Greg Tish: Help us identify the unsung heroes of Tallahassee’s history?
One day I had an idea for my hometown’s celebration of its bicentennial: Come up with a list of the 200 most influential citizens since 1824.
Shortly after I announced this on my The Greg Tish Show on Real Talk 93.3, I got a call from Tallahassee Democrat Editor William Hatfield saying the Democrat wanted to team up with me on this list. I quickly and enthusiastically said yes, as the reach of the Democrat would help tremendously on helping find the people that needed to be included on the list.
Naming the project after the late Tallahassee Democrat reporter and columnist Gerald Ensley came from Hatfield and Tallahassee Democrat staff writer James Call. I couldn’t have been happier with that idea. I was (and still am) a huge fan of Gerald and his vast knowledge of Tallahassee. The republishing of Gerald’s articles this year in the Democrat are a welcome reminder of what a great storyteller he was.
Call mentioned in his article on the TLH200 Gerald Ensley Memorial Bicentennial Project that he had moved to Tallahassee from elsewhere but quickly fell in love with our “little city”.
I also was not born here, as my mother and father lived in Bowling Green, Kentucky, at the time of my birth. My father was attending and teaching at Western Kentucky University and my mother was working for the local electric co-op in the area. They both moved to Athens, West Virginia, shortly after when my father took a teaching job at Concord College (now Concord University). A job In Tallahassee came calling shortly after that and all my memories of my life are only from one home. My beloved Tallahassee.
I don’t know when my love of our local history started but learning of the only home that I have ever known was a fire that burned as deep as the mythical “Wakulla Volcano”. Learning of our past is fascinating to me and I truly love each story I am told.
That’s where the importance of this project comes in and why we need your help on this. We need to learn more about our deep history in Tallahassee. The good, the bad and the ugly.
We need your help with your stories as our team can’t possibly unearth all the grains of history that have been swept around over the last 200 years.
We know a lot of the names and stories that have been told repeatedly through the years. It’s the names of the people that, for one reason or another, whose grains have been swept under the rug of our history that we want to know. We need to hear those stories from you.
Our TLH200 will be exclusively of people that are no longer with us as we feel the ones still with us are continuing “to write their legacy” in Tallahassee. We encourage each of you to also learn of the ones making history in our city each day as we could easily make a TLH200 list with them.
Since I announced this project on The Greg Tish Show, several people have reached out to me and have told me stories of amazing people from our area that I had unfortunately never heard of, and the stories are amazing and need to be heard. I know there are a lot more out there and we can’t wait to hear them from you.
You can email us your suggestions history@tallahassee.com if you or your family has someone that we need to be reintroduced to. You can also send us any questions you may have about a name you have heard or seen around town and have always wondered who that person was. A street named after someone, and you don’t know who that is? Email us! A building named after someone? Email us!
We will announce the “First 20” on Bicentennial Day, March 4th. I encourage you and your friends and family to share our list so these people from our past and their stories will live on.
I also invite you to listen to my show each Friday at 8:30 a.m. My dear friend Jay Revell and I dive into Tallahassee history each week as we share stories that you may or may not have heard.
Greg Tish is host of The Greg Tish Show on Real Talk 93.3 in Tallahassee.
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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Help us identify the unsung heroes of Tallahassee’s history?
