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Like Father, Like Son

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By STEPHEN HAMMILL

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 24, 2008

KEYSTONE - Born off North Mobley Road on July 4, 1924, Mordecai Walker has seen his hometown go through its fair share of transformations.

"Nobody in our town even had electricity until 1942," he said, "but being in the country, we didn't know anywhere else."

The retired educator has spent the last two years collecting photos and letters reflecting a lifetime as a rural child of segregation, soldier, teacher and inventor for an autobiography called "56 Years of Hope, Help and Service."

The manuscript chronicles not just Walker's growth but the area's as well.

His family's fingerprints can be found throughout the county. His father, Charles Walker, was one of Tampa's black pioneers and an early participant in Florida's land boom.

In addition to land he already owned, he purchased 80 acres in Keystone in the 1930s. "We owned land, but we were on the poor side," Walker said. "We had a big family," with 11 siblings.

Before attending Booker T. Washington School in Tampa, Walker spent his days at the Citrus Park Colored School on Gunn Highway. The one-room schoolhouse, on land owned by a former slave, also served as a church for the black community.

"The pulpit stood behind the teacher's desk," Walker recalled. "It was the place to go for your educational needs and your spiritual needs. It was the most well-utilized building in the United States."

The school was also the brainchild of his father, who lobbied Hillsborough County to build the area's first school for black children.

Every morning, Walker walked to school barefoot down the railroad tracks through the cypress trees and orange groves.

He recalls the name they gave a then newly paved stretch of Gunn Highway, where robberies were frequent and Sickles High School now stands. "We called it dead man's curve," he said.

By 1943, Walker was drafted into the Army. He served through 1946 and, upon returning, attended Tennessee A&I State College (later renamed Tennessee State University). It was there he met Anna Polk, who would become his wife.

The college housed a garden. Walker began tending it, learning how to get the most out of the soil.

From that point forward, his love for agriculture would flourish.

Walker returned home to Keystone in 1953, to the house on Peterson Road that his father built.

By 1958, he relocated with his wife to St. Petersburg, where he taught fourth grade at Perkins Elementary School while raising two sons.

There he started the Clean Campus Club, where he taught agriculture and horticulture to his students after school.

"We had a little flower garden. It wasn't in the curriculum, but it got so big we couldn't accommodate everybody who wanted to do it," he said.

Though he retired in 1987, Walker never stopped teaching. Former students still drop by his home to help replant trees, learn old techniques nearly forgotten or just share stories.

At age 83, the trips to Keystone have become less frequent. His old house on Peterson Road, since sold to the county, burned down this year.

"Plus, these days I can dance better than I can walk," Walker said with a laugh that punctuates most of his sentences.

He said he is amazed on every return at the pace of growth - a once-rural landscape now transformed into new schools, roads and a mall.

It's a far cry from the old South, the days of segregation - days he recalls with some ambivalence. Though Walker rarely heard a racist slur uttered in Keystone, he said everyone knew there were dividing lines that someone like him could never cross.

"You kept to your own kind, mostly," he said. "Things have changed in that sense."

Over the decades, Walker's backyard has become a repository of lost agricultural artifacts, furniture and tools, including the original hand pump used for the Citrus Park Colored School's water.

"This is older than I am," he said, turning over a wash pot. "We'd boil water to take a bath, make syrup in it, candy pulling - all in the same pot. I'd say it's been in the family 150 years."

"It was about the most useful thing I've ever had, so why not keep it," he added, with a laugh.

Walker doesn't keep the old tools for sentimental reasons. "I use them every day," he said.

"My daddy used these when he helped build the Gandy Bridge in 1922," he said, holding up a pair of broad axes.

Walker takes pride in the philosophy of sustainable living. He says he eats fruit from trees growing in his backyard every day.

His inventions include the Plant Corral, an elevated irrigation device for elderly and disabled gardeners that allows plants to develop off the ground in a system of PVC pipes.

He's currently working with a manufacturer to produce his patented cooking utensil, the Rib Slinger.

Walker credits his upbringing for fostering an inventive mind. "In Odessa, we didn't have much, but we had enough," he said. "You could swim, fish, hunt - that was your recreation."

Walker has lived to see things come full circle.

In 1996, Hillsborough County named the Citrus Park Colored School a landmark, based partly on Walker's testimony.

In 2006, Walker was inducted into the Tennessee State University agriculture hall of fame.

He said nothing matches the honor he felt when, in 1997, Hillsborough County decided to name a school - Walker Middle - built less than a mile from where he grew up, after his father.

"It was a great honor," he said. "Who knew, all the way back then, that people would be talking about my daddy to this day?"

He wants to publish his autobiography this year, not to sell, but to give to family and friends.

"I'm not sure who else would want to read it," he said with another laugh.

Reporter Stephen Hammill can be reached at (813) 865-1523 or at shammill@tampatrib.com.

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