Ah, another place I lived as a kid! For a time we lived on Lake Lovely, then moved to Maitland/Goldenrod to Lake Georgia. I went back as an adult, and had a hard time reconciling what that all looked like 20 years later. Night and day. I can’t even imagine it now when it would be 50+ years later. I still prefer what I call “Old Florida.” It only exists in a few spots that I know of.
My father went to the old Orlando High School on Robinson just east of Lake Eola. It was the only white high school in the county at the time, and as a poor, scrawny Catholic kid from Up North with a Polish last name in a town run by WASP Baptists and Presbyterians tolerant of the Klan, he was ignored by most classmates and scorned by the school principal as a frequent truant with a fondness for the pool hall behind the high school.
Nevertheless, my father won an academic scholarship to the Merchant Marine Academy, went to sea as a deck officer, was in the US Navy, became a lawyer, and then a circuit judge. The defining opportunity though of my father's life -- the Merchant Marine Academy -- required that he leave Florida before eventually returning.
Now though, a kid in Orlando can dream of going into space, get the necessary education all the way through university, then drive over to Cape Canaveral and apply at NASA -- all without being dissed because of their background and having to leave Florida to find opportunity. And if they are lucky, they might get to suit up to ride one of the big candles, with half the state able to see it on a clear day.