Trail Stops

Intersection of SW 3rd Ave. and SW 9th St., Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/s21UXDNnoUZe5wM67

     Site of historical marker for Alachua General Hospital, which was once located here. It is where, on Oct. 20, 1950, was born Thomas Earl Petty – or Tom Petty, the Gainesville native and future Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee. 

     Son of Katherine Johey “Kitty” (Avery) Petty and Earl Alvin Petty, the Pettys resided then at 1040 NE 9th St., Tom Petty’s first home. 

     In 2010, the 81-year-old hospital was demolished. 

     Today the marker is located in Florida Innovation Square at the University of Florida. To learn more about the historic hospital and its marker, go here:

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=93167  

Photo by Shawn Murphy

1040 NE 9th St, Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/pMUpCux8qgMoKWZ7A

     This house, which was built in 1947, is where Earl and Kitty Petty, parents to Tom Petty, lived when Tom was born Oct. 20, 1950. The family moved to the childhood home at 1715 NE 6th Terrace after it was built in 1952. 

     Should you go here, remember that this is a private home, located in a residential neighborhood, so must be treated with respect for the property owner and neighbors. This includes not trespassing on private property! 

Photo by Shawn Murphy

1715 NE 6th Terrace, Gainesville, FL 32609

https://maps.app.goo.gl/jGiFJNDVgT5YxWj29

     Childhood home for Tom and Bruce Petty, his younger brother. Built in 1952. (Note that Tom's first house when he was born in 1950 was at 1040 NE 9th St., which was built in 1947.) 

     It was in this house on the night of Feb. 9, 1964, when 14-year-old Tom Petty, along with 73 million other people, watched The Beatles perform five songs on the Ed Sullivan Show. Tom watched this national broadcast on the Petty family's TV in the living room at the front of the house. 

     Reflecting back on that night, he would tell Peter Bogdanovich for the 2007 documentary "Runnin' Down a Dream: "It all became clear. This is what I'm gonna do, and this is how you do it."

     In 1964, Tom formed his first band, the Sundowners, in the living room. Keith Harben, Tom's neighborhood friend, helped to set up the band's equipment, a practice he continued for the band's duration.  Keith recalled to me that one day he was told that he could sing a little bit of a song to see how he was, which was when he was told, "maybe you'd want to be the band manager."

     Once the band lineup was set, they would rehearse cover tunes in a backyard shed with carpeted walls. They would eventually perform at high schools and university fraternity houses -- driven there by drummer Dennis Lee's mother in a station wagon. Moreover, for each of the four members, she also sewed stage outfits: pink jackets with ruffled white shirts and tight black pants -- British Invasion-style. And Tom acquired from a Jacksonville wig store a blonde wig that resembled the Beatles' haircuts at the time, which he briefly wore on stage.

     In late 1967, at age 16, Tom Petty left the Sundowners to play bass guitar with the Epics, a band that eventually included Tom Leadon on lead guitar.

     It was at this house that Tom Leadon met Tom Petty, both of whom would later become members of Mudcrutch. The 14-year-old Leadon, who lived a few blocks away at 412 NE 13th Ave. (with his older brother Bernie, a future member of the Eagles), would walk to Petty's house for near-daily band rehearsals for years.

     "I was fascinated with Petty," wrote Leadon, a founding member of Mudcrutch, in an overview of his upbringing in Gainesville and the city's music scene at the time. which you can read in full here: http://www.gainesvillerockhistory.com/TLeadon.htm 

     In 2019, Tom's first wife, Jane, purchased the house, which has three bedrooms and two bathrooms -- including one that still has pink-tiled walls from when Tom lived here -- for $175,000 following reports that it might be turned into a museum, according to The Gainesville Sun article found here:

https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/local/2019/09/04/tom-pettys-ex-wife-buys-rockstars-childhood-home/2563279007/

     "I thought we should have it in the family," said Jane Benyo Petty to a Sun reporter, who noted that eventually it would be passed on to their grandchildren. 

     Before Jane purchased this home in 2019 so that it would remain in the Petty family, superfans Kevin Beauchamp from California and Joanne Davis from New York were interested in purchasing Tom Petty's childhood home, getting it recognized as an historical landmark, and turning it into a museum. To make this financially and logistically possible, they had worked with Jeff Goldstein, a producer of the Rose Community-produced Mudcrutch shows in and around Gainesville in the early 1970s and today the president of the Gainesville Music History Foundation. To learn more about this effort, read this Gainesville Sun article:

https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/local/2019/06/11/up-for-sale-tom-pettys-childhood-home/4932139007/ 

     Should you go here, remember that this is a private home, located in a residential neighborhood, so must be treated with respect for the property owner and neighbors. This includes not trespassing on private property! And be sure not to be like the unknown knucklehead who stole the mailbox in 2019!

Photo by Shawn Murphy

1516 NE 6th Terrace, Gainesville, FL 32601 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/ouTJcM1WuJ4CGKjF6  

    The childhood home of Keith Harben was here at 1516 NE 6th Terrace, which backs up to what is today Tom Petty Park. Keith and his twin sister, Kathy, lived here in the 1950s and 1960s while Tommy Petty lived five houses north on the same street, 1715 NE 6th Terrace, just on the east rather than west side. Keith wound up being Tom’s long-lasting friend, from childhood through their adult lives. They went together to the same elementary, middle and high schools. And Keith served as the band manager for the Sundowners, the first band that Petty was in, for the band’s duration, from 1964 when it formed while they were 14-year-olds at Howard Bishop Junior High School until it disbanded in 1966 after a concert at the Delta Upsilon fraternity house.

    Tom was “my adventure partner,” Keith told me. “There was never a dull moment, which is good.”

    Keith told the audience at Heartwood Soundstage in 2019 for Tom Petty Weekend, “I didn’t have a brother, so Tom was more or less my brother.”

   Tom would go to Keith’s house for his childhood birthday parties. But the highlight was what was located behind Keith’s house: There once stood a tall tree in which there was a tree house. This was a place that Keith and Tom enjoyed going to. Keith noted that Tom seemed to like being up high in a perch, looking down on everything from above. Keith’s wife, Marsha, found it interesting that years later he would pen songs about being up high, looking down upon things – perhaps with a long-lost mental thread from Keith’s backyard tree house. Consider these select lyrics:

• “A Mind With a Heart of Its Own” from the 1989 album “Full Moon Fever,” Tom Petty’s first solo album, is this autobiographical lyric in which he cites two towns near Gainesville, mentions a tree house, and gives his real middle name: “Well I've been to Brooker, and I’ve been to Micanopy, I’ve been to St. Louis too, I’ve been all around the world, I’ve been over to your house, And you’ve been over sometimes to my house, I’ve slept in your tree house, My middle name is Earl”
• “Learning to Fly” from the 1991 album “Into the Great Wide Open” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: “I’m learning to fly around the clouds, But what goes up, Must come down. … I’m learning to fly, But I ain’t got wings, Coming down is the hardest thing”
• “Free Fallin’” also from “Full Moon Fever,” Tom Petty’s first solo album: “I wanna glide down over Mulholland, I wanna write her name in the sky, I’m gonna free fall out into nothin’ Gonna leave this world for a while”
• “Saving Grace” from the 2006 album “Highway Companion,” Tom Petty’s third, and final, solo album: “I’m flying over backyards, Country homes and ranches, Watching life between the branches below”
• “Room at the Top” from the 1999 “Echo” album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: “I got a room at the top of the world tonight, I can see everything tonight … and I ain’t coming down”
• “Straight Into Darkness” from the 1982 “Long After Dark album by by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers: “I remember flying out to London, I remember the feeling at the time, Out the window of the 747, Man, there was nothin’, only black sky, We went straight into darkness”
• “Face in the Crowd” (same LP) from the 1989 album “Full Moon Fever”: “Out of a dream, Out of the sky, Into my heart, Into my life”

    Most of the time, though, Keith and Tom would base themselves at the Petty family home as a jumping-off point for their day’s adventures. 

    “There wasn’t a lot on TV back then (in the 1950s), so we created our own entertainment,”  Harben told the audience at Heartwood Soundstage in 2019 for Tom Petty Weekend. “Our playground was provided by nature.”

    What was life like for kids in Gainesville, Fla., in the 1950s and early 1960s? Keith noted that their homes were not air conditioned, so they spent most of their time together outdoors where it was cooler, especially during the extended summer months. Black and white TVs had 3-4 channels, which you had to change by walking across the room and turning the dial; when the Petty family got a color TV in the early 1960s, this was a big deal. This was a time when there were only rotary-dial telephones with steep long-distance charges, not the smartphone – portable computers, really – of today; there were also no computers of any type. There were no laptops, iPods, Walkmans, earbuds, e-bikes, e-skateboards, nor e-scooters. And of course there were no video games, in an arcade or at home. The battery-operated, portable transistor radio was about as good as it got for technology. This was especially true for Tom Petty, who could listen to his radio at night, when the signal was the strongest, and pick up AM stations from across the Deep South, listening to rockabilly, country, blues, and rock and roll stations. Therefore, instead of being inside where one might fill their mind with all things technology-related today, kids then would be outdoors, expanding their imaginations, exploring and experimenting. Bicycles, legs and imagination were the portals to their childhood, Keith said. 

    As children, aside from climbing Keith’s tree house and pondering life from above, they would pick from a long list of childhood games that they would play on any given day. While they might play pick-up baseball or football in City Park with other friends, they more typically just the two of them would play marbles, wage battles with small plastic “Army men,” toss a Frisbee, experiment with a hula hoop, or play “Cowboys and Indians.” And they used a knife to become blood brothers. 

     “We became great friends and companions,” Keith recalled for the Tom Petty Weekend audience in 2019. “We actually became blood brothers. That was something that Indians would do. So we cut our fingers and exchanged blood. That is something you probably wouldn’t want to do today, but that was one of the kid things we did.” 

    Keith recalled for me how one time while playing in Petty’s front yard, Tom, adorned with a holster for his cap gun, would work on his quick-draw, perfecting the ability to spin the pistol rapidly around, before stopping it and pulling the trigger. This skill would later be showcased while on the set for the 1982 video for “You Got Lucky”; and if one watches the Cameron Crowe-directed MTV “Heartbreakers Beach Party” documentary, which was rereleased in 2024, Tom’s knack for pistol-spinning is on full display.

    Also as children, around 11-12 years old, Tom and Keith used a knife to carve their initials into a tree in adjacent City Park (later Northest Park, then Tom Petty Park).

    Among the tall pine trees in a heavily wooded area behind what is today the St. Patrick Interparish School (550 NE 16th Ave., which opened in 1960), a stone’s throw from the Petty home, they built a wooden fort from trees they chopped down. In one outing to this wooden fort, an overnight one, they kept crossing NE 16th Avenue, to the south, throughout the night to go into City Park to play. By morning, they hadn’t slept much, if at all, so both spent most of the next day at home sleeping in their own beds rather than going to the movies as planned.

    The Burt Ames Scout Cabin (100-198 NE 4th Ave.) is where neighborhood Tom and Keith attended meetings for their Boy Scout Troop 84, Falcon Patrol. And they were campmates at overnight mini-retreats at the Burt Ames property in the vicinity of what is today the Brywood, Fox Grove & The Meadows neighborhoods. They were also campmates for a two-week retreat at Boy Scout Camp Echockotee (2513 Doctors Lake Dr, Orange Park). They stayed together in a tent with cots. The boys had been warned to beware of rabid racoons. One night, as Keith recounted to me, he and Tom started screaming when they thought one of these raccoons had made its way into their tent. It turned out to be a stray dog, about which they had a good laugh. Keith also recalled how homesick they were – and how thrilled they were when their moms visited them one day. 

    It was common for Keith and Tom to ride bikes 1.5 miles one way due south down to the Florida Theater (233 W. University Ave.) to see a Saturday double feature for a quarter; and if one had an extra dollar, they could split popcorn and a drink. When Tom’s blue Schwinn 3-speed bicycle wasn’t operational, which was often and typically due to a flat tire, Tom sat atop the handlebars of Keith’s bike while he peddled them both ways.

    Ten-year-old Tom Petty met Elvis Presley in the summer 1961 during the filming of “Follow That Dream,” shot on location throughout Florida, including downtown Ocala at the then-named Commercial Bank & Trust Co. (203 E Silver Springs Blvd.). The introduction was facilitated by Tom’s Aunt Evelyne, his mother Kitty’s older sister. As luck would have it, Evelyne’s husband, Earl Jernigan, owned and operated Jernigan Motion Picture Service ( 3019 NE 20th Way in Gainesville), which helped film companies scout locations – including for this movie. Uncle Jernigan invited Tom to go here to watch filming and to meet Elvis. When he introduced Tom to him, Elvis briefly nodded and shook his little hand. Tom stood still, stunned and speechless, yet smiling. Afterward, back home in Gainesville, Tom was eager to tell Keith about how he had met Elvis that day. Seeing how excited Tom was to have met Elvis, Keith worked out a trade on the spot that he thought would please Tom. Keith offered to take Tom’s slingshot and give him a stack of Elvis 45s – which were owned by his older sister, who by then was out of the house and married (for the record, Keith did not ask for his older sister’s permission before giving away these records – I asked). 

    Harben told the audience at Heartwood Soundstage in 2019 for Tom Petty Weekend about this “bingo moment” of meeting Elvis and then making this trade.      

    “He just lived the thought of Elvis, Elvis, Elvis,” Harben said in 2019. “For several years it was all about Elvis.” He noted the obvious, about Tom meeting Elvis on the set of a movie called “Follow That Dream”: “I would say that gave Tom a dream at that time, and he definitely did follow his dream.”

    About a year later, Tom got a guitar and he learned how to play it from a book of song sheets, as well as from just listening to the songs and trying to play along. As the years went by, Tom became more adept at guitar. Keith told the audience at Heartwood Soundstage in 2019 for Tom Petty Weekend about one day when Keith went to the Petty home and was greeted by Kitty at the door, which was the norm. She noted that Tom was in his bedroom. So Keith walks there, opens the door, and sees Tom sitting on the parquet floor with his acoustic guitar in hand.

    “Keith, I’ve written a song. Do you want to hear it?,” Keith recalls Tom saying. “I said, ‘How have you written a song, you just barely play the guitar?’ But he had actually written a song, and he accompanied it with his guitar. So, I guess I was his first audience. I was the only one in the audience. But I was his main support group, his only support group, other than his mother I suppose.”

    I asked Keith about whether he recalled any details about the song, but he didn’t.

    At various time as children, which Keith recalls was from about ages 7 to 13, Tom and Keith periodically went to Glen Springs Pool (2424 NW 23rd Blvd.), the public pool that closed in 1970, which is today located behind the privately owned Elks Lodge No. 990. 

    Keith told me that Tom would typically go to the pool with him because his mother didn’t have a job during the week while Tom’s mother did. The Harben family had a pass for the pool, which was especially popular in the broiling hot summer months. Keith told me that when he went here with Petty, Tommy’s favorite snack to buy from the concession stand was a Pepsi or a Coke, into which he would pour a bag of shelled, salted peanuts.

    While one could wonder whether the year-round 72-degree water in Glen Springs Pool was so cold it could turn lips blue, Keith noted that it was possible for some people since the air was so hot and humid. And for Tom Petty, Keith said it most certainly did turn his lips blue one day. Keith recalls Tom, thin as a rail with pale white skin, standing in a white bathing suit with a towel wrapped around him, shivering while his lips turned blue.

    Later, autobiographical details from Tom Petty’s childhood would be woven into the lyrics for “Dreamville” from the 2002 album “The Last DJ.” Petty writes about a childhood trip here that Petty said was made with his mother, Kitty. Here is that lyric: Ridin’  with my mama to Glen Springs Pool, The water was cold, My lips were blue, There was rock and roll across the dial, When I think of her it makes me smile, Like it was Dreamville, A long time ago, A million miles away, All the trees were green in Dreamville.”

As 13-year-olds, Keith’s parents would would drop them off at Florida Field at the University of Florida (157 Gale Lemerand Dr.) for Gators games where they would sell Cokes in bottles in the stands to earn money. They walked up and down the aisles yelling “Coca Cola!” Keith told me that on a good day they would earn $15 in a day.

    As 13- and 14-year olds, Tom and Keith both had membership cards for the “Teen Time” dances and bands at the Thelma A. Boltin Center (516 NE 2nd Ave). They would go here to listen to the music being played by a DJ spinning records or by a band on the stage. It is here where Tom and Keith first heard The Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” in early 1964, which Harben told me immediately sparked Petty’s interest in the band. Petty soon began collecting Beatles records. 

    “Tom and I would walk here every Friday night from our homes on NE 6th Terrace to hear the bands that often played,” Harben said. “One day Tom told me that they were going to be playing a very special record that night. So there I stood by Tom Petty at Teen Time to hear for my first time a group called the Beatles. That changed Tom’s thoughts about music from that day forward because until the English invasion, he had been a solidly an Elvis fan.”  

    And as maturing teens, they went to the American Legion Hall (513 E University Ave.) for dances and bands. One of the bands that Keith and Tom saw was the Allman Joys, the precursor to the Allman Brothers Band. Afterward at night they would walk home north through the Duckpond neighborhood and all its elegant, historic homes, continuing north through quiet residential streets for about a mile to their homes. At 15, they were at an event here when they left in a friend’s car to go to a nearby convenience store where Tom and Keith each acquired – and downed – a quart of Miller beer. 

    “We shared our first beers together,” Keith told me, and “we got pretty wasted.”

    Keith also recounted this story to the audience at Heartwood Soundstage in 2019 for Tom Petty Weekend, saying: “A quart of beer for a young guy is pretty intoxicating, I guess. I remember that we were pretty silly.”

    On school days, Tom’s mother would pick up Keith and Kathy, driving them to school, then home afterward; on other days, Keith and Kathy’s mother would pick up and return Tom. And when Keith and Tom got their driver’s licenses at age 16, just days apart, they took turns doing the school trips, as well as driving to the weekend shows at the American Legion Hall. Tom would drive a white Chevrolet Impala, which his mother had given him after she got a newer car. Tom drove this Impala until Tom, still 16 at the time, accidentally drove it into alligator-infested Lake Alice on the University of Florida campus. This happened when he was supposed to be at a dance with Keith at the American Legion Hall. Tom, who had very recently received his driver's license, had left the dance with a girl to go here to park. But in the course of things that transpired at the lakeside, Tom accidently drove his recently acquired car into the drink. When Tom had left with the girl, Tom, who had driven them there that night, told Keith he’d be back to pick him up at the dance. Later that night when Tom hadn’t shown up, Keith became worried. Eventually, Tom’s mother showed up in the family car to pick up Keith – with an embarrassed Tom in her car. 

     Kathy Harben told me that she was a fan of the Sundowners and went to many of their concerts during the band’s time, 1964-1966. She said that this was in part because of a crush she had on Robert Crawford, the head guitarist who was a few years older than the other band members. At the time, she would write into a calendar about the Sundowners shows, making special note if Robert smiled at her. 

    Kathy recalled for me two funny memories of Tom during this time. One is that Kathy had suggested to Tom another name for the band than the Sundowners. When she suggested the Aliens, he laughed and said he thought it was a ridiculous name for a band. Another memory she had is that shortly after the Batman TV series, starring Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin, first aired in 1966, Tom started mimicking the cartoon fight scenes with speech bubbles that were shown during the show. Tom then started saying “pow,” “bam,” “boink,” and the like.

    “He was shy,” Kathy recalls, “and a very nice guy.”

Keith was there for when the Sundowners were formed and for when they disbanded. In 1964, the Sundowners formed in the living room and the Petty family home. 

    As Tom recounted for Warren Zanes’ 2015 book Petty: The Biography, Tom, then a 14-year-old at Howard Bishop Junior High School (1901 NE 9th St.), was motivated by a crush he had on a classmate, also 14, by the name of Cindy Crawford. Looking to impress Cindy, Tom quickly assembled the band when she asked him whether he knew a band that could perform at the school dance in the school cafeteria. He bluffed and said “yes,” then grabbed his bass guitar and immediately started forming a band with his friends at the school, with help from the older Robert Crawford. 

The Sundowners would practice in the Petty backyard in wooden warehouse attached to their house, which was empty at time. Dennis Lee’s family donated unused carpet that was then attached to the walls for soundproofing. Keith helped to set up the band’s equipment, which he continued for the band’s duration. Keith recalled to me that one day he was told that he could sing a little bit of a song to see how he was, which was when he was told, “maybe you'd want to be the band manager,” which he did from then on. From 1964-1966, the Sundowners performed in “many, many different places,” Keith said. Some of those places are already mapped on the Tom Petty Trail website. And Keith was there for when the band broke up.

In 1966, the Sundowners had been hired to play at the Delta Upsilon fraternity house (1814 W. University Ave.). But while setting up equipment during the day, there was a disagreement between Tom Petty and Dennis Lee, the drummer, which led to a fistfight between the two. There are two accounts of what happened. One is what Tom Petty told for a 1985 “Southern Accents” documentary, which was made for MTV, when he drives by the frat house, points it out, and talks about the skirmish that he says resulted in a broken nose, and was caused by an unprovoked assault by Dennis Lee. The other account is what Keith has told me and also recounted for the audience at Heartwood Soundstage in 2019 for Tom Petty Weekend. Keith, who was there to witness what unfolded, said there was disagreement between the two of them. The end result is that Dennis was on top of Tom and punching him – and the band broke up. 

    “Tom was a very strong-willed person, and so was Dennis (Lee),” Keith told the audience at Heartwood Soundstage in 2019 for Tom Petty Weekend. “Tom told the story that the drummer was being obnoxious, but it was Tom who was being obnoxious.”

    In high school, Tom Petty and Keith Harben would occasionally skip school. One of the places they would go was Warren’s Cave (11101 Millhopper Road), on the northern outskirts of Gainesville. It was, at that time in the mid-1960s, a popular spot for teenagers to go. On other days, Tom and Keith would hang out here after school.    

    Seven years after Mudcrutch drove to California in search of a record deal, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers made its first visit to Gainesville in October 1981. In this triumphant homecoming, Mayor Courtland Collier gave Petty a key to the city at a packed press conference in the Grand Ballroom at the now-shuttered, yet still standing as of January 2025, Gainesville Hilton (2900 SW 13th St.). It was followed that night by a concert at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center (250 Gale Lemerand Dr.) on the campus of the University of Florida, which had been built the year before. The concert included special guest Stevie Nicks. 

    But at the Gainesville Regional Airport (3880 NE 39th Ave A), Tom Petty, Benmont Tench, Mike Campbell, Stan Lynch and Ron Blair returned to Gainesville as Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers for their first time as a band, much to the excitement of the large crowd of journalists, fans, and friends who greeted them at the Gainesville Regional Airport, many of whom returned to see them off.

    Keith was also on the tarmac that day to greet him. He took pictures of Petty being greeted by the press – as well as Petty crouching down to greet Keith’s young son.

     Years later, Keith and his wife, Marsha, received complimentary tickets and backstage passes for shows with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and for Mudcrutch when they performed in Florida or Georgia and Tennessee, within driving distance from their current home in Gainesville, Fla. The Harbens would typically go out for a nice dinner, and a couple beers, with Tom. Keith said they often recalled the time they each had their first beer, when they left an event at the American Legion Hall when they were 15 and each downed a quart of Miller, catching a buzz.

    And Keith and Marsha both recounted a visit, with their still-young son, they made as guests in Tom and Dana’s home in Malibu where everyone was relaxed and having extended conversations about Tom’s Gainesville days.

     “To see what he has accomplished, it’s been an amazing thing to see your young friend turn into the superstar that he is,” Keith told the audience at Heartwood Soundstage in 2019 for Tom Petty Weekend. “It was interesting to be around him, but he’s just a down-to-Earth guy. He’s just like you or I, but he’s just made a bigger name for himself than I have. I kept up with him not because he was a superstar, but because he was a friend.”

    To listen to Keith Harben’s 15-minute talk at Heartwood Soundstage in 2019, go here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksu_YKWxT00 

After Tom’s death on Oct. 2, 2017, Keith was instrumental in getting the city to rename Northeast Park, where he and Tom had spent so much time as kids when it was called City Park, to its current name of Tom Petty Park, which was inaugurated for Tom Petty Weekend in 2018. And it was Keith who came up with the idea for the annual Tom Petty Weekend in the fall, around the time of Tom’s birthday, Oct. 20 – nine days after Keith’s, Oct. 11 (it has since been shifted to early November after hurricanes in late October disrupted recent Weekends).

    In February 2014, Keith and Marsha both went to the main branch of the Alachua County Library in Gainesville as part of a national effort to collect oral histories as part of a Storyteller series. While Keith thought that all of them, including his, would be included on a website, neither of us have been able to find his recording. He did, however, have a few burned CDs of the 39-minute recording about his Gainesville years with Tom Petty as his friend. Keith gave me one of those CDs, which I listened to in full, pausing to attempt to transcribe and take notes. 

     Furthermore, I was able to take some steps to convert the audio file to a digital file so that I could, with Keith's permission, make it publicly available. That oral history can be heard in full by clicking the link below, which will bring you to the Google Drive folder for Tom Petty Trail:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F8pt6C4d5iq9xLhJJOrCwRskXd6c2RO2/view?usp=sharing 

    Toward the end of the recording, Keith said he did it so that he could pass along to his “generational offspring,” namely his son, but also for Tom. Keith said he wanted to give Tom a copy of it. When I asked him in March 2025 whether he ever did that, Keith said, “No, I never did.” In the 2014 recording, Keith said: “I still have always wanted Tom to be a little bit more involved in Gainesville. I wish he was here more. I’ve never had the chance to get in a car with him and ride around town.” Keith said in 2014 that he hoped they could one day do this, to drive around town “and talk about some of these old stories.” Said Keith: “I need him to help me with my memory of growing up in Gainesville. And I think he’d enjoy that, possibly, to be able to have that discussion someday. I hope we’ll have time to do that before we both get too old.” I asked Keith in March 2025 about what he had said in 2014 for this oral history recording. I wanted to know whether he ever had this opportunity to drive around Gainesville with Tom and talk about the old days. I was told “no.”

    I was reminded of the first time I met Keith Harben during one of my Tom Petty Trail website research trips to Gainesville. It was March 2024 and we had been driving around for most of the day, with Keith pointing out sites and reminiscing about what he remembered had happened in these places. I did a lot of listening and some note-taking. At one point he was driving slowly down a quiet residential street, not far from the old American Legion Hall (what is today the Matheson History Museum), when Keith turned his head to catch my eyes, and said: “I really wish Tom were here with us now, helping me talk about all these places and memories.”

     Should you go to see this house, remember that this private home, located in a residential neighborhood, so must be treated with respect for the property owner, its occupants, and the neighbors. That includes no trespassing on private property!

Photo of childhood home of Keith Harben by Shawn Murphy, taken March 2025. Note the tall, branchless tree behind the house, to our left. Before there was this tree, there was the tall tree with branches that supported the tree house 

550 NE 16th Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/pGtfJJXN8d9YLUnA9

     St. Patrick Interparish School is flanked by Tom Petty's childhood roots in Gainesville. Before the school opened in March 1960, this land was a heavily wooded piece of property adjacent to St. Patrick Catholic Church on NE 16th Avenue. On the other side of the wooded lot, due east, was the childhood home of Tom Petty at 1715 NE 6th Terrace. There in the 1950s Tom as a young child would play with his neighborhood friend Keith Harben. From a long list of childhood games, here at the Petty family home they would, on any given day, play marbles, or wage battles with small plastic “Army men,” or toss a Frisbee. Or, before the school was constructed, they might go west and venture into these woods and play “Cowboys and Indians,” a game popular with children during the 1950s. After, they might cross NE 16th Avenue, due south of the woods, to play in Northeast Park, which in 2018 was renamed Tom Petty Park – thanks in large part to efforts made by Tom’s friend Keith.

Thank you to Keith Harben for giving me the grand tour and sharing his childhood memories. 

     Should you go here, remember that this is a residential neighborhood, so must be treated with respect for the property owners and neighbors.

Photo of map courtesy of Google Maps

1415 NW 4th St, Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/p573DgvHpF3CxbBy5  

    Keith Harben, who was Tom Petty’s close childhood friend from the neighborhood, was at the Petty family home almost daily, so got to know Tom's mother, Kitty, and his grandmother, Troas Avery – or “Mrs. Avery.” And he got to hear Tom regularly call his mother “Kitty” and his grandmother “Mom.” Keith surmises that Tom Petty called his mother Kitty because this is what Earl, his father, called her instead of her full first name, Katherine. And he called his maternal grandmother Mom since she was the one who helped raise him while his parents worked.

    Grandmother Mom helped raise Tom, as well as eventually his brother Bruce, who was eight years younger, while Kitty worked for many years at the Alachua County government building in downtown Gainesville and Earl was either running a grocery store in Gainesville, driving around the region selling items to area stores, or selling insurance. She saw Tom a lot since she watched him after school during the school year and all day during the summer. As a result, they developed a bond, a closeness.

    “She was a big part of his life, and very much adored Tom, of course, as did his mother,” Harben told me.

    Harben noted the nurturing roles that these two women played in his life, noting that they made a “big impact” on him. Harben, who had two sisters and an “adoring mother,” told the audience at Heartwood Soundstage in 2019 for Tom Petty Weekend about the close relationship with his mother: “Tom (Petty) was soft like me,” he said.

    With both parents working, Tom, and later Bruce, needed to be cared for. This is where their maternal grandmother comes in. Petty recalled to Paul Zollo for the 2006 book Conversation with Tom Petty the role that she played throughout their younger childhood years.

    “We were on our own till about 6:00, when my mom would come home. My grandmother looked after us quite a bit. My mom’s mom. I was quite close to her. And she was a really big influence in my life. She really favored me quite a bit and really tried to build up my confidence all the time. She was really sweet to me. She lived not too far away (note: less than one mile to the southwest of the Petty family house), and she’d come over and watch us when we were really young. But when we started to be, say ten or eleven, then we were on our own,” Petty told Zollo (pg. 7).

    While Tom Petty’s mother, Katherine “Kitty” (Avery) Petty, worked for many years in the downtown county government building, his father, Earl Alvin Petty, “kind of jumped from job to job,” Petty told Zollo (pg. 6). At different times, he ran a grocery store, was a traveling salesman of wholesale products, and eventually an insurance salesman for many years.

    Tom Petty recalled that when he was 3 or 4 years old, roughly 1953-55, that Earl “owned the only grocery store in the black part of Gainesville” (pg. 6). And he remembered occasionally going there with Earl.

    “It was an all black clientele. Back then they had everybody segregated into neighborhoods. And so, in the black neighborhood, he had the only grocery store. … My memories of it are being taken down there, and I’d play out back of the grocery store with the young black kids of the neighborhood. It was kind of bizarre, because I’d spend most of the day with black kids. And then I’d come home to this white suburban life,” Petty told Zollo (pg. 6).

    About the store, Petty said “I guess that went bust,” so transitioned to another job: “He got a panel truck that sold what he called ‘wholesale dry goods,’ like handkerchiefs and cigarette lighters, and all that crap you see behind the counter in convenience stores. He had a whole panel truck of that stuff, and he had a route that he invented,” Petty said with laughter (pg. 7), “and he drove around to stores. And that didn’t pan out. … And then he got into selling insurance. That’s what he did for the rest of his life.”

    By the time Tom was born, Troas Frances (Hale) Avery had divorced her husband, who died in 1959 at age 66 and was buried in the Forest Hill Cemetery in Haines City, Fla.

    “Never met him in my life,” Petty told Zollo (pg. 8). “My grandmother hated him.” 

    Troas Avery had three children, all daughters (from eldest to youngest): Evelyn Louise (Avery) Jernigan, Lottie Christine (Avery) Darnell, and Katherine Johney “Kitty” (Avery) Petty – Tom Petty’s mother. The two maternal aunts both had a close relationship with Tom Petty as a child. Aunt Lottie and the Darnell twin girls lived next door to the Petty family and were part of many family get-togethers (see the Duckpond trail stop to read about that: https://tompettytrail.com/childhood-years). And Aunt Evelyne’s husband introduced 10-year-old Tom Petty to Elvis Presley on a movie set in Ocala, thus sparking his interest in being a musician (see the Elvis in Ocala trail stop to read about that: https://tompettytrail.com/buried-treasure).

    Tom Petty’s Grandmother Mom, Troas Frances (Hale) Avery, is buried in Forest Meadows Cemetery-East in Gainesville, where also is found the gravesite for Tom Petty’s parents (see the Forest Meadows trail stop to read about that:https://tompettytrail.com/dreamville-ghosts).

    Grandmother Mom died in June 1977 at age 77, when Tom would have been 26.

Kitty died Oct. 21, 1980, one day after Tom’s  30th birthday.

    On the gravemarker for Grandmother Mom – the mother to sisters Evelyne, Lottie and Katherine, all of whom would have been alive when she died – it simply reads: 

“Troas H. Avery

Our Loving Mother

1900-1977”

    As a side note, in Warren Zanes’ 2015 book, Petty: A Biography, it is noted that Troas Avery did not like Earl, Tom Petty’s father and Kitty’s husband (p. 16).

    Thank you to Sadie and Norma Darnell, Tom Petty’s twin cousins whose mother was Kitty Petty’s sister, for sharing with me the address of the home where their grandmother once lived. And thank you to Keith and Marsha Harben for reaching out to Sadie and Norma on my behalf.

Photo of house courtesy of Google Maps

312 NW 16th Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/cpbBWuSzKAPiaERh7

     Sidney Lanier Elementary School was Tom Petty’s first school. 

     Today it is the site of a mural in his honor, which was painted by Gainesville artist Jesus Martinez and his wife, according to this report by WUFT, Gainesville's NPR station:

https://www.wuft.org/education/2018-03-19/center-for-students-with-disabilities-uses-gardening-creativity-to-teach

     Note that today this is a school for children with special needs. You cannot just walk onto the school property. The mural is located on the end of one of the buildings, facing east. There is a fence along NW 2nd Street. You can take a photograph from the sidewalk alongside the fence.

Photo by Shawn Murphy

1901 NE 9th St, Gainesville, FL 32609

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Sbh7kbXHbQfQzVjd8

     Howard W. Bishop Middle School was Tom Petty’s junior high school, which was built in 1962. 

     It is where Tom attended grades 7-9. Tom Petty's childhood friend Keith Harben recalls that he and Tom planted grass in front of the school, a job that came about through a friend of theirs whose father was the principal. 

     Mike Boulware told me that the friend was John Hendrix, who was also in Boy Scout Troop 84, Falcon Patrol, with Petty and Harben, as well as attending Howard Bishop together. The father was Sam Hendrix, principal at Howard Bishop. 

     While more inclined to music than sports, he gave it a shot for a year, despite his dislike of team sports. As Petty told Paul Zollo for the 2005 book Conversations with Tom Petty, he was more interested in the long-haired crowd gravitating toward arts and music than the short-haired crowd obsessed by team sports.

    “...I wasn’t athletic and didn’t have any interest in sports at all,” Petty told Zanes. “I knew the name of no baseball player; I didn’t give a shit. Never watched sports. I liked to play (sports) with my friends, but I didn’t like the idea of organized sports. It just wasn’t for me. There was nothing wrong with it. It just wasn’t for me. And I was this skinny little kid, and I didn’t fit into that whole football mentality of the South” (pgs. 22-23).

    Despite this, Petty was on the football team while in the ninth grade. He wore a uniform with the No. 62, while Harben wore No. 7 (or 71, as the team photo if obscured). Keith shared with me a photograph showing them suited up. Keith’s father took the photo, which you can find in this website's Photo Gallery here: 

https://tompettytrail.com/photo-gallery

    “It may be hard to think about Tom Petty playing football, but he was no wimp,” Keith told me. “We played a lot of football with friends in the neighborhood.”

     This school, attended during Petty's formative, coming-of-age years, also becomes a cornerstone for his career as a musician and lyricist.

     This is the site of Tom Petty's first concert with the Sundowners in the school cafeteria in 1964, for which we may have Cindy Crawford (not the actress) to thank here. 14-year-old Tom, who had a crush on Cindy and was looking to impress, quickly assembled the band when she asked him whether he knew a band that could perform at the school dance. He bluffed and said "yes," then grabbed his bass guitar and immediately started forming a band with his friends. 

    About this middle school crush, Tom Petty recalled it to Warren Zanes for the 2015 book Petty: The Biography. 

     "I found this one beautiful girl, Cindy, the prettiest girl there, and she showed some interest in me," Petty said. "I probably made more of it than she did, probably thought it was more real than she did. I imagine every guy she met wanted to take her out. But I still remember the day that it hit me that we weren't an item like I thought we were. It was traumatic for me. I remember the walk home, just feeling ... I got my heart broken." (pg. 30)

    Cindy Crawford would re-emerge in Petty’s life years later. In 1968 after flunking out of art school in Tampa and no longer working at the funeral home in St. Petersburg, Tom returned to Gainesville where one night he tried LSD for the first time at a get-together of friends, reunited with Cindy, and laid the foundation for lyrics he would pen years later. 

    When Cindy showed up at this gathering, Tom, who was in an enlightened state of mind and still had her on his mind, chatted her up.

    “It was greater than great, a huge night for me,” Petty told Zanes (pg. 46).

    That night the gathering’s attendees would smoke cigarettes on the apartment roof and venture out to an area west of town where I-75 construction was ongoing. There, below a highway overpass, they gleefully tried to outdo one another by skipping stones across a small pool of water. They then headed back to town and partied through the night. 

    While any chance of Tom and Cindy becoming an item was dashed in the morning when she told him, “you and me isn’t going to happen” (Zanes, pg. 47), the night did become a lyrical catalyst for a song on the 1979 “Damn the Torpedoes” album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. 

    “When I wrote ‘Even the Losers’ years later, that night came back. I obsessed over her so much. She is probably in a lot of songs.” (Zanes, pg. 47) You can see that night in Tom Petty’s lyrics:

“Well, it was nearly summer we sat on your roof

Yeah, we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon

And I showed you stars you never could see

Babe, it couldn’t have been that easy to forget about me

Baby, time meant nothing anything seemed real

Yeah, you could kiss like fire and you made me feel

Like every word you said was meant to be

It couldn’t have been that easy to forget about me…

Two cars parked on the overpass

Rocks hit the water like broken glass

I should of known right then it was too good to last

God, it’s such a drag when you live in the past

Baby, even the losers

Get lucky sometimes

Even the losers

Keep a little bit of pride”

    Here you can listen to the song: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ue4_MWwKY8  

     Years, later, Tom wrote "The Best of Everything" for the 1985 album "Southern Accents" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The song reportedly was about Cindy -- looking back, two decades on. Here is part of that lyric:     

"So listen, honey 

Wherever you are tonight 

I wish you the best of everything in the world

And honey, I hope you found 

Whatever you were looking for" 

     Here you can listen to the song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hySGRNEKYN0 

     Marsha Danielson, a platonic friend of Tom's from his neighborhood, recalled for me various memories she has of walking to and from this middle school with Tom Petty.  

     "Tommy met me as we walked to Howard Bishop Junior High," she said. "Tommy was in ninth grade; I was in eighth. About one block's distance north of the school, we stopped to talk about the show. Tommy already had the album 'Meet the Beatles'. He said sarcastically to me, 'So I suppose your favorite Beatle is Paul McCartney.' I said, 'No, my favorite Beatle is George Harrison.' He was clearly surprised and asked me why. I said, 'Because I think he is most into the music.' Tommy thought about that and then said, 'I think so, too.'"

     Marsha also recalled two instances that showed what a kind soul Tom Petty was.

     She said: "Tommy carried my books between classes, not because I was his girlfriend -- we were just friends. He did it because he was a gentleman and thought it was the nice thing to do."

     And she recalled the following to me about Tom's calming effect: "At the end of my first class of Geometry, the teacher cited the Pythagorean Theory. As I walked out the door, looking like a deer in the headlights, Tommy was waiting for me. He asked me what was wrong. I told him what the teacher just said, and Tommy laughed. He told me not to let it scare me, that geometry is just a game with puzzles. You get clues to figure out the rest of the shape, and when you finish the puzzle, you win. I never again had math anxiety and realized I could apply his words to everything in life."

Photo by Shawn Murphy

2424 NW 23rd Blvd, Gainesville, FL 32605

https://maps.app.goo.gl/2RGxYqsNcnGShtSe7

     While today you will find Elks Lodge No. 990 at this address, hidden behind the building is the former Glen Springs Pool, which closed in 1970. 

     Keith Harben, Tom's neighborhood friend, told me that Tom would typically go to the pool with him because his mother didn't have a job during the week while Tom's mother did. The Harben family had a pass for the pool, which was especially popular in the broiling hot summer months.  Keith told me that when he went here with Petty, Tommy’s favorite snack to buy from the concession stand was a Pepsi or a Coke, into which he would pour a bag of shelled, salted peanuts. 

     While one could wonder whether the year-round 72-degree water was so cold it could turn lips blue, Keith noted that it was possible for some people since the air was so hot and humid. And for Tom Petty, Keith said it most certainly did turn his lips blue one day. Keith recalls Tom, thin as a rail with pale white skin, standing in a white bathing suit with a towel wrapped around him, shivering while his lips turned blue. 

     The "Dreamville" song lyric from the 2002 album "The Last DJ" recalls some autobiographical details: 

"Ridin' with my mama 

To Glen Springs Pool 

The water was cold 

My lips were blue 

There was rock and roll 

Across the dial 

When I think of her 

It makes me smile 

Like it was Dreamville 

A long time ago 

A million miles away 

All the trees were green 

In Dreamville" 

     Today the staff of the Elks Lodge does its best with limited resources to maintain the historic pool, which was built in stages, starting in the late 1920s. Members of the Elks Lodge clean the pool periodically throughout the year, as a sense of pride, they said. After a heavy rain washed sand from nearby development into the spring pool, they tediously removed all of the sand from this pool. In different sections of the pool today you can find turtles, fish and crawfish. 

Photo by Shawn Murphy

Tom Petty Park, 501 NE 16th Ave., Gainesville, FL 32609

https://maps.app.goo.gl/KEgkJ4pBPSxtWKeZ9

     Former Northeast Park is where Tommy Petty and friends played as children. It was renamed Tom Petty Park on Oct. 20, 2018, what would have been Tom's 68th birthday. The City of Gainesville videorecorded the unveiling ceremony, which you can watch here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbwl5tVZ9go 

     Tom Petty Park also includes three named recreational facilities: the Petty Pitch Parks, which has three baseball fields with dugout benches inscribed with Tom Petty’s name; Tom Petty Dog Park, which has two enclosed areas for small and large canines to play off-leash; and Petty Points Court, tennis and racquetball courts.

     The park is also the site of the Tom Petty Historical Marker, unveiled Oct. 13, 2024. To learn more about the dedication ceremony attendees for the state of Florida marker, see this Visit Gainesville page: 

https://www.visitgainesville.com/event/dedication-ceremony-for-the-tom-petty-state-historic-marker/

Photo by Shawn Murphy

Tom Petty Park, 1224 NE 5 Terrace, Gainesville, FL 32601 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/f4AjiZ9637YUCkgp7

     Tom Petty Park is the site of the Tom Petty Historical Marker, which was unveiled Oct. 13, 2024. The state of Florida marker is located on the south side of the park, near the Tom Petty Dog Park, at the intersection of NE 13th Avenue and NE 5th Terrace.

     Speakers for the marker unveiling were: Harvey Ward, mayor of Gainesville; Jeff Goldstein, president, chair and founder of the Gainesville Music History Foundation; Melanie Barr, a Gainesville historian and co-director of the Gainesville Music History Foundation; Mike Boulware, co-director of the Gainesville Music History Foundation; and Bruce Petty, Tom Petty’s brother.

     Danny Roberts, an original member of Mudcrutch, was a guest speaker. He talked about the Jeff Goldstein-promoted farewell to Gainesville concert in 1974 at Westside Park that raised the gas money for the band to drive to California with the dream of making it big.

     Note that Westside Park is located 3.5 miles west of here (1001 NW 34th St.). You can learn more about this Mudcrutch concert site and navigate to it by going to the this section of Trail Stops on this website: 

https://tompettytrail.com/teen%2B-years  

      And Roberts talked about the Church Studio recordings in Tulsa for Shelter Records, which yielded songs that were on the first Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album in 1976, after Mudcrutch had disbanded. 

     To learn more about the Church Studio recordings, go here:

https://thechurchstudio.com/tom-pettys-journey-at-the-church-studio/

     Bruce Petty, the final speaker, got emotional while talking about "Tommy," who was "a good brother." 

     "I miss my brother every day," Bruce said before immediately sobbing, bending over to brace himself with hands on knees. Standing up, he continued, "I wish we were together every day, sipping another beer, listening to music." 

     He reminisced about family reunions at which their children and grandchildren were all together. And he talked about Tom's legacy.

     "His music continues to touch people," he said. "Everywhere I go, I hear his music," listing places he had recently heard Tom Petty's music played or performed. "His music really touches people. It's such a great legacy that he can leave us all this amazing music that will carry on forever -- and I can't ask for anything better than that."

     To watch the full marker dedication ceremony, captured by Vicki Bordeaux, on Facebook, go here:

https://www.facebook.com/100000037907570/videos/866195695637143/ 

Or on YouTube, go here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvOwqVn4o7k

Photo of front of marker by Shawn Murphy

Tom Petty Park, 501 NE 16th Ave., Gainesville, FL 32609

https://maps.app.goo.gl/k2kRXR4JeQMyhoK16

     On the NE 16th Avenue side (the north side) of Tom Petty Park is the site of Petty Pitch Parks: three baseball fields with dugout benches inscribed with Tom Petty’s name.  

     Formerly called Northeast Park, this is where Tom and friends played as children. It was renamed Tom Petty Park on Oct. 20, 2018, what would have been Tom's 68th birthday. The City of Gainesville videorecorded the unveiling ceremony, which can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbwl5tVZ9go  

     The park is also the site of Tom Petty State Historical Marker, which was unveiled and dedicated on Oct. 13, 2024, near the Tom Petty Dog Park, at the intersection of NE 13th Avenue and NE 5th Terrace. To learn more about the marker dedication ceremony, see this Visit Gainesville page: https://www.visitgainesville.com/event/dedication-ceremony-for-the-tom-petty-state-historic-marker/ 

Photo by Shawn Murphy

Tom Petty Park, 1224 NE 5 Terrace, Gainesville, FL 32601 https://maps.app.goo.gl/rUdFeU9gHuK5q2DS7     

     Tom Petty Dog Park, which has two enclosed areas for small and large canines to play off-leash, is located in Tom Petty Park, the former Northeast Park where Tommy Petty and friends played as children. It was renamed Tom Petty Park on Oct. 20, 2018, what would have been Tom's 68th birthday. The City of Gainesville videorecorded the unveiling ceremony, which you can watch here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbwl5tVZ9go      

     The park is also the site of the Tom Petty Historical Marker, unveiled Oct. 13, 2024. To learn more about the dedication ceremony attendees for the state of Florida marker, see this Visit Gainesville page: https://www.visitgainesville.com/event/dedication-ceremony-for-the-tom-petty-state-historic-marker/     

     The state of Florida marker is on the south side of the park, near the Tom Petty Dog Park, at the intersection of NE 13th Avenue and NE 5th Terrace.      

     While you are at the Tom Petty Dog Park, watching the dogs run around, you might listen to "Dogs on the Run," a song from the 1985 album "Southern Accents" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. While the lyrics topically have nothing to do with canines, it still feels like an appropriate song to hear while here. You can listen to the song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV5F1C2NLdI     

     Part of the song lyrics are as follows: 

"I fell overboard and washed up on a beach, Let the waves and sand roll over me. 

I was helped to the home of a young bleached blonde, 

Who said, 'Honey, I discovered early in life There's ways of getting anything I want.' Yeah, some of us are different, 

It's just something in our blood. 

There's no need for explanations, 

We're just dogs on the run. 

It's just dogs on the run." 

Photo by Shawn Murphy 

Tom Petty Park, 501 NE 16th Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601  https://maps.app.goo.gl/L7J7dHUBg45QsBZj9     

     Petty Points Court, which has several tennis and racquetball courts, is located in Tom Petty Park, the former Northeast Park is where Tommy Petty and friends played as children. It was renamed Tom Petty Park on Oct. 20, 2018, what would have been Tom's 68th birthday. The City of Gainesville videorecorded the unveiling ceremony, which you can watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbwl5tVZ9go      

     Tom Petty Park also includes these named recreational facilities: the Petty Pitch Parks, which has three baseball fields with dugout benches inscribed with Tom Petty’s name, and Tom Petty Dog Park, which has two enclosed areas for small and large canines to play off-leash.           

     The park is also the site of the Tom Petty Historical Marker, unveiled Oct. 13, 2024. To learn more about the dedication ceremony attendees for the state of Florida marker, see this Visit Gainesville page:  https://www.visitgainesville.com/event/dedication-ceremony-for-the-tom-petty-state-historic-marker/ 

Photo by Shawn Murphy 

100-198 NE 4th Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601 

https://maps.app.goo.gl/QRc44BaQ3yPgKzqt6

     The Burt Ames Scout Cabin is where neighborhood childhood friends Tom Petty and Keith Harben attended troop meetings for their Boy Scout Troop 84, Falcon Patrol.

     It is likely that Tom Petty recalled these childhood years when he and the Heartbreakers performed “You Are My Sunshine” during the band’s 20-night residency at The Fillmore in San Francisco in 1997, which was included in the “Live at the Fillmore 1997” box set released in 2022. Petty introduces the song,  “Here’s a song I learned at camp." 

    To hear the band's rendition of the song, go here:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSSjlreHKos 

     However, there would have been no overnight camping at this scout cabin, and therefore no "You Are My Sunshine" singalongs here. The scout cabin is located just north of downtown near streets that would have been busy even in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Overnight mini-retreats, where Petty and Harben were campmates, would have been on then-rural property owned by Burt Ames, who was their troop leader at the time. That camping area would have been north of NW 16th Ave., in between NW 26th Way and NW 24th Way, alongside a creek -- where today there are houses in neighborhoods. See separate trail stop for this camping area.

     The website for the Burt Ames Scout Cabin lets us know that Troop 84 is still available for boys ranging in age from 6 to 12, as noted here:

https://www.scoutgnv.org/

     The scout cabin is located on the ground of the First United Methodist Church, whose members constructed the building.  

Photo by Shawn Murphy

1610 NW 24th St, Gainesville, FL 32605

https://maps.app.goo.gl/it5ZVkcfk8XL7MeL8

     Neighborhood childhood friends Tom Petty and Keith Harben attended troop meetings for their Boy Scout Troop 84, Falcon Patrol, at what is today named the Burt Ames Scout Cabin (100-198 NE 4th Ave). However, there would have been no overnight camping at this scout cabin, which is located just north of downtown near streets that would have been busy even in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Overnight mini-retreats, where Petty and Harben were campmates, would have been on then-rural property owned by Burt Ames, who was their troop leader at the time. That camping area would have been north of NW 16th Ave., in between NW 26th Way and NW 24th Way, alongside a creek -- where today there are houses in neighborhoods, according to two key sources

    Today you will find houses in neighborhoods with names like Brywood, Fox Grove and the Meadows, but then this area was owned by Burt Ames. His property was used as the camping area for overnight retreats for Boy Scout Troop 84, Falcon Patrol.

    When Burt Ames was Petty and Harben’s scouting leader, he would host them and their troops mates here on his then-rural area on the outskirts of Gainesville. Keith Harben recalled for me that they would have been ages 11-12 when they camped here. Keith said he was designated to be the camp cook. Stew was on the menu. The youngsters had to carry in their gear for camping overnight in the woods alongside a creek.

    Rogers Bartley, who also belonged to Boy Scout Troop 84, Falcon Patrol, as a child, recalled the Ames’ property being in the same vicinity as Harben pinpointed. In studying Google Maps, he determined that the property entrance would have been very near where I have mapped this trail stop, 1610 NW 24th St.

    “I believe that the Ames’ house was at the corner of what is now 24th Street and 16th Avenue,” Bartley said. “Their acreage was mostly wooded although there was pasture in the back where he grazed some cattle.”

    I unearthed a script for a 2001 interview done by Sara Lynn McCrea as part of the Oral History Program at the Matheson Historical Museum that reveals some more information about Burt Ames, his scout cabin, and his rural property. McCrea’s interview was with James Malcolm Alday, Sr., who had been born 1911, so had memories of Gainesville back in the day. Alday talks about being a member of the First United Methodist Church, the property on which the scout cabin is located. The scout cabin was built by its members.

    “We had a real good Boy Scout group and we built the log cabin for the Boy Scouts,” Alday told McCrea. “We had a nice log cabin that Bert [sic] Ames was the one we called the father of it. He put in a lot of time to be with the boys and take them on trips. He had a little farm and they would go out there and camp out. The boys enjoyed it because they could get out and camp out.”

    It is likely in this location that Tom Petty recalled these childhood years when he and the Heartbreakers performed “You Are My Sunshine” during the band’s 20-night residency at The Fillmore in San Francisco in 1997, which was included in the “Live at the Fillmore 1997” box set released in 2022. Petty introduces the song,  “Here’s a song I learned at camp."

  To hear the band's rendition of the song, go here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSSjlreHKos 

Photo by Shawn Murphy of reported entrance to camping area on former property owned by Burt Ames

2513 Doctors Lake Dr, Orange Park, FL 32073

https://maps.app.goo.gl/qc2gWcsHCURNb7oh7

     This Orange Park, Florida, property on Doctors Lake, an offshoot of the St. John's River, is owned by the Boys Scouts of America. It was once the location of a two-week summer Boy Scout retreat at Camp Echockotee attended by two young children who were neighborhood friends from Gainesville. Their names were Tom Petty and Keith Harben, who were representing Troop 84, Falcon Patrol. They stayed together in a tent with cots. The boys had been warned to be aware of rabid racoons. One night, as Keith recounted to me, he and Tom started screaming when they thought one of these racoons had made its way into their tent. It turned out to be a stray dog, about which they had a good laugh. Keith also recalled how homesick they were -- and how thrilled they were when their moms visited them one day. 

Photo courtesy of Florida Memory, State Library and Archives of Florida

22 SE 1st St, Gainesville, FL 32601

https://maps.app.goo.gl/qBEHC2GtScN3RMuSA 

    Tom Petty’s mother, Katherine “Kitty” (Avery) Petty, worked here for many years in this Alachua County government building in downtown Gainesville. 

    “My mom worked in the tax collector’s office in Gainesville selling car registrations and license plates,” Petty told Paul Zollo for the 2005 book Conversations with Tom Petty. “She worked there quite a long time” (pg. 7).

    Today in this downtown Gainesville government complex you will still find the Alachua County Tax Collector’s office and the Driver License and Motor Vehicles Service Center, along with other county administrative offices. Directly across SE 1st Street is Bo Diddley Plaza. You can see this Tom Petty Trail stop on this page for the Bo Diddley Sidetrail: 

https://tompettytrail.com/bo-diddley-sidetrail 

    On the next block south of here – just 300 feet away – is Lillian’s Music Store (112 SE 1st St.).  While today this is a bar called Lillian’s Music Store, it once was an actual music store frequented by Tom Petty in his youth, during the years his mom was working in the nearby government building. Lillian’s Music Store is named in the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ song “Dreamville,” from the 2002 album “The Last DJ” with this lyric: 

“Goin’ down to Lillian’s Music Store 

To buy a black diamond string 

Gonna wind it up on my guitar 

Gonna make that silver sing 

Like it was Dreamville 

A long time ago 

A million miles away 

All the trees were green 

In Dreamville” 

     You can listen to the song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViczcWEHgaY 

     Keith Harben, who was Tom Petty’s lifelong friend and lived in Tom’s neighborhood through their childhood and teen years, recalled to me that he was with Tom when he purchased from the store a set of black diamond strings, which were hung on the wall to the left as you walked through the front door. Keith noted that Kitty Petty, on her way to work downtown, drove them to Lillian’s Music Store that day. After getting the guitar strings, Tom and Keith walked the mile and a half back home. 

    Tom would later strum these strings on his acoustic guitar. And much later would pen the nostalgic song lyrics.

    You can see the Tom Petty Trail stop for Lillian’s Music Store on this page: https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-1  

Photo by Shawn Murphy

Duck pond, Duckpond neighborhood, Gainesville, FL 32601(alongside NE Blvd., between NE 6th Ave. and NE 5th Ave.)

https://maps.app.goo.gl/3c8hgrJPYgojXqjK9 

     The Sweetwater Branch Creek in Gainesville, which runs alongside Northeast Boulevard, broadens into a duck pond for a block, between Northeast 6th Avenue and Northeast 5th Avenue. It is here, at the duck pond in Gainesville’s Duckpond neighborhood, where Tom Petty went as a child. There he would try to catch crawfish with Keith Harben, a good friend from his neighborhood. Or he would be there on a family outing, playing with his younger brother, Bruce, or feeding the ducks with his cousins. 

    Thanks to Keith, I was able to watch a home movie that was given to him by the Darnell twin sisters, Sadie and Norma, Tom Petty’s cousins (their mother, Lottie, was the sister of Tom’s mother, Kitty). In the color video, you can see 1950s-era cars parked along the tree-lined street while the children gleefully feed the ducks – a lovely time capsule of that family moment. After seeing that video, I went there and stood alongside the duck pond and replayed that home movie in my mind.

     I found the Petty-Darnell home movies to be even more moving because I recalled having read a 2005 article in The Gainesville Sun about when the Darnell sisters showed them to the Petty family while visiting their home in California in the early 2000s, and how that nostalgic experience was so emotional for them.

    The home movie combines color footage from various Petty-Darnell family get-togethers while its soundtrack is the songs of Tom Petty, namely “Wildflowers” and “Southern Accents.” Shot in the mid-to-late 1950s or very early 1960s, it shows the Darnell and Petty children celebrating a birthday on a front lawn, pushing one another in a motorless go-cart along a street, and enjoying a day at the beach. (See related Tom Petty Trail stop for Daytona Beach here: https://tompettytrail.com/lyrical-threads-vol-1) We also see children hunting for Easter eggs, including a slightly older-looking Tom, who has his hair spiked like Elvis Presley, with whom he became obsessed after meeting him on a film set in the summer of 1961, an introduction made possible by his uncle, Earl Jernigan. (See related Tom Petty Trail stop for Ocala here: https://tompettytrail.com/buried-treasure)

     The home movie is edited in a way so that we see spiky-haired Tom, while on his quest for Easter eggs, standing aside his mother, Kitty, who is seated, while we hear the heart-wrenching “Southern Accents” lyric in which the song’s narrator describes a vision of seeing his deceased mother, standing with him “for just a minute”: 

“There’s a dream I keep having

Where my mama comes to me

And kneels down over by the window and says a prayer for me”

    “Upon seeing the scene, the room fell still, Sadie Darnell said,” according to the report in the Sun. “The rock star in the Malibu mansion was genuinely overwhelmed. ‘It was just a really warm moment,’ she recalled. ‘It just felt right.’”

    To read this account from the Sun, go here:

https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/2005/10/30/book-explores-petty-s-area/31464775007/

Or here:

https://www.thepettyarchives.com/archives/newspapers/2000s/2005-10-30-gainesvillesun 

  In this Sun article, Tom Petty expresses to the reporter his nostalgia for his Gainesville hometown. 

    “I remember a lot about Gainesville, such a lovely place to grow up. Just incredible growing up there.” Petty is quoted as saying. “It was really special there. It was so great. Sometimes I have this fantasy of buying one of those houses by the Duck Pond and moving there. I loved it there. I really did.”

Photo by Shawn Murphy

3019 NE 20th Way, Gainesville, FL 32609

https://maps.app.goo.gl/vcpuCgarfYSR2BDo8

    One of Tom Petty’s uncles, Earl Jernigan, ran for decades a successful film production business here out of a nondescript building in the northeast quadrant of Gainesville (3019 NE 20th Way). The company, Jernigan’s Motion Picture Service, took on many videography projects over its 49 years in business, including to help scout filming locations for Hollywood movies – one of which was “Follow That Dream,” which starred Elvis Presley. The movie was shot on location throughout Florida, including downtown Ocala at the then-named Commercial Bank & Trust Co. (203 East Silver Springs Blvd.), where 10-year-old Petty met Presley – and sparked his interest in living a musical life.

    Uncle Jernigan, as he was called, invited Tom to go to Ocala one day in the summer of 1961 to watch filming and to meet Elvis. When Jernigan introduced Tom to him, Elvis briefly nodded and shook his little hand. Tom stood still, stunned and speechless, yet smiling. Petty told Warren Zanes for the 2015 book Petty: The Biography: “I caught the fever that day, and I never got rid of it. That’s what kicked off my love of music. And I never thought much about rock ‘n’ roll until that moment.” 

    Earl Jernigan, who died in 1998, ran Jernigan’s Motion Picture Service from 1938 to 1987. He helped Hollywood when it came to Florida, but from 1958 to 1961 he also did the underwater camerawork for TV’s “Sea Hunt,” which was filmed in Silver Springs. And he helped document life in Gainesville for half a century; in doing so, Jernigan helped document its history. He even produced local newsreels that were shown before movies shown at the Florida Theater at 233 West University Ave., a place where Tom Petty and his childhood friend Keith Harben would go on Saturdays. Expanding his business from motion pictures to video, Jernigan recorded video of events in the city and on the campus of the University of Florida, many of which were sought by TV stations across Florida. His final production was “The Gainesville Movie Album,” a retrospective of six decades of Gainesville’s history. Two DVD copies now reside in the special collections at Alachua County regional library, 401 East University Ave.

    To learn more about Earl Jernigan, who died in 1998, read this Gainesville Sun article:

https://www.gainesville.com/story/news/2004/05/26/lights-camera-history/31666625007/  

A special thanks to Phil Chiocchio and Erik Emerson for helping to provide leads on this location.

Photo by Scott W. Smith, courtesy of Screenwriting from Iowa blog