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Hernando Today

We Are As Capable As Anyone Else

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By ADON TAFT

Hernando Today Correspondent

Published: February 8, 2009

BROOKSVILLE - What most have in common is a childhood where on one level they seemed like everyone else. But by the time they were 6 or 7, they knew they were different because of the color of their skin and the way they were treated.

Despite those circumstances and unlike many in their communities, these women and men were convinced they were as good and as capable as anyone else no matter their pigmentation and where they went to school. Today, not only are they among the movers and shakers of Hernando County's African-American community but more and more in places of leadership and influence throughout a less segregated, if not fully intergraded, society in general.

Their stories are the latter-day chapters of Black History now recognized during an officially designated month every February, to the chagrin of some.

Barbara Manzi, Walter Dry and Luther Cason represent a shift in the makeup in this group of women and men who in their lifetime not only have witnessed but have experienced the historic change in the black experience in Hernando County and the nation as a whole. They are people of color in business and politics who more and more are the power brokers in both racial and interracial communities.
Barbara Manzi
Manzi is the owner and president of Manzi Metals Inc., located in Brooksville's airport industrial park. The company is the nation's first black woman-owned minority contractor for the U.S. Department of Defense. The firm is a multi-metal distribution center that provides stainless steel, aluminum, copper, brass, high-temperature alloys and titanium to the aerospace industry, the Department of Defense and such manufacturing corporations as Rolls Royce for its turbine engines.

Her achievement might not have been expected from a black woman born in Cape Cod, Mass., rather than in or around Hernando County where most of the other local leaders got their start in life. But the segregated communities had their similarities.

"I had a school teacher come right out and tell me that I was just a little black girl from a poor family and I had to learn to cook and sew to be successful in life," she recalls. "I thought it was good advice and today I am a fabulous cook."

One of 12 children of a white father and African-American mother, Manzi went on to finish her education at a community college, marry Louis, an Air Force veteran who became a New York policeman, have two children and, after they were in school, enter the work force as the token black clerk in an upscale New York department store. She worked her way up into management and then left to manage a mid-town specialty shop dressing executive women.

A racial slur from a top executive after a management change at that shop prompted Manzi to look for another job. When she found that a nearby aerospace company was offering on-the-job training in sales, she made her move. After three years there, she formed her own company. And since her son Louis, a Navy veteran, was working for an aerospace company in Port Richey, she named him vice president of her firm that they located in Brooksville in 1989 because this part of the state "offered the best tax structure, friendly people and the generosity of three white businessmen - Dennis Wilfong, then owner of Innovative Technologies, who provided free warehouse space to get started; Jim Reiley, of Jamari Industries, who loaned us some necessary machines; and Sam Shrievs, of Capital Bank, who arranged financing to launch the business."

Today, Manzi and her company are the recipients of many awards. She is an active member of the Hernando County Chamber of Commerce and her company is supplier to such prestigious clients as the Department of Defense, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, NASA and many others.

Despite being respected and looked upon as a leader both in the African-American community and a friendly community at large, Manzi feels she still faces prejudices, particularly from the government, that white-owned businesses do not.

"I even have to prove that I'm a black woman to qualify for minority-owned small business contracts," she said. "And my driver's license is not enough. I have to show my birth certificate, marriage license and other papers. I also have to show financial information that is not required of white-owned businesses."

She pictures President Barack Obama as "the perfect choice" to bring a color-blind racial climate to fruition because of a heritage similar to her own - parents of different races. "He is not the president of the blacks nor president of the whites but president for all the people."

Walter Dry

Another example of the new black community leadership from the business and professional ranks is Walter Dry, 75, the retired administrator of the Pathology/Laboratory Service of the Veterans Administration Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y., who now is a church and professional leader not only in the predominantly white community of Spring Hill but throughout the nation.

Born in Wilmington, N.C., Dry said neighborhoods were not so segregated in his growing up years but the racial differences were emphasized outside the neighborhood where blacks sat at the back of the bus and went to separate theaters, restaurants and schools. He and his two younger sisters attended the black high school there. He graduated at the age of 16.

His father, who had struggled to save the money, wanted him to go to Howard College and become a doctor. But Dry persuaded him to save the money for his sisters and to sign for him to enter the armed services at age 17 "to let Uncle Sam educate me."

Dry's five years in the Air Force earned him two specialties in medical technology - emergency treatment in air rescue and laboratory analysis of blood and urine. When he got out he got a job in the VA lab where he "started at the bottom and rose to the top."

The expertise he acquired in 39 years in the field led to consulting businesses in which Dry designed and supervised the building of clinical laboratories for a number of hospitals and still serves as an equal employment opportunity investigator and labor relations consultant for the Veterans Administration and other government and private entities. He is a sought after lecturer and trainer in the field of the prevention of discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace.

Dry found that the Air Force experience, though not free of incidents in the barracks and in the community, taught him that racial prejudices can be overcome when men and women have to get to know each other because they are working for the same goals.

When he and his wife, Glenda, a former nurse, moved to Spring Hill in 1987, Dry found that segregation was not based on race or religion but only "over what you could afford." So they located in the developing area of Forest Oaks and found a welcome at the Spring Hill First United Methodist Church where "we didn't see another minority face."

The father of two children and grandfather of two grandsons has worked his way up church leadership ranks to his present role as lay leader of the 70-church Gulf Central District of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church, member of the Leadership Council of the conference and member of several other conference boards, including the Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious concerns.

In the community at large, Dry is the former chairman of the Hernando County Health Care Advisory Board, has served as a director of Hernando/Pasco Hospice, the former president of United Way of Hernando County and chairman of the Florida United Way, former chairman of the Human Rights Coalition of Hernando County, and a member of board of the NAACP and numerous other boards.

"People really are beginning to see that it doesn't matter what you look like, what your ethnicity is but what you have in your heart, doing things to help other people. That's how they measure people today," he observed.

Luther E. Cason

One of the new breed who falls into two categories - business owner and political leader - is Luther E. Cason. A 67-year-old native of Dade City, Cason became Brooksville's first black city councilman, serving from 1990 through 1994. He was the first black mayor in 1992.

After attending a segregated high school in Dade City, Cason served nine years in the Army, worked a stint for the telephone company, then learned embalming at Miami-Dade Community College where he graduated as president of his class in 1971.

Cason, married and the father of six children, opened his funeral home in a racially segregated Brooksville (although the schools were intergraded) in 1976. "There was more of a black community then and my clientele was strictly black," recalls the owner of a monument firm and a limousine service in addition to his funeral homes here and in Inverness. He also has a real estate license.

An active member of Shady Rest First Baptist Church who serves on many government, community and business boards, Cason hopes to inspire younger people to achieve the way he was influenced by John D. Floyd, the much-honored black educator after whom the elementary school is named, and Frank Fisk, a white county commissioner "who seemed more concerned about the issues in the black community than others."

Cason is convinced the election of President Obama reinforces his own view that "over the years, blacks have begun to see that if you have a dream of whatever it might be, it can be accomplished. The young people today can see where their parents and fore parents have come from and where they can go if they have a mind to."

Adon Taft is a resident of Brooksville. He can be reached at adontaft@yahoo.com.

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