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I don’t have a father to send gifts to on Father’s Day anymore. My father has been gone since January, 2014. However, he lives very much in my life today.I’ve become his voice through the multimedia show I made about him that I call “Patrick Smith’s Florida IS A Land Remembered.”
It wasn’t anything I ever thought I would do. After all, I live in California and had left home long before dad’s most well-known work, A Land Remembered, was even an idea for a book. Many people I have met on my tours are really surprised by this.
How It Started
Before I get started or you get excited, I have to tell you that I have recently retired from the speaking tours you are going to read about. But it’s an interesting story, so here we go …
Years ago, right out of college, I moved to California and stumbled into a position at California Polytechnic State University. I ended up staying there for 27 years, 24 of those in a Director position with a department that produced and sold educational videos all over the world. When I left that job in 1998, I started my own video production business. At the same time, Dad was experiencing growing success with A Land Remembered and his other books. He especially enjoyed traveling all over Florida to speak not only about his books but about Florida.
One day when visiting dad, he told me that if I ever made a movie of his popular talk, “You’d sell thousands.” That caught my attention.
A few years later I did get him to sit down in front of my camera to do just that. At the time, I was more interested in just getting his talk on video so it wouldn’t be lost forever. I didn’t have any lighting or other fancy equipment with me as I was in Florida just visiting him and mom.
From that simple shoot, I produced Patrick Smith’s Florida: A Sense of Place. 
But the story didn’t stop there.
Once the video was produced, I had to figure out a way to get it out there for people to view and buy it. Having experience from my years at Cal Poly and wanting to get involved with an online business, I launched this website. That led me to become his official spokesperson. People started finding my site while looking for his contact information to ask him to speak. Since Dad did not do email, I would get the requests which I would relay to him. At that time, his health kept him from accepting speaking engagements. That was when people started to ask me if I would come and speak. In February 2013, my show was born. Dad was so popular and so polished as a speaker, I knew I had to put together something much different.
A Multimedia Experience
Using my video and editing skills, I decided to produce a multimedia show rather than a lecture. I wanted to bring him into my talk and the best way to do this was to include parts of the video A Sense of Place.
But I didn’t stop there. I went on to include other videos, images, stories, and music. (I figured it would be a lot easier for me to present as each clip, image, and slide cues me as to what I talk about next.)
I added laugh tracks and sound effects. It turned out to be a fun, fast-paced, and entertaining “show! I call it visual storytelling.
While A Land Remembered is a key theme in my show, to help the audience understand what led him to write this book, I also talk about the other books that were important steps in his writing career. I also take the audience on a heart-warming and nostalgic trip back in time to a Florida that once was, is no more, and never again will be.
Patrick Smith’s Legacy Lives On
I presented my show over 325 times all over Florida, in libraries, schools, universities, museums, theaters, performing arts centers, festivals, state parks, country clubs, retirement villages, and so on. I’m now in the early stages of planning another tour in February and March of 2020.
I never cease to be amazed at the interest people show in him and his literary legacy. In a recent show at the Sunrise Theatre in Fort Pierce, almost 1,200 audience members showed up on a rainy Tuesday afternoon! Such is the draw of his best-known novel, A Land Remembered and people’s desire to learn more about Florida and my father.
An ongoing joke I like to share is that I can walk into a bar in Florida and loudly say A Land Remembered and a few people will say that’s their favorite book. This has happened many times.
As more and more people move to Florida that book keeps growing. I believe it is because “Old Florida” is such a surprising concept to the transplants. And “Old Florida” is what A Land Remembered and my show deliver.
So while Dad is not with us this Father’s Day, my show has now become the best possible way I am keeping Patrick Smith’s legacy alive. I’m honored to do it.
