Pebble Creek Vet Helps Build Monuments At Bushnell National Cemetery

Pebble Creek resident Wayne Rich and his daughter at the 2019 Gasparilla parade as part of Ye Special Forces Krewe on Tampa Bay, representing the Special Forces Association.

A short drive north of Pebble Creek in New Tampa, where retired U.S. Army Chief Warrant Officer Wayne Rich lives, his father, mother and wife are all buried at the Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell.

Averaging 7,000 burials a year — about 30 each day — Florida National Cemetery is the second most active cemetery in the U.S.

When Wayne arrives after the 45-minute drive up I-75, he takes in the rows upon rows of gravestones, sprawling across 600 acres. It’s hardly possible to view the markers for all 130,000 people who are laid to rest there.

At certain times of the year, volunteers come out and mark the graves with flags. Last Memorial Day, they placed 105,000 flags. Near Christmas, they laid 30,000 wreaths.

Bushnell National Cemetery, however, is lacking something you might expect to see — a monument to the veterans and their spouses who have died and are buried there.

In 2018, Wayne became part of the committee that is working to design monuments for the cemetery, raise the money to fund them, and eventually carry out their installation, as well. 

Called the Florida National Cemetery Joint Veterans Support Committee, it is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization. Wayne also serves on a separate subcommittee, called the monuments committee, that is working to determine the plans and the rollout of the monuments.

After 21 years on active duty, and as a combat veteran from Vietnam, Granada, and Panama, Wayne is spending his retirement in a different kind of service. He was asked to join the Joint Veterans Support Committee as a representative of the Special Forces Association, of which he is a member. That group focuses on community service, as well.

“How could I not volunteer to help in the effort?,” Wayne asks.

Wayne works with committee chair Doug Gardner, also a Vietnam vet, who was inspired to join the effort when the cemetery’s executive director, Tony Thomas, shared his vision for a memorial that would welcome Vietnam veterans home.

“That caught me in one sentence,” says Doug, who understands that the memorial is not just about veterans from one conflict, so the committee came up with a design that would honor everyone buried at the cemetery.

The centerpiece of Freedom Memorial Plaza, which will be located at the main entrance to the cemetery, will be a tribute to a military honors funeral, with two bronze military figures folding a flag which will be powder-coated red, white and blue, over a bronze casket.

It will be surrounded by 14 additional monuments, with etchings displaying memorials for specific groups, such as Vietnam and World War II veterans, special forces, and more. It also will feature the Defenders of Freedom Wall, which will be 470 feet long, using the back of a columbarium (a public storage of cremated remains) that will delineate the border of the Memorial Plaza.

The wall will have granite panels that depict scenes from every U.S. conflict since the Revolutionary War. 

Doug is not only a veteran, he’s also a volunteer who helps visitors to the cemetery by answering questions, locating graves and even taking those who can’t walk out to the gravesites they want to visit on a golf cart.

He recently drove a World War II veteran who used a walker out to his wife’s grave. It had been a few months since she passed away, and there were lots of tears. It was emotional, but Doug says he felt something was missing. He looks forward to the time when he can take those veterans to a monument that will show them how much their service to their country is appreciated.

“We’ll get in that same golf cart, but on the way, we’ll go to the Defenders of Freedom Wall,” Doug says. “We’ll stop by the World War II section and it will bring back memories for him.” 

He hopes it will be meaningful for those it is intended to tribute, and educational for everyone who sees it.  “We have a half million visitors a year at the cemetery,” Doug says. “With the monuments, now it can become an educational experience for all.”

He emphasizes that all of the monuments will focus on sacrifice, not victory, and will give those who view it an understanding of the sacrifice that has happened throughout our nation’s history.

Wayne says it will honor not only his parents, but the values that they passed on to him.

“My parents instilled into me the principals of duty and honor and serving one’s country,” he says. 

Those values will one day be on display at the cemetery where they’re buried, thanks to the efforts of the entire committee and all those who support it, making Freedom Memorial Plaza a reality to both remember and honor all of the veterans buried at the Florida National Cemetery.

To find out how you can support the effort to bring the Freedom Memorial Plaza to life, go to the Joint Veterans Support Committee website at JVSC.us or search “jvscfl” on Facebook. 

Brookron Dr. Gets Resurfaced

Brookron Dr. in New Tampa, once seemingly held together by a never-ending series of potholes patches, has a new surface.

Hillsborough County had all but completed the $686,841 project at our press time. The one-mile circular local road, located off Cross Creek Blvd. (across from the entrance to Cory Lake Isles) and winding past the communities of Pinehurst, Magnolia Trace, Meadow Creek and Creekwood to Kinnan St. in the Cross Creek development, had fallen into disrepair in recent years.

The project was originally expected to start later this year and finish in 2020.

The 18-year-old road is used by most of the Cross Creek II community’s 1,236 households, as well as by residents of the adjacent Addison Park and Andover Place apartment communities.

“They just showed up to fix it; it was very nice,” says Jo-Ann Pilawski, the head of property management for the Cross Creek II community. 

In 2017, Pinehurst resident Sasenarine Persaud emailed county commissioners and the Neighborhood News to express disappointment that the county had approved $250,000 towards building an unplanned Kinnan St.-Mansfield Blvd. connector, while just a mile south was a busy road Persaud said was in “third-world condition” and “a motley (collection) of patches, ridges and depressions, with a new pothole opening every week.”

Due in part to the complaints of Persaud and Pilawski, as well as a handful of others, the county sent an engineer to do a full inspection of the road. 

County commissioner Ken Hagan, who at the time held a District 5 county-wise seat but now represents New Tampa in District 2, was aware of the problem, as a former resident of Creekwood who had driven the road many times. 

Although Brookron Dr. had been on the unfunded project list — meaning the 50 or so potholes repairs applied over the years would have to hold it together until at least 2021 or ‘22 — Hagan worked to get the road reclassified from a local to a connector road, and got it funded for fiscal year 2019.

Workers spent the month of August repaving the road. Also included in the work were ramp improvements for those with disabilities, and pedestrian improvements at the light at the intersection of Brookron Rd. and Cross Creek Blvd.

Pilawski, who says the county always promptly repaired any potholes she reported, praised Hillsborough’s efforts.

“I am really impressed with the response you get from the county,” she says. “I think they really do a good job. I’ve always found that to be the case. I don’t know if it’s because I complain so much, but they always respond.”

Firm Picked To Design New Tampa Performing Arts Center!

The New Tampa Performing Arts Center (in red) off Bruce B. Downs Blvd. will be part of the Village at Hunter’s Lake mixed-use development. (Photo: Charmaine George)

In one of the more significant steps in the long, sometimes-tortured history of a proposed cultural arts center in New Tampa, the Hillsborough Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) has approved the hiring of a firm to design the facility.

Last month, the BOCC awarded a $598,413 contract to Fleischman Garcia Architects to draw a plan for the long-awaited facility, which is now officially being called the New Tampa Performing Arts Center (NTPAC), after years of being referred to as a “cultural center.”

“It’s an extremely significant and critical step in the process,’’ said District 2 county commissioner Ken Hagan, who represents New Tampa and has been involved in the project in various forms since it first sprouted in 2001. “It’s an important move.”

The design of the center — which will be located directly across Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. from the main entrance to Hunter’s Green, in the new Village at Hunter’s Lake development — is expected to be completed by the end of the year, with bidding for the construction services tentatively scheduled for May of 2020.

It is hoped that the $6-million construction of the NTPAC will begin sometime by November 1, 2020, and is expected to open by Jan. 1, 2022.

The facility — long-heralded to be the centerpiece of the New Tampa community — will be 20,000 square feet on its first floor, with the capability to have a 10,000-sq.-ft. second floor added later. 

The building will include a 350-400-seat theater/multi-purpose room and stage to be used for community theater performances. It will be the home of the New Tampa Players (NTP) acting troupe, which currently stages its performances at the University Area Cultural Development Center (UACDC) on N. 22nd St., just south of Bearss Ave.

The stage area at the NTPAC will be more than 2,000 square feet, and Hagan said it will include an orchestra pit that he helped add after meeting with the NTP and addressing some of their requests.

The center also will host cultural/arts education classes, as well as meetings, banquets and other events.

There will be 1,040 square feet dedicated to NTPAC operations and education programs employees, including an office for the NTP.

The education wing will feature two studios with ballet and dance floors, mirrors and movable walls.

Hagan made note that the NTPAC also will be sustainable, incorporating solar power and electric vehicle stations.

Plans for the NTPAC date back to 2001, when a Connecticut firm was paid $27,000 by the City of Tampa for a study that determined New Tampa could support a small cultural center of its own.

A nonprofit group, called the New Tampa Cultural Arts Center, was offered the six acres of land it requested for the project, but the city requested the group come up with a $10-million endowment to pay for it, which killed the effort back in 2005.

Doug Wall, who was involved with those initial efforts, revived it again in 2007. But Wall, the New Tampa Players president and founding artistic director, could not secure the funding and he passed away in 2017.

Former county commissioner and Tampa Palms resident Victor Crist helped keep the project alive as he worked on finding funding. In 2014, the larger Village at Hunter’s Lake project, of which the NTPAC is a central part, was approved. 

In a 2016 meeting at Hunter’s Green, Crist told the NTP he had secured partner-ships with the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts, the Patel Conservatory and the Prodigy Cultural Arts Program to bring gravitas to the project and elevate it to a high-level arts center.

THE BEST

Tirso “Junior” Cintron

The first truck pulled up to Wharton High in 1997, and head custodian Tirso “Junior” Cintron was waiting.

He pulled the first chair off the truck. The first desk. 

“The first everything,” says Carmen Aguero, one of the first teachers at the school.

Junior set the desks and chairs up in the classrooms and offices. He made sure the bathrooms had toilet paper and soap. The lawn was mowed. The floors were shined. 

Wharton was ready.

And every day, for the next 22 years, before any teachers and students arrived for the day, thanks to the diligence, determination and dedication of Junior, you could count on one thing.

Wharton High was ready.

* * *

Junior’s last day at Wharton was August 26. To say he will be missed hardly does his legacy justice.

“I’m telling you, and this is no exaggeration, he is the most beloved person ever to walk the halls of Wharton High,” says Tommy Tonelli, a guidance counselor and the school’s long-time, beloved boys basketball coach. “He has done more for Wharton in the history of our school than any other person that has ever worked here.”

That’s high praise from Tonelli, who isn’t prone to hyperbole. He was one of hundreds of friends that Junior made at Wharton over the years. Junior’s retirement party on Sept. 12, Tonelli says, will be the most attended retirement party ever at New Tampa’s oldest high school.

A school custodian can be a thankless job, and rarely does one rise to the level of hallway celebrity, but Junior somehow did just that.

He was always affable, earnest, positive, productive and those who knew him say he never had a bad day. 

He arrived every morning at 5 a.m., checked the air conditioning, swung by the kitchen to make sure the cooks had gas, went building to building turning off all 16 alarms, and made a sweep of the school to make sure everything was safe and ready for another day.

During the day, he answered calls on his radio for assistance, never saying no, never sighing, never hanging his head. When the school served as a hurricane shelter, it was Junior who made sure everyone was as comfortable as possible.

Even the dreaded call to clean up after a sick student — the one task he liked least — was hastily handled.

“I am an easy person,” Junior says. “I always had a good attitude, that’s why I win so many people. If a teacher saw me in the hall and said she needed a new board in her room, when she showed up the next morning, the board was there.”

Wharton career counselor Magda Rodriguez has a student take a picture of her and Junior, one of her best friends at Wharton.

Junior, 67, was born in Puerto Rico and moved to The Bronx, NY, when he was 18. He worked as a waiter in a hotel for 17 years, met and married Rosa, his wife of 42 years, and started a family — daughters Elaine and Jennifer, who are now teachers in Hillsborough County, and son David, who is a U.S. Marine.

In 1989, the Cintrons moved to Tampa, where Junior started work at Hillsborough High from 2:30 p.m.-11 p.m., while holding a second full-time time cleaning floors at Tampa General from 11:30 p.m.-8 a.m.

Those at Wharton can thank Aguero for Junior. The two met when Junior was the head custodian at Hillsborough.

When she was promoted to the athletic director at Wharton, and the new school was looking for a custodian, she had one word for principal Mitch Muley: Junior.

Aguero lured him to Wharton, where Junior soon became indispensable.

“He was the heart and soul of Wharton,” she says.

Aguero chuckles recalling the time Junior helped chase away the biggest squirrel either of them had ever seen, and the time he had to remove a dead alligator from the tennis courts.

When Aguero left Wharton to become principal at Webb Middle School, she had her head custodian sit down with Junior, “to teach him how to do the job right.”

Junior had his own way of dealing with problems. When parents complained that their kids said there were no soap dispensers in some of the bathrooms, Junior explained that the school couldn’t replace the ones student were destroying fast enough.

When the parents showed up to discuss the issue a second time, he was ready with a pile of smashed and broken soap dispenser. “After that, they never call me again,” Junior says. 

When some kids made fun of him for being a custodian, he pretended not to understand or would just ignore them. Those that didn’t, he would fist bump or salute. 

“I was like that with them all time; they would say ‘he’s cool,” Junior says, smiling proudly. “They like me because I’m cool.”

Junior loved joking with students and teachers, and wasn’t above the occasional prank. One of his favorite victims was Tonelli.

Despite the basketball coach’s fear of frogs and snakes, that didn’t stop Junior one time from putting a frog in a bag of donuts he left for Tonelli. Junior waited in an adjoining room with some other teachers, all eagerly waiting to hear the reaction. Junior leans forward as he tells the story, slapping his knee.

And yes, Tonelli was still Junior’s biggest fan.

“They should rename the school after him,” Tonelli says. “That’s how much he has meant to Wharton High School.” 

On Junior’s last day at Wharton, he was summoned to the auditorium where the school’s teachers were waiting for him. He received a standing ovation, two sweaters for the winter — he hates the cold — and lunch.

He got a second lunch later when the ladies who work in the cafeteria made him his favorite — pork, rice and black beans.

“Two big lunches,” Junior says, grinning ear to ear.

However, even the happiest guy in world couldn’t escape the sadness on that last day. At 2:30 p.m., he took his radio and told everyone it was time for his final call. He thanked current principal Mike Rowan and all the teachers, and it was as if the entire school wept along with Junior. 

Then, he walked out the front door, turned around, and gave the school he had served for 22 years one last glance.

“I looked at everything, and I say, ‘Okay. That’s it.’”

Run/Walk To Kick Off 9/11 Memorial Saturday at TPO



A piece of the ladder from FDNY Ladder Truck 18, pictured above being pulled from the rubble of the north tower of the World Trade Center, will be the centerpiece of a 9/11 Memorial being developed by the Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel and the Tampa Premium Outlets. (Photo courtesy of Chris Casella)

Every year when the Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel is handing out miniature American Flags on the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, current club president Chris Casella is moved to tears.

People who lost a brother, sister, loved one or a friend thank Casella and his fellow Rotarians, and share their heartbreaking stories.

“It never fails,” says Casella, who, due to an injury, was on limited duty as a sworn officer with the New York Police Department (NYPD) when the World Trade Center towers crumbled to the ground.

The latest project hatched by Casella and his fellow Board member Troy Stevenson and the Rotary Club is Pasco County’s first permanent 9/11 Memorial, which will be dedicated at the Tampa Premium Outlets on Saturday, September 7, at 8:46 a.m., the time the north tower was struck in 2001.

Stevenson is a 13-year first responder with the National Disaster Medical System and U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services. Casella and Stevenson have received a lot of help from not only their fellow Board members, but especially from Wesley Chapel resident Stephen Spelman, a retired Fire Department of New York (FDNY) emergency medical technician who was at the foot of the north tower when it collapsed. 

The dedication of the new memorial will follow a one-mile Memorial Run/Walk at TPO — which will begin at 7:30 a.m.. The run/walk is open to all ages and is $10 per person to participate. All net proceeds will go to fund local scholarships for graduating high school students in Pasco County who intend to pursue careers as first responders.

The centerpiece of the 9/11 Memorial will be a 2-foot piece of the ladder from FDNY Ladder Truck 18 (photo), which will be framed and hung on a 25-foot stretch of wall at TPO’s food court. The wall will have a vinyl wrap depicting images from that day, as well as the names of everyone who perished.

According to Casella, FDNY Ladder Truck 18 was destroyed by falling debris, but the firefighters on the truck were all spared.

“Everybody on that truck survived by jumping under the ladder,” Casella says.

The ladder segment belongs to Spelman, who received it for being a scheduled guest speaker at a ceremony on 9/11/17 at the Motts Military Museum in Ohio, which he was unable to attend, due to Hurricane Irma.

For the past two years, Spelman and Casella have discussed what to do with the piece of ladder. Ideas ranged from donating it to a library or local firehouse to building a memorial, which wasn’t financially feasible.

While organizing the Memorial Run/Walk with TPO, one of the mall’s executives mentioned that he had been approached by a guy looking for help with a possible memorial. Casella asked if the guy’s name happened to be Steve…and it was.

Once TPO agreed to host the 9/11 Memorial by donating the space, plans took off and eventually came to fruition.

Casella also has been active in organizing events to benefit first responders, such as having Rotary Club members serve breakfast at all of the Fire Rescue Stations in Wesley Chapel and the Pasco Sheriff’s District 2 office in Dade City each year on 9/11.

The 9/11 Memorial and run/walk, however, may be his proudest achievement. “It’s emotional for me, and I know it is for Steve as well,” Casella says, his voice cracking. “Memorializing it is a big deal for, I think, everybody. It’s something we’ll never forget.”

Casella says the response to the Memorial Run and 9/11 Memorial has already been “incredible.”

Spelman has been in contact with two women who lost their husbands on that terrible day who also will share their stories at the dedication. Surviving first responder John Berrang also recently emailed Casella to applaud the Rotary Club’s efforts and said he’d like to participate in the one-mile run, despite currently undergoing treatment for stage 3 cancer contracted at the World Trade Center site. It was an email that Casella says was both inspiring and difficult to read, but a reminder that Sept. 11 remains a terrible day with a lot of meaning to many people.

“Thanks again,” Berrang wrote to Casella, “for remembering the heroes we lost on 9/11.”

For more information or to sponsor the Walk/Run, visit WCRotary.com/911-Memorial-Mile, or email Casella at Cdcasella@me.com or Stevenson at Troynyc65@aol.com.