Effievescent

Effie Turner has spent a lifetime in Winter Garden, building a family and a home in the community. Now she begins a new chapter in her old hometown.

RHEYA TANNER

Effie Turner is the definition of chic— her sleek gray-and-black ensemble embellished with a string of pearlsand a bedazzled headband to tame any straywisps of silver-white hair. A gentle smile gracesher face as her delicate fingers trace a photoalbum one of her granddaughters made.

“Isn’t he precious? You’ll just die when you see how tall he was,” she says, pointing to a photo of her and her late husband, Collie, from when they first met. She was just 18 then. “I’m holding a Terri Lee doll in this one because I’d just bought it when he came in the drugstore. Maybe I was too old for dolls, but I loved them anyway.”

“It’s how I got my name,” says Effie’s daughter, Terri Morabito, as she turns the pages for her mother. “This is always how I saw them— in the kitchen, laughing, always with a bowl of fruit on the table.”

The cover on the album reads “Think About the Good Times,” a phrase Collie said when things got tough, before his unexpected passing last year. “I wasn’t ready for change,” says Effie, dabbing away a tear. “But the day I moved in, the staff was all in the front room singing a song to me. That meant a lot.”

At the beginning of this year, The Blake at Hamlin, a new assisted living facility, became the latest of many Winter Garden residences Effie has called home. She celebrates her 87th birthday this month. “I’m doing just fine,” she says. “The only thing I have is a little arthritis in my hip that everybody has when it rains.”

In her Welcome Home photo from that first day, Effie is as sharply dressed as ever, wearing her signature pearls alongside a pair of old dog tags. “They were the only thing I found of his that I can wear.”

Collie also left his wife a lifetime of good times to think about. From house to house, moment to moment, with Winter Garden as the backdrop through it all.

Be it Ever so Humble

Effie was born in Ocoee on March 11, 1935. Her childhood home was at 212 Valencia Ct., in a Winter Garden that looked quite different, but felt nearly the same. “There weren’t as many houses, for sure. It was more country-like, a lot more orange groves,” she says. “There wasn’t a whole lot to do, but we made up our own fun. I broke my arm twice—once sliding onto a base we made on Story Road to play baseball, and again while riding bikes.” While it was a small agricultural town, Winter Garden still felt the impact of World War II. “They couldn’t get rubber to make balls. I played jacks with a plastic ball. I even sewed a ball from the toe of a sock.”

Things remained quiet and simple until one Sunday in 1953, when she met the love of her life. “Me and a girlfriend were downtown at the pharmacy, on our way to church, when he walked in.” That “he” was 21-year-old Collie Turner, back visiting his hometown while on leave from the Navy. “He asked us to go out with him, but I asked him to come to church with me instead.”

He declined that invitation but agreed to come to her house the next day. “We spent the night riding around singing Christian songs,” she said. “He loved me from the very start. And I loved him.”

The two were together just three months before Collie was deployed again—but even after such a short time, they knew it was meant to be. “He really wanted to marry me before he left, and I wanted to marry him too. I didn’t mind waiting for him.”

The newlyweds were separated for almost a year, sending letters whenever they could. “I could have gone with him, but I thought it would be better for me to keep my job and stay with my parents,” she says. “I made some chocolate chip cookies and sent them to him once.”

When they finally reunited, Collie and Effie began to settle down in the place they’ve always called home. “He knew everybody around Winter Garden,” Effie says. Within a few months, those connections brought Collie to his first (and last) job. “Two people from Continental Can came to our house to tell us they were gonna be hiring that day. So he went down there and they hired him.”

Collie started with the Continental Can Company at the bottom, cleaning floors and often working nights. “I quit my job when he moved to night shift because I wanted more time with him. We’d already been apart for so long.”

Where the Heart Is

It was two years before their first child, Terri, was born, and another two years before the birth of their son, Craig. “We had to work everything around Collie’s schedule, but he spent lots of time with the kids, playing ball and playing outside.”

“They always put us first, even if Dad didn’t have a lot of time,” says Terri. “He would come home after second shift, pick us up, and go to this restaurant called Chastain’s that was open all night so we could have dinner together.”

The young Turner family grew up in a little house on Palm Drive. “Goodness, it was so small,” says Terri. “But it was very Old Florida—cedar cabinets with the knots in them and huge sliding glass doors that would shake when the hurricanes came.”

With the tight-knit neighborhood and the city’s growth during that time, the Palm Drive house is home to their fondest memories. “All us kids would camp out all night and then come back to my house in the morning because Mom would make pancakes for the neighborhood,” Terri recalls. “Some days they’d load up the car and take us through the woods out to a lake in Windermere and we’d go swimming. We had a lot of adventure in that house.”

Meanwhile, Collie worked his way up the ranks, eventually being offered the position of Plant Manager. “We had to move to Winter Haven for a couple years, because that’s where Collie got his training,” says Effie. “But then they put him right back in his old plant, and the people loved him there.”

“We all wanted to come back to Winter Garden anyway. Just because it was home,” adds Terri. “There’s never going to be a better town to live in.”

Collie retired at 72 after 50 years at Continental Can, and the couple enjoyed an independent, retired life playing grandparents to both their own grandchildren and the whole community. Collie continued to teach Sunday school, coach little league baseball, and play Santa Claus for the better part of a decade. “The kids would still call him ‘coach’ after all these years. Some of the kids he taught are old themselves now,” says Terri. “Mom was always the silent person behind everything. She always made sure everything was taken care of and everybody felt loved.”

“And Collie was the one behind me,” Effie adds.

Going Back Home

In his mid-80s, Collie fought and won a battle against bladder cancer. “In February 2021, the doctors at the cancer center said it was all gone,” Terri said. “But he just kept getting weaker.”

The family started looking into assisted living and discovered The Blake. “It was dirt when we first saw it,” says Terri. “He and Mom had planned on coming here together.”

Their best-laid plans couldn’t have accounted for Collie being re-admitted to the hospital and discovering that his cancer was not only back, but had metastasized. But even while he was in the hospital, he was still putting Effie first. “He’s so brave,” she says. “He saw that he was going to pass away, and he wanted me to be taken care of. He paid for my stay here and told me he wanted me to come.”

Collie and Effie Turner surrounded by four generations of family

Collie passed on Aug. 4, 2021. His funeral was attended by his two children, five grandchildren, 11 great grandchildren, and countless members of the community who saw him as their own family. “I have to know he is with God,” says Effie. “He was a good force.”

Honoring her late husband’s wish, Effie moved in January 2022 and has enjoyed the freedom of assisted living. “Bless her heart, her and my dad were so locked in with the pandemic. It’s wonderful that all the services can come to her,” says Terri. “If she gets sick in the middle of the night, she doesn’t have to go to the hospital around all the sickness.”

“They can come over here and eat with me,” Effie says of her family— four generations of family now residing in Winter Garden. “My little 4-year-old great granddaughter can come visit.”

Her new home offers another opportunity to think of the good times, as well as create new ones. “Winter Garden makes her feel comfortable, even though it’s changed. We still see it a lot the way it was, so to see it as it is now brings back old memories.”

After all, a home is just a house until the memories are made.