Parks and Rec: The Origins of Three Gainesville Parks

Long remembers when athletes used to drink large amounts of water to combat dehydration, but their muscles still cramped up from a lack of potassium and salt, hence why they turned to salt tablets.

“If you just constantly hydrated yourself with Gatorade, you didn’t have to worry about trying to time ‘OK when I supposed to take (salt tablets) because I’m out there playing tennis in August in Florida and I’m sweating like crazy.'”

Stephanie Bailes, president and executive director of the Cade Museum said the sports drink has had significant impacts in many ways. The success of the product influenced not only the town it was invented in, but also set a precedent for inventions that came after it, opening up a new industry and proving itself to serve medicinal purposes.

The local effect of the beverage on Gainesville and the University of Florida’s community was significant. Its success created a system and established “a pathway to commercialization” for future local inventions, according to Bailes.

Gatorade isn’t the only invention to impact lives beyond the county lines. Dr. Thomas Maren’s Trusopt, an eye drop glaucoma drug, has delivered more than $250 million in royalties to the University of Florida. Taking after the precedent set by the Cades, Maren also charitably donated much of his portion of the earnings to support additional research at the university, according to the University of Florida News website. The prosperity of the sports drink increased the personal wealth of the altruistic Cade family who has been known to constantly give back to their community. According to Bailes, who said she personally witnesses their local impact just by peeking into her office’s hallway, the Cades are also known to say they are “blessed to be a blessing” to the community. There, Bailes sees all the plaques of thanks for the family’s generous donations from UF club sports teams to local organizations like Gainesville Young Life and others.

Bailes reflected on how she meets people at least once a week who have stories about how the Gatorade founder impacted their lives. She remembers being at her son’s baseball game conversing with one of the other moms when she told Bailes, “‘My dad was an air conditioning repairman, went to his house and was repairing his air conditioning. They ended up talking about me going to college, but he didn’t have the funding, and Dr. Cade paid for two years of my school.’ There are stories like that throughout this community.”

The electrolyte beverage has also opened up an avenue for an entire industry. Before the drink’s inception, the sports performance industry wasn’t nearly as developed as it is now. After its success, it established a need and want for other performanceenhancing products. This comes as no surprise

considering the stark difference it made in Florida football players' performances on the field during the product’s testing period.

Gainesville was founded as a result of the Florida Railroad linking Fernandina and Cedar Key. The railway was used to carry goods to and from each coast, according to the City of Gainesville. Bailes recalled that Phoebe Cade Miles, the founder of the Cade Museum, always said, “They used it to export produce and Gainesville has moved from an exporter of produce to an exporter of ideas.”

Though the Gators may lose a game now and again, the opposing teams still celebrate their win by dumping what on their coaches? Gatorade.

IDEAS

The Origins Issue 63

Recovering from 2020

Story and Photos by Melissa Hernandez De La Cruz

It's safe to say that the year 2020 broke me.

The culminating year of the 2010s was like the final boss — our very own Bowser from Mario Kart. It was supposed to be everyone's Great Gatsby year, the resurgence of the roaring '20s. But instead of glasses full of champagne and flapper dresses, a pandemic halted the world.

If you told me in the prime of my life I would have dealt with the emotional baggage of a global pandemic, all while weaving my way through distance learning and hyflex courses, I would've suggested laying off the theatrics.

Yet, every two weeks, my saliva pools at the center of my mouth as I drive, so I can quickly fill up the COVID-19 test tube given to me. I make sure my saliva meets the second line — without bubbles, of course — and I am slightly disgusted that I'm forced to examine my spit. The results from the tube full of my DNA are the only thing keeping me from a twoweek quarantine.

Following the events of 2020, my relationship with my family remains broken after a COVID-19 scare led to pointing fingers after someone got sick. I haven’t seen my cousins in over a year because of the severed ties in my family. I overheard the horrors of family members who were intubated because they contracted COVID-19. I lost a year of my college experience. I watched as countless student apartments denied any rent relief for college students despite the scale of the severity of the lockdown. I feel guilty whenever I leave my house for unnecessary things. And yet, I am better off compared to the mass loss of life experienced in the past year. No one could've predicted the way things turned out in 2020. I'm not even sure the tarot cards could've warned us of the inexplicable pain and societal destruction that was coming our way. If you never paid attention to the news, 2020 surely caught your eye after the racial injustice protests, heavily politicized elections and, of course, COVID-19.

But if 2020 was the year that broke us, 2021 must be the year that reinvents our story — a new beginning.

In 2021, I am letting go of restricting myself. It's OK to feel like I've lost something, even if it wasn't physical. It's OK to grieve over the emotional pain felt after reading the COVID-19-related headlines that eventually desensitized me of the rising death toll of at least half a million in the United States.

I must learn to accept that it's OK if I didn't become a fitness guru during this time. It's OK if I didn't score an extraordinary internship. I shouldn't guilt myself for endlessly scrolling through TikTok because I am not alone in these feelings. Along with the rest of the world, I must cope with the fact that the normal we knew and were so comfortable with may never come back.

In this spare time of loneliness, reflection and forgiveness are vital in recovering from the aftermath. So take mental health days. Cry whenever you feel overwhelmed. Grieve over the time you lost. Reminisce on that 2020 spring break trip with your friends. Most importantly, learn the power of resilience.

"Along with the rest of the world, I must cope with the fact that the normal we knew and were so comfortable with may never come back."

64 The Origins Issue

A Trip To the Psyche

Story by Alexis Vega

Photos by Melissa Hernandez De La Cruz

There are numerous strange occurrences that stretch across the human experience and beyond the confines of reasonable explanation. For example, deja vu, literally meaning “already seen” in French, is a remarkable wonder that one cannot succinctly sum up with science. On that same note, there is the phenomenon that has perplexed minds for years: the Mandela Effect.

Also referred to as “false memory,” the Mandela Effect got its name from a bizarre instance that took place in 2010. According to Healthline, a selfproclaimed “paranormal researcher,” Fiona Broome falsely recalled that Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa, had died in prison in the 1980s. In actuality, he had been released from prison in 1990 and died in 2013. Despite the facts, Broome and a large group of people “remembered” viewing TV coverage of Mandela’s funeral years prior. Thus, the Mandela Effect was born.

Since then, the internet has been teeming with new occurrences of the bizarre psychological phenomenon. For example, the famous twist from “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back,” the truth about Luke Skywalker’s father, is different from what some remember. The iconic line, “Luke, I am your father,” is actually, “No, I am your father.” Though the difference is slight, many gravitate toward the former as being correct.

Not convinced? Most occasions when someone experiences a Mandela Effect moment, it may happen visually. For instance, close your eyes and imagine the Fruit of the Loom’s company logo. You probably envision a cornucopia of spilled fruits. If you didn’t, then congrats! Your memory is solid. In truth, the emblem is simply a pile of fruits. No cornucopias were involved in the making of this logo.

Is there a science behind the Mandela Effect?

“A lot of the examples I saw online when I looked it up are illustrations of incomplete memory,” said Dr. James Shepperd, a social psychology professor at the University of Florida. “There are lots of details that we don’t encode because it’s not important to us. And therefore, when required to recall them, we fill in the details in a way that makes sense to us. And sometimes those details are incorrect. It’s not that we misremember them — we don’t have a memory for them. We’re creating one to fill in those details.” Another fun concept proposed by conspiracy theorists is that this collective misremembrance hints at the possibility of alternate realities. After all, how can such a large group of people swear up and down that an event happened one way when in reality it didn’t? While it’s entertaining conjecture, there isn’t exactly a basis for it. But then again, can there be tangible evidence of alternate realities? Or is it something you just feel is out there? “Well, the alternate universe idea is … an unprovable thing,” said Shepperd. “So, you can never prove or disprove it. But, it’s actually an idea that has some traction in theoretical physics.”

In essence, the Mandela Effect falls under pseudoscience. According to Shepperd, your mind reconstructs a memory based on other information that surrounds or follows the memory in question, creating one that is different from the truth.

“An alternative explanation is that all of these explanations can be true because it could be a phenomenon that has multiple causes … we have some sort of interference going on,” he said. “So, we learn something afterward which is inconsistent and that we remember the past of it in a way that… rectifies that inconsistency.” This wouldn’t be the only time something like this happens. Often, your brain gaslights you into remembering things not quite how they occurred.

The Origins Issue 65