Mo’ Peppah: Louisiana Power Crew Gets Gator Dinner
Gator trapper Julie Harter fried and served the reptiles she catches at a Lakeland dinner for 100 visiting electric workers helping with Hurricane Irma recovery.
People
Scholarship Gives Lakeland Family a New Start
Kevin Treadway, who persevered to overcome disabilities, and mother Cathy Clark, who suffers debilitating back injuries, were evicted from their Lakeland home last month. But Kevin’s scholarship to Syracuse University is giving the family a new start. “If there’s a kid that deserves to go to college, it’s him,” said Steve Morgan, Kevin’s chess coach at Crystal Lake Middle School. “Kevin was a natural gentleman. He was brilliant.”
Lakeland Native Fred Ridley to Lead Augusta National
Ridley, a 65-year-old Tampa lawyer, takes over as chairman of the Augusta National Golf Club, home of the Masters Tournament, from Billy Payne. He has “come a long way from his childhood days playing public courses in rural Lakeland and Winter Haven, Florida,” notes the Golfworld profile by my former Tampa Times colleague, Tim Rosaforte.
John Bohanan, Banker and Civic Booster, Dies at 83
Bohanan, a man who presented the public face of Peoples Bank for many years and seemed to greet everybody in Lakeland by name, is remembered by his family in this obituary.
Joe P. Ruthven: ‘Super Salesman for Lakeland’
A lengthy profile traces the 90-year-old patriarch’s path from rural childhood to Navy and college days to opening a Memorial Boulevard tire store and finally to a real estate career pioneering Lakeland’s warehousing boom.
Memorial Set for Longtime Commissioner
A service in memory of Carl Dicks, who served on the Lakeland City Commission for 24 years, has been scheduled for Aug. 25 at 11 a.m. at College Heights Methodist Church, 942 South Blvd. Dicks, who owned a hardware store in Dixieland for many years, died Wednesday at age 90.