Freddie Woolfork was one of the most beloved people in Indian River County for almost 75 years.
The folksy, decades-long director of public relations & facilities operations at the Gifford Youth Achievement Center who died recently, seemed omnipresent countywide.
He was proud of his community and honored its rich history. I appreciated how he helped me understand a different perspective.
Despite growing up in a Black community and crying with many of his Gifford High School peers when they were told after his junior year in 1969 the segregated school would close and they’d have to travel to integrate Vero Beach High School the following fall, Woolfork broke color barriers effectively.
Life after Gifford, Vero Beach highs
“You probably could have taken a rowboat through that room (at Gifford High School the day the announcement was made) so many people were crying,” Woolfork told me in December 2021.
They loved their school and had grown up wanting to be Tigers and leaders there.
Gifford school officials chided them for whining, reminding them they must continue to be proud of the many things they learned in school and life.
Like, “if someone says you can’t do something, you exhaust all your possibilities,” he said, explaining after he graduated from Florida A&M University, he was needed back home. That meant not going to Notre Dame for graduate school, his parents told him.
Instead, Woolfork went to Piper Aircraft Corp., where he had worked summers, to look for a job. He was told there were none. But he was persistent. He insisted on completing an application, then speaking to someone. Woolfork was hired, eventually leading to a job in management.
In that 2021 interview, Woolfork told me about the unintended consequences of Gifford losing its high school, the community hub of activity.
“It caused Gifford to turn into a ship without a sail,” he said, noting when he returned from college, young people were concerned the neighborhood needed a cleanup. They blamed local leaders. “We were moving, but we didn’t have any sense of identity.”
He was among about 15 young people to attend a Gifford Progressive Civic League meeting led by civil rights icons J. Ralph Lundy, Victor Hart and Joe Idlette Jr. The young folks planned to give these elders an earful, Woolfork said. Instead, the elders told them about their accomplishments, eventually motivating some of Woolfork’s generation to help beautify the neighborhood with flowers, plants and more.
His ordained role with Brown, Idlette
Over the next 50 years, folks like Woolfork, Tony Brown and Joe Idlette III became the next generation of Gifford leaders.
Brown, who leads the local chapter of the NAACP, explained the trio’s relationship.
While working for the betterment of Gifford and its youth, God made Woolfork the “diplomat” of the group, Idlette the “analytical” one and Brown the “blunt” advocate.
“Freddie was a hardcore advocate. He just had a different style,” Brown said. “If it wasn’t for Freddie, where would the children be?”
TCPalm pictures document the photogenic Woolfork making the rounds at government meetings, cocktail parties and chicken dinners around the county, helping to build the business community and raise money for the GYAC and other nonprofits, such as United Way, to support youth programs.
Helping in numerous other ways
For example, he helped Float Hope of Indian River County, a nonprofit, provide the “gift of swimming as a life skill and sport year-round” to local children who otherwise could not afford lessons.
At a 2019 swim meet, Woolfork introduced me to Samuel Hope, 9, who initially was scared to get in the water, but eventually took to it like a fish and wanted to participate in the Olympics when he grew up.
The kids, Woolfork said, got him interested in taking swim lessons.
“If the kids can do it, I can do it, too,” he said, setting an example for the youngsters. “It’s fun.”
Then there was his 2021 effort to help without having fun: showing that getting a COVID-19 shot with his wife and 95-year-old mother-in-law was not dangerous and that, given the high COVID death toll in Gifford, it made sense to get one.
“All three of us took it, and that gave us a sales card that was impeccable,” Woolfork told me. “I tell people, ‘Don’t be afraid. Be an example.’ ”
A man of words, and music
Brown said Woolfork’s style ― which featured positive and pithy phrases ― came from listening to their mothers, who were best friends, and other elders as children.
I don’t know how many times I heard Woolfork say, “Team work makes the dream work.” And Woolfork described his fellow young Gifford upstarts whining about the progressive league’s perceived lack of success, they were just “fanning flies and telling lies.”
Brown told me another one they’d use: “We’re going to hell in a hand basket, and we’re carrying the basket.”
Woolfork had a passion for words and music. Images are etched in my mind of him playing the trombone or other instruments in the annual Martin Luther King Jr. parade.
In our 2021 meeting, Woolfork made his music passion clear, taking about how he’d hoped to eventually work in Vero Beach as a band director.
He pridefully spoke of the Gifford High School alma mater, repeating its spirited words, such as “Gifford High has stood the test, it gives the very best … ”
He began singing one of the school’s pep songs, “Give me that old Gifford spirit, it’s good enough for me. … ”
Setting trends at Vero Beach High School
Then he got more active, drumming on a table with his hands and using his mouth for additional percussion when reflecting on a song he wrote as a newcomer to Vero Beach High School after accepting a challenge from its band leader.
Woolfork had been used to up-tempo music at Gifford, but when he heard the tunes at VBHS, he told friends, “White people have no soul.” The band leader overheard it and asked Woolfork to give an example, so he wrote and arranged “Soul Stew,” which, he found, the band continued to play after he graduated.
That senior year, he also wrote a class song to the tune of Johnny Mathis’ hit, “A Time for Us.” He remembered the words more than 50 years later. They included:
“A time for us to be a star no matter who or what you are on Earth … A time for us to stop and pray, to thank the Lord for showing us the way. We have been taught to believe in trust. This is indeed a time for us.”
Amen to a beautiful life lived by a man whose support and positivity were so uplifting to many others. May his spirit be spread for generations through all the boys and girls he inspired and helped.
This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.
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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Florida man’s words, music imbued his community with hope | Opinion
Reporting by Laurence Reisman, Treasure Coast Newspapers / Treasure Coast Newspapers
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