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She Was Devoted To Helping Dade City

File Photo 2003/scott iskowitz

Agnes Lamb, runs the cash register at Solutions Gift Shop one day a week.

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By TODD LESKANIC and JEFF SCULLIN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 23, 2008

DADE CITY - For many years, Agnes Lamb was the woman behind the scenes here, the one who made things happen.

The longtime mayor, city commissioner and civic booster died Tuesday. She was 88.

Family and friends remember her as a strong-willed, independent woman of faith who dedicated her life to her family and Dade City.

"She loved Dade City, and she put her heart and soul into this town," said her daughter, Becky Jewett.

"She was a person of action. She was very unselfish. She was a doer. She was a giver."

Lamb was elected to the commission in 1969, filling the seat left open after her husband, J. Willard Lamb, died. She served for the next 21 years, including a three-year stint as the city's first female mayor in the 1970s.

She and her husband moved to Dade City in 1949 and ran a retail egg business from 1952 to 1968. After the business closed, she worked as a teller in a downtown bank until retiring in 1984.

It was Lamb's volunteer work, though, that left the biggest mark on her adopted hometown.

"She was very dedicated to the city, and any involvement she could have that would make the city better, she was always there," said Phyllis Smith, a friend and executive director of the Greater Dade City Chamber of Commerce.

Lamb sold so many tickets for chamber, Rotary and Kiwanis events she became known as "the ticket lady." And at the benefit fish fries and barbecues thrown by longtime friend Roy Hardy, she always handled the coleslaw.

"She was there for 15 or 17 years," Hardy said. "She was one of the longest ones we had, and not a dime did she get. Period."

Lamb remained active in Dade City life until the last year of her life.

"I've gotten a real pleasure and real joy out of volunteering," she told the Tribune in 2002. "I love people, and I love to help."

In recent years, Lamb's daughters invited her to come live near one of them. But she couldn't leave the place to which she'd devoted decades of her life and that named a park after her in the 1980s.

She knew just about everyone in town, or they knew her, daughter Melinda Devlin said.

"She just loved people," Devlin said. "She really didn't meet a stranger."

Though she often worked behind the scenes, she enjoyed the spotlight, too.

"When it wasn't her time to be the life of the party, she wouldn't be the life of the party. But when it was her time, she expected 100 percent attention," said Joey Wubbena, her great-nephew.

She took seriously her responsibilities as a public servant. In the early1980s, when Wubbena, then a city firefighter, and his wife moved into the family home next door to Lamb, he spotted her poking around the yard one Saturday. She'd just finished pruning her hedges and wanted him to rake and bag the trimmings for her, but she was afraid a reporter might be lurking nearby.

"She didn't want anyone to make a stink about the city mayor using a city employee to do private work for her," Wubbena said. "She was always worried about her public presence. She didn't want anyone to think she was abusing her position.

"She was a trip."

Lamb is survived by her daughters, three granddaughters and four great-grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Reporter Todd Leskanic can be reached at (352) 521-3156 or tleskanic@tampatrib.com.

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