Cancer can't keep Platt away from community

Time is, as they say, relative.

One hundred years can be a flicker of time in the big picture. Or it can be good enough to get Willard Scott to mention your name on television if you're lucky.

On Thursday evening a few dozen people gathered inside a cigar factory in the shadow of El Reloj to see the new Burgert Brothers calendar put out by the Friends of the Library.

The Burgert Brothers came to Ybor City at the end of the 19th century as commercial photographers, and along the way they documented a changing city for more than seven decades. Their pictures of Hillsborough County emerging from a rural backwater through the booms and depressions are one of our treasures.

The new calendar was unveiled inside the J.C. Newman Cigar Company on North 16th Street in Ybor City. It was an appropriate setting as the cover of the calendar is the old factory building itself, which will celebrate 100 years in the coming year.

I was there partly for that but mostly because the head of the Friends of the Library is former Tampa councilwoman and Hillsborough County commissioner Jan Platt.

Platt hasn't been around as long as the Newman factory, but it seems as if she has been a presence in government around here forever. She also remains a symbol of good government. Whether you agreed with all of her positions when she was in office, you knew that nobody had slipped an envelope full of money inside her desk drawer or that any outside influences had muddied her vote.

It's sad that she is seen as more the exception than the rule in politics - and I do believe that is more perception than reality - but there is little doubt Jan Platt is special.

She just has completed a long series of chemo treatments for the cancer she is fighting and is getting ready to tackle five hard weeks of radiation.

But she looks good and is feisty as ever. It was Platt who ran Thursday's meeting and then weathered an onslaught of well-wishers and supporters.

Eric Newman, who with his brother, Bobby, manages the great factory and successfully has fought off changing tastes and punitive taxes on their business, said a few words to the gathering. The Newmans have been involved a number of philanthropic causes around here, not just financially, but by showing up.

He spoke about El Reloj, which is the great four-sided clock that towers over the factory and how it used to be the neighborhood's timepiece back when Edward Regensburg opened the factory a century ago. "Children went to school by it. Workers knew when to come and leave. People's lives were centered around the clock.''

Eventually the factory closed and the great clock rusted and finally stopped. Then, seven years ago, the Newmans had it carefully restored. Today it again keeps the time for the neighborhood.

"It used to be called the 'Wishing Clock,' Newman added. "It was said if you stood out in front of it on 16th Street at 9:15 a.m. and spread your arms out and made a wish, it would come true.''

I'm not clear on why it had to be 9:15, but I'm going to make a pilgrimage over there one day soon and make my wish that we are blessed with more Jan Platts and people like the Newmans, who give back daily to our community.