Week 4

Week 4 began late for me, starting on a Thursday due to other responsibilities related to school. I met with Dr. Lyons that morning, which was an extremely informative meeting which revealed for one, Orange County had a history of the local schools. Another key fact is the existence of a oral history workshop being run by none other than Dr. Gannon, a professor I have had on multiple occasions. The hope is it will prep me for conducting the interviews related to the Hillcrest internship.

Later on, Dr. Lyons and I traveled to the library, where she taught me how to use the microfilm (specifically on this occasion for the Orlando Sentinel). The microfilm viewer was all new to me, meaning some trial and error was bound to occur.

 I began by searching through the Sentinel's Dec 1963 record, which split the month into two equal halves. The December 1st to the 15th contained mostly headlines related to JFK assassination as the mainstay of Sentinel headlines, and had no information related to Hillcrest. While going through the second half, December 16th to the 31st, I found a host of information related to Hillcrest. First, I pinpointed the exact date of the Hillcrest Fire to December 22nd, 1963 over the winter break. The headline "Hillcrest Ravaged by Fire" is the first I came across related to the inferno. The article recounts how 16 quare blocks of Orlando was shutdown, and said Fire Chief Pennington would investigate. It also gave a look into the demographics of Hillcrest, saying 360 kids went to the school and 12 teachers taught. The follow day, December 24th, has the headline "Engineer will check Hillcrest". It reveals the than the fire was intentionally started, with the Fire Chief reporting nine distinct locations such as the Principal's office and Hillcrest's Cafeteria. The December 27th headline "Hillcrest's fate Pondered" sees engineer John Tilden give an price estimate to rebuild the school, and that Orange County Superintendent Kipp thought of forgoing rebuilding Hillcrest and simply incorporating the children to neighboring schools. The final story on Hillcrest, made on the final day of December, relates to how the school carried on by using churches and extra classrooms at Fern Creek Elementary to continue Hillcrest's operation.

Some findings I found interesting was the "Hillcrest Ravaged by Fire" articles posits that Hillcrest was built between 1925 and 1927, while the Orange County Superintendent's report to Tallahasee directly contradicts that by saying a school was built in February of 1924. Another fact revealed by my studies was the existence of a "Negro" version of the Sentinel, which may be useful when research desegregation.