Time to soak up mermaid tales, cheer manatees | Commentary

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Florida native and author Lu Vickers, in a journey that began while researching her novel “Breathing Underwater,” she became an expert on the history of Weeki Wachee and its mythical mermaids. She'll tell the story, illustrated with vintage photos, in a free online program Nov. 13, presented by the Orange County Regional History Center.

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Time to soak up mermaid tales, cheer manatees | Commentary

 

Mermaid Barbara Colson checks her hair in a publicity shot for Weeki Wachee Springs snapped about 1960 by photographer Sparky Schumacher. (Florida State Archives)

 

Florida author Lu Vickers remembers that sinking feeling. She was 11 years old and her parents had just dropped her off for a visit with her Georgia cousins. Anxiety set in, but it vanished when her cousin Kim introduced her to the neighborhood kids with the words, “she’s from Florida.”

The Georgia kids just stared at the Florida girl — but in a good way, their minds in those pre-Disney days full of white sandy beaches, Monkey Jungles, and probably the “Spring of Live Mermaids” at Weeki Wachee. It was the first time Vickers saw the hold her “weird native state had on the imaginations of outsiders,” she recalls.

Her native state would come to have a hold on Vickers, too. Eventually, in a journey that began while researching her novel “Breathing Underwater,” she became an expert on the history of Weeki Wachee and its mythical mermaids, among other things. It’s a story she’ll tell, illustrated with vintage photos, in a free online program on Nov. 13 presented by the Orange County Regional History Center.

Showbiz, underwater

Weeki Wachee Springs first opened in 1947 and made its mark by mixing showbiz fun with a display of natural Florida’s wonders. The deep, high-magnitude springs that serve as its underwater “stage” pour out 170 million gallons daily.

Like much of Florida’s underwater lore, the Weeki Wachee story begins with Newton “Newt” Perry, an instructor for Navy combat swimmers. After World War II, he invented the technique of underwater breathing using an air hose instead of a scuba tank. Perry’s system enabled performers to give the audience the illusion of human beings flourishing in 20 feet of water. A big tank on your back would break that spell fast.

Newton “Newt” Perry, founder of Weeki Wachee Springs, helped promote Florida in many stunt shots, including this one with Edith Allen Landt at Silver Springs from about 1950. (Florida State Archives)

In October 1947, Perry presented the first “live underwater mermaid show” to the public at his new underwater theater at Weeki Wachee. In 1959, the ABC network acquired the attraction and increased its promotion tremendously. Early shows that had consisted mostly of mermaids performing stunts such as eating and drinking underwater were extended to musical production shows with various themes.

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The springs drew crowds and visiting celebrities, including Esther Williams, Arthur Godfrey and Elvis Presley. By the way, one of the early mermaids, Susan Backlinie, gained a kind of creepy cinematic fame as the first victim in the don’t-go-near-the-water classic “Jaws.”

By the 1970s, after Walt Disney World opened and the theme-park era began to shape Florida tourism, smaller attractions struggled. ABC eventually sold Weeki Wachee, sparking fears the attraction would cease to exist. But the state’s announcement in early 2008 that it would become a state park gave its now-mythical mermaids a new lease on their underwater life, earning their place as true icons of Florida.

In John Sayles’ 2002 movie “Sunshine State,” for example, actress Edie Falco plays a former mermaid who remembers her career with a memorable line: “The important thing is to keep that smile on your face, even when you’re drowning.”

Perhaps that’s a metaphor for our state itself, a place that perpetually puts on a happy face, inviting visitors to “come on down” even as our state and its natural environment struggle amid the onslaught of development.

That natural environment includes manatees, one of the creatures that’s inspired mermaid legends over the centuries. In 1493, Christopher Columbus thought he spotted three of them as he sailed near Haiti. The mermaids “rose well out of the sea,” he noted in his journal, “but they were not so beautiful as they are said to be.”

They were manatees, beautiful to Floridians. In June, it was reported that more than 10 percent of Florida’s estimated population of them, 761 manatees, had died since the start of 2021, already surpassing the total number of manatee deaths in 2020.

November has been Manatee Awareness Month since Gov. Bob Graham declared it so in 1979. It’s a great time to learn more about our other real live mermaids — the ones who inspired the myth that thrives at Weeki Wachee.