- [Announcer] This is a special presentation of WEDU PBS, Tampa, St.Petersburg, Sarasota.

Support for this program was generously provided by the Radiant Group.

(soft music) - There have been, I think, a Junior League woman behind almost every worthwhile adventure that has happened in Tampa.

I think about a wonderful woman named Georgia MacDonald who had a child who had severe learning disabilities and there was nowhere for him to go.

And so she started MacDonald Training Center.

I think about the child abuse council, which now is called The Champions for Children, recognized that there were kids not being watched out for and out of that came Baby Bungalow, where parents can learn skills of how to deal with angry children, how to deal with angry parents.

And the Junior League has been behind lots of important things.

- So over the last 95 years and especially looking at the change that's happened in this past year, it's been an organization that has evolved and works and adjusts for the critical needs that our community have at the time.

So it's an organization that promotes volunteerism but we also are developing women so that they can go out and impact communities through their effective training and volunteer work.

- When we first started thinking about The Luminaries we really reflected on what the Junior League was and the Junior League is about leadership development and the community.

And so what better way to sort of honor our history in the Tampa Bay area by looking back out into the community and beginning to highlight leaders that had really played a transformational role in how Tampa came to be.

(soft music) - So it's not a requirement of The Luminaries that you have been born here but it is a requirement that you have made a difference here.

And I think one of the aspects of The Luminaries that we thought about when we were creating it is that kids are learning about civil rights leaders, they're learning about people on a national stage who have made a really big impact but the reality is this community is filled with hundreds if not thousands of people who are doing that each and every day.

And if we don't take a moment to sort of pause and capture their stories now what happens is they pass on and with them passes on that legacy and that knowledge and that history.

And so Luminaries really creates an opportunity for us to celebrate that moment with them while they can contribute to the story.

- Our Luminary, Fran Davan, she's a beacon of light in the community.

She has been an advocate for example, as a commissioner and is now serving the community on many boards and her selfless work has definitely shown us what a Luminary is.

- I was born in July of 1933 in a town called Angum, Massachusetts right on the edge of the Boston Harbor.

I come from a family of three girls.

I was the youngest of the three, kind of a regular normal childhood, I would say.

Beautiful town, quiet, safe.

My mother was a typical housewife of that era.

My dad was in the ship building business.

And in fact, I hardly saw him during the war years.

I graduated in a group of 75 kids.

So there was a lot of individual attention.

I met my husband when I was a 10 year old in pigtails.

He was in the class that my older sister was in and much to my parents' consternation, I announced I was getting married and we were gonna go to California.

We moved to Tampa in 1970.

- Because of Fran's earlier experiences in the state of California, she knew the perils of unplanned growth.

As I look at her career, I think one of her lasting legacies was the admonition, the warning we have got to plan for this growth.

- So Fran got elected to the Hillsborough County Commission in 1974, just two years after Betty Castor and she was Betty's campaign manager.

And so that ushered in a whole new era of politics for Hillsborough county.

In the 60s and in the early 70s, it was not the norm for women to be in politics.

- I came here in 70, there were three women in office, four years later, there were 14 of us.

So that was an effort that really and it was time.

- Fran ushered in an era of a new kind of politics for Hillsborough county, you know, politics that represented intelligence and integrity, transparency, concern for the environment and really looking at our community and how we stacked up to other like communities and what kind of community did we wanna be?

- It was a period where you could make a lot of changes for the better.

And we did.

- She was a real leader on the commission.

She was always interested in Tampa General Hospital and in healthcare.

Fran Davan was also very interested in land use and planning.

This was a time when really similar to today when there was just great growth in Hillsborough county.

- First, I think you have to identify Fran as a real environmentalist who cared very much about the health of Tampa Bay, really brought an environmental lens to the rezonings and really brought an environmental lens to growth management.

- Hillsborough county then was a much smaller place, far less population, certainly far less developed but you could already see the signs of what had happened in California, just coming east.

And that's really what spurred me.

- When it came towards the end of her tenure on the commission, she was a real advocate for plan growth along the I-75 corridor.

When she was out of office, she became a political consultant.

- One of the legacies that I think Fran is most proud of is her mentee, Pam Iorio.

- I don't think I would've ever been very successful in politics without her help and that's not hyperbole.

When I first ran for the county commission, I was only 25 years old and Fran was my campaign manager.

I would never have won that first seat without her guidance but you know what, she made sure that not only that we ran a good campaign but that I was prepared to be a good public official.

- The mayor would have a meeting once a week where all the department heads would sit around the table and talk about what the issues were.

And Fran was always right near the mayor as was I because I was a city attorney and she was quite wise in her advice, amazing insight into people, great judgment about human nature.

- She's had a great career in public policy along the way.

She was also a mother and a wife.

She balanced her career in public service with her family and did so well.

- Bill was an extraordinary man.

He just backed me for whatever I wanted to do.

Great husband, great dad and good friend.

We had a lot of good times together.

MacDonald Training center is built on the philosophy that every person should have a right to choose their own life.

And frequently people who are developmentally disabled don't have the means to choose their own life path.

There is something very compelling about the education of people who are developmentally disabled.

People come and they have no training.

They have sometimes little if any education.

So you see somebody come in there and all of a sudden there's guidance for them that wasn't there before.

And they blossom.

- You know maybe when I really think about it, what she gives other people is a belief in themselves where sometimes they might not believe in themselves so much.

And she gets them to see that they ought to believe in themselves.

They ought to have confidence in themselves.

And that's a real gift.

- Perhaps I would overstate it but I don't think so, I think the community has a commitment to honesty, honest government, fair government because of Fran.

- I think she's had an indelible imprint on Tampa and Hillsborough county.

- Participation in your community is critical to a community being a healthy rewarding place to live.

The more people that are involved in civic life, the better the community is going to be.

- Doretha Edgecombe is a gem in our community.

She works tirelessly in education, supports so many children, supports our community and is also an advocate for cancer research.

The light that she gives off that truly makes her a Luminary.

- I'm a native Tampan, kind of a disappearing breed, if you will.

I'm a member of a family of five.

I am the oldest girl.

I had a set of twin sisters.

We lived in a section of Tampa called Belmont Heights.

Today we know it as East Tampa.

I think of my childhood as being very protective.

I grew up during the Jim Crow era and my parents and the people around me really created what everybody now calls the village.

The early years of my education was of course segregated.

And the school that I attended initially was Harlem Academy that does not exist anymore but it was the first school for blacks in Hillsborough county.

My mother was a teacher there.

I think about the materials that we use, the books the books that we use were tattered and old and pages missing because they really were the books used by the white students in Hillsborough county.

And we got them as a left over.

And that was the way we learned.

But what I'd remember most of all was the caring, positive, encouraging and inspiring ways that our teachers made us believe that we could do anything under any set of circumstances.

And that one day things were going to be different.

- She is a woman who, when she walks in a room, she has this aura of self-assurance.

- Doretha Edgecombe is probably one of the people in this community that I feel shows all kinds of love and care for children.

- Doretha's tenure on the children's board really shifted a focus for us to early learning.

And that those first three years of a child's life are the most important.

Doretha's been invested in that all of her life.

She is absolutely the consummate teacher and she proves that day in and day out.

- My relationship with Doretha Edgecombe goes back to our childhood days.

We lived in the same neighborhood.

We grew up together and Doretha was always the teacher.

So I knew then that she was going to be an educator like her mom.

And she went on to become a great educator.

- It was really my eighth grade English teacher whose name was Mrs.Fred, who really inspired me to become a teacher.

I wanted to be just like her.

Sophisticated, smart, approachable, caring about kids.

When I graduated from Middleton at 16 and I went to Talladega college in Alabama because I got a scholarship there.

I came back to Tampa, I started my career as a seventh grade English teacher.

- She went on to marry her high school sweetheart, the late judge, George Edgecombe.

- George became the first African-American county court judge at 31, the youngest, unfortunately at 33, he died from leukemia.

And so his life at that time was so full of great possibilities but it wasn't to be.

I was 31 at the time, our daughter Alison was five.

And so for me the most important thing that I focused on was being the very best parent that I needed to be for her.

- My mom has always been my support system because my mom was my mother and my father.

And I knew that I could go to her with anything or for anything.

She was always there.

You know, if there was something that I needed to help me with school or support me or just to listen as a friend, she did that without any hesitation.

- Doretha is also a very religious person.

Her religion and her family go hand in hand.

And I have seen her go through some very trying times but her faith and her belief pulled her through.

- I think coming back to Hillsborough county where she was born and raised from a long line of educators, that not only Doretha made an impact but her family also and she takes that legacy forward and she pays it forward.

And that has made the inspiration even greater.

- Doretha Edgecomb was a great teacher but she was also good with teachers.

She was always able to steer the ship.

- She also served as a principal of Booker T Washington for a short period of time and a principal at Robles.

But there was a time frame where Doretha actually made a tremendous amount of personal sacrifice to make sure that black teachers and black principals had a voice.

In 1974, 75 was shortly after Hillsborough county schools actually became integrated.

So she was a part of that fight.

During that period of time, Doretha was able to say to people but what about, what about the black children?

What about the black schools?

What about those communities?

Doretha would say very softly but what are we gonna do about them?

What are we gonna do for them?

- All things and dreams and hopes and resources that I would want for my daughter, Alison, I will always want it for other children.

And after getting encouragement from people, I decided to run for the school board.

And so for 16 years I was a member of Hillsborough county school board and that's where I retired.

- When she became a school board member and that's not something that she's always dreamed of doing but once she took on that role, you could see the passion she had for it, the enjoyments she had for it and the love for students.

The love for students and teachers.

- Her legacy and impact on Hillsborough county is gonna be children.

And that's exactly why the board of the children's board of Hillsborough county named their family resource center after her, The Doretha Wynn Edgecombe Family Resource Center.

And it's all about children and families.

- For the last few years, Doretha has served on our justice team whose mission is to encourage bridge-building across our differences and to advocate for compassion, mercy and justice throughout our community.

So much of what makes Doretha so special is her commitment to community and the value of connection.

In every way that she's involved in this church, she deeply desires people to feel connected.

- She is a shining star in this community.

- The biggest secret to my success?

Hmm, that's a pretty hot one 'cause there is no secret other than working hard and give of yourself to other people.

I think one of the biggest things that anybody can do is to be of service to somebody else.

- [Woman] Ron Weaver is committed to our Tampa Bay community especially through all the work he's done in developing the area and then partner that with the support on many multiple nonprofit boards.

He truly is an advocate for Tampa Bay.

- Born in June eighth, 1949 in the beautiful tobacco country of North Carolina in Winston, Salem.

And my father had had to quit school in the eighth grade and drive a truck in order to feed his mom and his sister and his little brothers.

And he drove a truck for about 50 years and helped put me through the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and then Harvard Law School.

And my mother was a homemaker after being a shoe salesperson at JC Penny which she loved being a sales person but then she took off to take care of us kids for about 20 years.

Well, I was a terrible student in the third grade because our teacher Mrs.Bryan had passed away, unfortunately and the substitute was reading this books that I could not get into.

So I started getting C's and I was giving up on school and Mrs.Mary Conrad saw something in me I did not even see myself in the fourth grade and after I wrote a story that she really likes she had me read it to all the other fourth grade classes and she really support my interest in academe and I've been loving reading and loving academe ever since.

First day '002, a new high school, I saw this gorgeous creature going down the hall and that's my lovely wife, Jackie, who presented in class and she was giving a current event speech on posture.

And she had all those guys sitting up straight pretty soon.

And I thought, wow, she's not only gorgeous, she's also the most talented and a lovely sense of humor and person in the world.

And we've been going out for 54 and a half years since.

- Well, Ron is irrepressible.

He has boundless energy and he never forgets a name or a face.

And so he actually collects people to him the way a magnet collects filings.

- He decided that he wanted to make Tampa home.

And so, you know, Ron moved here, he came down and started knocking on the doors of law firms.

He ended up at a well-known firm here in Tampa.

He started out as a banking lawyer and he saw the opportunity to create the field of land use in Florida.

And he did that because he was trying to help his clients.

- Yeah, we joke that Tampa is the biggest small town in America.

We think that's one of our strengths.

And Ron is the perfect example that just getting to know people.

And Ron always seems to be everywhere.

He's a guy that's plugged into what's happening but isn't in it to make Ron's light brighter, he's in it to make the community's light brighter.

And that makes him somebody people want to work with and a real asset for us.

- For some reason Tampa just felt perfect.

It felt like it was a city that was like 10:00a.m in the morning when it had a whole day ahead of it.

In 1973, Tampa really did have a lot of promise.

You know, it wasn't like some cities that had already reached their three or four o'clock in the afternoon as far as their progression.

And so we chose Tampa over Houston, Miami and North Carolina.

- [Man] If you just drive around Tampa and look at the skyline, you're probably looking at at least one project that Ron has worked on over the years.

So, you know, we're in the Truist building downtown now, this was one of Ron's projects before the firm moved in to this building as its first tenant.

- Ron's accomplishments within the legal profession speak for themselves as one of the prominent land use and development lawyers in Florida, which is of course as a very important part of the Florida economy and the local business community.

But what I find most admirable about Ron is his work outside his profession.

Ron did something truly remarkable which was not just respond to a crisis, by that I mean the real estate crash more than a decade ago now and seeing the devastating effect that was going to have on so many people in the development and real estate business, Ron started real estate buys to help people across that very difficult transition.

And Ron rallied a community really that existed this day.

And I think it's just really a terrific example of how an individual with a great idea and a lot of heart created something of lasting value.

- He loves not just being a lawyer but teaching other people about how to be a good lawyer, how to be a good business person, how to be a good role model in your community.

- It goes back to ironically Mrs.Conrad in the fourth grade when she had me read my little story about the self sacrificing penny machine 'cause then after I went around all the other fourth grade classes I realized I loved being up there and sharing and seeing their reaction.

And in at least some small part contributing to the lives of others.

- Another thing to mention as a role model is just how a godly a man my father is and how loyal and committed he is not just in his own religious life and commit to Christ but also in the commitment and loyalty to the family and setting a godly example for his kids and I think that that's something that everyone should emulate, that people would strive to be the best people that they can be.

And my dad definitely embodies that.

- I think candidly that family is so much more important and family reminds me of something that Billy Graham once said, the great evangelical Crusader.

He said, "I wish I'd had fewer crusades and spent more time with my family."

And I think that's true.

I think that most important lesson we learned is that no matter what we do and how important we think it is at the time, it's not nearly important as our family.

- You know, there's the old saying about, "there's nothing sweeter to someone's ear than their own name."

And he makes it a point.

He makes it a priority in life just to remember everyone's name.

And I think that's something simple but there's really something nice about that and generous.

- But he's kind of guy that has fingerprints on a lot of positive things that have happened in town but you won't know they're his 'cause that's just the way Ron works.

He's not in it to get his attention, he's in it to do his job and make us a better community.

- Find something that you can become the best in the world at quite frankly.

And maybe it's very, very small.

Maybe it seems insignificant at the time become the master of it and be able to tell the world how you came to that mastery of whatever it is that you wanna do better than anyone else.

- Tampa is such a special community.

And we have this program and celebrate these luminaries because we in the community couldn't do what we do without them.

There are a beacon of light and there are wonderful example to our future community leaders, to children who can continue the amazing work that they do and continue to lift up our communities and become future luminaries.

- If I've affected someone's life in some positive way, that's a pretty good feeling.

And that's enough for me.

- Don't forget the community and the destination of your greatness and whatever is it you achieve academically, intellectually, financially, socially and especially emotionally be prepared to share it with the community.

- If we can focus on building strong communities and what makes a community strong.

I think that's a wonderful effort and I'm quite flattered to have been asked to be a member of that effort.

(soft music) - [Announcer] Support for this program was generously provided by the Radiant Group.