Advertisement

Book chronicles Brandon's historic roots

 
BRANDON - The second edition of ??? ?? Brandon, Florida, Images in Time,??? ??  is being printed with a 22-page supplemental edition that runs through 1989. The author, Michael Wigh, is a 1982 Brandon High graduate, who said writing and researching the book was a labor of love, nothing more, nothing less. Contributed by Michael Wigh
BRANDON - The second edition of ??? ?? Brandon, Florida, Images in Time,??? ?? is being printed with a 22-page supplemental edition that runs through 1989. The author, Michael Wigh, is a 1982 Brandon High graduate, who said writing and researching the book was a labor of love, nothing more, nothing less. Contributed by Michael Wigh
Published Dec. 16, 2016

BRANDON — The photos are grainy and many are black and white and out of focus.

They are fantastic.

I turn the pages.

There is John Brandon staring from the 1850s, around the time he rumbled 700 miles from Mississippi by horse, oxen and covered wagons, through rivers and forests, worried all the while about an Indian attack.

After two years on the move south, Brandon built a log cabin on the 40 acres he bought for $50 (see the photo of the Warranty Deed) near the corner of present-day Lithia Road and State Road 60, and in essence...

Brandon, the town, was born.

On the page next to John Brandon is his son, a handsome dude with a ZZ-Top beard, James Henry Brandon.

Turns out James Henry fought for the south in three Civil War battles before being captured and later released. He returned to Brandon and built his sprawling Victorian residence, which, by the way, became Stower's Funeral Home, still standing on State Road 60.

I turn the pages.

The photos in Michael Wigh's book — Brandon, Florida, Images in Time — take me through the years, and I keep stopping, here and there, to check out everything from a newspaper story on the deadly "Yellow Fever" outbreak in 1887, to a team photo of the 1924 Brandon girls basketball team, to a 1948 picture inside Frenchy's Bar and Grill, a place of mysterious intrigue for me as a kid living down the street.

My parents said Frenchy's was a place I should never enter, which I never did. But looking at the happy folks in the photo, it sure didn't look too bad.

I turn more pages and wonder what compelled Wigh to find all this stuff and produce a self-published book.

"It was a simple labor of love, nothing more," said Wigh, a 1982 Brandon High grad whose idea for his 209-page book began when in 2014 he created a handout publication for the 100-year celebration for Brandon High. "Once I started looking into some history, I felt compelled to do a book. There was something inside that made me feel I had to do it."

He began gathering from a close resource, his 105-year-old grandmother, Iva Lee Bell, who moved to Brandon in 1950 and opened a grocery store. From his grandmother, Wigh started researching the families behind local street names, including Lumsden, Falkenburg, John Moore, Kings and so on.

In rolled the photos, which I couldn't stop looking at, until I sat at the end and wondered why the book's historical journey ends in 1983.

I got an almost eerie feeling that the answer lay partly within the last few photos, which are of construction of the I-75 overpass over State Road 60 and of the construction of the Regency Square Mall, both built in 1983.

To me those construction projects in 1983 signaled the point where Brandon changed from a tight-knit community with "mom and pop shops," to a "sprawling area" of national chain stores.

I also think that like Wigh, I graduated from Brandon High in 1982 when Brandon was the only high school in Brandon, and our community was, in fact, united.

Keep up with Tampa Bay’s top headlines

Subscribe to our free DayStarter newsletter

We’ll deliver the latest news and information you need to know every morning.

You’re all signed up!

Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started.

Explore all your options

As for Wigh, he said that he's adding 22 supplemental pages to the book, which will be available separately and in complete second editions in the coming weeks. But Wigh did say his supplement ends at 1989, for similar reasons to my feelings about 1983.

"I just don't have the interest for it after 1989," Wigh said. "I guess the years before 1989 I consider the years of my youth. So 1989 it is."

I get it, I do.

Those were great times for Brandon.

Our town.

Our times.

I miss those days.

I turn the pages.

Contact Scott Purks at hillsnews@tampabay.com.