- December 26, 2024
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Alice Louise Olmsted Burt may have been a woman ahead of her time, but she also kept an eye on the past.
The MacDonald House. The Anderson-Price Memorial Building. The Three Chimneys Sugar Mill Ruins. The Casements.
All Ormond Beach’s historic landmarks still standing today thanks to Burt, who was known fondly by her friends and family as “Lupe.” As the woman who founded the Ormond Beach Historical Society alongside her longtime friend Ruth Canfield in 1976, Burt saw the need in the city to preserve the buildings that made it special.
“I think you can literally see Lupe’s legacy today everywhere we look,” said Amy Valcik, OBHS secretary and board member.
Burt died on April 11 at the age of 97. A funeral service was held on Monday, April 24 at St. James Episcopal Church in Ormond Beach, followed by a reception at the Ormond Memorial Art Museum. She dedicated over 60 years of her life to the Ormond Beach community — through her work with the OBHS, the Garden Club of the Halifax Country and her husband’s reinsurance business — and her service was attended by many.
She even made an impression with people who never got the chance to know her, beyond her accomplishments and legacy.
“Even though I never had the opportunity to meet Lupe, the fantastic stories of her perseverance to save The Casements and start OBHS in 1976 give me and my talented team much confidence to keep her legacy going,” OBHS President Mary Smith said in a statement to the Observer.
Locke Burt, former Florida senator and current CEO and chairman of Security First Insurance, said his mother was a formidable woman — smart, not one to shy away from giving her opinion, and with a brain for business.
Born in Iowa, Lupe Burt graduated with a math degree from Smith College in just three years in 1946, then married her childhood sweetheart, Wallace Burt. They had three children: Locke Burt, David Burt and Virginia Wolfe.
“The only job open to her was a secretary, a nurse or a teacher, and it was very hard to do something as a woman,” Locke Burt said. “I guess the glass ceiling was steel ... and it was a lot lower.”
But that didn’t deter Lupe Burt much. In 1959, the family moved to Ormond Beach, where they started their own reinsurance company. Lupe Burt kept the books; her husband was the salesman. In 1961, they founded Burt and Scheld with Bob Scheld, and the company is still in business today.
Women like Lupe Burt and Ruth Canfield were ahead of their time by taking the initiative to organize a group of like-minded folks to preserve the rich history of Ormond Beach. Without their foresight, there would be no Ormond Beach Historical Society." — Former OBHS Executive Director Suzanne Heddy
Lupe Burt worked with her husband for 30 years until they both retired in 1989, Locke Burt said. In that time, she also encouraged other women to grow and develop.
“She let them take classes at night to improve themselves using the office building,” Locke Burt recalled. “She let them travel on behalf of the company, which was really unusual at the time, and particularly in the reinsurance business.”
She always encouraged everyone she worked with, as well as her family members, to recognize their strengths and pursue their passion, said her granddaughter, Melissa Burt DeVriese.
“She had six grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren and a lot of people that she worked with professionally over the decades and in the community, and I think she’s always been very encouraging of people to find their passion and to work hard at what they’re doing,” DeVriese said. “Whatever that might be.”
The idea to form OBHS came during a “dismal Saturday afternoon” on April 17, 1976, according to a firsthand written account by Canfield.
Canfield and Lupe Burt, who had been friends for over 30 years, often discussed the need for a historical foundation in town. That afternoon, they were having cocktails in Lupe Burt’s living room when Canfield suggested it was time to establish such an organization.
The city was completing a feasibility study to see if The Casements could be saved and used as a historic and cultural center. At the time, The Casements, the former winter home of John D. Rockefeller, was so rundown that locals tell stories of drinking and partying inside the dilapidated building. The city bought the property in 1973 to keep it from being torn down to build condos, Canfield wrote in her account.
In 1976, presidential candidates were also running on platforms supporting historic preservation.
So that Saturday afternoon, Lupe Burt and Canfield declared themselves the president and secretary of the historical foundation, and on Aug. 18, with 10 people present, the Ormond Beach Historical Trust was born.
“Women like Lupe Burt and Ruth Canfield were ahead of their time by taking the initiative to organize a group of like-minded folks to preserve the rich history of Ormond Beach,” Former OBHS Executive Director Suzanne Heddy said in a statement to the Observer. “Without their foresight, there would be no Ormond Beach Historical Society.”
According to the OBHS, Lupe Burt helped secure $449,000, through fundraising and grants, to restore The Casements. She later helped form the volunteer Casements Guild in 1979. And on Dec. 7, 1979, the first annual Christmas Gala was held, replicating the Christmas parties thrown by Rockefeller in his lifetime.
“The price of admission, at $250 a couple, included a gold bell with the donor’s name on it,” Canfield wrote. “At $150 per couple, a silver bell. By the number of bells adorning the enormous Christmas tree centered in the atrium, it seemed the entire population of Ormond Beach attended the memorable evening.”
In 2008, the Trust changed its name to the Ormond Beach Historical Society to better reflect the direction in which it was heading — more programs and community outreach.
"Even as we got older, she was determined to keep on going, and that was very wonderful because as you get older, a lot of things happen in life ... it can be very depressing but that's not the way Lupe was. She was always positive." — Evelyn Lynn, friend of Lupe Burt
OBHS past president and board member Pat Sample said in a statement to the Observer that she and Jane Robinson were all very involved in the Trust early on, along with Lupe Burt.
“Our challenge was that when you call yourself a ‘Trust,’ people think your organization has a lot of money and doesn’t need financial support in terms of grants or donations,” Sample said. “ So, we changed our name from the Ormond Beach Historical Trust to the Ormond Beach Historical Society, which solved that problem!”
Lupe Burt was certainly dedicated to her community, but the same could be said for her friendships.
Every Saturday for dinner, she would meet up with her OWLs — Babs Foster, Connie Treloar, Katie Dodd, Sandy Rossmeyer and Evelyn Lynn, the group known as the Old Widow Ladies.
Lynn — a former state representative, senator and Ormond Beach city commissioner — said she’s spent some of her most favorite moments during these dinners. She and Lupe Burt were the oldest of the OWLs.
There have always been six ladies in the group. Lynn was invited to join by the late Sybil Greening, and said the group has been very special.
“We talk about everything — from politics to what kind of nail polish [we’re wearing],” Lynn said. “It’s from personal issues to what’s happening in the world, and it was very inspiring.”
Lynn and Lupe Burt met sometime in the 1960s when Lupe Burt was working to bring the London Symphony Orchestra to Daytona Beach for several summers. Over the years, as Lynn got involved with politics, she found Lupe Burt to be an inspiration. Burt was a role model for her.
“Even as we got older, she was determined to keep on going, and that was very wonderful because as you get older, a lot of things happen in life. ... It can be very depressing, but that’s not the way Lupe was,” Lynn said. “She was always positive.”
Lupe Burt was also a member of the Garden Club of the Halifax Country for 61 years. In addition to serving as president of the club, she later went on to be the zone representative for the area on the Garden Club of America Interchange Fellowship Committee.
One of her biggest accomplishments in this field? The 20-year effort to save Tuscawilla Park in Daytona Beach. Lupe Burt chaired that committee.
“That was an undertaking I don’t think this town has ever seen since, not only because they didn’t have all the clubs and organizations going then,” GCHC member Kay Acquaro said. “It was just a tremendous feat.”
Last year, as the club celebrated its centennial anniversary, Lupe Burt received the GCHC’s first Member Years of Service award for her six decades of membership, and for being a “working member,” at that.
She was a guiding force in the GCHC, Acquaro said.
“But more than that, she was really a beloved and respected member, and I feel like she represented the gracious spirit of our garden club ideals,” she said. “She did everything from leadership roles, to playing hostess at her home, to events. Her leadership level in our club is unsurpassed, no doubt about it.”
Lupe Burt had a way of deciding what needed to be done, and then making those actions happen, Acquaro said.
Lupe Burt’s list of accomplishments is long. She chaired the Historical Preservation Advisory Board for the city, was a member of the Air and Water Pollution Committee of Ormond Beach, served as a board member for the Museum of Arts and Sciences and helped create the former Ormond Beach Memorial Hospital.
She's made us as a city stop, take notice, and gotten a city to care enough to work together to preserve our history. And that's a monumental legacy to try to carry forward." — Amy Valcik, OBHS secretary and board member
But historical preservation was one of her true passions.
“...[She] wanted to maintain what she felt made Ormond a special place,” DeVriese said.
Among the organizations she was involved with, the Historical Society held a special place in her heart. Lynn said Lupe Burt always cared about having an influence on how the community looked at its history.
When the commission decided to tear down the Ormond Hotel, Lynn was the one who managed to save the cupola. She also managed a store in the MacDonald House where people could buy pieces of Ormond Beach history.
“I got pieces out of the old hotel — the legs of bathtubs or things like that,” Lynn recalled with a laugh. “And that’s the kind of thing Lupe liked and appreciated, that you would try to do something. People came from all over to buy pieces of the hotel, and we would paint them. ... I had an artist who worked with me. That’s what Lupe appreciated. That feeling in our community.”
The OBHS is committed to carrying on Lupe Burt’s legacy, Valcik said, and the nonprofit hopes to honor her once it opens a museum of Ormond Beach history in the MacDonald House. Without Lupe Burt, the OBHS wouldn’t exist.
“She’s made us as a city stop, take notice, and gotten a city to care enough to work together to preserve our history,” Valcik said. “And that’s a monumental legacy to try to carry forward.”
