Wit & Wisdom in the Poems of Don Betts

De: Stan Paregien

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Don and Judy Betts are Florida treasures. She was born in Miami and he was born and reared on Longboat Key (parallels the shores of Bradenton down to Sarasota). Each has made significant contributions to their community and their church.

He is a walking-talking almanac of old-time Florida history. His father was the chief horticulturalist for John Ringling of the Ringling Brothers Circus fame. And Don grew up on a virtually deserted southern end of Longboat Key. He and his siblings spent their time fishing and/or swimming in the Gulf of Mexico on the west side of the Key or in Sarasota Bay on the east side. He marked the year of 1947, the year of his 15th birthday, by swimming in the Gulf every day of the year. Every single day.

Betts served in the U.S. Navy, mainly in Virginia and Florida. Later, he did whatever he had to do to get by. He worked as a clerk in a hardware store, as a hand at a dairy (often working more than 100 hours per week), climbed poles for Florida Power & Light Co., and was a ranger at Myakka River State Park. Then he was a police officer in Phoenix, AZ., and in Sarasota. He became a V.P. in a bank in Bradenton, then worked for the Florida Farm Bureau as an insurance agent, and then worked for the Bureau of Soil & Water Conservation. He has plenty of stories to tell, and he shares many of them in this book of his essays and poems.