Lee County Commissions Meeting 25Jan05 (report)

To: The National LoS Staff and FLLoS Staff and State Chairman Randy Ward:

Re: Attempted Renaming of Lee County Florida

As many of you have already heard, a member of the Lee County Florida Commissioners "Black Advisory Board," a Mr Anthony Thomas, has started a drive publicly to have the name of Lee (Robert E Lee) removed officially as the county name and replace it with some as yet undecided but rumored names such as Grant or Lincoln. This has caused a stir not only in Lee County (Ft Myers) but also nationally via television and radio talk shows such as Neal Boortz, as one example.

Tonight, a regular meeting of the Lee County Commissioners commenced at 5PM with as many as 20 people from various Southern Heritage and Southern political groups. We had representatives of the FLLoS, SCV, UDC, OCR, DAR, and clergy with many signing up prior to the start of the meeting to have the right to talk for 3 minutes each on their views of the proposed name change directly to the commissioners.

Anthony Thomas was the only one there FOR a name change.

At the start of the meeting commissioner Ray Judah (liaison to the Black Advisory Board) addressed the board and those in attendance and proceeded to call for the dissolving of the Black Advisory Board as it has not acted in the capacity of what it was created for in keeping abreast of problems in the black communities concerning unemployment, racial unrest, and crime. Instead Mr Judah witnessed an out of control meeting last night (Wednesday) of the Black Advisory Board with people yelling and physically intimidating others at the meeting and causing at least one resignation from the board. Mr Judah pointed accused Mr Anthony Thomas of being the perpetrator at this meeting and was personally outraged at such behavior. Mr Judah went so far to say that this was not a racial issue as many in the Black community are offended at Mr Thomas' behavior as is the local NAACP appalled by him.

Following Mr Judah's remarks Chairman Doug St. Cerny then called forward those that wanted to speak on this subject of a proposal by Mr Thomas of renaming of Lee County. Approximately 8-9 people, including myself representing the FLLoS (looking good in red:-) and Rob Gates representing the FL Div of the SCV along with the many others, gave a defense opposing the name change.

During the various individuals speaking it should be pointed out here to everyone reading this that the commissioners as a whole (five) were supportive of our arguments and even went so far in trying to stop anymore attempts at adding to the facts of why there should be no name change. Commissioners Ray Judah and John Albion could make for two good heritage defenders should they ever need further employment with Judah going so far as mentioning to antagonist Mr Thomas that Lee was against slavery (among other things), along with some other excellent points that made me wonder if maybe he was secretly a member of the South Carolina LoS Rangers as I hadn't seen his name on our own Florida membership list! Commissioner Albion stated the chance of this renaming of Lee County was so remote and with such little support (one person it appears) and such a waste of everyone's time that he wanted the commission to move on to important matters of our community. Other commissioners were caught nodding their heads in agreement with many of our pro South speakers.

Following the meeting most of our group approached the commissioners and shook their hands in appreciation and had pleasant exchanges for all. Several commissioners even appeared to go out of their way to make sure they shook our hands and a smile. (Yes, they are politicians) We also met with Anthony Thomas and had a nice time talking to him and invited him to the next meeting of one of the various groups (I told him I will buy his dinner should he accept) and he in turn invited me to the Black Advisory Board meeting. And maybe I will surprise him and show up (with my red shirt of course:-)

Now the next meeting of the Lee County Commissioners will be in February (will update on exactly when and where) and the name change proposal WILL be on the agenda officially. We will be calling on everyone we can from every group in Florida to show up in support of a fine County Commission Board and make sure they don't do the old political "about face", You never know.

We will need to present LoS member and SCV Camp Cmdr Rob Gates with a "Forrest Award" as no one could have rounded up support and addressed the issues and thus "Got There First With The Most" better than he did the last 24 hours.