Gary Mormino, described as the “dean of Florida historians,” will showcase his affinity for the Sunshine State on Nov. 1 at Orlando’s History Center, where he’ll present “From 9/11 to Pulse” for the Joseph L. Brechner Speaker Series.
According to the Center’s press release, “Gary Mormino returns to Orlando with a program on the media and Florida in the years 2000-2016, a time when ‘no novelist could imagine a plot involving the real-life events that took place in the state.’”
“The story opens with the zany 2000 election and the unthinkable tragedy of 9/11 and ends with the shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub and the election of Donald Trump,” it continues. “In between the bookends, Florida experienced the worst recession in modern history. The media played a critical role in this melodrama.”
The lecture coincides with Mormino’s work on his upcoming book, tentatively titled Florida and the Age of Fear: 2000-2017. Watermark was lucky enough to read its introduction, which offers the historian’s wide-ranging musings on the era he says will be remembered for a “vicious economic downswing” and as having been defined by the “hot-button, hot-blooded issue [of] homosexuality.”
“To support gay rights in 1999 was tantamount to touching the third rail,” Mormino writes, musing on a time without Kardashians, without iPhones and with a certain “testosterone-charged New York developer” who frequently visited Mar-a-Lago. “Same-sex marriage seemed as unlikely as gay Hispanic dance clubs.”
“The grim realities of life in the 21st century—global warming, the yawning inequalities of life, the wanton destruction of the wetlands and pollution of our beloved natural springs,” Mormino’s introduction concludes, “touches everyone.”
Watermark discussed Mormino’s work ahead of his Nov. 1 lecture. He was cheerful but direct, and his correspondence included a signature that may sum up the historian perfectly: “Florida dreams amid the storms.”
“I have lived a charmed life as an academic and writer,” Mormino says. “I arrived in Tampa, Florida, in 1977, not knowing whether Tampa was on the east or west coast of the state. Forty years later, I look back at my career with immense satisfaction, the result of good fortune, great friends, and hard work.”
And he should. As a Fullbright scholar teaching in Rome, Italy, in 1980, Mormino decided to dedicate his energy to “trying to figure out Florida.” He said that it took a year in Italy for him to “understand that the greatest story of my lifetime was happening every day in Florida—new skyscrapers going up in Orlando and Miami; millions of tourists pouring into Central Florida; race riots in Miami; a dynamic, exiled Cuban community in South Florida; and environmental destruction.”
Since then, he became the Frank E. Duckwall professor emeritus at the University of South Florida, and at the age of 68, received the Florida Humanities Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Writing.
”The Frank E. Duckwall professorship meant a great deal because it was one of the first endowed chairs in Florida history,” he says. “The lifetime achievement in writing award was heartfelt. I take a great deal of pride in my writing.”
And although Mormino contributes frequently to the Tampa Bay Times and has written numerous, award-winning books including Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams: A Social History of Modern Florida, he’s quite clear about his profession. “I am a historian, not a journalist,” he says. “I remain a professor of history.”
On his upcoming lecture, Mormino mirrored the press release but provided greater detail. “The new project deals with an astounding period in Florida and America… the giddiness of Y2K, the chaos of the 2000 presidential election, and the tragedy of 9/11.”
On the book and lecture’s end, however, he notes that “originally, his intent was to end in 2016 with “Orlando Pulse and Trump’s election, but Hurricane Irma and Trump’s first year in office made [him] add 2017 to the study.”
He notes that around 2011, the Census Bureau announced that Florida had supplanted New York as America’s third-largest state, prompting the significance of his inclusion of “a severe blow to the Florida Dream,” the Great Recession.
“Consider that as late as 1940, Florida was the least-populated state in the American South!” Mormino says enthusiastically. “For most of Florida history, the state was too isolated, too remote, too hot and humid to matter. Today, Florida matters – think of the late Tim Russert warning during the 2000 election count, ‘Florida, Florida, Florida!’”
Mormino chose the starting point for his study as Sept. 11 because of its “profound” impact on America. “I write that it ushered in a new Age of Fear,” he says. “Consider the new vocabulary: No-Fly List, dirty bombs, Homeland Security, USA PATRIOT Act, regime change, WMD, color-coded terror alerts, ISIS or al-Qaeda.”
“Imagine in 1999,” Mormino says of the significance of Pulse and its inclusion, “if someone told you that the greatest mass shooting in American history would occur at a gay Hispanic nightclub in Orlando.” (Of tragic note, Las Vegas now holds that unfortunate title. On Oct. 1, 58 Americans were murdered and 489 more were injured in the country’s most recent mass shooting.)
“The jolting awareness of homosexuality has become one of the most compelling issues in our lifetime,” Mormino concludes, and you can hear his extensive take on the matter on Nov. 1.
The History Center is located in the restored 1927 courthouse at Magnolia Avenue and Central Boulevard in the heart of downtown Orlando, at 65 E. Central Blvd. “From 9/11 to Pulse” will be held from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 1 at the Orlando Public Library at no cost to the public, with free parking validation. You can learn more about Gary Mormino, the History Center or its speaker series at thehistorycenter.org.
