History can be complicated, and historians can be complicated, too. However, the more you invest in history and historians, the more you understand how the past shapes the present — at least for me.
Jerry Wilkinson, the historian who mentored me for a decade, passed away the other night. He was 94, led a pretty extraordinary life, and left a lasting impact on the history of this amazing island chain. Jerry helped to form my history foundation and stoked my desire to learn more about the local history. He became one of the primary reasons I work so hard to share these stories.
When I moved to the Florida Keys in 2001, I would have rolled my eyes if someone had told me that I would become a local historian. I have been a documented eye-roller since the second grade when Mrs. Permenter called me to her desk and said something that I do not remember but apparently it elicited an eye roll. While my back was turned and I was returning to my seat, she said, “Don’t you roll your eyes at me.”
When I was still in school, even in graduate school, history was not something I was interested in learning about. I was an English major, both in my undergraduate and graduate years. The only thing I ever wanted to learn was how to write better stories. It was not until I finished school and moved to the Keys that I caught the history bug.
It had to have been something in the water because I moved to the Keys to finish my excellent island novel that remains unfinished, still. Lucky for me, I walked backwards into a publishing deal for my first book, “Snorkeling Florida” (University Press of Florida), and have had a hard time getting back to fiction ever since. While researching the book and snorkeling over the reefs here in the Keys, every dive captain, mate and local had a different story about how the reefs were named, and I became curious about the real stories. I started doing a little research in that area, too, and that was it; that was what cracked the door open and invited me to step inside, take the steps and wander down a fortuitous rabbit hole.
Curious about the local history scene, I contacted several history groups. I set my fiction pen aside and started exploring the history of the Upper Keys, and wrote a little piece I called “Sketches of Islamorada” that I emailed to Jerry Wilkinson. I had never met him, but I attached the file, introduced myself and said something like, “Let me know what you think.”
Jerry responded positively to my query, and the rest, as they say, is history. He invited me to his house, as he was prone to do, and for much of the next decade, I visited Jerry’s Tavernier home, walked up the wooden steps, past the orchids, and knocked on his front door sometimes weekly. He opened the door not just to his home overlooking the Atlantic Ocean but to his history, curiosity, passion and story after story about the Florida Keys.
Jerry invited me to join the board of his history group, the Historical Preservation Society of the Upper Keys. For a time, I served as its vice president (and even its president for one short week). We published two books together, and I introduced him to another who co-wrote several books with him, too. I once told him that I could not name a bridge after him, but I could work to name a library in his honor, and now the Jerry Wilkinson Research Library holds much of the fruit of his tremendous labors.
History can be complicated, especially local history that disagrees with long-espoused legends and lore. Some historians cave and pass on legends posing as historical facts, and others, like Jerry, tend to take more of a Joe Friday “just the facts” approach.
One of the things that we used to talk about was that all of the island chain’s historians were older, Tom, Irving, Dan, John and Jerry, and that no one outside of Key West was working to pick up the torches that those men carried. I’m happy he knew that his torch would continue to burn bright. At the end of every day, I am thankful for the day we met, and every subsequent day I knocked on his door, he opened it, and we shook hands.
The other day I got a call from a gentleman looking for information about the Long Key Fishing Camp. Jerry gave him my phone number and told him I was who he should call. I thought about shooting Jerry a text or giving him a call. It had been some time since we last talked, but I didn’t, and two days later, I found out that he had passed.
The Florida Keys are richer for his presence, as am I.
