Planning for Tallahassee’s Bicentennial

Dr. James M. Denham  is Professor of History and Director of the Lawton Chiles Center for Florida History at Florida Southern College.   He is the author of Florida Founder William P. Duval: Frontier Bon Vivant.

Bob Holladay, a former journalist and bookseller, moved to Tallahassee in 2000.  For the last 15 years, he has taught American History at Tallahassee Community College.  He has been president of the Tallahassee Historical Society since 2018.

Claude Kenneson is a volunteer researcher at the State Library of Florida.  Since the 1990s, he has created nearly 100 reference notebooks on Tallahassee and Leon County topics including two notebooks on the 1924 Tallahassee Centennial.

Joe Knetsch has taught in four colleges and universities in Florida as well as being a teacher of the gifted at Ramblewood Middle School in Coral Springs. He is a former president of the Tallahassee Historical Society as well as a member of the boards for the St. Augustine Historical Society, the Florida Historical Society, the Broward County Historical Commission and the Florida Heritage Foundation.  Joe has published ten books, including Florida’s Seminole Wars:  1817-1858 and Forts, Ports, Canals and Wars: An Uncommon History of Tallahassee and the Surrounding Area, and over 200 articles on Florida history and genealogy.

Alissa Lotane is the Bureau Chief of the Bureau of Historic Preservation at the Florida Department of State and a Deputy State Historic Preservation Officer for the State of Florida. She holds an Master’s degree in Anthropology and a Museum Studies Certification from Florida State University and a Bachelor’s degree in History from Troy University. Ms. Lotane has been with the Florida Department of State since 2003, working in many areas of the Division – reviewing state and federal undertakings for impacts to historic properties, managing large scale state grants for rehab of historic structures, then supervising Florida’s historic preservation grants program, and later serving as the Department of State’s grants administrator and historic property manager. Ms. Lotane has held her current position as Bureau Chief since 2011. Recently, she has also reviewed federal historic preservation tax incentives applications, and has been working with the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation on legislation to pass a state historic tax credit in Florida. She lives in the Brant Hills neighborhood of Tallahassee with her husband Bob and two cats, Angus and Stevie, and enjoys caring for her hundreds of indoor and outdoor plants.

Lynn McLarty was born and raised in Chattahoochee, Florida. He completed college, dental school, and a residency at Emory University. He served in the United States Naval Dental Corps, 1973-1978, in Naples, Italy and Beaufort, South Carolina. 

He retired from private practice of pediatric dentistry in 2019.

His wife Miriam is a retired FSU College of Nursing professor and they have three daughters, Emily, Rebecca, and Margaret.

They have been family members of Trinity United Methodist Church since 1979.  Lynn serves as Chairperson for Trinity’s bicentennial in September 2024.

Susan Mick first came to Tallahassee in 1966. She is an FSU graduate and a retired teacher from here in Leon County. She is both a collector and dealer of old & rare books, maps, and documents, as well as an avid student of Florida History.

Torrio Osborne is the Vice Chairman of the John G Riley Museum Foundation and serves as a steward of the John G. Riley Museum Archive at Tallahassee Community College. As a liaison to faculty, students and community, he provides opportunities for access to the wonderful local historical collections of primary and secondary resources in the Archive.

In addition to his role as steward of the TCC Riley Museum Archive, he has been professionally engaged in areas of business development, finance, real estate development and economic development for more than twenty-five years; in doing so, bridging the common needs of public and private sector projects with an emphasis on sourcing, relationship management and new venture development.

Locally, serves as Vice-Chairman of The John G. Riley Museum Foundation Board, and has served on the Urban Land Institute Technical Assistance Advisory Panel Study (ULI/TAP) of the Orange Avenue Corridor focused on South City, Tallahassee Florida; Leadership Tallahassee, Class XXXIII; additionally, the Big Bend Homeless Coalition Board as Secretary as well as an annual volunteer for the United Way of the Big Bend’s CHSP Humans Services Grant program; and, serves as a new member of the Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra (TSO).

He studied Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois with a focus on Organizational Design and Change Management.

He is passionate about discussing historical preservation, architecture, African-American history and turn of the century southern history.

Torrio currently resides in Tallahassee, Florida with his wife and two sons.

Dr. Larry Eugene Rivers is Distinguished Professor of History at Florida A&M University.  He is the author or co-author of eight books, including his seminal work titled Slavery in Florida: Territorial Days To Emancipation.

KC Smith is a member of the Florida Historical Society board of directors and operates The Wordsmith, a contract writing, editing, and research business. Now retired, KC was a museum educator at the DeSoto Site, Mission San Luis, Florida Historic Capitol, and Museum of Florida History, serving for eight years as the MFH Curator of Education.