Florida Catholic | Obituary :: Richard Pope Jr.

OBITUARY

Dick Pope: St. Matthew Parish founding member and Cypress Gardens legend

LAURA DODSON | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 11.30.07

WINTER HAVEN | Richard Downing “Dick” Pope Jr. was an accomplished public figure whose life, work and family were so significant in the community as to make his death front-page news in local newspapers. Still, the comments and compliments shared by those who knew him speak more of the deeply spiritual font of his success.

Pope died at home around 10 p.m. Nov. 8 of pancreatic cancer, according to those newspaper reports. He was 77.

Valeta Orlando, who was on staff at St. Matthew Parish in Winter Haven for 15 years as director of religious education and director of liturgy and knows the Pope family well, said, “Dick Pope was always extremely gracious. He was kind and very unassuming. Someone would have to point him out to you to know who he was. He was always a very quiet presence, very generous.”

Born Dec. 12, 1930, on Long Island, N.Y., Pope became a Winter Haven resident when he was 18 months old.

In 1936, his parents, Julie and Dick Pope Sr., founded Cypress Gardens — 223 acres of what would eventually showcase 8,000 varieties of plants and become Florida’s oldest theme park. They were also founding members of St. Matthew Parish, donating the five acres of land for the first church that was built and dedicated March 6, 1977.

Responding to a request from visiting soldiers, Pope’s mother gathered children and friends to create a water show at Cypress Gardens. As a young adolescent, Pope skied in the first water show at Cypress Gardens and went on to win national skiing championships as well as the World Championship in 1950.

He was an expert at barefoot skiing, was inducted into the Waterski Hall of Fame in 1989 and the Polk County Sports Hall of Fame in 2000. Pope manufactured water skis and was responsible for innovations to improve the equipment and standards.

Pope was an avid outdoorsman. In addition to skiing, he was a fisherman, skeet shooter, hunter and a pilot.

As president of Cypress Gardens from his father’s retirement in 1962 to 1985, he was well-respected as an employer and businessman.

“Dick Pope and his family were not just Catholics in name only. He and his family were very much an active presence in the parish. They cared very much about the life and future of the parish. They were very involved,” Orlando added.

In 1995, with his wife, Frances, Pope established a scholarship fund in the name of their deceased son, Richard D. Pope III, to provide tuition, books, uniform and a full scholarship for one St. Matthew parishioner to attend St. Joseph Catholic School in Winter Haven.

Upon learning Pope was gravely ill, Father Fred Ruse, former pastor of St. Matthew Parish, traveled from the sister Diocese of San Juan de la Maguana in the Dominican Republic to be by Pope’s bedside. He was there when Pope died.

During the closing of the funeral Mass Nov. 13, Father Ruse said, “Following the words of St. Paul, ‘farewell’ is more the occasion to ‘congratulate’ God for his presence and action in our lives, especially as manifested in the life of Dick Pope.”

Father Ruse continued, “Nothing will separate us from the love of God, which is an assurance that, even in this ‘farewell,’ we are not entering upon the absence from us of Dick. In God’s love he is part of the communion which is the church.”

In addition to his wife of 50 years, Pope is survived by daughters Julie Dantzler and Ann Wood and their spouses Rick and Allen, respectively, and granddaughters, Elizabeth and Margaret Dantzler, and Paris and Brittany Wood.

Tanya Goodman of the Florida Catholic staff contributed to this article

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OBITUARY

Dick Pope: St. Matthew Parish founding member and Cypress Gardens legend

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