Whitey Markle was a proud and defiant defender of Florida’s environment, animals, lands and especially water. Like the late songwriting legend Bobby Hicks, the famous Game Commission biologist songwriter Dale Crider and the 400-song Patriarch of Florida Folk Music, Frank Thomas, Whitey was unforgiving to those who dared despoil Florida, throw a cigarette out a car window, leave litter on a beach, dig holes to drain wetlands, clear cut miles of forest and throw up trailer parks in natural prairies. I can see him right now, face red as fire, his vitriol boiling over with anger towards cowardly politicians and Councilman and the faceless corporations that dare to cross his path. Yet he had a soft touch that could silence an angry room with songs that made you feel the old Ocklawaha flow through your veins as the room grows quiet and shy like the squirrel who perches like a statue until we all safely walk by. Whitey, I knew and respected you every day since we first met at the 1971 Florida Folk Festival and we offer this podcast in your honor, to the bears and panthers and gators and mullet and those vanishing parts of Florida we can still see and feel, which you helped preserve. We present your first appearance at the Florida Folk Festival, including Cousin Thelma’s introduction, as well as your last FFF appearance. And we have your appearances at many environmental meetings, standing like a vicious bantam rooster before governments, the bad guys, the people who want to do things like they did up north where they had to leave because it was so bad. Remember, Whitey and rest in peace knowing you have trained and educated an Army of protectors, a veritable militia who will use their binoculars and notepads and phone cameras to keep watch over Florida and bring to justice the bastards whom I hope your memory will haunt the rest of their days. Richard “Whitey” Markle, a man like no other in Florida history. Courageous, bold, stubborn yet sweet in his own Florida cracker way.
I hope you enjoy this Tribute to Whitey produced by Tim Valle from everything we could quickly get our hands on at the last minute. And thank you for listening to the Florida Folk Show podcast.
