Biography, program detail life of beloved troubadour Rogers

In Central Florida, the name Gamble Rogers usually brings to mind the revered Winter Park architect James Gamble Rogers II, who created Casa Feliz and many other buildings. It’s also the name of his eldest son, who died, sadly, at 54 in 1991.

This is the Gamble Rogers whom Jimmy Buffett has hailed as an important mentor — the troubadour who ventured from the stages of Florida folk festivals and clubs onto the airwaves of NPR. “I would open shows for Gamble,” Buffett recalls, describing how Rogers wove magic with a guitar and a story. “I was the apprentice and he was the master.”

Such performances are detailed in award-winning biography, “Gamble Rogers: A Troubadour’s Life,” by Jacksonville journalist Bruce Horovitz, who will talk about the book Jan. 26 at an online program presented by the Friends of Casa Feliz and the Winter Park Public Library.

Rich family legacy

Born in 1867, the first James Gamble Rogers was an architect who helped shape many college campuses built in the 1920s through 1940s in Collegiate Gothic and Collegiate Georgian styles. He practiced architecture with brother John Arthur Rogers, the father of Winter Park’s James Gamble Rogers II (1901-1990).

Rogers II moved with his family about 1913 from Chicago to Daytona Beach, where he later worked in his father’s architectural office and opened a branch of that business in Winter Park in 1928. In 1935, he started his own firm, now Rogers, Lovelock & Fritz (RLF). His son John H. “Jack” Rogers retired as chairman and CEO in 2006 after 41 years.

When Jack Rogers’ brother was born in 1937, the designation of James Gamble Rogers III had just gone to another family member, a grandson. So the firstborn son of Rogers II became James Gamble Rogers IV,

Gamble Rogers performs about 1977. Born in Winter Park on Jan. 31, 1937, Rogers died Oct. 10, 1991, off Flagler Beach while trying to rescue a swimmer in rough surf. called Jimmy and, later, Gamble — the singer-storyteller eventually known for public-radio monologues such as “The Great Maitland Turkey Farm Massacre of 1953” and other tales.

During performances Gamble Rogers would prowl the stage, spinning tales with the “wisdom of a cracker-barrel philosopher and the vocabulary of an Oxford don.”

Still Bill, Forklift Mary

As a student at the University of Virginia, the future troubadour met William Faulkner, who became a significant influence, especially in Rogers’ creation of his fictional Oklawaha County, populated by characters such as Agamemnon Jones, Still Bill, Forklift Mary and a rabbi named Bubba. (The name paid tribute to the Florida river, spelled Ocklawaha.)

It is this Gamble Rogers whose name you see on I-95, on signs pointing toward the state recreational area that was named for him after he drowned at Flagler Beach on Oct. 10, 1991, in attempt to save a tourist caught in a riptide. Both perished.

“What makes Gamble Rogers so unique,” says Horovitz, “is that no one has ever attempted to copy or imitate his style. Rogers was fond of saying, “When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt,” Horovitz notes.

To learn more

Learn more about Gamble Rogers in a free online program with Bruce Horovitz on Tuesday, Jan. 26, at 6:30 p.m., presented by the Winter Park Public Library and the Friends of Casa Feliz. The library uses the Go To Meeting platform.

It’s Zora time!

January means the return of the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities, now in its 32nd iteration, which this year encompasses online programs. The February program features author Isabel Wilkerson. For details, visit https:// zorafestival.org/