FL - White House Boys, Dozier School for Boys, Marianna

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USF and the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office (that's for the county that USF is in) has recently reached out to Florida communities asking for help to locate families of some of the boys to help identify the remains of children buried at the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.

The attachment was sent in an email from my city's Neighborhoods division in mid-May to community groups (the list was originally published mid-April 2014).

Please view and share the attached list with friends, family and the community. If you know anyone on the list, or know of remaining family, please contact Master Detective Greg Thomas, Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, 813-247-8678 with information.


There are 42 names on the list (attached PDF).

After a bit more cross-checking, I located the same information on the HCSO's web site here, posted 4/15/14:
http://www.hcso.tampa.fl.us/About-HCSO/Press-Releases/Releases/2014/April/14-142.aspx

Includes the list, with 6 names highlighted and this good news:
"Since our January update, we have located 6 family members (highlighted in yellow) and we are in the process of collecting DNA from these individuals."
 

Attachments

  • 20140508154526542.pdf
    75.4 KB · Views: 18
http://www.wjhg.com/home/headlines/No-Human-Remains-Found-at-Dozier-School-for-Boys-266804831.html

After hundreds of hours digging, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, University of South Florida Anthropologist Erin Kimmerle has announced what she's found at the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna.

After more than a year of research, Kimmerle says she's found....absolutely nothing. Her report to the state says she and her team did not find any of the alleged secret graves on the Dozier campus...

In her report, Kimmerle says the remains her team unearthed all died prior to the 1950's and before the alleged abuse at the small building known as the White House.
Click to expand...
 
http://www.kspr.com/news/nationworld/boy-missing-since-1940-idd-in-florida/21051646_27356340

After more than seven decades, the 85-year-old has found Owen. She hopes to soon lay him to rest at the Auburndale, Florida, cemetery where her parents lie. Her mom, after all, instructed her, "Put him with me and daddy."

George Owen Smith was sent at age 14 to the Florida Industrial School for Boys in 1940 for car theft. Krell never saw him again, and her family was told he died of pneumonia after running away from the school and hiding under a house in town...

Owen's body, the team found out last month, was the first to be pulled out of the ground. The university announced the finding Thursday. "We hope it's the first of many identifications to come," Kimmerle said.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for posting that link, OkieGranny.

I came here to post (basically) the same thing I saw on CNN, but you beat me to it. I'll post that link anyway since it has a video I THOUGHT would feature the identification, but is just a blurb about the situation at the school. Text part is the same.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/us/florida-boys-school-dna-match/index.html?hpt=hp_t2



Here are a couple links I found that I didn't see on this thread (I may have overlooked them if they are).

They both have videos featuring former "students" at the school talking about their experiences.
I liked that you could see/hear them talk about it, rather than just reading about what they had to say.

For their own good: a St. Petersburg Times special report on child abuse at the Florida School for Boys (4/17/2009)
http://www.tampabay.com/features/hu...times-special-report-on-child-abuse-at/992939

Sheriff investigates claims of 'torture,' killings at Okeechobee reform school (7/11/2014)
http://www.tampabay.com/features/hu...heartened-by-investigation-of-alleged/2188161
 
There is at least one other thread on this wretched school. One of the boys has been identified and it was announced today.

I will copy/paste what I put on that thread and put it here.

Thanks for posting that link, OkieGranny.

I came here to post (basically) the same thing I saw on CNN, but you beat me to it. I'll post that link anyway since it has a video I THOUGHT would feature the identification, but is just a blurb about the situation at the school. Text part is the same.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/07/us/flo...html?hpt=hp_t2



Here are a couple links I found that I didn't see on this thread (I may have overlooked them if they are).

They both have videos featuring former "students" at the school talking about their experiences.
I liked that you could see/hear them talk about it, rather than just reading about what they had to say.

For their own good: a St. Petersburg Times special report on child abuse at the Florida School for Boys (4/17/2009)
http://www.tampabay.com/features/hum...buse-at/992939

Sheriff investigates claims of 'torture,' killings at Okeechobee reform school (7/11/2014)
http://www.tampabay.com/features/hum...lleged/2188161
Click to expand...



This is the link I thanked OkieGranny for:

Boy missing since 1940 ID'd in Florida
http://www.kspr.com/news/nationworld...51646_27356340


What'sThatClue posted this earlier today. It WAS about how they were going to make an announcement but now links to what the announcement was.

USF Dozier researchers identify first set of remains
http://mynews13.com/content/news/cfn...hers_to_a.html
 
What a blessing that Ovell can finally have some closure, and that her brother, George , can now be properly laid to rest. I pray for similar outcomes for these other young boys and their families.
 
http://www.turnto23.com/lifestyle/f...nd-recalls-horrors-of-florida-reform_85266123

Joseph Johnson was 3 when he was sent to a foster home. When he was 6 his mother was killed. At 12 he was beaten so badly by his stepmother Florida authorities removed him from her care. A judge sent the child to a place that sounded like a haven — the new Florida School for Boys at Okeechobee.

There the real hell began. For 10 months, three weeks, four days and some 10 hours, the boy lived in fear. He was beaten, tormented, molested. Struck so often and so hard with a 2 ½-foot-long, 5-inch-wide leather paddle that blood soaked his blue jeans. He got no medical help.

Long after he escaped Okeechobee, the emotional and mental pain festered. For years he tried washing out the hurt with alcohol. Eventually he coped by confronting the past and with ongoing therapy and medication. Now the 68-year-old Army veteran and retired truck driver is telling his story.
Click to expand...
 
http://www.theledger.com/article/20140923/NEWS/140929628

The University of South Florida investigation into 55 unmarked graves at a former Florida reform school infamous for its abusive practices has brought peace to a second Polk County family after a decades-long wait.

"It was a moral issue for our family because these boys were never tried or convicted of anything," said Glen Varnadoe, 64, of Lakeland, referring to Hubert Varnadoe and Thomas Varnadoe. The brothers were sent to the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in 1934. Only his late father, Hubert, returned from Dozier after a nine-month stay, Varnadoe said. Thomas Varnadoe died at age 13, just 34 days after his arrival.

"I'm very pleased with the outcome. My mission all along was to bring back my uncle's remains," Varnadoe said. "Now I can return his remains back from that atrocity-laden soil."
Click to expand...
 
Researchers have identified two more sets of remains buried on the grounds of a former Florida Panhandle reform school for over a half-century, the team announced Thursday.

The University of South Florida team said it has identified the remains of 13-year-old Thomas Varnadoe and 12-year-old Earl Wilson, who both died while confined at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys.

Varnadoe died in 1934, reportedly of pneumonia. Wilson was beaten to death in 1944, reportedly by four other boys while in a small confinement cottage on the property, known as the "sweat box." The other boys were convicted in his death.
Click to expand...
http://www.news4jax.com/news/researchers-to-announce-more-dozier-school-findings/28238256
 
http://www.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php/sid/226481085

University of South Florida forensic anthropologists looking into decades-old deaths at the Florida School for Boys were hoping to get some clues to what killed Thomas Curry. A coroner in 1925 reported that Curry, whose body was found on a railroad track 20 miles from the school said he was killed by "a wound to the forehead, skull crushed from unknown cause."

But the exhumation Tuesday at a Catholic cemetery in West Philadelphia opened another mystery. The coffin in Curry's grave was like those used at the school but held only more wood...

Investigators said they could not tell if the school shipped a coffin full of wood to Curry's grandmother in Philadelphia or if the body was removed after it arrived there. Curry ran away after only 29 days at the school.
Click to expand...
 
This turned up in a Google Alert I keep for the Dozier school for boys:

Decades-old coffin found empty in Dozier School case
http://www.newsherald.com/news/crim...in-found-empty-in-dozier-school-case-1.383999

I'm still torn about all of this, the generation of poverty in society as reflected this era of the school's history is horrible enough, families that could barely afford to care for the boys who ended up at the school were often without means to follow up on their well-being. Not everyone was a throw-away child, however.

The mention of an empty casket unnerves me though, as if money was taken frmo a family (or the state) to give a child a burial when something more sinister may have happened to that child and he is buried elsewhere, or worse unaccounted for altogether. I feel like this may deviate from the apathetic "that's just the way it was" types of passive corruption/abuse in the school, to something more malicious and structured.

JMO...and I hope I'm wrong.
 
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