As mentioned in the first blog post, this week entailed a trip to the West Oak Library and Genealogy Center in Ocoee. The journey itself was lengthy, needing to navigate the public bus system of Orlando for the first time. I, like many first timers on public transit, became lost and had to take an Uber to reach my final destination. My driver, Elizabeth, was a Hillcrest Alumni who attended in the early 1960's, a changing time in the narrative of the elementary school. She recounted the a turbulent month of November 1963 where not only the school shut down due to mourning for JFK and then the school itself burning.. Elizabeth also gave an abridged history of the neighborhood, and how the prominent Vietnamese community bought up much of the real estate in the area. I only had about 10 minutes, but luckily recorded her email for possibly more information and hopefully more fascinating anecdotes.
When at West Oak, I was lucky enough to meet Allison L. Ryall. She is the Genealogy Specialist at the library. She gave me plenty of resources to look into Hillcrest, like the Family History Centers associated with the Mormons and Newspaper.com for some of the older Orlando Sentinels. Another reason for the voyage to West Oak was to collect finding aids, or document important as they have information on specific collections. Mrs. Ryall gave me access to the index first showed to me via email to me by Professor French. I went through the Orlando Sentinel and Orlando Sun 1966-1970 Volume II: Orange County and Orlando.
I was able to explore the annals of the genealogy center, spending approximately three to four hours perusing the Orange County section, including the 1966-1970 Orlando Sentinel and Orlando Sun headers but coming with little. Hopefully, future research is more fruitful in my findings.
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