For more than 60 years, the clipping from the Junior Page of The Citizen newspaper of St. Petersburg lay hidden away among the private belongings of Jack Corey’s mother.
Dated April 15, 1949, it showed five participants in Gulfport’s First Annual Pet Show – sponsored by the Gulfport Mothers Club and held at Gulfport Elementary School.
Two of the children were hers: Jimmy and Bobby Corey, second and third seated from left, holding their bunnies.
When she died in 2011, Jack Corey found the clipping and put it away among his own belongings. Recently, Corey, 75, brought it out to show to the Gabber and was reminded of his childhood growing up near 47th Street and 6th Avenue S.
“Me and my brothers used to play in Gulfport more than in St. Pete,” he recalled, sitting at his home in Broadwater, just a few miles from where the 1949 photograph was taken. “We rode our bikes down to Gulfport Beach in the summer even though we weren’t supposed to ride them that far.”
Corey is a third generation St. Petersburg resident and one of four children, all boys. His grandfather was Pinellas County Commissioner Jack Corey, after whom the Corey Causeway Bridge was named. He has lived in St. Petersburg his entire life, except for several years away at college, and retired about 10 years ago after a career as a yacht designer at Morgan Yachts in St. Petersburg. He volunteers in the Meals on Wheels program based at the Gulfport Multipurpose Senior Center.