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Florahome residents, from left, Meri-lin Piantanida, Betty Carnes and Ronnie Carnes smile as they stand at the town’s historic clubhouse Wednesday. -
Florahome residents, from left, Betty Carnes, Meri-lin Piantanida and Ronnie Carnes stand on the porch of the historic Palmetto Hall in the West Putnam town. -
Positively Putnam FL
FLORAHOME – Residents are getting excited ahead of the town’s Fall Heritage Festival this weekend.
People are invited to attend the festival starting at 10 a.m. Saturday at Florahome Palmetto Park, located at the corner of State Road 100 and Magnolia Avenue. At least 50 vendors are expected to sell their wares and people will be cooking chicken dinners, pork ribs and hot dogs starting at 11 a.m., said organizer and Florahome resident Ronnie Carnes.
“People that lived in Florahome years ago come back for this,” he said. “They come from out of state. … I just got a call from a boy. He was a little boy when he was last here. He has a cattle ranch down in South Florida, but he’s ready to come back.”
All proceeds from the festival will benefit Palmetto Hall, the town’s historic clubhouse that will turn 100 years old in 2023, organizers said. Members of the Florahome Park & Heritage Association, of which Carnes is a part, have been working to save the clubhouse for a little more than two years, said association member and festival organizer Meri-lin Piantanida.
She said the last steps the association needs to take to finish the clubhouse are painting the interior and installing lighting, flooring and cabinets.
“When I first got married and came here 64 years ago, we used to have birthday parties up here,” said Betty Carnes, Ronnie Carnes’ wife. “We had wedding showers; we had baby showers. Anybody that didn’t have enough room to have everybody at their house, they’d all come up and use the clubhouse.”
The building started as a meeting hall for the Florahome Woman’s Club, but it was also used to distribute polio vaccines and show plays. Ronnie Carnes said he was one of Florahome’s first firefighters who started the fire station in the clubhouse decades ago.
Association members plan to use the building as a meeting hall, an event space and a museum to showcase Florahome history.
“We hope to bring some culture and art to Florahome and create the kind of community that we want to live in,” Piantanida said.
At first, Piantanida said, she did not think the building could be saved when association members saw its condition before restoration efforts began. She called the work residents have put in a “labor of love” and is excited to share the clubhouse’s progress with festival attendees Saturday.
This will be the first year bands can play on the building’s porch, organizers said.
Association members said they were grateful for all the volunteers who helped with the project and to all the businesses that donated roofing, flooring and other materials.
Piantanida said, “I think it’s really important that we preserve the parts of Old Florida that we can.”