Tag: monument

Monument Of States

~ Timothy Jeffers ~ 1 Comment

From a recent visit to the Monument of States, it was conceived as a symbol of American unity after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and is located at 300 E. Monument Avenue in Kissimmee Florida. It was built by volunteers, with donations of stone that came from around the world, including a rock from President Franklin D Roosevelt.. It was the brainchild of Charles W. Bressler-Pettis, who also hoped it would become a unique tourist attraction for the city.

St Anne’s Shrine

~ Tim Jeffers

 

Another roadside attraction that I recently visited was St Anne’s Shrine.It was built around 1920 by French-speaking Catholics on a lake six miles east of Lake Wales, Florida. The shrine commemorates St. Anne’s miraculous healing of terminally ill cancer-ridden boy after he swam in adjacent St. Anne’s Lake. Most of it was demolished by an unsympathetic Catholic Church in 1950, but some vestige survives today.

Anti Gravity Monument

~ Tim Jeffers ~ 1 Comment

Another unusual roadside attraction this is located on the University of Tampa.

It doesn’t defy gravity literally, but the anti-gravity monument does take a defiant stand toward what its originator once called “Our Enemy No. 1.”

Gravity was Roger Babson’s nemesis and obsession ever since his sister drowned when he was a teenager. Babson blamed gravity, and when he later became a millionaire businessman he founded the Gravity Research Foundation to find a way to defeat it. He also gave money and stock to over a dozen colleges and universities if they placed one of his inspirational tombstone-like monuments on their campuses. Tampa’s went up in 1965, inscribed “to remind students of the blessings forthcoming when science determines what gravity is, how it works, and how it may be controlled.”

Babson died in 1967 but his monuments remain. Gravity, which makes big rocks too heavy to move, turned out to be his friend after all.

Anti Gravity Monument