TOWN HAS ITS SHARE OF FSU LOVERS
By Bayard Stern
Assistant editor, Florida State Times
Some have been there since the early 19th century, and some visited last year and decided not to leave. Either way, dozens of Flori-da State families are living in Apalachicola, the old port where the big river meets the Gulf of Mexico.
They seem to be a major element of the personality of the town.
Their influence comes in a variety of styles, pieces to the puzzle that is Apalachicola charm: a 78-year-old artist who bought an inn; an antique-store owner who grew up there, left, and returned; a graduate student who's published a book about it, and his father who is renovating a historic building; a lawyer who practices in a 1930s courthouse.
They live in a little coast town that - so far - has been renovated but not ruined.
Apalachicola has seen waves of prosperity and depression. Industries have ranged from a thriving cotton port to sponge harvesting and logging. The result is both modest and grand homes and waterfront warehouses that were geared for big commerce.
But in recent decades, those industries faded, and the economy slowed. Many structures, residential and commercial, sat dormant or were destroyed.
The young people who went to Florida State often moved away after their education to find a new life. With a population of fewer than 3,000, Apalachicola did not offer the future many grads wanted.
Wesley Chesnut, for example, graduated from FSU with an English degree in 1959 and stayed away from his hometown for many years. But now he's back, owner of a downtown antique store called The Chesnut Tree.
"My mother's side of the family can be traced back to the 1830s or '40s in Apalachicola," Chesnut said. "This was a very prosperous small town when my mom and her sisters were growing up here. But in the '50s, '60s and '70s the town suffered a real decline."
Chesnut cites the renovation of the Gibson Inn as a turning point.
"I feel that after '85, when the Gibson was fixed up the town started to pick up and become rejuvenated. I think it's a great place to live and raise a family. I have three daughters. Two of them went to FSU. Rachel is a local prosecutor, and she got a business major and went on to FSU's law school. Elizabeth was a theatre major at FSU. "
Chesnut is not the only member of an old Apalachicola family who brought his energy and his family back to town.
Lee Willis II and his wife, Kathy, are two more. She graduated from FSU in 1966. He graduated from FSU law school in 1971.
Her grandmother, who played basketball at FSCW, left them a house on the water where Kathy had spent much of her childhood.
Kathy and Lee spent five years renovating the old house.
Lee also purchased the waterfront Grady General store.
"The Grady store sold marine supplies, hardware and groceries." Willis said. "It stayed open until the Depression." Now he's restoring it.
"The first floor will be a series of retail shops selling things like antiques and gifts," Willis said. "The upstairs is going to be called The Consulate. It will be four luxury apartments. At one time it was the French consulate. It was a U.S. Customs office, and the inspector of steamboats was housed there."
"Since 1985," Willis said, "people from other places would come here and visit, and really many of them had no intention of staying here.
"But they like the feel of it, like the pace, and they decide to move here. A stream of people started moving here and buying property who like the lifestyle and were willing to sacrifice the other things that you have to do to live here, like not having a movie theater."
His son, Lee Willis III, is working on a master's degree from Florida State in American Studies. He has co-written a book with his history professor, William Warren Rogers about Apalachicola called AT THE WATER'S EDGE A Pictorial and Narrative History of Apalachicola and Franklin County.
Willis III has ample personal experience in 20th century Apalachicola.
"I spent a lot of time in Apalachicola as a kid," he recalls. "I started going down to Apalachicola as soon as I could walk to visit my great grandmother, Alice Parlin. She died when she was 100, and I was 14. We spent a lot of Christmases down there and summers."
"There was no-thing to do really except hang a-round the house and going to the beach. The house was kind of imposing for a little kid."
He wants more for today's little kids, and the teenagers.
"The town has one really beautiful park - Lafayette Park - which they did a nice restoration of. But it's not really a functional recreational park. There is a real need for more things for kids to do around there"
One thing Willis III finds odd is something that clip-clops around the historic district occasionally.
"There's a horse and buggy tour that goes around town," he laughs. "Things like that are amazing."
Some of the more recent arrivals - like Chamber of Commerce Director Anita Gregory - may not be surprised at all.
Gregory graduated from FSU with a geology degree in 1985.
She has lived in Apalachicola less than a year and now runs the Chamber of Commerce from an office a few doors down from the Chesnut Tree, sharing the block with a soda fountain, a video store and a few other small shops.
"It's a great little town," Gregory says enthusiastically. "The economy is changing with more tourists coming in and different people moving here, but fishing is still our primary industry. We produce 10 percent of the nation's oysters. I really love living down here. I have a cute place in the historic district. I fish, ride bikes, go crabbing and boating."
Another convert to the town is retired art professor Ken Kenniston, who owns the Witherspoon Inn, a renovated turn-of-the- century home. And he lives next door, where he paints in the upstairs studio of an 1865 house.
Kenniston retired from the FSU art department in 1988 with no plan to be an innkeeper.
But he had seen Apalachicola before he moved his life to it.
"I had been coming down to this coast for a long time, way back when my first wife was alive.
"We used to come through Apalachicola a few times, but it didn't look very promising in those days.
"It was very run down.
"Now that has turned around completely."