WAY BACK WHEN: Patricia Brooks Angry, of Winter Garden

Editor’s note: Way Back When is a recurring feature that records and preserves the stories and memories of longtime West Orange and Southwest Orange residents.

Patricia Brooks Angry grew up in a time when it took an entire family to raise a child. A lifelong resident of east Winter Garden, she always has felt a connection to her hometown, its residents and its future.

Angry was born on Winter Garden’s east side, likely at home on North Street, 82 years ago to Carrie and Arthur Williams. Her father was serving in the military at the time, and her mother already had two small children to raise, so her cousin and her husband, Malonie and John Brooks, raised her. They also raised her aunt, Annie Pearl Mullins, who later cooked at all the neighborhood restaurants.

“If a family was large, some of the relatives who didn’t have any kids took them in,” Angry said. “That’s the way it was. … Black people didn’t adopt back in the day; they just took them in.”

Angry recalled having a wonderful childhood.

“I was probably one of the more privileged black children around,” she said.

Her father was a truck driver for the Roper family — and might have driven one of the first diesel trucks in the area, she said. Her mother did the ironing for many families, including the Ropers.

GETTING AN EDUCATION

Angry’s mind is like a sponge, holding all the memories of 82 years of living in one community. She attended her primary grades at the Winter Garden Colored School, located at Center and 10th streets, the same school her mother attended. At Christmastime in 1948, it was moved to a site between Maple Street and East Story Road, most recently occupied by Orange Technical College – Westside Campus.

“I had to catch the bus up on Ninth Street; they had a bus that came from Tildenville,” Angry said. “It picked up Mr. (Henry) Birdsong’s children, and then it came down Ninth Street, where I was supposed to catch it, which I rarely did because I missed it. Daddy would come back in the work truck and take me to school.”

Angry remembers 10 wooden buildings with a restroom in the center of them. One of the classrooms had the cafeteria. A gymnasium was built in the 1950s, she said. Elementary students attended school there until Maxey Elementary School was built on Maple Street. The black school later became Charles R. Drew High School, from which Angry would graduate.

“My teachers, I remember every last one of them,” Angry said. “Mrs. (Juanita) Maxey taught me from first to third grade; Miss Connie, her sister-in-law, taught me from fourth to sixth grade. And then in seventh grade you had different teachers, (such as) Mrs. Hattie Mae Wright, Mr. T.H. Charlton.

“Mr. Charlton was the most comical man you would ever want to meet. … He made you learn. I never will forget him. I will never forget Mrs. Maxey. I will never forget any of my teachers.

“Lester Starling … taught all the maths,” Angry said. “Mr. Walden – he was the band teacher, but he taught the sciences.”

Angry played clarinet in the band, and she also took chorus under the direction of Miss Sampson.

“We really excelled under her; we really put Winter Garden on the map, we were that good,” she said. “We had gone to Tallahassee to the state competition, and they had a lot of Germans there. Before we started singing, they were mocking us, but then they put down their pencils and enjoyed the music. We got all A-pluses. Mr. (William S.) Maxey would follow us because it did him good to say, ‘They’re my kids.’”

MAPPED OUT

Angry remembers where everyone lived and what business was located where. In fact, she provided the Winter Garden Heritage Foundation with a hand-drawn map that lays out the entire community she lived in as a child. When she was growing up in the 1940s and ’50s, the neighborhood was full of small businesses, including taxi companies, grocery stores and a slew of bars and jook joints.

One of the stores, Mr. Richardson’s Grocery Store, was located on Center Street and belonged to Hezekiah Richardson.

“Most kids couldn’t say Hezekiah, so we called him Mr. Ki,” Angry said.

Taking a mental walk west down the street, Angry also remembers a taxi cab company, barber shop, duplex, former Winter Garden City Commissioner Mildred Dixon’s family’s house, church parsonage, Holt’s Pool Room and Dry Cleaner and, on the corner of Ninth and Center, a building that housed a snack and jook joint and a laundry.

Cross the street and head back east to find several small houses Mr. Wilcox rented out; a house that later was moved for the filming of “Rosewood” in the 1990s, Angry said; another snack and jook joint that also served as a house; and then the only sidewalk in east Winter Garden, according to Angry.

The Merchant family owned several pieces of property and small rental houses, as did the Holts and the Boulers.

“The Holts had what we call a soda shop and ice cream shop, and they sold hot dogs and teenagers used to have a dance in there,” Angry said. “They just tore that building down not too long ago. Four Habitat (for Humanity) houses are built there now.”

The street also boasted a joint in which Lucy Bouler cooked for the neighborhood’s working men.

“She fed most of the guys that were single, made lunch to take to work with them, and then in the evening they ate there,” Angry said. “Next to that was a shoeshine shop, and they called him Daddio.”

Ginny Burch had a restaurant near there, and Sam “Teeny” Manuel owned a café next door. Next to that was Daisy Brown’s restaurant. All served soul food, Angry said.

As was common at the time, the businesses — including restaurants, jook joints, pool rooms, dry cleaners and a fish market — occupied the downstairs and the upstairs had several rooms for rent.

Also on Center Street was the popular Dyson’s Plaza, which housed everything from a taxi service to a jook joint, beer garden, restaurant, convenience store and icehouse. Next door was an open field.

“People used to set up barbecue pits and sell barbecue there,” Angry said.

Further down the street was the site of a kindergarten run by Rosa Toney.

“One of the best teachers around,” Angry said. “You learned something when you went there at an early age. That’s why I started school early before my time. I went there, and I knew how to do all the things, (like) read and write. I started there when I was about 2 years old until about 5 years old; I was ready to move on. She taught out of her house. She was a babysitter. She was a teacher. I can’t say how much she charged or anything, but most of the kids around here went to her. And then they went across the street to the elementary school, Winter Garden Colored School.”

The neighborhood boasted several churches, including St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal at Center and 11th streets, Bethlehem Missionary Baptist Church at Ninth and Plant streets and Ninth Street Church of Christ.

EAST WINTER GARDEN IS HOME

As a child, Angry lived on Story Road near Ninth Street. The house was built using wood from another house that had been torn down.

“My daddy, he built that house out there on Story,” she said. “He moved the lumber out there, and during the summer of 1948 he built that house. My job was to take the nails out of the boards, because, back then, if you didn’t go up north, the men stayed here and didn’t have anything to do in the winter. Me and him built the house. They tore down the house recently.”

Angry attended one year of college at Florida A&M before getting married and having children, six in all. She is now a grandmother to 18.

She graduated from nursing school and worked at the old West Orange Memorial Hospital. That job lasted a year before she quit because she didn’t like the fact that important residents who came in were put ahead of critically ill patients.

“I was going to take care of the sick first,” she said.

She later went into the automotive business with James Burks on the west side of town, renting space from Sam Sanders, known in the area as the kerosene man. West Orange Automotive Repair did diesel mechanic work for 22 years at that location and, later, on Ninth Street.

Angry has long advocated for her neighborhood, serving on the board of Orange County Community Action and finding available land in Winter Garden for neighborhoods such as Horizon Oaks and Bay Pointe Apartments.

She remembers one of the first neighborhoods for black residents was called Joe Lewis Park, and it included Bay and 11th streets, Lincoln Terrace and Maxey Drive.

Angry never considered settling down in another city — east Winter Garden is home.

 “I never wanted to live anywhere else,” she said. “I could have excelled more by not living here because I had opportunities, but I just wanted to make my hometown better. I love Winter Garden.”

She’s hoping the revitalization will bring restaurants and retail back to her corner of the world — creating a thriving community like the one she remembers from decades ago.