Civic pride is a thing of beauty

Something big is on the calendar this week, so I want to talk about turtles.

Big Aluminum turtles. Cooters, if we want to be technical. Eleven of ‘em, adorning downtown Inverness.

They’re all works of art. Murals that include Old Courthouse, Elvis, and observances of military veterans. Even the downtown community cats have their faces on a turtle mural.

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My friend Paul Hertensen is the brains behind the turtle project, which he and the city unveiled Friday night on the eve of the Inverness Fine Arts Festival.

I wrote last year about Paul and his turtle plan. Paul’s one of those people when he gets an idea in his head nothing stops it until fruition.

It’s useless for me to try and explain the extraordinary effort Paul and his team put together to create the turtle project and the art festival. This Chronicle story covers it fairly well.

But it got me thinking about civic pride. Citizens give a rip about their communities so much that, despite help or lack thereof from the government, they’re only goal is to make it better.

We’re all pretty wrapped up in the national stage right now. Totally get it. I’m not naive to suggest Inverness turtles are a bigger deal than that.

However, in one sense, they are.

Man, is it easy to let the noise distract us, right? It’s deafening at times, the tinnitus that never subsides. How are we to happily function with all this negative energy swirling about us?

The easy answer is we don’t let it get to us.

Shortly before the unveiling Friday night, City Manager Eric Williams was telling me how this turtle movement can really take off. In the coming years, we could be seeing turtle art everywhere. Indeed, it seemed like a theme of the weekend festival. 

I just think it’s cool. It’s even cooler when the local government and citizens work together.

Take a look around our county; civic pride is everywhere. Some examples:

— Floral City has had a truck problem for years. Trucks exit the interstate at State Road 48, instead of continuing north to S.R. 44, east to U.S. 41 along Orange Avenue through Floral City. Not only have those trucks destroyed the pavement, they clipped an overhang on a building that stood at 48 and 41.

That building is no longer there. It’s been replaced by a pleasant fountain, wall mural, and rock garden. Take a stroll through Floral City; it’s a community with extraordinary civic pride. Floral City embraces both its heritage and what it is today.

— Homosassa is another Citrus County community with tremendous civic pride. A tight-knit community where, even in their occasional personal squabbles Homosassa accentuates its positives.

Nowhere is that more evident than the Old Homosassa Heritage Park and Working Waterfront. Basically, we had a bunch of citizens with an idea. They took that idea to politicians, businesspeople, and citizens. The idea was crunched, squeezed, analyzed, beat up, smoothed over, applauded, and finally put into action.

That’s a civic pride thing right there. Homosassa’s leaders wanted a waterfront park for the community’s children and families, to both enjoy and participate in Old Homosassa’s heritage. It now has one.

— Many people either don’t remember, or choose to forget, what Crystal River was like 25 years ago. This was a town with very little civic pride. A city manager turnstile at town hall. Bickering council members. Just a general overall feeling of underachievement.

Then, the town square came along. Seems like that happened overnight. One minute sat a dull piece of vacant property in the heart of the city’s downtown (true story: a funeral home wanted to place a crematorium on the site). The next minute, families were enjoying First Friday events in this beautiful park.

Today, Crystal River is a city of immense civic pride. Their resiliency the last 18 months from three hurricanes and a tornado is proof of that. Crystal River protects its own.

— Few people are looking at Tuesday with glee. I know I’m not. But I don’t need to stay glum. I can walk into downtown Inverness or drive through any of our communities and see our civic beauty.

All is well in our corner of the world.

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