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Widow Questions Where Elections Office Sign Went

Tribune file photo (1967)

Bob Gilder is credited with containing the violence after a race riot in 1967.

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By MIKE SALINERO

msalinero@tampatrib.com

Published: January 15, 2009

TAMPA - The widow of Tampa civil rights icon Bob Gilder says she can't get a straight answer as to why her husband's name has not been restored to the Hillsborough County elections office on Falkenburg Road.

Friends told Ellie Gilder last year that her husband's name had been removed from the Robert L. Gilder Elections Services Center. When she called the office asking for an explanation, Gilder was told the name had been removed during a renovation.

"But nobody could tell me what was being renovated," she said.

Gilder said former Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson never returned her phone call.

Johnson, who lost his bid for reelection in November and is no longer elections supervisor, said Wednesday that Gilder's name was removed during an expansion of the building. After the renovation, the sign was too wide for the space where it was supposed to go, Johnson said.

The sign on the building now says, "Supervisor of Elections." Johnson said he had a temporary sign put up last year because he was busy with the primary and general elections.

"I was the one who initiated the designation of the building in honor of Mr. Gilder," Johnson said, "and I would fight for the restoration of the name."

County Administrator Pat Bean said Johnson asked commissioners to rename the building for Gilder after he died in 2003 at age 72. Bean said she doesn't know why the name was removed.

"If we did anything to expand the building and didn't do anything to put the sign back up, then I do have some concerns about that," she said.

Gilder, the former president of the Tampa NAACP, risked his life leading black voter registration drives during the 1960s. He is credited with containing the violence after a race riot in 1967 and helping to defuse a threatened riot 20 years later.

Ellie Gilder said her husband would have been proud an elections office was named for him.

"Bob and the coalition he put together registered over 10,000 voters in this community ... that was something my husband was very interested in," she said.

Current elections supervisor Phyllis Busansky, a longtime acquaintance of Bob Gilder, said his name will be restored as soon as possible.

Reporter Mike Salinero can be reached at (813) 259-8303.

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