You either fished or farmed in Ruskin back then, if you didn't want to starve," Buzbee said. "And a little bit of moonshinin' on the side."

His parents lived on Sand Point, also known as Paradise Island, where tourists from St. Petersburg came by charter boat "to picnic and see alligators," Buzbee said.

"My daddy used to have a big fish fry to feed all those Yankees," he said.

Then another memory came to mind.

"My dad's brother, Nebraska, remembers a horse and buggy riding down the main trail through Ruskin, and the little boy on the back was Paul Dickman," Buzbee said.

Dickman was the son of A.P. Dickman, who backed George McAnelly Miller in starting Ruskin College at the turn of the 20th century. At one time, his family of farmers and landholders owned about 10,000 acres. The Dickmans, Elsberrys, Sumners, Councils, Leiseys, Willises, Villemaires and Vogels built agriculture into an industry in south Hillsborough.

Buzbee decided not to follow his father into commercial fishing. The industry became difficult in the 1950s, and Buzbee wanted to fish strictly for pleasure. Then there was his mother, Della, who said she wouldn't let him.

"I wanted him to do something else," she said.

So Buzbee went into the nursery business and stayed there for 38 years.

He married his high school sweetheart, Jane Colding, whose mother, Bessie, operated Ruskin's first beauty salon out of her home on Fourth Avenue Southwest in the late 1920s. The couple have three children and six grandkids.

Buzbee said he's had a good life in Ruskin.

"We used to hang out at the A&W Root Beer stand across from the Coffee Cup," he said. "When the theater opened we'd pay 15 cents to get in and a dime for a drink and candy. If you brought in three Baby Ruth or Brock candy wrappers, you'd get in free. Then you'd have a whole quarter for goodies."

Reporter Lois Kindle can be reached at (813) 865-1553 or lkindle@tampatrib.com.

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