Student continues Apopka tradition

Mayor: Council meeting’s history lesson taught by youth

Presiding over his first City Council meeting as Apopka mayor, Bryan Nelson changed a longstanding tradition last week and didn’t personally recite a history lesson to start the session.

He instead enlisted an Apopka school student for the duty.

The late Apopka Mayor John Land, a history buff and Nelson’s uncle through marriage, started the practice of offering a brief historical reminder at the beginning of council meetings while he was Apopka’s top elected official, a post he held for 61 years.

Joe Kilsheimer, who was elected in 2014 by defeating Land and lost his re-election bid in March to Nelson, kept the tradition alive during his four-year mayoral run.

“We’re going to do this thing a little different,” Nelson said Wednesday as he introduced Gracie Darlington to lead the Pledge of Allegiance and recite a historical fact.

Gracie, student government association president at Apopka High School and daughter of Apopka High football coach Rick Darlington, informed city commissioners that on May 2, 1776, the nations of France and Spain donated arms to American revolutionaries fighting for independence.

Apopka City Clerk Linda Goff said the tradition dates to the 1970s.

Most government meetings in Central Florida begin with the Pledge and a religious or secular invocation, though the latter practice has proven controversial in communities where non-Christians argue they are excluded.

Land, an Army veteran of World War II, opened Apopka council meetings with a greeting, a religious invocation, the Pledge and a historical event which occurred in the past on or near the meeting date.

He often remembered the struggles or service of war veterans, once noting the birth date of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and the sacrifices of American G.I.s who lost their lives on D-Day during World War II.