By Peek Hames – Originally published in the 2008 Founder’s Review
Roy Abshier is as much at home sitting in a deer stand or frying up mullet on the shore of Lake George as he is behind a desk or giving a political speech. He spent the first year of his life in a home where the Chevron Station is located today, across from the old Belleview School. In 1940, his dad bought a 420-acre farm on Turkey Road (SE 110th St.), four miles west of Belleview. The next four years, the family lived in an old wooden farmhouse with no electricity or running water. After four years in 1944, his dad contracted with Tom Hames to build a new home “on the road”. They now had indoor plumbing and electricity where he lived and enjoyed the farm life for ten more years until his dad sold the property. He remembers a great life on the farm with kerosene lamps, a wood stove, a smokehouse for curing meat, chicken coops, and the crops and livestock.
Without electricity, there were not too many ways of preserving food other than canning. His mother would can everything from meat to guavas and even made her soap. There was plenty to do, but there was time to play too. One of Roy’s fondest memories is horseback riding with his friend, Alonzo Belle Hope. He and Alonzo raced on the road and spent lots of time riding in the woods, most of which is the greenway property today. Life was good.
One of his favorite memories was grinding their sugar cane in the fall. The mule would walk in circles, turning the cane mill, squeezing the juice out, which was strained and put in a syrup kettle to cook over an open fire. The syrup was then put in 1/2-gallon buckets to be eaten, given away, and sold. A good weekend was when one of his cousins would come stay the weekend with him.
From the third grade thru the sixth grade, Roy sometimes either rode his bike or his pony the four miles to Belleview School. There was no school bus out that way. The road wasn’t paved and had several challenging hills. While coming down one of those hills at a high rate of speed, he wrecked his bicycle and skinned and bruised his body nearly from head to toe. A man named Shep Jenkins was sitting on his porch and heard the commotion. He came and loaded Roy and his bike into his pickup truck and carried him home.
At the bottom of one of the hills, a creek crossed the road, and on some hot days, Roy would stop and drink water right from the road. When the oranges were ripe, he sometimes would stop and eat an orange from a tree near the road. Around 1947, Roy’s dad bought Mr. Clyatt’s property, which consisted of a restaurant, bus station, and garage, in Belleview at the intersection of 441-27-301. He turned it into a grocery store, naming it Roy’s Cash Market. He later built an apartment on the store, sold the farm, and the family moved to Belleview. “When Dad sold the farm, it was one of the saddest days of my life,” Roy said. One of Roy’s chores at the market was filling the cold drink machine and keeping the empty bottles separated and stacked. These were the days before aluminum and plastic, and each bottle was worth two cents.
It was still Tom Sawyer days for Roy in the Belleview and surrounding area. He enjoyed fishing in the clear water of Lake Lillian, playing in the Grotto, getting 10-cent comic books at Jeffers store, and playing marbles on the clay roads or on the clay basketball court behind the old school. “We played for keeps too,” he said, “Everyone carried their marbles in an old sock.”
The Belleview School only went to the eighth grade, and high school students had the choice of riding the bus to Summerfield or Ocala to continue their education. Roy rode the bus to Ocala for the next four years, and after graduation, he joined the Marine Corps. In 1959, when his tour was over, he returned to Belleview and got a job first as a rod man and then operating a D8 bulldozer with the company that was building the new four-lane highway from Belleview to Leesburg.
In the fall, he enrolled at CFCC and later Florida State University. While at CFCC, he worked from 4 PM to 10 PM as a bellhop at Howard Johnsons on South 441. It was there he met the officials with the company that were building a plant to manufacture vitrified clay sewer pipe. The president of the company offered Roy a job and “I jumped at the opportunity and worked there between semesters for three summers. It paid better than the bellhop job. That was my first exposure to any kind of manufacturing, and it was very interesting,” he said.
Mr. Abshier sold the grocery store to Bruce Smith in 1953. Eventually, he built the Alrmina restaurant where Burger King is now located. In 1962, Roy bought the Alrmina restaurant from his dad, which at one time was the only restaurant on Hwy 301 that was open 24 hours between Tampa and Jacksonville. The Al in the name was for his dad, the R for Roy, and Mina for his mother. He operated the restaurant until he sold it in 1967. During this time, in 1963, he married his wife Lou.
After selling the restaurant, he took a job as a lumber salesman for Webb Lumber Company out of Atlanta with the whole state of Florida as his territory. He also became a “weekend realtor” as a part-time salesman with Clotfelter Realty. With his family growing and a desire to be home more, he went to work in real estate full time and opened his own business, Roy Realty in 1970. He did that full time for 20 years, and in 1990, he started an Allstate Insurance Agency, which is now owned by his son Emery. Along with all of his business activities, politics has always been an important part of his life, from his early days at CFCC, where he became a Republican and was elected president of the Political Union to the current Chairman of the Republican party of Marion County.
He was elected Mayor of Belleview in 1969 and served in that capacity for ten years before being the first Republican elected to the Marion County Commission since reconstruction days in 1980, and where he served Marion County for eight years.
Reminiscing about his public service, Roy states, “The opportunity to make a difference is a blessing straight from God. There are several definitions for Biblical love. To love God is to adore and worship him. When he instructs us to love one another, a contemporary dictionary is where that kind of love is defined, “a benevolent concern for the benefit of another”. Unselfish and political involvement is a good way to do just that. The rewards are not monetary; they are much better than that. You make friends and meet some very interesting people along the way. I met one such person while serving as Mayor of Belleview. He was one of the smartest men I have ever met. There was almost nothing he couldn’t do or figure out how to do. I describe his abilities as knowledge by intuition. Belleview made giant strides during the seventies and it all began when the man, Jim Rainey, came to work as City Superintendent for the City of Belleview. He not only carried out the policies as set by the city commission, he helped shape those policies. I was fortunate to have worked with Jim and others such as Bill Giles, Bob Howie and Reginald Black. Working with them and others like them was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.”
Retirement is just a word to Roy. He is actively involved with the Republican Party, still holds his broker’s license and still sells some insurance and also leads a weekly Sunday school bible study, besides being an avid outdoorsman and seasoned hunter.
Roy and Lou have a daughter, Mary Lena, a full time mother and wife, two sons, Edward, a civil engineer and Emery, an Allstate agent and blueberry farmer and a great son-in-law, two wonderful daughters-in-law and 10 special grandchildren. “I thank God for my family and for my parents and the love they showed me. Most of all I am blessed and grateful for the love and support of my wife Lou,” Roy proudly says.
