TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Zephyrhills Adds Diversity

ADVERTISEMENT

By LAURA KINSLER

lkinsler@tampatrib.com

Published: November 8, 2008

ZEPHYRHILLS - Tuesday's city council special election was the last item on a two-page ballot, and 20 percent of city voters left it blank. The race saw minimal campaigning and no buzz.

Still, Manny Funes' election speaks volumes about how far race relations have come in Zephyrhills.

Four years ago, a battle over renaming a city street to honor slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. brought simmering racial tensions to the surface.

Now Zephyrhills has two Hispanic council members. Luis Lopez was elected in 2005 and serves as council president.

A real estate agent who spent two decades in law enforcement, Funes won a slim victory in the three-way race to fill the unexpired term of Daniel Burgess. Funes beat Lance Smith by fewer than 100 votes.

Funes didn't run as a Hispanic. He doesn't even consider himself one, even though his grandparents emigrated from Spain. The only Spanish he knows are the few dozen words he picked up as a police officer in Miami.

"I don't think of myself that way," he said. "I like to think people will accept someone if they know him."

He identifies more with his home state of Hawaii. Funes, 63, was born on Maui and moved to Florida after serving in the Air Force.

Now a mainlander, he stills wears Hawaiian shirts almost every day and eats seafood for Thanksgiving - a Hawaiian custom. He even danced the hula in a grass skirt and coconut-shell top at a recent Rotary meeting.

He has earned a reputation in Zephyrhills as a business leader - he's president of the East Pasco Association of Realtors and an officer in the Zephyrhills Chamber of Commerce. He also has a reputation as a practical joker who loves to spin a good yarn.

"God gave me a talent to make people laugh," he said.

James Tokley, a Tampa consultant who led a series of diversity workshops in Zephyrhills in the aftermath of the MLK controversy, said the changing faces of the city council illustrate that attitudes have changed in Zephyrhills.

"What we're seeing now is what we're seeing across the nation: a greater willingness to accept diversity," Tokley said.

When he arrived in Zephyrhills in 2004, Tokley found a town confronting change.

"The old guard was afraid that is was losing a grip on what it had traditionally held," he said. "Even though we would like to be a society that is open-minded and tolerant, it takes a long time to get there. It's still a work in progress"

Lopez said the city's population has changed since 2000, when just 5 percent of city residents were Hispanic. People were shocked when he won a seat on city council.

"I think it's a reflection of the changing demographics of the city and younger people moving to the area," he said.

Longtime residents have changed, too. Several local churches have grown more ethnically diverse in the past few years, Lopez said.

"People are starting to put aside those diehard, last-generation, preconceived ideas about race," he said.

Tokley applauds the changes in Zephyrhills.

"The voters realize there is more to people than their skin color or last name," he said.

Reporter Laura Kinsler can be reached at (813) 865-4844.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT