The Participants

Board of Directors

William R. Adams, Ph.D. is the former director of the Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board and presently acts as the director of the City of St. Augustine's Department of Heritage Tourism. Dr. Adams has been associated with the restoration program for three decades.

Jess Childre is a retired president of a major central Florida home building company. Mr. Childre has lived in St. Augustine for the past fifty years and owns and resides in one of the city's 36 remaining colonial-era buildings.

Hal Holton is an independent insurance broker and 14-year St. Augustine resident.

Ronnie Hughes is the former publisher of the St. Augustine Record, which has been the city's major daily newspaper for the past 111 years.

Derek J. May became publisher of the St. Augustine Record in January 2006, after working at the Athens (GA) Banner-Herald as director of sales and marketing.  He graduated from Augusta State University with a B.S. in computer science.

Susan Parker, Ph.D. is the former historian for the Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board and presently serves as a Heritage Preservation Consultant for the Florida Department of State.

Richard Rumrell is a St. Augustine attorney.

The Colonial St. Augustine Foundation is adminisitered by Catherine Culver, M.S.

Board of Scholarly Advisors

William R. Adams, Ph.D. is the director of the Department of Heritage Tourism for the City of St. Augustine. A graduate of the University of Minnesota and Florida State University, from which he holds a doctorate in history, Dr. Adams has worked in the field of historic preservation for three decades. He previously served, in turn, as assistant professor of history at FSU, executive director of the Florida Bicentennial Commission, and director of the Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board.

Kathleen Deagen, Ph.D. is Distinguished Research Curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida. Dr. Deagen serves as the director and principal investigator of the Historical Archaeology Field School Program in St. Augustine. She was the principal investigator for a number of major archaeological projects in St. Augustine and the Caribbean region, and she has published numerous books and monographs dealing principally with colonial period archaeology in the Ancient City.

Michael V. Gannon, Ph.D. is Distinguished Service Professor of History and the Julien C. Yonge Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Florida. Dr. Gannon is a leading authority on colonial Florida history. He served for many years as president of the Board of Trustees for the Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board, a State of Florida agency charged with restoration of the colonial city. He is author on The Cross in the Sand: The Early Catholic Church in Florida and the best-selling Florida: A Short History, among his many books and monographs.

Thomas Graham, Ph.D. is professor of History at Flagler College in St. Augustine, where he has served for some thirty years. An authority on the history of the Flagler Era in St. Augustine, Dr. Graham is the author of The Awakening of St. Augustine: The Anderson Family and the Oldest City, 1821-1924 and major monographs on the three great hotels of St. Augustine constructed by Henry Flagler.

Patricia Griffin, Ph.D. holds a doctorate in anthropology from Florida State University. Dr. Griffin is author of Mullet on the Beach: The Minorcans in Florida and Emerson in St. Augustine. She has served for many years on the Board of Directors at the St. Augustine Historical Society.

Carl Halbirt, M.A. has served as the city archaeologist for the City of St. Augustine since 1988. In this role, Mr. Halbirt has become a leading authority on the archaeology of St. Augustine’s colonial era. Municipal ordinance requires archaeological examination of any property in the city scheduled for developmental activity that might disturb a potential archaeological site. He has excavated hundreds of such sites in the course of his work.

Eugene Lyon, Ph.D., now retired, was most recently president of the St. Augustine Foundation, a private organization dedicated to colonial period research. Dr. Lyon, who holds a doctorate in history from the University of Florida, is a scholar of the early Spanish colonization of Florida and has performed extensive research in archival repositories in Spain, including those holding the Menéndez family papers. He authored The Enterprise of Florida: Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Spanish Conquest of 1565-1568.

Susan Parker, Ph.D. is the former historian for the Historic St. Augustine Preservation Board and presently a Heritage Preservation Consultant for the Florida Department of State. Dr. Parker is an authority on the city's colonial history.

Cecile-Marie Sastre, Ph.D. earned her doctorate in history from the Florida State University, completing her dissertation on the military outpost at Picolata. Dr. Sastre, whose graduate work included studies at the University of Cambridge and extensive research of fortifications in Spain and the Caribbean, is an authority on colonial Spanish military works. She most recently directed the historical research for reconstruction of the Santo Domingo Redoubt, a colonial era fortification in St. Augustine.

Daniel Schafer, Ph.D., Professor of History at the University of North Florida, has produced numerous published works on the colonial history of Florida, especially the British Period (17631784). Dr. Schafer, who earned his doctorate at the University of Minnesota, has performed extensive research at the British Museum in London and in various private repositories in Great Britain and Scotland.

Hershel Shepard, AIA, FAIA is the dean of historical architects in Florida. Recently retired from the faculty of the School of Architecture at the University of Florida, Professor Shepard has for close to four decades led architectural investigations of historic buildings in Florida, most notably the Historic State Capitol in Tallahassee, where he directed the restoration of the 1902 structure. For many years, Professor Shepard has been engaged in historic architectural studies of St. Augustine. He earned his degree in architecture at Princeton University.

Paul L. Weaver, M.A., President of Historic Property Associates, Inc., earned a Master’s Degree in historic preservation studies from the School of Architecture at the University of Florida and for the past quarter century has been engaged in historic preservation work as a private consultant. One of Florida’s most knowledgeable practitioners in historic rehabilitation planning, Mr. Weaver has directed literally hundreds of restoration projects throughout the state and the Southeastern United States.