The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • 200

K2 Orlando Sentinel SUNDAY, MARCH 11,2001 State honors pioneer carpenter Winter Springs club .) GOLF CLUB John Bistline, president of the Central Florida Society for Historical Preservation, will gather with his family and 2100 Ekana Drive 900 West State Road 434 1 Oviedo, Florida 32765 Winter Springs, Florida 32708 407.366.1211 407.699.1833 Golf courses are in the Practice facilities best condition ever Friendly staff Open to the public And so much more Bar Grill neighbors at a Longwood house on Monday to talk about a Share Longwood photos Josiah Clouser's carpentry will be featured in a new photographic history of Long-wood by the Central Florida, Society for Historic Preserva'-" tion. The society is seeking addi-' tlonal photographs of Loncj-wood, its buildings and its families. If you have photo's' that could help tell the story of Longwood, contact Lee Taylor' at 407-830-4196 or or Barbara) Odom at BCOdomaol.corh or 407-83 1-5820, $10 Off Green Fees (before 12pm) Not valid with any other offer. Exp. Mar 31.200.

Must present coupon Call either dun to make tee time. MultiClub I 3 Memberships Available aotr a f. J1 "5" I ML 9S i iiium' A Great Flondian. The state has honored Josiah B. Clouser, Bistline's great--grandfather, with a round blue historic marker recognizing him through its Great Floridi-ans program, which since 1997 has tried to give credit to those who have contributed to Florida's heritage.

A dedication is set for 1 1 a.m. Monday at the Clouser House at 21 1 W. Warren where the marker will be displayed. Many of Clouser's wooden treasures are gone, including the five to seven vacation cottages he built along Volusia County's Coronado Beach. Clyde Clouser, one of Josiah Clouser's nephews, provided the society with tape recordings of his memories of his uncle.

In the early 1900s, the Clouser family had a chicken farm near the beach. "The chicken farm was about a mile below Old Corona-do, and Old Coronado was about a mile below the town of New Smyrna Beach. Uncle Joe built five or seven cottages there, and there wasn't another cottage there." Beach vacations began when he and his mother boarded a train in Longwood that took them to Orange City, then east to New Smyrna. Clyde's father and an older brother would leave the day before, traveling by horse and wagon to the beach and getting there in time to meet them at the railroad depot. All of those beach cottages were lost to fires.

But Longwood has preserved many of the other old structures built by Josiah Clouser. Roberta Sandler's Florida Historical Walking Tours describes Clouser as one of Longwood's "most important residents." He built many of its landmarks. During the era when Longwood was a mill town and lumbering provided most of the jobs, Clouser was a master car After moving the chapel to its current site near Hermit's Trail Park, Fuller and building contractor Joseph Lewis renovated it. The chapel served the winter residents of Altamonte Springs and the guests at the Altamonte Hotel. George and Louise Lew-ton owned the land where the chapel was built.

Rollins College accepted the deed as tuition for the Lewtons' daughter. Mclntyre, a winter resident from New Hartford, N.Y., who in 1906 bought the Altamonte Hotel and much of the surrounding land, paid Rollins College $600 for the sanctuary. Mc-Intyre's nearby 15-room winter home is known today as the Bradlee-Mclntyre house, which was moved in the 1970s to Longwood's historic district. Clouser, who served as one of Longwood's first aldermen and completed three terms as mayor, also built several other houses and many businesses. The carpenter recognized for his work as a cabinetmaker and stair-builder eventually opened his own shop at Wilma Street and West Bay Avenue.

The workshop is now at 274 Wilma but it originally faced Bay Avenue. Late in his life, Clouser ran a general merchandise store eventually taken over by his son-in-law, Fred J. Niemeyer, who was Longwood's postmaster for 23 years, beginning in 1905. Monday's dedication will be at the Clouser House, the second home he built for his family in Longwood. Nearby is the Clouser Cottage, built in 1881.

The cottage is the oldest house built in Longwood that still stands. The Inside-Outside House is older, but it was built in New England. It gets its name from its odd construction that features support studs on the outside and panels bolted together in ship-lap fashion. A former sailing captain had the prefabricated house, possibly one of the nation's first, built up North in the early 1870s, taken apart, shipped by barge and mule cart to Sanford and finally put together to join a cluster of cottages at Snow Station. Roughly a hundred years later, the site on Boston Avenue was in booming Altamonte Springs.

The Central Florida Society for Historic Preservation saved it from a bulldozer by moving it to Longwood's histor- ik-At Seminole's PASJ JIM ROBISON State Road 436 just east of Mait-land Avenue in Altamonte Springs. It was once the Lake Brantley Union Church. Clouser built it between 1882 and 1885 as a gift to the community from Bostonian Carlos Cush-ing. The site on Lake Brantley was near the Cushing family home, also built by Clouser. One of that house's most striking features is the craftsmanship of the Clouser staircase.

Cushing was an investor in Longwood founder E.W. Henck's three-story hotel. Besides building Henck's second home at 398 Freeman Clouser had a hand in building the Longwood Hotel, which is one of the centerpieces of the city's downtown historic district. Clouser probably worked for Cushing after he bought the unfinished hotel started by Henck for Peter Demens, another of Longwood's hading characters. The PA Demens Co.

sash, door and blind factory was the major supplier of lumber and building materials for much of the area. Demens came to Florida as an exile from czarist Russia in June 1881 and used his lumber company to build a railroad linking Longwood with the Gulf Coast village he named for his hometown in Russia, St. Petersburg. The chapel was abandoned after the Great Freezes of the winter of 1894 and '95. The back-to-back freezes cut that season's fruit harvest to 20 percent of the previous year.

Far worse, the bitter cold killed nearly all the orange trees in Central Florida. Many of the people who relied on citrus in the early communities of Lake Brantley, Altamont, Palm Springs, Forest City, Piedmont and Glen Ethel packed up and left. A decade later, citrus grower Arthur Fuller and wealthy Bostonian Maxwell Mclntyre stumbled on the church in the woods while hunting. ic district, where today it's a shop called the Culinary Cottage at 141 W. Church Ave.

Clouser's cottage was b(nlt soon after he came to Florida from Pennsylvania, Hehck hired him to supervise construction of the Longwood Hotel. Clouser, according to family history, first saw the South while stationed here with Northern troops during the Ciy-ilWar. Clouser, his wife, Elizabeth, and their teenage son and daughter arrived at Sanford's wharves aboard a St. Johns River steamer in November 1881. The only place they could find to stay was "a bale of hay and an old blanket in the upper story of a box board shanty," according to a family history.

That night, they shared tight quarters "with a lot of fleas and wild hogs who lived in the sand under the building," according to a family history. Clouser set out immediately to build a suitable house. First, he built a board and batten cottage at what today is 218 W. Church Ave. It had a central room with a loft, plus a kitchen and front and back porches.

The family lived there for two years. By that time, Clouser had built a larger house behind the cottage on Warren Avenue. (The cottage is now owned by John and Fred Bistline, Clouser's great-grandsons, who lease it as the Apple Basket, a country furnishings shop, at 141 W. Church Ave.) Both houses stand today as testaments to Clouser's skills. Jim Robison, co-author of Flashbacks: The Story of Central Florida's Past, can be reached at jrobisonorlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5137.

penter. On Monday, he earns another title, as an honoree of the state's Great Floridians Heres a sample of what made him great. Come see what Jiin is made ofl Most people today call it the Altamonte Chapel, and it sits off The Senior Forum Aging is personal not (1 size fits all' -if T) I fv. By KENT S. COLLINS TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES Dear Readers: Last weekend in Philadelphia, a group of mid dle-aged cousins and in-laws were quizzing their elders on vV and loneliness that that can bring.

The widows told the middle-aged know-it-alls that adjusting to old age was not a matter of will power, but more a matter of routine. They knew in hindsight that an active routine in early retirement was necessary for an active routine in old age. For example, both women knew women who had been so devoted to their husbands that they had no other routines. When the husbands died, their old routines were meaningless. Both women expressed sympathy for friends forced to cancel an active routine to serve as round-the-clock caregiver to an ailing spouse.

But they said the extreme devotion to duty ended with the ailing spouse dead and the caregiver spouse mortally wounded emotionally. Both widows told their younger nieces and nephews that retired people grow old more gracefully if they keep their own routine of friends and family, activities and chores, separate from those of a spouse, The separate routine lives on come old age and widowhood. Religion played a role in the healthy old age of both women. The spirituality of it was good. The camaraderie and responsibility of religion were better.

They both admitted to finding family more useful, but not out of some reverence to blood relations. The elders said they were selective in family relations. Those that kept them active and happy were nurtured. Those that didn't weren't. "Just because a son or daughter or sister or brother is a blood relative doesn't mean that person will be important to you in old age," claimed one.

"I like you people here. You show me courtesy, not grief. That's why I drove to Philadelphia to be with you this weekend." Finally, both agreed that old age was best where living space was controlled. Neither maintains the old family place. Neither lives in a location that limits their access to the family and friends and activities and chores that provide them with a routine that gives them purpose and makes them happy, If you've got notions about living happily ever after In the golden yearv send e-mail to seniorf orumhome.corb or write to The Senior Forum, co Tribune Media Services, 435 N.

Michigan Ave, Suite 1500, Chicago, IL 60611. one group's revelations and enlightenment about old age and living "happily ever after." Consider them a focus group measuring the golden years. The two elders were both women, both widows, both 80-plus. One was widowed long ago, and one just months ago. One was stooped and slow to walk.

The other was more agile. Both smiled at the nieces and nephews and in-laws quizzing them. Both were quick to interrupt when the "youngers" said something stupid. "You can't watch me and know what it is like to be old," one of the widows interrupted a fat-cat lawyer nephew. "You have no idea what is going on inside me.

Listen, and I will tell you." Both widows told about adjusting. They claimed that early in life adjusting came easy to them. In old age, they had to work hard to adjust. They had to work hard to adjust to some physical aches and pains. They had to work hard to adjust their budgets from their husbands' good paychecks to their own Social Security and dividends checks.

And, they said, most of all they had to adjust to being widows and all the insecurity the nature of a long and happy life. The "young" people wondered why some other older folks in their family were tired and worn, unhappy and complaining, boring and shut-in. As middle-aged, know-it-all, upper-middle-class people do, they tried to force their assumptions into the conversation: A hard life of difficult experiences leads to an ailing old age. Genetics control the aging clock, Personality determined long ago dictates whether a person grows old to enjoy the golden years or grows old to become a grumpy geezer. The two older folks in the Philadelphia reunion group cut off the conversation.

They acknowledged that hard life, genetics and personality were factors in promoting or arresting "a long and happy life." But they insisted other factors contributed more. And so, this column is about Retirement should mean less work and more play Thati why at Summerville at Lake Mary we do all the chores cooking, cleaning, laundry, maintenance and yard work. And, iti why we make sure our recreational program includes outings, entertainment, on-site classes, religious service and much more. Our residents receive assistance if they need it, while enjoying the independence and privacy they want. Plus-, ihey have the added peace of mind of knowing our professional, well-trained staff is available 24 hours a day and that our beautiful, brand-new building is equipped with a variety of safety features, including an emergency call system in each room Specialized Alzheimer and demenlia care available through our SummerBrook program.

Discover high-quality, high-value senior living. Call today lo arrange tourl (f ((07)688-1660 SlIMMERVILLf AT LAKE MARY Senior Resident! tnd Assisted Living 3655 West Lake Mary Blvd. Lake Mary How to Contact the Sentinel in Seminole For your Personal Invitation to Our Grand Owwing Thuruky, March 15 at 4.00 p.m. plruir ill oui and rr turn the coupon Mow. Yas, I'd Ilk an Invitation to the Grand Opanlnf Calibration.

Nwntlll. Add ml ADVERTISING 407-772-8000 SPORTS 407-320-0915 CIRCULATION 407-420-5353 Hp. The Orlando Sentinel has two offices in Seminole County to serve its readers: Serving south and west Seminole County is the Altamonte Springs office at 715 Douglas Suite 101, 32714; telephone: 407-772-8030. Serving north Seminole County is the Sanford office at 541 N. Palmetto Suite 105, 32771, telephone: 407-322-3513.

If you have an idea for a story or photograph for this section, call the Sentineh news line, 407-420-541 1,1 or the news office nearest you. Letters from readers are welcome. Keep letters to 300 words or less and limited to a single topic. They must be signed and include the writer's name, address and phone numher, Letters may be edited for accuracy, space and legal considerations. Mail letters to the Altamonte Springs office or e-mail to jnewmanorlandosentinel.com.

i I Won Rtlurn lo Richard Stppala, Director of Community Relations, Sumnwrvlllt al Ukt Mary. 365S Lake Mary Lake Mary, FL 327MS. lak ti www iurrlllanloriMiil cam i.