University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 2010 From Celery City To Navy Town: The Impact Of Naval Air Station Sanford During World War Ii Lewis Metzger University of Central Florida Part of the History Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.edu/etd University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact STARS@ucf. STARS Citation Metzger, Lewis, "From Celery City To Navy Town: The Impact Of Naval Air Station Sanford During World War Ii" (2010).
Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019.edu/etd/4419 FROM CELERY CITY TO NAVY TOWN: THE IMPACT OF NAVAL AIR STATION SANFORD DURING WORLD WAR II by LEWIS W.University of Central Florida, 2006 A Thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of History in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Summer Term 2010 Major Professor: Robert Cassanello ! © 2010 Lewis W. Metzger V ""! ! ! ABSTRACT This thesis examines how Naval Air Station (NAS) Sanford impacted the nearby city economically, demographically, and socially during World War II. City commission minutes, newspapers, and census data highlight the efforts of city leaders and their cooperation with the federal government to get a naval base established at Sanford. Thereafter, it assesses the ways in which a naval base garnered economic and demographic development, and organizing among African Americans in a southern city.
"""! ! ! ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ! The support of many people made this work possible. First, I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Robert Cassanello for his patience and support. John Sacher and Lori Walters also added invaluable critiques and support that benefited this work enormously.
My fellow graduate students and the History Department faculty provided encouragement and advice throughout the last three years. Additionally, Sanford Museum Curator Alicia Clarke, Cynthia Porter at the city of Sanford Clerk’s Office, Museum of Seminole County History Coordinator Kim Nelson, and Seminole County Supervisor of Elections Mike Ertel invested time and enthusiasm during the research process. Seminole County residents Douglas Stenstrom and Patricia Gatchel also shared their experiences through oral interviews that benefitted this work. Finally, without the backing, understanding, and humor of my family and friends none of this would have become a reality, thank you.
"#! ! ! TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES. viii! LIST OF TABLES. ix! LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. 1! CHAPTER ONE: DEPRESSION ERA SANFORD 1930-1941.
12! Sanford at the Onset of the Depression and New Deal. 13! New Deal Relief Programs in Sanford. 17! Sanford Race Relations during the 1930s. 25! CHAPTER TWO: THE NAVY ARRIVES.
28! Government Structure in Sanford, Florida. 32! Initial Attempts to Certify the Airport for National Defense. 33! Marketing Sanford for CAA and WPA Aviation Development. 35! Selling Sanford’s New Airport to the Armed Services.
43! The Navy Arrives. 50! CHAPTER THREE: SANFORD GOES TO WAR: THE IMPACT OF NAS SANFORD ON THE CITY. 53! Economic and Demographic Development in the city of Sanford, 1941-1945. 56! Wartime Relationship between NAS Sanford the city of Sanford.
70! Wartime Race Relations. 93! APPENDIX B: ADDITIONAL MAP. 95! APPENDIX C: POPULATION TABLE. 97! APPENDIX D: URBAN POPULATION EXPANSION.
99! APPENDIX E: CITY BUDGET EXPANSION. 101! APPENDIX F: WARTIME BUSINESS GROWTH. 103! APPENDIX G: BUILDING DEVELOPMENT. 105! APPENDIX H: WHITE WORKER OCCUPATIONS.
107! #"! ! ! APPENDIX I: WHITE WORKER INDUSTRIES. 110! APPENDIX J: AFRICAN AMERICAN WORKER OCCUPATIONS. 112! APPENDIX K: HOUSING DEVELOPMENT. 115! APPENDIX L: WARTIME BANKING ACTIVITY.
117! APPENDIX M: POSTWAR AFRICAN AMERICAN VOTER REGISTRATION. 119! LIST OF REFRENCES. 121! #""! ! ! LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 World War II Florida Naval Air Stations. 94 Figure 2 Seminole County Population Growth, 1930-1950.
96 #"""! ! ! LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Population in the city of Sanford, 1930-1950. 98 Table 2 Seminole County Urban and Rural Populations, 1930, 1935, 1945. 100 Table 3 Operating Expenses for the city of Sanford, 1941-1945. 102 Table 4 New Businesses Listed In the Sanford Phonebook, 1938, 1939, 1943, 1944, 1945.
104 Table 5 Building Permits Issued In Sanford 1939, 1940, 1944, 1945. 106 Table 6 Employed White Workers In Sanford, Florida By Occupations Group, 1940 and 1950. 107 Table 7 Employed White Workers In Sanford, Florida By Industry Group, 1940 and 1950. 110 Table 8 Employed Nonwhite* Workers in Sanford, Florida By Occupation and Industry Group, 1940 and 1950.
113 Table 9 Housing Development In Sanford, Florida, 1930-1950. 116 Table 10 Bank Deposit Increases in the city of Sanford, 1942-1945. 118 Table 11 African American Primary Voter Registration In Seminole County, 1944-1950. 120 "$! ! ! ! LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CAA Civil Aeronautics Administration CPTP Civilian Pilot Training Program NAS Naval Air Station WPA Works Projects Administration $! ! ! ! INTRODUCTION Despite the explosion of World War II books and articles published over the last twenty years discussing the home front, no historian has examined how naval air station (NAS) Sanford – a base responsible for training almost half of all naval aviators that served in the Pacific theater – in turn impacted the local community.1 Commissioned in November 1942, NAS Sanford provided the central Florida area a premier naval facility during World War II.
This air station was one of 227 military facilities and thirteen naval air stations that, by war’s end, transformed Florida into what historian Lewis Wynne termed “the world’s largest aircraft carrier.”2 (see map in Figure 1) This thesis builds upon previous historiography to evaluate the relationship between the station and Sanford, Florida, as a lens to view how World War II bases impacted southern communities. This study analyzes how city leaders worked with the federal government to bring the Navy to Sanford and the subsequent economic, demographic, and social impacts the base created. During the Depression, the city and federal government cooperated to update urban infrastructure and expand the runways at the Sanford Municipal Airport. The latter played a significant role in establishing NAS Sanford in November 1942.
Wartime training at the base, thereafter, presented Sanford urban development. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 ‘Command History of NAS Sanford, Florida From 24 April 1942-31 December 1958,’ located at the Sanford Museum NAS Collection, Enclosure 1, Folder #2, 1. Hereafter cited as ‘Command History of NAS Sanford., Florida at War (Saint Leo, Florida: Saint Leo College, 1993), 4. Hereafter cited as Wynne ed., Florida at War.
%! ! ! Economically, the base provided job opportunities for local residents in non-farm work like construction, retail, and administration. Officers and enlisted personnel also served as clientele for new retail businesses and the city’s operating budget doubled from 1940 though 1945. Demographically, the war and base brought more than three thousand people (civilians and service personnel) to the city that facilitated new road and building construction. Socially, dances sponsored by the community, and war fundraisers connected the station and city behind the war effort.
From 1935 through 1945, however, African Americans in Sanford were treated as second-class citizens. Nevertheless, black residents made efforts to organize and become more involved residents of a growing city. Particularly, Sanford African Americans requested that the city sponsor New Deal programs, designate resources for establishing a black United Service Organizations (USO), and draft stricter alcohol and noise ordinances to protect black residents. During the war, African Americans also registered to vote that built the foundation for large numbers to participate in postwar general and primary elections.
3 City leaders played a significant role in bringing the Navy and establishing an overall cordial relationship between the base and town from 1942 through 1945. Consequently, NAS Sanford created !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 ‘History of U. Naval Air Station, Sanford, Florida,’ located at Sanford Museum, NAS Collection, Folder #2, 1; ‘Assignment to Duty’ Memorandum for Swiggum; Station History,’ The SANFLY, Souvenir Pictorial Issue---Friday, November 3,1944---U. Naval Air Station Sanford, Fla, p.
2; ‘Command History of NAS Sanford,’ Enclosure 1, Folder #2, 1; “Jimmie Kinney AMM 1c, of NAS Sanford, to Herschel Hamby, of Sanford on Thursday, May 25,” The SANFLY Friday, June 16, 1944, Vol. ‘Contract for Construction Has Been Awarded, According to Hendricks,’ The Sanford Herald, Tuesday May 5, 1942, Vol. 1; ‘Residents’ High Hopes Took Off When the Navy Base Came to Town,’ Orlando Sentinel, Sunday July 1, 1990, B1; Paolo E., and Jack Bauer associate ed., United States Navy and Marine Corps Bases Domestic (Connecticut and London: Greenwood Press, 1985), 589. Hereafter cited as Coletta and Bower eds., Us Navy and Marine Corps Bases.
This concept was borrowed from Gary Mormino, “World War II,” in The New History of Florida (Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1996), 337. &! ! ! economic and demographic development and an organizing platform for African Americans despite numerous inequalities experienced by the black population before and during World War II. Equally important, in the 1960s historiography emerged that challenged the “Great man” approach to history. As a result, historians became interested in lives of ordinary people.
This practice, later known as social history, provided a “bottom up” approach instead of a history that accounted only for the lives of politicians, generals, and social elites. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class, for instance, documents late eighteenth and early nineteenth century England’s working class formation. Thompson focuses on the lives and class-consciousness the workers created. 4 Also, in 1972 John Blassingame’s The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South ascribes slaves their own voice by relying on slave narratives and the Writers Project of the Works Projects Administration (WPA).
5 These works approach history from the common persons’ perspective and offer a valuable framework for later generations of social historians. 6 Similarly, during the 1980s and 1990s historians began evaluating how World War II bases provided an impetus for urban development and social change within surrounding communities. Two themes emerged from this body of work that are applicable to NAS Sanford’s relationship with the city and its population: economic and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 4 E. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Pantheon Books, 1964), 9, 11.
Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South Revised and Enlarged Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972, 1979), xi. The Works Progress Administration was renamed Works Projects Administration in 1939. This paper refers to the agency as the Works Projects Administration. '! ! ! social history approaches.
The former discusses the ways military installations garnered economic and demographic expansion; the latter addresses how military facilities provided patriotic cohesion for local residents, while in some instances, heightening racial tensions, crime, and sexual deviancy. In the 1980s, a number of historians began combining the two themes.7 An increased popularity in African American and Civil Rights histories by the 1990s inspired many historians to analyze how World War II bases both fractured race relations and laid the foundation for the Civil Rights Movement. 8 Published in 1976, James McGovern’s The Emergence of a City in the Modern South: Pensacola 1900-1945, documents social change in Pensacola, Florida, society during World War II. Primarily concerned with Pensacola’s early twentieth century development, McGovern’s chapter, “The National Emergency,” gauges how the war and the naval air station transformed Pensacola into a modern metropolis.
9 Originally established during World War I, military expansion before and during World War II initiated economic and demographic development in Pensacola’s business community !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 7 James Colwell, “Wings Over Texas: Pecos Army Air Field In World War II,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook, Vol. Launius, “A Case Study In Civil-Military Relations: Hill Air Force Base And The Ogden Business Community, 1934-1945,” Aerospace Historian, Vol 35 No.