Download Magazine - Levin College of Law - University of Florida

Douglass at 6th birthday
party with dog Bullger
GETTING NOTICED
Barkdull, the only person who served on all three Florida
Constitution Revision Commissions in the 20th Century,
remembers hearing about Douglass before they even met as
underclassmen at UF.
“His reputation preceded him,” says Barkdull, who was a
few years ahead of Douglass in school. “I heard about him
from some people from West Florida. They said thereʼs this
freshman boy thatʼs going somewhere. Heʼs a good orator, they
said, so I went over and heard him make a campaign speech
and he was pretty good.”
He had a chance to see Douglass in action years later when
he appeared before the Judicial Qualifications Commission on
which Barkdull sat as a judge.
“I think heʼs one of the best lawyers that I know,” Barkdull
says. “Heʼs the kind of lawyer that would try most any case. He
studies them hard and heʼs good. I donʼt think thereʼs anybody
in North Florida thatʼs any better in front of a jury than he is.”
Douglassʼs affiliation with the Democratic Party is an
integral part of who he is. His father was W. D. “Cooter”
Douglass, a newspaper publisher in Okaloosa County and a
popular radio newscaster whose staunch Democrat views were
broadcast throughout the Panhandle. His mother, Marie Folmar
Douglass, owned and operated two restaurants in Crestview.
Douglass was born in Pensacola on December 6, 1929, just
weeks after Black Monday and the onset of the Great Depression.
“My dad used to say I was conceived in prosperity and born in
depression,” he says. “And it was depression alright.” Like just
about every other business, his fatherʼs newspaper business
went broke, and he landed a job selling snuff all over West
Florida. “He sold two carloads a week of snuff, if you can
believe it,” Douglass says. “Apparently everybody used snuff
in those days, all the old women, everybody.”
COUNTRY LIVING
After landing work with the U.S. forest service, his father
moved the family to West Florida, to the Blackwater Forest
in Munson, coincidentally near to Walton County where the
Douglass family had originally settled as a pioneer family
in the 1820s and his motherʼs family had arrived in the late
1890s from Alabama. Coming from Tallahassee, Munson was
“in the boonies,” he recalls. For a young boy, it turned out to
be heaven on earth.
“It was a great deal for me,” Douglass says. “I didnʼt think
so at the time. It was a hell of a culture shock to go from here
to Munson. I got to Munson and we had the only electricity and
running water within 15 to 20 miles of where we lived.”
When he first arrived at the elementary school, Douglass
stood out, but not in a good way. “I wore short pants, the only
kid in 20 miles with short pants going to school in the fifth
grade,” says Douglass, his eyes lighting up at the memory.
“And I wanted some dungarees like these old ragged things
everybody was wearing. So I got ʼem.”
Douglass soon learned just how fortunate he and his
family really were. Most other kids at his school literally
didnʼt have anything to eat. He and his sister would give
them their sandwiches. When they came home and ate their
dinners like they were starving, their mother asked why.
“And I said, ʻWell, the other children didnʼt have anything
to eat,ʼ” says Douglass, who says it was at his sisterʼs urging
that he joined her act of kindness. “I really was impressed by
how poor these people were. But they were all my friends,
or became so.”
Munson was not a big place, to be sure, but growing up
there would leave a huge impression on Douglass.
“We went all over that great forest, and I learned a lot
about the woods and about snakes and farming and fighting
fires and everything else, I guess,” he says. “I just had a real
wonderful experience there.”
In 1940 the Douglass family moved to Crestview,
population 970. His father bought the newspaper, and Dexter
worked there and in his momʼs restaurant and did whatever
else he could to make a buck, from selling wood to raising
and dressing chickens. “I always had something going. My
mother made darn sure I was always working.”
Though Munson and Crestview were not big places,
politicians campaigning in the area, including U.S. Sen.
Spessard Holland (JD 16), always stopped at the Douglass
house on their way through.
“I went to all the political rallies with my dad,” Douglass
says. “Everybody that came to Munson came to our house. I
got to meet them all. I was very impressed. When we went to
Crestview it was the same thing. We were right in the middle
of it. So I just had a great upbringing.”
BECOMING A LAWYER
After graduating from high school, Douglass came to
Gainesville, where he worked at the radio station and earned
his bachelorʼs degree in journalism from UF. He knew from
a young age that he wanted to be a lawyer.
“I always loved to go down to the courthouse and
watch the trials when I was in Crestview,” he explains. “I
remember going down and watching even coronerʼs juries,
anything. So I had a real good background in the law, from
the bottom. I guess I was raised with a feeling for the poor,
the underdogs, because my dad had it.”
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