Jim’s curiosity about the
Highwaymen was satisfied. He
understood that the public’s
overwhelming interest in their
paintings provided what he insists
is the beginning of “Florida’s
contemporary art tradition.”
Jim is entrepreneurial. He must
have known that his time was
better spent exploring
fresh possibilities
while someone else
obsessively-compulsively
dug deeply into the
minutia of the largely
unknown story of the
artists behind the nearly
forgotten paintings. In
other words, Jim knew
what I was getting into
long before I did, and
hence the smirk.
Jim was born in Ohio
in 1935 and his parents
moved the family to Oakland Park,
a Fort Lauderdale suburb, when he
was three
years old.
So Jim is a
Floridian,
and to prove
the point,
he says, he
married
Anne Smith,
a seventh
generation
Florida
native on
her mother’s
side, who
was an
Albritton,
a sixth generation Floridian from
Bowling Green, as small as a town
could be in interior Florida. Jim
believes that art and commerce
are synergistic. Hence, it is no
small admission when Jim says,
“Best deal I ever made.” He lost his
wife of 63 years in 2016. I knew
Anne, and his admission is not
hyperbolic.
Jim, Anne, and their three boys
discovered “Paradise,” in the form
of Fort Basinger. It had been a
Seminole War outpost, now a bend
in the road in cattle country far
from the coast, at least
as far as one could be
from the ocean or gulf
in Florida. It had history,
about the kind of rugged
frontiersmen who
worked with their hands
for what they had, with
wit and tenacity. Think
of John Wayne with
cabbage palms or read
Patrick Smith’s novel,
A Land Remembered.
Jim had clearly lost
interest in the mid-1960s
changes and developments to
southeast coastal Florida living,
what is
now the
megalopolis
that extends
from Jupiter
through
Homestead–
The Gold
Coast. Jim
recalls: “The
move to Fort
Basinger
gave me an
entirely new
outlook on
life. I loved
the people
and I loved the place. If anyone
asked me where I was from, I
would tell them Fort Basinger.”
Jim was focused on learning,
captivated by his new home.
Continued >
Jim & Anne Fitch
Al Black
43