Tales Of The Big Potato
- Synopsis
Jack Christmas wrote a weekly article in The Apopka Chief entitled “Historical Tidbits,” from 2007 until 2011. These articles were generally about Northwest Orange County, Florida. They came from the archives of the Museum of Apopkans, personal memories or interviews with the subjects involved. When writing articles from the Museum archives, he did everything possible to give proper credits to the various authors. Sometimes, however, the author was unknown.
During the 16th century, the Acuera tribe of the Timucua confederation lived on the eastern shores of Lake Apopka, fishing, farming, and trading with other tribes. They called the area “Ahapopka,” which means “potato eating place.” By the 19th century, the Seminole Indians occupied the area and called the lake “Big Potato.” From those days forward, Apopka was known as “The Big Potato.”
About Jack Christmas
Jack Christmas’ family, which came to Florida from Georgia in 1926, was truly a pioneer family. He and his brother were born in Apopka, and he is the youngest of seven children. After graduating from high school in 1949, he immediately joined the U.S. Marine Corps and served in the Korean War before getting out of the military in 1952.
In 1953, he married Joan Stone and they have four children, ten grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. He has always lived within five miles of the place of his birth.
After his discharge from the Marines, Christmas returned to Florida, where he and his father ran an indoor plant business called Oakdell, Inc. Christmas bought the business from his father in 1956, and went on to develop it into one of the largest and most progressive foliage plant nurseries in the United States.
In 1975, Oakdell built the first commercial laboratory in the U.S. devoted to studying plant tissue in the development of disease-free plants. That same year, the company installed one of the most mechanized greenhouses in the country.
Christmas was appointed to the St. Johns River Management District Governing Board in June of 1976. During his tenure in the nursery business, he was elected to the American Academy of Florists, was president of the Florida Nurserymen’s Growers Association, was on the Board of Directors of the Orange County Farm Bureau, and served on Society of American Florist Growers Council. He won a case against the IRS for Investment Tax Credits for Greenhouses. Christmas eventually sold his business to the Weyerhaeuser Company of Tacoma, Washington and remained as its manager until his retirement.
Christmas was elected to the Florida Nurserymen and Growers Hall of Fame in 1989. A garden was dedicated in his honor at the Polasek Gardens in Winter Park in 2009. He is active in the Apopka Historical Society, and wrote a weekly article in The Apopka Chief called “Historical Tidbits.”
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