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Strawberry Name For Plant City School Stirs Up Sticky Issues

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By MARILYN BROWN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 3, 2008

TAMPA - Perhaps the toughest part of naming a high school after the strawberry is finding a mascot.

Young people in Plant City wonder: "Wouldn't it be tough to go out on the football field being 'strawberry something?'"

That comes from Faye Blount, who is heading one camp of the Plant City community in east Hillsborough pushing to name the new high school opening in August near Plant City after Blount's late father, Osburn M. Griffin, a long-time strawberry farmer.

"I've heard some kids say we'd be called 'the fruities' or the 'Plant City tarts,'" she said.

The high school's campus sits on some of the 50-plus acres of land that Griffin's wife, Grace, sold to the Hillsborough school district. Her wish before she died in January was for a high school to be named after her husband, Blount said.

In the "strawberry-something" camp is former school board member, Joe Newsome, who already has a high school named for him.

Newsome, whose family strawberry farm was next to the Griffins', thinks the school should be named after the strawberry to honor all of the farmers over generations who made Plant City the winter strawberry capital of the world.

Along with land sold by Newsome and a third land owner, the district has more than 100 acres for the high school, a middle school and an elementary. The high school and elementary schools open in August just south of Interstate 4, east of McIntosh Road.

The School board is slated to vote on names for those two schools as well as a middle and an elementary school in the Lake Hutto area of South Hillsborough at its 3 p.m. meeting Thursday.

Strawberry Crest is the name agreed upon by Newsome's group to present to the board, although Strawberry Palace, Strawberry Patch, and Griffin's Strawberry Ridge are all on the list to be considered.

"The group felt you couldn't go down to the board with five strawberry names," Newsome says.

The competition is high: Newsome says he comes armed with a petition of "700 or 800 names." Blount said her petition has 1,400, and her campaign includes donated ads in local magazines and T-shirts.

Newsome says the mascot is no problem. The school could readopt the former Plant City High "Planters" mascot or call themselves the "Packers" or the "Strawberry Crest Knights," he suggested.

Reporter Marilyn Brown can be reached at (813) 259-8069.

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