I have been excited for months by the idea of celebrating soon-to-be 100 year old Earl ‘Poppy’ Wilson as the My Winter Park Neighbor of the Year 2022! Poppy is so wonderfully worthy of celebrating with such an award. Poppy is the kind of guy you want in your neighborhood.
In asking family members about him over the past several weeks, the words I hear again and again are kind and friendly, told of the joy he gets interacting with others. The last few years have surely taught us a lot about ourselves, what we individually prize in others. Each day a new opportunity to demonstrate both the best and worst in ourselves. This has been a period in which the goodness, sincerity and jovial nature of someone like Poppy is more than a positive interaction during a day. It can be a LUVly reminder of how we should treat one another, how inspiration can take hold simply by showing up.
As the Covid 19 pandemic created havoc with event and work schedules in March of 2020, the weekly Winter Park Farmers Market was just one of its Local casualties. While a favorite Saturday morning pastime for many, for Poppy, it has been his regular workplace for over 45 years. After retiring from McCrory’s 5 & 10 at 65, he then began working for his son, Earl Jr., and his Earl Wilson’s Tropic Décor in their regular space at the farmers market each week. They are an original vendor, present since its first day in 1979.
I stopped by last week to talk to Earl Jr., Earl III and his eldest, Joyce. In speaking with his grandson, the third of four Earls now in the family, I asked him how everyone keeps track of which Earl is which. He laughed and explained that Poppy, inside the family, is now often called “Old Poppy”, his Dad taking on the “Poppy” name, while he is simply Earl. His son, Earl IV, is “Early”.
Poppy has three daughters and one son, nine grandchildren, 23 great grandchildren and two great great grandchildren. Poppy was married to his wife, Dorothy, for 76 years. “She passed away in 2018 at 95,” Earl Jr. tells me. “They were married 76 years. They got married under age. They were seventeen when they got married. They had to go to another county to get a license. They came back and they both went home, back to their individual houses and didn’t tell anyone for a year.”
He continues to tell me his father was “instrumental in helping me start my business by letting me sell plants that I grew on the sidewalk of McCrory’s at Colonial Plaza. Later we were awarded a 20 foot counter in 15 different McCrory’s. We would buy plants to stock the counters and service them weekly and give the store 15 percent of our sales. My mother was responsible for telling me about the Winter Park Farmers Market before it opened and urged me to join it in 1979 and we have been there ever since. My father retired from McCrory’s at 65 and has been working with us ever since.” That’s 45 years.
When you work the Winter Park Farmers Market on Saturdays, your day starts early. Years ago Earl Jr. told me of days which start around 2 a.m. as they load the trucks. Setup will begin around 5 a.m. Earl III has been working with him each Saturday since he was 12. He is now 37. He describes his grandfather as “the engine” of the operation.
I ask him about their relationship and he replies: “I LUV my grandfather. I try to cook for him at least twice a week. He’s one of the kindest men I’ve ever met.”
So many years doing something he obviously enjoys, I asked both Earl Jr. and Earl III how Poppy reacted to the closing of the market early during the Covid pandemic. Both said he was not pleased, talked about how they needed to get back to work. “He was the one who wanted it,” they shared. “He was like, I’ve got to have something to do.”
Joyce tells me that strong work ethic took hold early in his life. He would walk a paper route in the dark hours of morning delivering newspapers in his hometown of Columbia, South Carolina. “In the winter he would line his body and legs with newspaper to keep out the cold,” she says. “At 100 he is still working. Guess that pretty much proves his work ethic.”
Covid has many office types – of which I live with one – staying home to work online, now prefer just that. So many of us have become comfortable with that scenario, technology enabling it like no time before. As so many do just that, the idea of a man nearly a century old anxious to get back to work, outdoors, interacting with people face to face, it’s that much more noteworthy, admirable. I am quite sure I would not be the only one to attribute a generational aspect here, a head nod to qualities long associated with members of what we have long called The Greatest Generation. Poppy Wilson just might be its perfect poster boy.
Poppy’s family members also talk about his sense of humor. Earl Jr. tells me “he’ll walk a mile just to pull your leg.” As we were chatting last Saturday, I hear laughter and he tells me Poppy “just told a woman he lived to be a hundred by drinking Jack Daniels and chasing women.” Joyce calls her father “a card, a real character” and says all her friends when she was a child would talk about how “handsome your father is.”
“He says that there’s two things he’s always LUVed in life,” Earl III shares. “One was chasing women and two was making money. And he says at 99 he can’t really chase women much anymore. So he does the second as much as he possibly can.” He continues telling me no one else in their family has ever lived to be 100, believes he has “because he wakes up every morning happy, ready to face the day.”
Joyce tells me how proud of him she is, how “he tries to find the good in people, work with them. He’s a good guy. He LUVs people. He doesn’t want to work from home. He would never want that. He wants to feel needed at a job, feel that they couldn’t do it without him.” She agrees with Earl III about his longevity, attributes it to “one thing: He’s friendly and happy, makes jokes. When somebody might feel down, he will pick them up. But he pulls himself up by his boot straps. He came from a family that didn’t have a lot of money. That didn’t stop him. He’s smart, was president of the senior class.”
This wonderful man and extraordinary role model, Poppy Wilson, will be 100 years old this Tuesday, December 27. In honor of this wonderful milestone, Winter Park Mayor Phil Anderson has proclaimed Tuesday Poppy Wilson Day, and there will be a birthday celebration at the Winter Park Farmers Market building from 3 to 5 p.m. to celebrate. All friends, neighbors & fans of Poppy are invited to attend. Tomorrow, at the Winter Park Farmers Market from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., you are invited to drop by the Earl Wilson Tropic Décor space to sign a card for the occasion.
Poppy, thank you for friendly greetings, personable assistance, the humor you have provided during our interactions, those with our friends, neighbors and visitors each Saturday for over 45 years. Our community is richer, our neighborhood more special and unique because of you and your example.
Happy Birthday & Congratulations, Poppy!