Hibbard - The Man

KING OF CASSELBERRY

Hibbard - The Man

From the book:

At twenty, Hib’s oldest child, Diane, was attending college and doing fine on her own. He, however, turned to his father for guidance on raising the rest of his brood. Marty had given birth to five children, all now under the age of twelve and undergoing chicken pox. When Hib wrote Hibbard asking for advice, he doled out the best his hindsight could provide.

I think that children are the finest thing going. I wish I could know them more individually. But children and chicken pox are all part of the same game of bringing up a family. So, good luck to you.

Your last question is the hardest to answer. What’s cheaper, raising kids, dogs, cats, or horses? My vote is horses. A couple of strays that Lilian picked up and sent for inoculation and all the other things cost more than her horses. Kids do cost more than dogs; the cats I have no experience with, but our horses we have turned out to pasture. They have ten acres to run around and dig up their own food, most of it, and with Lilian away at school, it cost too much to have them where she can ride them.

Johnny doesn’t give a hoot about horses. Boats and airplanes are all that come into his life.

Johnny also took practical instruction better than his sister, and tried to commit everything his father told him about Brightwater’s complicated system of pipes, pumps, and sprinklers to memory.

Above - 1932 brought Hibbard's boys, Len (shown here) and Hib, the curious addition of a little sister, Molly.

What Hibbard was really like

- a daughter's view -

Hibbard was a complex man whose motives were not always apparent to those around him. However, no matter what he was up to, everyone knew it involved the town. The question most people never stopped to ask was why he was doing it.

When he arrived in Florida in 1926, however, he planned to judge for himself whether the land boom in the south part of the state had gone bust or not. Circumstances cut that part out of Hibbard’s trip and stranded him in Central Florida. There, he found that there was indeed an obvious boom. However, all but a few hundred people knew that the boom they saw was only a deception.

Hibbard wanted to create Barnett’s subdivision, Fern Park Estates, as a place his wife Mel and their two sons could call home. However, she had no desire to live in a place where a fly swatter was a household necessity more than six months out of the year. She did agree to live in Florida for one year if she could visit her father up North in the summer. In return, Hibbard agreed they could go back to Winnetka, Illinois if it didn’t work out.

But Mel drew the line at the Winter Park city limits. She would not live in Fern Park – not then, not ever. In 1928, Hibbard built a small cottage in Fern Park where he could be near his work when she and the children were away.

When the whirlwind of Florida’s bust threw Hibbard in a spin, his focus seemed to be that of a man desperately trying to keep what money he had invested from being flushed away. But like many men, this was the way they showed love and concern for their families – by providing for them as best they could.

Hibbard and Mel’s views of child-rearing was as diverse as their view of Florida. He always wanted more children, but after the birth of their daughter, Molly, Mel drew the line. She also made it obvious that her eldest son, Hib Jr, was her favorite.

In 1952, shortly after John was born, Hibbard and Martha celebrated their first Thanksgiving at Brightwater. Here, some of Hibbard and Martha's family and friends join them.

As Hibbard and Martha's children grew up, Hibbard donned a Cub Scout cap and went to meetings with Johnny, and horse shows with Lilian. Part of the reason Hibbard worked to get a university and junior college to locate nearby was so that none if then had to go very far away after high school.

By the mid Sixties, Hibbard's oldest three children had grown up and had families of their own. Of those, only Len lived nearby. Hibbard confessed to his oldest grandson, Danny, his greatest wish: he wanted his children and grandchildren to raise their families and practice their professions in Casselberry.