Remembrance of Fortune Street

I was born and raised in Tampa, Florida, in the same neighborhood I write about. My family moved often, but always within walking distance, inside that same neighborhood. My mother's siblings and their families lived there too, and the families we met there became friends, and then became like family, for the rest of our lives.

I was a very inquisitive child, always paying attention to the people and places around me. I looked, I listened, and I was always asking questions, never knowing that I was storing up memories, or that one day I would have a duty to write about a neighborhood that is now forgotten, with little or nothing left to tell the world how it once looked.

When Urban Renewal came through to build the interstate highways, it displaced everyone: every family in our neighborhood, and in the neighborhoods around us, left to find their own way. This book is for them, and for everyone who wants to know what was here before.