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A History of Columbia County Florida (1996) Edward F. Keuchel 267/340

Since the Second World War

bined with the new Lake City Junior College, and the first students
were enrolled for the fall term of 1962. Herbert E. Phillips, former
assistant superintendent of instruction in Brevard County, was the
first president. Among the 375 students who attended the first
year were 62 registered in the Forest Ranger School representing
15 states and 24 counties.8

One measure of the county’s growth and maturity after the
war can be seen in the search for a historical past which was em­
bodied in various centennial observances. The county had witnessed
celebrations commemorating past historical events such as the
dedication of the Olustee Battle Monument in 1928, but these did
not deal with the general historical heritage of the area. The
county’s centennial of its formation was in 1932 in the midst of the
Great Depression and the event passed without any great fanfare.
After the war, however, the county had reached a level of develop­
ment in which the people took pride, and this was reflected in
celebrations and writings.

In 1959 a citizens group was formed in Lake City to celebrate
the centennial of the city’s incorporation. This group included
some of those with family names tracing ties to the area from the
territorial period, while others were more recent arrivals.9 A
historical committee composed of Robert B. Harkness, Mayor
Murray E. Hagan, George W. Wilson, Neal M. Dukes, Lassie
Goodbread Black, May Vinzant Perkins, and Bernice Haworth
prepared a publication, A Century in the Sun, to commerorate the
event. Mrs. Perkins not only had long-established family ties in the
county but was a good historian and published poetess. A series of

3Ibid., p. 39; Board of Public Instruction, Brief pp. 4-7; Cox and Dovell, Florida,
p. 229; Morris Smith Hale, Jr. "A History of Florida Junior Colleges,” unpublished
Ed.D. dissertation, George Peabody College for Teachers, (1966), pp. 1055-1064.
9The governing board consisted of Mrs. A. K. Black, Mrs. A. W. Bloodworth, J.
A. Brewer, G. A. Buie, Jr., Harvey DeVane, John Giebeig, Murray E. Hagan, Walter
M. Hackney, R. B. Harkness, Edward R. Libert, James L. Niblack, Ray Starr,
James R. Tison, John Ward, and George W. Wilson.
203

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