Community Sunday Favorites: The Life and Legacy of Vernon Peeples

Lifelong Punta Gorda resident Vernon Peeples dedicated his life to preserving the history of Charlotte Harbor.

PUNTA GORDA — Most folks want to create a legacy for themselves before they die, whether it is through their children, their career or their livelihood. But it isn’t often that people dedicate their lives to preserve the legacy of an entire town or region. That’s exactly what one Punta Gorda resident did.

Vernon Peeples remembered watching his dad collect old bottles and books. He was just a kid when he began gathering historic items related to his hometown and the Charlotte Harbor area. He first amassed items that children are naturally drawn to, like rustic arrowheads and colorful postcards.

When he passed away April 15, at age 85, he’d acquired quite an assemblage of relics. One of his arrowheads dated back to 100,000 B.C. and the number of postcards he amassed was more than 20,000.

He also owned the first map of Florida, hand drawn in 1687, and another done almost a century later by world-renowned cartographer Sir Thomas Jeffreys. The maps were professionally framed and hung on the wall in his den. Another frame held the first chart of Charlotte Harbor. He proudly pointed them out as I entered the room.

I was working as a reporter for the Charlotte Sun Herald when I first met Peeples. He invited me to his downtown residence, describing it as “the one with the big poinsettia tree in the front yard.” It was the home he shared with his wife of 67 years, Edna Jane Peeples.

I was doing a story about the Church of the Good Shepard, one of the oldest churches in Punta Gorda. Back in 2012, the church celebrated the return of a 110-year-old bell that had been fixed after it was cracked and forgotten on the church property for several decades.

Edna Jane Peeples poses for a photo on her wedding day.

Of course Vernon was involved in the restoration, not only were he and Edna Jane church members, he was also a walking encyclopedia of information and go-to source for anything that had to do with history.

Edna offered me sweet tea as I turned the corner and entered Vernon’s lair. He was sitting at an old desk surrounded by thousands of books, all out-of-print editions filled with Florida history.

We shared some of our favorites like the Lures of Manatee, by Lillie McDuffie and the Edge of Wilderness by Jane Snyder Matthews.

He then told his account of the Sarasota Democratic Vigilantes. It was almost the same speech he’d presented to the Manatee Historical Society back in the 1960s.

Well into his 80s at that time, Vernon was still sharp as a whip. In fact, he’d recently published a Punta Gorda history book based on his life’s collection. He autographed it for me, spelling my name wrong in the process.

I still have it. Normally my books are highlighted, dog-eared and tabbed, but I never could bring myself to do that to Vernon’s book. It was beautifully written and illustrated with excerpts from century-old newspapers and magazines, all of them from his collection of course.

Vernon even had a photocopy of the fist page of the first edition of the Punta Gorda Herald, dated February 17, 1897. Everything in his office was meticulously cataloged on 15,000, hand-typed index cards.

I learned of Vernon’s death a few months back.

The Peeples family in the early days.

Edna Jane had died earlier this year, and Vernon passed away eight months later. A colleague of mine wrote me an email, saying the rumor was that an otherwise healthy Vernon died of a broken heart.

Vernon and Edna Jane (she went by both her first and middle name) met on November 2, 1945. They were both high-school students in Punta Gorda. They dated throughout high school and into college, their courtship chronicled by hundreds of letters they wrote when they were separated. Vernon attended Florida State University while Edna Jane studied nursing in Miami. Vernon kept every one.

In 1951, the two got hitched and eventually had three children. They were together until Edna Jane’s passing. During that time they had one son, Vernon Peeples, junior and were pillars of the community. Peeples served as a state legislator. He also hosted a public radio show about Florida’s history and issues from 1997 to 2010.

The couple created a non-profit history center that not only houses Vernon’s expansive personal collection, but also encourages other collectors to donate their assemblages to be stored for future generations.

The Punta Gorda History Center is currently under construction. When it reopens it will display many of the times in Vernon’s collection and preserve the legacy of the town he loved so much.