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On December 31, 2017 ownership of Won Lee’s Chinese Restaurant in DeLand, FL passed to new owners, ending a nearly 40 year era. My family has a close relationship with Won Lee’s from the very beginning: my dad and my brother helped renovate the building from Jimmy’s Highway Steakhouse into Won Lee’s back in the…
Corner of South Florida Ave and Beresford Ave I’d forgotten about Friendly Way stores, and as best I can tell this may be the only one left. I’m pretty sure the convenience store on New York Ave just East of Blue Lake Ave, near where I grew up, was a Friendly Way as well, but…
South Woodland Blvd
On our way back north this weekend we stopped off for a few hours in DeLand, AKA My Home Town. The following are a few snaps I managed to get in between shepherding The Fam around the many small shops on Small Business Saturday, and of course a stop off in Bellini’s for lunch. I…
When I was a kid back in the 70’s there was pretty much one “major” shopping center in DeLand: Woodland Plaza. This place had everything. It had a Roses, it had a Winn Dixie (or was it a Pantry Pride, or maybe both at different points…), it had a Super-X drugstore (which sounds like an…
Calvary Baptist Church was my family’s church for decades. This was the church my father went to when he was a kid, and of course the one my brother and I both went to when we were kids. My father was baptized by Rev. Leslie Colding…who also happens to be the same person my mother…
Boston Avenue Elementary School was the school I attended from Kindergarten through the end of third grade, when the Volusia County School Board decided to close Boston Ave and Dempsey Brewster, another elementary school across town, and transfer us to the new Blue Lake Elementary School, which was just a few blocks north of my…