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Living Through The Tough Economic Times, Then And Now

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By SHERRI ACKERMAN and PENNY CARNATHAN

sackerman@tampatrib.com pcarnathan@tampatrib.com

Published: March 15, 2009

TAMPA - On their way to the Union train station to welcome home his mother and dad, 9-year-old Sam Gibbons and his aunt came upon a frenzied crowd outside Citizens Bank & Trust.

It was July 17, 1929.

"I remember all the people pushing up to the door of the bank to try to get the door open and get their money out," recalls the former U.S. congressman, now 89. "They were hysterical ... crying, weeping, screaming."

But the doors were locked. The bank had closed, taking with it lives' savings. As word spread, other banks downtown were mobbed by customers frantic to pull out their money.

"The people lost their heads," the Tampa Morning Tribune reported. "Wild-eyed excitement" ruled. In all, 15 banks in Florida, seven in Tampa, closed that day.

Three months later came the stock market crash that officially launched the Great Depression, a far different time from now, Gibbons says, with all the safety nets. Today, our bank accounts are federally insured; people unable to work can get Social Security benefits; Medicaid pays doctors' bills for the poorest of the poor.

But as record numbers of workers lose their jobs and the stock market continues its plunge, many see a frightening resemblance to the dark decade of the 1930s. Like then, thousands of foreclosed homes stand empty. The growing lines of people seeking free food include well-dressed men and women driving their own cars. Some fear we're fast sliding toward a '30s-style crash.

At best, we're well on our way to the worst recession since World War II, says economist David Denslow of the University of Florida.

"Right now, we're going off a cliff," he says. There's a chance we might look back and call this another Depression, but Denslow doesn't think we'll see the era's 25 percent jobless rate or 50 percent factory shutdown.

Citing the National Bureau of Economic Research, the economist and others pinpoint this recession's start at December 2007. Denslow predicts a tilt toward recovery beginning in mid-2010. But with the banking industry collapse and the credit crunch, there's no past experience on which to base predictions.

In other words, it's anyone's guess.

It's certainly the worst economy many Americans alive today have experienced.

But the Bay area's oldest residents remember worse, much worse. They became accustomed to the knock of strangers at the back door - "white people, black people, nice-looking people," as Gibbons remembers, looking for the odd job in exchange for a meal.

He and other Depression survivors recall what it took to make it through: an optimistic outlook, a giving heart, education, a will to work.

"It was just a matter of luck how you managed to get through all that," says 101-year-old Ida Wasserman, who lives with her 74-year-old daughter, Rhoda Brueggeman, in Sun City Center.

But it was so much more than that, Brueggeman confides. Her mother took a practical, creative approach to solving problems. And she was always upbeat, dwelling on life's positives.

"We didn't realize we didn't have money."

Survivors' Advice

Sam Gibbons, 89, of Tampa

Former U.S. congressman

The Depression began for his family the day Citizens Bank & Trust closed. They were Citizens customers, and they lost all their savings.

"It was sure scarce for the Gibbons family for years," the Tampa native says.

That July afternoon, aunts, uncles and cousins met at the family's law offices at the Citizens bank building.

"Everybody pulled out what they had in their pockets and counted it," Gibbons says. "Between the 13 of us, we had about $100. They said, 'Well, we'll pool it. See how far it goes.'"

And that's how they got through - pulling together. Gibbons' widowed grandmother moved in with Sam, his parents and his little brother in their New Suburb Beautiful home. She mended their clothes, cooked and baked cakes, and read to the little boys.

When Sam got older, he took over painting the house and making repairs.

"I was 13, 14 years old, hammering away to keep the house together."

His father and grandfather, both lawyers, worked, but didn't expect cash payments. "We burned coal in our fireplace because they represented Tampa Coal Co.," Gibbons says. "We ate lots of fresh fruit, strawberries, corn."

Around them, others suffered.

"People began to lose their houses," Gibbons says. "So many nice people had to move out of our neighborhood and the houses stood vacant."

Some resorted to desperate measures.

"We used to have two fires a night in Palma Ceia, and only one fire engine," Gibbons says. Since the fire engine could get to only one house, the other would burn and the homeowner could try to collect the insurance. "We called that 'selling the house to the Yankees.'"

His grandfather's practical advice may have spared Gibbons' family a similar fate. It's still sound advice, he says, given the mindless spending of recent years.

"They had gotten a real good fee in the law firm a couple years before, and my grandfather said to my father, 'What are you going to do with your part?'

"My father said, 'I'm going to invest in real estate.' My grandfather said, 'The hell you are! You're going to pay off that mortgage!'"

He did.

"So we lived OK."

Helping Others

Harriette Grana Gurney, 99, Lutz

Retired, but still "Granny Gurney"

Marge Hafner says her longtime friend has always been a giver.

"She's actually a better giver than a receiver," Hafner says.

That makes for fond memories of the Depression years.

"We helped the whole family because my husband was the only one working," says Gurney, a Tampa native who married Paul in 1929 and had her first child, Betty, in 1930.

When it became apparent that Harriette's grandparents needed help, the new family moved into her grandparents' home on Armenia Avenue. Harriette's aunt Ruth joined the household, along with a second baby, Virgil.

Paul had a good job at Tampa Electric Co., and Harriette found work at Vic's Grocery and Trailer Park, where she managed things and hefted 50-pound blocks of ice onto customers' cars for their ice boxes.

Granddad took care of the garden, and they had a cow and chickens. It was enough to provide for the family - and the men who came knocking on the door looking for food. "They were happy times," Gurney says.

Her giving spirit hasn't dampened with age. Today, Gurney plans a big party for her 100th birthday, which is Monday. Instead of gifts, she's asking for donations to Cornerstone Ministries, which helps families in need with child care, food programs and housing.

Making The Best Of It

Ida Wasserman, 101, of Sun City Center

Retired office manager

Wasserman was a 21-year-old office manager for a New York City garment manufacturer when the stock market crashed in '29.

It wasn't her dream job, but at $40 a week, she earned as much as a man. So the night school student who longed to be a certified public accountant gave up the dream, stayed put and socked away her money.

"I was always in school," she says. And when she wasn't, "I always had a job."

For her, the glass was half-full, says daughter Rhoda Brueggeman, 74. Making the best of any situation and learning to live within one's means were life lessons that left an impression on the Wasserman brood.

"I remember standing in the subway one day with my mother and she took out a penny to buy me some gum," says Brueggeman, who was 8 or 9 then. "I said, 'No, mom, you better save it.' Obviously it was engrained in us to save!"

Bare Necessities

Gloria Cox, 87, of Sun City Center

Retired secretary

By the time she graduated from high school in 1939, Cox knew the sacrifices necessary to survive the worst economic crisis of our time. While searching for work in Boston, Cox stuffed cardboard in her shoes to cover the holes.

She was a kid when the Depression began, but she remembers her mother hiding from the tax man who came door to door back then to collect. They waited for Friday night, when her father came home with his paycheck, to buy a loaf of bread. She always wore hand-me-downs, and for some reason, most of those clothes were brown.

To this day, Cox won't wear brown.

She never imagined the country having to live that way again - until now.

"This recession is very hard on people," Cox says, but just like 80 years ago, there are lessons to be learned. "It will teach us one basic thing we have forgotten. We must not buy anything unless we have the money to pay it off."

For her husband, Joe, 87, learning to live within your means can be accomplished by simply asking yourself the right question.

"It's not 'What do you want?'" he says. "But 'What do you need?'"

Whatever It Takes

Earl Ware, 96, of Tampa

Retired furniture store owner

In 1929, Ware, an Orlando high school senior, set his sights on being a furniture salesman for Wogan S. Badcock because "people still got to eat, got to cook your meals." He eventually acquired five Badcock Home Furniture stores - all during the Depression years.

"You were affected by it, but you lived with it," he says of surviving the times.

That required three things: Having strong faith, taking good care of himself and finding an occupation that would provide a decent living. It taught him he could weather all sorts of calamities - including the death of his beloved wife 30 years ago.

Says Ware: "You do whatever it takes that day."

Steely Resolve

Roger Rackliff, 85, of Sun City Center

Retired steel manufacturer manager

"I went through it, I knew what it was like to wear the knees out in my trousers," the Maine native says. "But I didn't have the responsibility to put food on the table."

That job went to his father, a successful investment banker who lost everything in the crash.

"He told us it would get better in 60 to 90 days," Rackliff recalls. "Of course, it took five years."

The elder Rackliff found a new job, then another. During World War II, he started a dowel factory. The factory burned the day before Roger returned home from the war. His dad picked himself up and started from scratch - again. Eventually, he formed an insurance company, which he ran until he retired at 78. His resolve to keep going and his ability to overcome the odds stuck with his son, who eventually managed an iron foundry for Bethlehem Steel until he retired some 30 years ago.

"You save for a rainy day," Rackliff says. "You can't be smoking cigarettes, can't be boozing it up at the bar. ... You've got to keep your nose to the grindstone if you want to amount to anything."

Researchers Melanie Coon, Buddy Jaudon, Michael Messano and Stephanie Pincus contributed to this report. Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144. Editor Penny Carnathan can be reached at (813) 259-7612.

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