Category: Featured

With Cancer Battle Behind Her, Bailey Returns To Wharton High

To whoever has been parking their car in Bailey Rhodes’ senior spot this year at Paul R. Wharton High, she’s got news for you:

Starting Monday, April 4, she’ll be needing it back.

Bailey, a 17-year-old senior at Wharton, will be returning to school for the first time since Sept. 2014, after winning battles against bone cancer and leukemia the last four years that left her immune system battered and susceptible and left her unable to wander far from her hospital rooms at Tampa General (TGH) and All Children’s hospitals, as well as her New Tampa home.

She took on all of her treatments with verve, foregoing any wallowing and telling anyone who would listen, ‘Let’s get this going, I have stuff to do and places to go.’”

She will finally get to park her car in one of those spaces in a couple of weeks.

“I can’t wait,’’ she says excitedly, her big brown eyes and even bigger spirit clearly joyful. “I’ve been waiting such a long time.”

Nearly two years, to be exact. September of 2014 was the last time that Bailey attended school, after her first fight with bone cancer and before her second against leukemia.

She has worked hard for this moment. While cancer ravaged her body, Bailey kept her mind focused on school. Although she couldn’t attend full classes, she took her courses through TGH’s Homebound programs, spending hours on the phone with teachers like Gary Lundgren, “Who I couldn’t have done this without,” she says, and others from Wharton.

Bailey has volunteered any way she could, as a mentor, talking to other families touched by cancer, working fashion shows with cancer patients and even working with special needs students when healthy enough.

She took both the SAT and ACT exams from a hospital room.

Now, she will be able to attend the final two months of her senior year, and graduate with her class.

“Everything she had to go through, it’s been kind of hard to watch,’’ says Bailey’s best friend, Jessica Korver. “It’s been hard to go to school and have her not be there. She was always the, ‘Let’s go to all the pep rallies’ person, and I’ve always been the stay home type of person. So, that’s been kind of hard. But she is soooo strong. That’s the one thing I really learned through this whole thing.”

A Tough Time

Bailey was first diagnosed in 2012 with osteosarcoma, a rare type of bone cancer with fewer than 20,000 cases nationwide per year.

The summer before her freshman year at Wharton, she had been experiencing pain in her left knee. Her mother Beth says that Bailey’s grandmother noticed a small rise in her knee, and a visit to the doctor and an MRI confirmed that she had a tumor.

“When I heard tumor, I was like, ‘Wait a minute…back it up,’’’ said Beth, a second-grade teacher at New Tampa’s Dr. Richard F. Pride Elementary.

The diagnosis came just two weeks after Bailey was told she no longer had to wear a back brace to bed to help with scoliosis while she was in middle school.

“I said, ‘I can’t catch a break’ in one breath, and then in the other, I said, ‘I guess this is God’s plan for me,’” Bailey says.

Although there were tears as family members showed up at the doctor’s office, Bailey was resolved to fight. She received six months of chemotherapy treatments, a full knee replacement and limb salvage of her tibia, and another seven months of chemo. Her weight at one point was down to 68 pounds, and she needed a feeding tube to help get her back to a healthier weight.

She was able to return to Wharton for the second nine-week period of her sophomore year in 2013. For a year, she was back to being a normal teenager, making the homecoming court, hanging out with friends, and even taking a family trip to Hawaii.

But, in August of 2014, she started noticing bruises in places where she had not bumped into anything or fallen down. After being in remission for a year, a routine lab test revealed bad news — secondary leukemia, which was the result of her previous chemotherapy, requiring that she receive a bone marrow transplant.

Bailey was shaken up. This fight would be more difficult, and require more resolve. She gritted her teeth through more chemo treatments as doctors searched for a bone marrow match.

“When I was re-diagnosed, I said, ‘This is going to suck, it’s going to be hard, but it’s only going to make you stronger,’’’ Bailey recalls. “We’re going to get through this. And then at the end, we are going to say, ‘What can we do with this now? What can we take from this, and make better?’”

After testing her family at Shands Hospital in Gainesville, doctors ended up finding a perfect match from a donor in Germany.

“A 10 out of 10 match,’’ said Bailey. “I thought that was the coolest thing ever, that somewhere out there, I don’t even know this person, and we’re not related, and they have the exact same bone marrow as me. That’s pretty cool.”

Bailey spent 80 more days in the hospital. Because her immune system was so fragile, she wasn’t allowed to leave her room. Immediate family was allowed in, but only in full hospital gowns and masks.

She was finally discharged Easter weekend of 2015,. For nine more months, she wasn’t allowed to leave her house. “I’ve been on house arrest,’’ she jokes.

She actually had to eat processed foods, like macaroni and cheese and ramen noodles, because there is less bacteria in them than say, unwashed lettuce and fruit. “You could have washed it really good, but I’m wasn’t taking that risk,’’ Beth says.

And, because her bone marrow donor had a peanut allergy, Bailey now also has a peanut allergy, so great discretion had to be used in her daily food choices.

The Big Announcement

On March 15, doctors told her she was once again all clear, and that she could return to school.

“I’m nervous, but I’m really excited,’’ Bailey says, and after noting that the last day of school is May 20, smiles as she reaches across the table to high-five Jessica.

Bailey also has a new cause: Code Gray, an informational service she wants to start for new cancer patients and their families, which she hopes to launch soon.

While at Tampa General Hospital the first time, Bailey had a port put in instead of an IV, and it was difficult to access. Located in her chest and at an angle, it was beneath the skin and reached by a needle. “Very painful,’’ she says. “The first time they tried to access it, it took 10 times.”

She was told to make sure the nurses used 1-inch needles, and one night a nurse was having difficulty accessing the port. Bailey asked her if she was using the right needle, and the nurse insisted she was.

“I only asked because it wasn’t working,’’ Bailey says.

As it turned out, it wasn’t the right needle, just as Bailey thought. On her chart that night, the nurse listed her as “Code Gray,” a designation for “unruly” patients.

The seed for Bailey’s Code Gray organization had been planted. As part of a project for her nursing assistant classes she was taking (since she was not allowed to go to clinicals), she researched mistakes made at hospitals, many she thinks could have been prevented had the patient and their family spoken up. But, most people, said Beth, are just content to let the doctors and nurses handle things.

In Bailey’s case, the family kept extensive journals and recorded every dose of medicine every time something was administered. “Highly recommended,’’ Beth said. “For me, it was therapeutic.”

Bailey spent a recent weekend designing pamphlets, which will contain information for new cancer patients and their families, including tips about dealing with your cancer treatment and talking to doctors and nurses without stepping on toes, as well as how to continue your schoolwork against great odds. She’d also like to create a website, hold some fund raisers and get the word out.

“I’m so passionate about it,’’ she says. “People don’t speak up because they don’t think they are knowledgeable enough to say anything to their doctor. But, if they have questions or doubts, they can — and should — say something.”

Bailey says she hopes Code Gray can help cancer patients. And, maybe one day, she will as well. She has been accepted into her dream school, the University of Florida in Gainesville, and wants to be a pediatrician. While she never thought about treating cancer patients before her own struggles with the disease, she wonders if she hasn’t been sent a sign.

“I always wanted to be a pediatrician, and they always asked me, ‘Do you want to go into oncology?,’’’ Bailey says. “I thought, there’s no way I could relive that every day. But then, this second time, it was like this is proving that I can relive it. Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to do.”

Both Sides Taking A Closer Look At Kinnan/Mansfield Connection

A new study to determine the feasibility of connecting Kinnan St. in New Tampa and Mansfield Blvd. in Meadow Pointe could be on the horizon, after both Pasco and Hillsborough counties met recently in hopes of settling the long-simmering disagreement between the sides.

Pasco County District 2 commissioner Mike Moore and Hillsborough County District 7 City Council member Lisa Montelione, accompanied by lawyers, city administrators and engineers from each side, met in Dade City on March 9, as negotiations to connect their two counties heated up.

The result: a decision to send the engineers back to work, looking at old plans from 2007-12 to determine if any are applicable today in light of the new developments in the area.

“Our staff, the engineers who do the technical stuff, are going to look at prior studies to see if we need to do a new study,’’ said Moore. “Things have obviously changed in that area, with more homes, schools and daycares.”

Kinnan St., which is on the Hillsborough side, and Mansfield Blvd., which is on the Pasco side, are separated by a 100-foot patch of grass (photo) that is more a dumping ground than the commuter convenience it should be, argue some.

The last traffic study in the area was done roughly two years ago, says Montelione, by ICON Engineering, Inc., as part of the process for M/I Homes during the re-negotiation of the development agreement for K-Bar Ranch.

She said similar studies go back to 1996, and that both staffs plan on taking inventory of those to determine the next step forward.

Kinnan St. was paved north to the Pasco County line in 2007 by the developer of Live Oak Preserve, but never completed. Barricades mark the end of Mansfield and block the road heading south, while steel poles with red diamond-shaped signs on them prevent any traffic further north on Kinnan St.

Last publicly discussed in 2012, when the two sides failed to come to an agreement, Montelione raised the issue again of connecting the roads in January, writing a letter to Moore. The two officials first met later that month to discuss it, before agreeing on the latest meeting with government staff, namely the engineers. “We’ll see what was discussed in the past,’’ Moore said. “There’s no guarantee either way. But, I think what we all agree on is we need an end result.”

If both sides decide a new study needs to be done, Moore and Montelione said public meetings will be held so that residents and business owners of both sides of the debate can be heard.

Montelione attended the meeting with Tampa city attorney Julia Mandell.

Mandell, who was the senior assistant attorney for the City of Tampa during the last round of negotiations with Pasco County in 2013, is now the City Attorney, having been appointed in March as only the second female City Attorney ever by Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn.

Susan Johnson, the subdivision/DRI coordinator for the City of Tampa, and Melanie Calloway, the senior transportation planning engineer, also attended the meeting.

Pasco was represented by county administrator Michelle Baker, assistant county attorney David Goldstein and Ali Atefi, Pasco’s transportation engineer.

The meeting also included discussions on other possible extensions to help alleviate traffic issues affecting both counties, like one linking Beardsley Dr. in Meadow Pointe southeast east to Morris Bridge Rd. in K-Bar Ranch, Moore said.

Volunteer Of The Year Craig DiCecco Makes Impact at New Tampa YMCA

Craig DiCecco volunteer — Tampa Palms resident Craig DiCecco is the New Tampa Family YMCA’s Volunteer of the Year.

Thanks to the efforts of volunteers like Tampa Palms resident Craig DiCecco, the New Tampa Family YMCA continues to help people in need in and around our community.

DiCecco was named the facility’s “Volunteer of the Year” at the annual Tampa Metropolitan Area YMCA’s annual Community Impact Awards dinner on Feb. 25.

DiCecco, whose three kids have all participated in sports at the New Tampa YMCA over the past 10 years or so, is a real estate appraiser who is also a member of the New Tampa Rotary Club. He first became involved with the YMCA through the Wiregrass Wobble Turkey Trot, which is an event put on jointly each year by both organizations.

“Craig has really stepped up in many ways, especially with the Turkey Trot, ” says Tony Kimbrough, New Tampa Family YMCA executive director. “The event helps us raise funds to provide programs that impact our members and the community.”

Some of these programs include drowning prevention, teen leadership, the YMCA’s partnership with LIVESTRONG, adaptive programs for people with special needs, and providing financial assistance to kids who need it to attend summer camp.

“There are a lot of families in need,” says Kimbrough, “and we serve them. Summer camp can really help kids close the achievement gap. We see that there’s a lot less of a ‘summer learning loss’ for kids who come to our summer camps, versus those who don’t get that opportunity.”

Honored To Be Recognized

DiCecco says he is honored to have received the award. “The Y is a great organization with a lot of fantastic volunteers,” he says. “It’s tough for me to understand why I deserve this more than others whose faces I see at the Y every day.”

But, Kimbrough says DiCecco absolutely deserves to be recognized for his efforts.

“Craig also serves as vice chair of the New Tampa Family YMCA advisory board, and he’s been instrumental in helping us to raise both money and awareness,” says Kimbrough. “He’s always the first to raise his hand to volunteer when something needs to be done.”

For more information on the New Tampa Family YMCA, call 866-9622 or visit TampaYMCA.org/locations/new-tampa/.

‘Mayor Bob’ Visits Chiles Elementary

Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn has faced some tough lines of questioning in his five years as the city’s head honcho, so taking a few softballs from the second graders at Lawton Chiles Elementary in Tampa Palms on March 8 was something of a welcome respite.

Not that a few fastballs weren’t sneaked in there, however.

After talking to the children about how much he loved his job and how important it was, Buckhorn fielded questions asking him about his favorite food, color and his favorite sports.

Oh yeah…and a few about the traffic in New Tampa.

“We do need a train that runs from New Tampa to downtown Tampa,” Buckhorn answered to one traffic question.

Another student wanted to know why the red light by his house stayed red for so long. The exact location of that light was never pinpointed (and let’s be honest, we all have one of those lights we love to hate in New Tampa, don’t we?), but Buckhorn gave a quick wink said he would check it out.

He also was asked what he thought of Donald Trump.

“Oh, I think I’ll stay away from that one,’’ Buckhorn said. “But, I do not think he is good for the country.”

The event was organized by Linda Rosen, who was teaching her second graders about local government when she came up with the idea to try and get Buckhorn to visit her class. She had all of the kids write letters inviting him to Chiles, and the mayor ended up accepting.

Leading the second grade classes of teachers Ashley Mitchell, Elizabeth Horton, Tari Baldwin, Elaine Wilkinson, Michael Rehfus, Chelsea Bowen, Ami Egeland, Felicia Sell and Rosen into school’s media center was Alejandro Rodriguez, a mayor himself — he was elected by his classmates in Rosen and Bowen’s classes, a mock vote designed to teach the children about democracy.

The 8-year-old, decked out in gray slacks, a light green plaid shirt and a gray tie with white stripes, fidgeted in his seat with his hand thrust as high as he could reach, eagerly awaiting his chance for a question, like 150 of his classmates.

Buckhorn, who was elected to his first term as mayor in 2011 and then re-elected in 2015 while running unopposed, told the classes he caught the government bug as a fourth-grader growing up near Washington, D.C., when in 1968, he was helping out on the late Senator Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign.

“I used to have my mom drive me down to Bobby Kennedy’s headquarters, and I’d seal envelopes and put stamps on them,’’ Buckhorn said.

However, the kids seemed more interested in answers to the bigger, more important questions facing Tampa — such as his favorite color (blue), his favorite food (Italian), and his favorite sports (he played lacrosse and soccer in high school).

When he wasn’t playing sports, Buckhorn said, he was reading books or having crab apple fights with his friends.

“We didn’t have cell phones,” he said, drawing perhaps the loudest reaction of the morning from the gasping second graders.

“It was a much better life, I think,’’ he added. The lack of cell phones apparently made at least one child think Buckhorn was far older than his 57 years, because he was later asked if he had town criers when he was growing up.

Mayor Shares Governmental Info, Too

Buckhorn provided some civics lessons for the kids as well, explaining that he and the seven-member Tampa City Council operate mostly independently. “I meet with them once a year to tell them how much money they have to spend,” he said, referring to his annual budget meeting.

Asked if he can change the City Council’s decisions, Buckhorn told the class “sometimes,” explaining that he can veto items but “the City Council can override my veto with a 5-2 vote margin.”

“He added, “But, so far, I haven’t had to veto anything.”

The mayor, in case you were wondering (like at least one of the kids was), does not have a butler and maids. He told them, however, he was “rich in blessings with a great job, a great wife and great kids, but not rich rich, like Donald Trump.”

He jokingly bragged about having so much power, he could turn rivers green (which he did, again, on St. Patrick’s Day).

Buckhorn, who has two young daughters, also told the assembly “and none of you are ever allowed to marry them.”

Buckhorn impressed the crowd by telling the children he has been to President Barack Obama’s Christmas parties, and has even been to his office.

“Was his chair comfortable?,’’ one boy asked the mayor.

“Oh, I don’t dare sit in the president’s chair,’’ Buckhorn replied, grinning widely.

Buckhorn, whose second term is scheduled to end in 2019, said leaving the mayor’s office won’t be easy. “You’re going to have to pry my fingers off the desk,” he said.

He did, though, drop a hint about his rumored future plans, asking the kids if they’d like it if he came back to visit as Florida’s governor.

As for who Buckhorn, a Democrat (although all municipal elections in Tampa are non-partisan), is supporting for president, no surprises there.

“I am supporting Hillary Clinton,’’ he said of the Democratic frontrunner (see page 8) he introduced at her pep rally in Ybor City the following day. “Because I want my two little girls to grow up knowing there are no barriers. I want them to know that they can grow up to be president, too.”

Mayor Bob Buckhorn Visits Chiles Elementary

bob buckhorn chiles elementary mayor tampa mayor

Local Historian Publishes The Definitive History Of Wesley Chapel!

DanielSmithWesleyChapelCrackerHouse — This house was built for Daniel H. Smith and Elizabeth Geiger, who were engaged, in 1894. It was donated in 1979 by the Smiths’ grandson, Willie Smith, to the hands-on exhibit at the Florida State Fairgrounds known as “Cracker Country.” Photo courtesy of Ernest Wise.

As Wesley Chapel grows and adds shiny new housing development after shiny new housing development, businesses as far as the eye can see and all the comforts of modern living, it’s hard to imagine our area as a hardscrabble agricultural and rural town with a long, rich history.

Author Madonna Jervis Wise, however, brings that unique history into focus with her latest book, Images of America: Wesley Chapel, a fresh glimpse of Wesley Chapel’s history through extensive research and hundreds of old photos and maps being officially released on Monday, March 21, by Arcadia Publishing/History Press. A launch event for the book will be held on Thursday, March 31, at the first annual History Fair at the Pasco Hernando State College (PHSC)-Porter Campus at Wiregrass Ranch off S.R. 56, 6 p.m.-8 p.m., in the conference room.

The president of the Pasco County Historical Society and a Pasco County resident for 43 years, Wise has written nine books — including Images of America: Dade City and Images of America: Zephyrhills — and was asked by her publisher to do a book about Wesley Chapel.

While her previous books on Dade City and Zephyrhills were written with a wealth of information in library and government archives, Wise says her Wesley Chapel book required more digging. But, with each layer she peeled away, new stories emerged.

“It really became a labor of love,’’ says Wise, who lists the Douglas family who ran the K-Bar Ranch (south of the Pasco line, in New Tampa) and many of the Porters, who developed the Wiregrass Ranch area, as her friends.

Wise says she was shocked to learn that Wesley Chapel actually is older than Zephyrhills — it was settled in the 1840s, when land was granted to Edward Boyette, Sr., in the Florida Armed Occupation Act of 1842. It was so sparsely populated, however, there were few historical references for Wise to draw upon from that era.

She did, however, find the remaining turpentine foreman’s house on the Barnes Ranch, which is 150 years old, and Daniel Smith’s pioneer cracker home, which was donated to the Cracker Country Hands-on Museum (currently located at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa) in 1979.

Much of Wise’s research on Wesley Chapel’s beginnings in the 1840s took place in Brooksville. Because Pasco County didn’t exist until 1887, locals had to travel to Brooksville for marriage licenses and other official documents.

“I discovered a very rich history as I uncovered it,’’ Wise says. “I had to go back and do a lot of interviews.”

Wise did more than 30 original interviews and reviewed hundreds of photos from family collections. She connected with Marco Stanley, who had been researching his own family’s Wesley Chapel beginnings, on Ancestry.com. She met David Brown from the Barnes family, who had a wealth of information and connections. The First Baptist Church of Wesley Chapel, located on S.R. 54, east of Saddlebrook Resort, let her examine its records, which dated back to 1878.

Wise’s book is 128 pages and six chapters of family histories with more than 300 photos, including of families whose names are still familiar still to us: Boyette, Gillette, Godwin, Kersey and Wells, and others.

“There was a cohesiveness to these settlers,’’ Wise says.

The Double Branch Baptist Church (which is what is now called the First Baptist Church of Wesley Chapel) was the focus for community life, and Wise was told by dozens of people that the Fifth Sunday Sing, called the “Grand Ole Opry of Wesley Chapel” by one of the people she interviewed, captured the spirit of frontier Wesley Chapel, which was highly regarded for its singing.

Wesley Chapel also was known for its lumber harvesting — much of it under the control of Standard Oil Company founder and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and others – as well as for turpentine production. The area was known by various names over the years, like Gatorville, Double Branch (for the twin creeks that flowed through Edward Boyette’s property) and Godwin.

The plucky community also had a reputation for its moonshine production. During prohibition (in the 1920s), Wesley Chapel was the only town in Pasco county that was opposed to it. The community was accused of being home to 90 percent of the stills producing the liquor that was sold to Tampa.

And, the frontier women of Wesley Chapel were lauded for their hard work, as they ran many of the ranches, some even serving as the county’s supervisor of elections. “I’ve never seen such interesting women,’’ Wise says.

Wise, who developed her passion for historical research by compiling her own family’s history as a young adult, says she has received “overwhelming response” for her book, much of it from the families who are thrilled to have their history officially recorded.

Wise’s book is full of interesting nuggets, like the time the area once applied for a U.S. post office under the name Lemon, but was denied. Wesley Chapel did get a post office, located at the site of today’s Quail Hollow Country Club, from 1897-1902, although we do at least have a Contract Postal Unit on Boyette Rd. today.

S.R. 54 was originally Denham-Dade City Rd., an old dirt road used to transport lumber and turpentine, although Wise’s book says many referred to it as “2-2-20” after gravel replaced the dirt: 2 years to build, 2 years to wear out, 20 years to pay for it.

And, James H. Porter was called “Wiregrass” because every Christmas, Dade City Buick dealer Ed Madill would send Porter a box of matches to burn the wiregrass on the ranch, so the ashes fertilized the grass for the cattle.

“It’s fun with these books, because once they are published, people will find more information,’’ Wise says.

The First Annual History Fair at Pasco Hernando State College-Porter Campus will host a book launch reception for Images of America: Wesley Chapel on Thursday, March 31. Wise also will do a book signing on Saturday, April 2, 9 a.m., at the Florida Old Time Music Championship & Spring Fest at the Pioneer Museum & Village in Dade City.

For more information, visit Wise’s author page at Amazon.com/Madonna-Jervis-Wise/e/B003RGSJB6. Images of America: Wesley Chapel can be purchased on Amazon, Google Books or at Barnes & Noble bookstores.