Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was Fort Myers. And
with a population of over 68,000, it is still in the process of growing. But
the Fort Myers that we know and today would not have been without the help of local
entrepreneur Harvie E. Heitman.
Although Fort Myers stood for 38 years before Heitman
arrived, he oversaw the development of the now Historic District. The first
brick building, the first thoroughbred horses and even the first sidewalk in
Fort Myers can all be attributed to his entrepreneurial expertise.
Arriving in Fort Myers at the age of 16, Harvie Heitman of
Lexington, North Carolina went to work in his great uncle’s general store. As a
result of poor business and the panic of 1893, his uncle had to close up shop
and move to a more economically hospitable to environment. Heitman took this
new found freedom as a chance to try his hand in Key West.
About a year later he returned to Fort Myers to start his
own business. He bought a small piece of property on the Northwest corner of
First and Jackson Street – across the street from the Sidney & Berne Davis
Art Center where the Re/Max building currently sits. His business distinctly
tailored to the yachtsmen and fishermen that frequently docked in the
Caloosahatchee River.
With the money he saved he commissioned a 16 stall stable
and bought Fort Myers’ first Kentucky thoroughbred horses that he used for his
taxi service down to Naples, Florida.
His growing business caught the attention of a local oil tycoon
Ambrose McGregor. The quickly became good friends, and in 1897 McGregor
financed the expansion of Heitman’s first building on the corner of First and
Jackson. This would become the first brick building in Fort Myers. In 1900,
Harvie’s younger brother Gilmer Heitman would occupy the second floor of this
building, which he used to house his 50-drop switchboard for the first
telephone line in Southwest Florida.
Heitman would go on to wear many hats including the manager
of hundreds of acres of citrus grove, the president of the bank of Fort Myers
and friend to the original snowbird Thomas Edison.
Harvie Heitman died in 1922 from stomach cancer. Following
his death, his brother took control of his estate.
I had the opportunity to speak with Harvie Heitman’s
great-nephew and grandson to Gilmer Heitman, Rod Heitman. Although Harvie died
almost 20 years before he was even born, he recalls stories that have been
passed down to him from his father and grandfather.
“I’ve always been
told that he had a strong entrepreneurial mind. As a boy we used to go down to see
him at cemetery often and it wasn’t until I was older that I realized just the
prominence and impact that he had.”
Harvie Heitman has one of the largest and ordinate
headstones in the Fort Myers Cemetery. The head itself is white marble and
about six feet in height with a 10’ by 6’ white boarder around the perimeter of
the plot. Shaded by age, the stone represent the magnitude of the man. However
there is nothing buried there. Shortly after Heitman died, his widow Florida
Heitman exhumed his body and relocated it to an unknown location. It is rumored
that she moved somewhere in the Northeast U.S. to be closer to her family, but
there is little record to validate his whereabouts.
“Shortly before he died there was a falling out between
Gilmer and Harvie, so after he died [Gilmer] just lost track of him and [his
wife].”
His brother Gilmer is buried directly behind this with
nothing more than a modest block of marble with an inscription of his name.
Harvie’s stone overshadows Gilmer’s as older brothers tend to do.
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