Pan Am flies Key West to Havana

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Members of the Pan Am flight and ground crew with the General Machado.

On this day in 1927, Pan American Airways began mail service from Key West to Havana using its own aircraft, a Fokker F-VIIa Tri-motor.

To comply with U.S. government requirements, the company had actually started the mail service nine days earlier with a chartered seaplane. It couldn't use its own plane because the airport at Key West wasn't ready for its plane.

The Oct. 28 flight carried 28 sacks of mail weighing 722 pounds. It left at 8:25 a.m. piloted by Hugh Wells and arrived in Havana an hour and 20 minutes later. The plane was named the General Machado, after Gerardo Machado, a war hero who was president of Cuba when the flight took place.

Passenger flights to Havana started three months later on January 16, 1928.

Historian Allen Morris wrote that "because of prohibition the champagne christening of the maiden flight that day had to take place in Havana rather than in Key West.”

Henry B. Plant was born in 1819

Ebyabe | Wikipedia

When Plant opened the Tampa Bay Hotel, he invited Henry Flagler attend. Flagler responded, "Where is Tampa." Plant answered, "Just follow the crowds, Henry, just follow the crowds."

Today is the birthday of railroad magnate Henry B. Plant, who built a system of steamships and railroads that ran from Jacksonville to Havana, Cuba. He built the Moorish-style Tampa Bay Hotel that eventually became the University of Tampa and the Belleview Biltmore near Clearwater.

Henry B. Plant

Plant was born in 1819 in Branford, Conn., to Anderson Plant, a well-to-do farmer, and Betsey Bradley Plant. His father died when he was six years old but his mother remarried and the family moved to New York and, eventually, to New Haven, Conn. He attended private school.

His grandmother wanted him to become a clergyman and offered to pay for him to go to Yale College but  the impatient young man became a captain's boy and, eventually, a deck hand on a steamship instead.

Plant married Ellen Elizabeth Blackstone in 1842, and he worked for the Adams Express Company, handling express parcels. He ran the company's New York office. In 1853, Ellen was told she needed to move to the South for her health. They visited the then-tiny town of Jacksonville, where Plant saw the possibilities for future development. In fact, a rugged trip to St. Augustine convinced him transportation was needed in the area. To get to the ancient city, he had paddle a dugout canoe up the St. Johns River and hike through the forest. The guide lost his way and they had to spend the night out under the stars. Only a few years later, Plant made such a rustic trip unnecessary.

During the Civil War, the owners of the express company transferred the company to him, fearful they would lose it to the Confederacy if they remained in control. Plant organized the Southern Express Company in 1861 with southern stockholders. The company collected tariffs and transferred funds as an agent for the Confederacy.

After the war, southern railroad were ruined and many railroads were in bankruptcy. Plant bought railroads at foreclosure sales and began building a transportation system. In 1882, with Henry Flagler's help, he organized the Plant Investment Company, resurrected several small railroads, and provided service across Florida.

The line ended in Tampa, where he established a new steamship line to Havana. For $2.5 million, he built the Tampa Bay Hotel in the style of a Moorish palace, with distinctive minarets. He also built the Victorian style Belleview Biltmore near Clearwater. He built eight hotels in all, but his favorite with the Tampa Bay Hotel.

Plant City in eastern Hillsborough County is named for him as is Henry B. Plant High School in Tampa. Bradley Junction in Polk County is named for his mother.

The Henry B. Plant Museum at the University of Tampa is dedicated to his life.

Yes, an alligator could eat your dog

Tampa Bay's Channel 10 reports on a 50-pound Keeshond that was eaten by an alligator on Saturday. It shouldn't be surprising. It's what alligators do. They see small dogs (and children) as food. In Florida, it's a fact of life. Around alligator habitat, be watchful.

Hermit in oil reveals fabled island life

Silas Dent preferred barefooted living on mosquito-ridden Cabbage Key to civilization.  He died at 76 in 1952.

PASS-A-GRILLE – In the old Florida boutique Bamboozle on Eighth Avenue, there's a huge oil painting of Silas Dent, the celebrated recluse of Cabbage Key, who is remembered for his quirky personality and non-conformist lifestyle.

He sometimes played Santa Claus for island children. Pulitzer-prize winning Associated Press columnist Hal Boyle called Silas the "Happy Hermit of Cabbage Key" in a 1948 Life magazine article. He recounted how Silas traded faded overalls for a red Santa suit once a year and invited the Pass-A-Grille kids over to his island (now part of Tierra Verde).

He gave them presents he'd bought with a meager income earned from selling mosquito swatters to tourists in Pass-A-Grille. He knew the parents of the island kids were struggling to make a living.

Longtime Pass-A-Grille residents knew Silas as the most eccentric member of a family that tried unsuccessfully to operate a dairy on Cabbage Key, eventually moved their herd to what is now Bella Vista, and finally to acreage off Ulmerton Road in Largo.

After Cabbage Key, Silas tried living the civilized life but found that it just didn't suit him, so he moved back to a palmetto-thatched hut on Cabbage Key. The oil painting shows Silas sitting in his hut playing a banjo. It was painted from a photograph well known to students of local history.

Artist Patrick Donatelli

The man who painted it has his own connection to Pass-A-Grille, though he never knew Silas when he lived here. Artist Patrick Donatelli is the son of legendary Major League Baseball umpire Augie Donatelli, who brought his family to the community in the 1950s.

The elder Donatelli and other umpires rented places to stay at the beach during spring training. Once Life magazine photographer Arthur Rickerby came to town and took pictures of the family down on the beach enjoying the warm Gulf waters for a spread in the magazine.

Patrick Donatelli fondly recalls his Pass-A-Grille childhood with memories of the wind whispering through tall Australian pine trees and dipping his toes in ultra fine sand on the beach. For young Patrick, it was a storybook life, like an N.C. Wyeth illustration of Treasure Island and the lad imagining himself as Jim Hawkins.

Though the family lived in Pennsylvania during those years, they always came to Pass-A-Grille in the spring. Finally, the family moved to St. Petersburg permanently in 1967, when Patrick was 12 years old. 

Baseball umpire Augie Donatelli lifts his son,
Patrick, on Pass-A-Grille beach in photo by
Life magazine photographer Arthur Rickerby.

As children, Partick and his siblings knew their dad was involved with baseball but they didn't really grasp how well known he was throughout the country, and among people in all walks of life. Patrick tells of a time shortly after the family moved to St. Petersburg when his dad took his mom, Mary, in the middle of the day to the Hilton Hotel downtown.

They walked past the lobby into the ballroom with Mary wondering what was up. An orchestra was rehearsing and a slight man with a big smile greeted Augie Donatelli. "Hey, Augie. How ya doin'?" It was Frank Sinatra.

Patrick Donatelli's youth in St. Petersburg is filled with memories of regular trips to the beach, soaking up the sun and beach life and basking in the spectacular sunsets. The love of place spurred him to explore Florida's history, and in the 1980s he discovered Silas Dent, the storied character from Cabbage Key.

He found that photograph while doing research at the St. Petersburg Museum of History and was immediately drawn to it. Patrick knew he would paint Silas in oil. Such an iconic figure in local history had to be part of his portfolio. It was a natural for a lad whose dreams of pirate adventures on Treasure Island fueled an imaginative childhood.

 • Read St. Petersburg Times columnist Jeff Klinkenberg's interview with Pass-A-Grille's Frank Hurley.