BY DR. JOHN WILTON
I arrived in Volusia County in 1982. By 1983, I had moved onto Hontoon Peninsula and soon discovered “Sloan’s,” as it was commonly called at that time. The formal name is Shady Oak. Shady Oak is a “fish camp” style restaurant and tavern located where the Whitehair Bridge crosses the St. Johns River – a shanty sitting right on the river. The bridge, just replaced in 2024, was built in 1955 for $760,000. It was named for Francis P. Whitehair, a prominent DeLand attorney who lost a close race for governor in 1940. He also served as undersecretary of the Navy as part of the Truman administration. The Whitehair Bridge had replaced a turntable-style wooden span called the Crows Bluff Bridge. What the new bridge will be called has yet to be announced.
My wife, Nancy and I, have spent many a Friday night at Shady Oak over the years, meeting up for happy hour(s) with the DeLand River Rats, as we liked to call ourselves back in the day. Not so many River Rats still go, but a few do, and I try to go about once a month. On one recent Friday night, Charlie Gall, the current owner (along with his wife, Tiena), started talking to me about the long history of the place. His accumulated knowledge is considerable, and he has a bundle of photos to back it all up. It felt like something I needed to write down, so I eventually sat down with Charlie and Tiena to see what I could learn. I also consulted Randy Palmer, a lifelong Friday Night Regular at Shady Oak. Randy helped me fill in a lot of the blanks . . .
Otis and Myrtle
Shady Oak Fish Camp was incorporated in 1954. It is purported to be the oldest still-operating fish camp/restaurant/tavern on the St. Johns River. It was built by Otis Walter Sloan, along with his wife, Myrtle, and their sons. Otis was born in 1912. Charlie says Otis was the last surviving person born in the town of St. Francis, a long-gone village just north of the Whitehair Bridge, on the Lake County side of the river.
St. Francis was so named by Dr. Harris from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, who settled there with his family in 1875, according to the West Volusia Historical Society. It soon became a major steamship stop and by 1888 had its own post office, hotel, and many other businesses associated with a prosperous town. However, since it was dependent on the steamship landing, when the train line began running from Jacksonville to Sanford, the town slowly began to decline.
In the winter of 1894-95, a major freeze killed the citrus groves and the town declined further. In 1909, there was a major fire that burned down the St. Francis Hotel and other buildings; that’s when the post office closed. In the 1920s, a hurricane devastated what was left. There were still a few people living in the town at that point, but by the 1930s several more buildings had been either dismantled, deserted or burned. By 1940, there were no longer any inhabitants or buildings in St. Francis when the federal government acquired the land for the Ocala National Forest.
Myrtle Norman was born in Glennville, Georgia, in 1913. The couple had four sons and a daughter, and they all lived in the house they built across the road from the restaurant. According to Randy Palmer, both Otis and Myrtle worked at Gene’s Steak House (out on Highway 92 on the way to Daytona) before opening their fish camp. At one point, Otis worked at the American Machinery Corporation on Lake Beresford, where they built tugs and barges for World War II.
Randy recalls Otis telling him about cutting cypress around the river and hewing it into railroad ties — all by hand — for 10 cents a tie. Otis also told Randy about meeting Walt Disney as a young boy, when Walt was scouting property for a theme park in Lake County (long before the deal was made in Orange County). Otis also remembered land in Lake County selling for as little as 40 cents an acre when he was a young man.
And here’s a tale from the “Boy, Have Things Changed!” Department: Otis once told Randy that long ago, a person could go to the Volusia County Courthouse and get a permit to hunt manatee! Families with permits would gather on the riverbank and picnic, while the men went off to hunt. Otis said the big beasts were not as prolific as they are now, and the meat was surprisingly lean.
When the men returned from a successful hunt, they would dress their catch on the bank and split the meat among the families in attendance. As repugnant as that sounds to some reading this through a 2024 lens, we must remember this story came from a man born over a century ago, back when there weren’t Winn-Dixie and Publix supermarkets on each end of town . . .
Initially Shady Oak was a fish house. They didn’t sell bait — they supplied ice to the fishermen. Later on, it became a bait shop. Charlie told me there was a big ice maker mounted on the roof of the building, and it would dump ice directly into one of the rooms. The insulated door to that room is several inches thick. The block building and that door are still there, to the south of the restaurant. “There’s a piece of plywood over the hole where the ice machine was,” Charlie says.
“Myrtle Sloan would make sandwiches for the fishermen when they came in to get their bait and supplies to go fishing for the day, and one thing eventually led to another,” Tiena Gall reports. Randy remembers Myrtle making pickled eggs, boiled eggs and boiled peanuts to sell at Shady Oak. And there were times when Otis would smoke turkeys in a small building next to the house.
But it was more of a bar than a restaurant at first, and it was when Miss Jean took over in 1998 that it really became a restaurant, according to Tiena. In its original conception, it was a fish camp — Shady Oak Fish Camp. Later on, the nicknames Sloan’s and Otis’ became popular among the clientele. In the 1970s, Randy recalls, a short draft beer cost 25 cents, a tall one 35 cents. And there was a gas pump on the dock out back.
Sammie Klug told me he gave the place its name when he was 7 years old. Sammie’s dad, Lester, who worked at a lumberyard, helped Otis with the construction of the fish camp. One afternoon Lester and Otis were mulling over ideas for a name. Sammie’s dad asked him what he thought, and Sammie, looking up at the huge tree they were standing under, said, simply, “Shady Oak.”
“The restaurant was built in three stages,” Charlie explained. “The center part, when you walk in the front door, facing the two poles holding the center bar, from there to the north was the original building. Later on, they expanded the south end of the building.”
Tiena added, “When you sit at the bar in front of the beer taps, over to the right is where we have the freezer we call our keg cooler — that used to be a window. The door was originally right there in the corner. At some point in time, they cut that open and put in that cooler. After the fire, we cleaned up the cooler door instead of replacing it because it was a piece of history. Everything else was shiny spanking new after the fire of 2017.”
In an online blog from 2018 titled “Wandering Florida,” the writer tells about “Friday afternoons during the 1980s – when there would often be a mass exodus after classes at Stetson University to the lively little fish camp overlooking the St. John’s [sic] River just off State Road 44” — what Charlie calls an “old Florida Cracker restaurant.” Affordable beer and wine, good food — a great place to decompress. Whether the students practiced that tradition during any of the other six decades Shady Oak has been around, I don’t know.
Preston
Preston Otis Sloan was born in 1941. He was the youngest of the Sloan children. He remembered watching the Whitehair Bridge being built while his parents opened the Shady Oak Fish Camp around the same time.
As stated in his obituary, “I made my living all my life on that river.” The lifelong West Volusia fisherman hauled in crab, catfish and an occasional alligator as long as he was able. “I never got rich, but I enjoyed it.”
When it became too much for Otis and Myrtle, Preston took over the restaurant. There are photos that people have posted of Otis and Myrtle in the restaurant in their wheelchairs. But Preston soon realized he was a fisherman, not a restaurateur. He sold the business to Jean and Willis Tuttle in 1998. Myrtle died in 2000, and Otis died in 2001. Preston died in 2016.
Over the years, several members of the Sloan family have worked at the family restaurant. Among them were Hazel, Nina, Eileen and Mike. There was a period when grandson Mark played the guitar on Friday nights. Ervin Walter Sloan dedicated many years of his life to working at his grandparents’ fish camp turned restaurant and bar on the St. Johns River. Along with many other patrons, I enjoyed seeing Ervin’s newest Bob Ross-style paintings whenever I went in. Ervin was born in 1956 and died in 2024.
Jean and Willis
“When I started working there, it was shortly after Jean and Willis took over,” recalls Tiena. “They took over April 1st, 1998. They had it for 14 years to the day when we took over in 2012.” Jean and Willis Tuttle came down from upstate New York and purchased the restaurant from Preston.
In 2004, the Tuttles experienced the reality of owning a business right on the river in hurricane-prone Florida. As reported in the Orlando Sentinel: “It’s on the porch [the river water]. We’re watching it real close,” said owner Jean Tuttle, pointing down at minnows swimming in the parking lot. Most residents along the St. Johns in Volusia County were doing the same. The river barely had time to begin recovering from Hurricane Frances before Jeanne dumped more water into already-full lakes and onto the already-saturated earth.
Tiena remembers “Miss Jean” worked at the restaurant before she and Willis bought it from the Sloans. She worked there until 2012, when the Galls bought it. “She passed away six weeks later, and Willis continued to work for us for a couple of years. He would go in and open up, make coffee and tea in the mornings.”
“He and his cronies would sit at the bar and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee. Bobby Sloan and Calvin Peterson and all of them used to come in and have coffee with Willis in the morning. They continued that daily ritual long after we took over. We used to call it “Old Geezers Morning” – Frank McNair, Bobby, Preston, Calvin and Willie and I know there were a couple other older gentlemen, but I can’t remember their names. I bet you if we got ahold of Willis he would be able to say who was there . . . he’s still alive.”
In 2005, at Jean’s request, regular customer Randy Palmer built a bench to put out by the front door so customers would have a place to sit while they smoked. As soon as it was in place, she asked for an awning over the bench and the door, so they wouldn’t get wet going out to smoke while it was raining. So Randy built and installed the awning — all this was gratis. “It was for Sloan’s”, he said . . .
Tiena and Charlie
Charlie Gall’s mom was born and raised in DeLand. Trained as a nurse and working in San Francisco, she met Charlie’s dad, a military man, and the couple eventually moved to Florida. Tiena Simons is originally from Bermuda. From there she went to the Florida Keys and then up to the Tampa area. Sanford was her next stop before landing in Lake County.
“I believe it was 2004 when I started working there,” Tiena continued. “That’s when Everett Simons, my brother, started working for Miss Jean, and I started working prep in the kitchen and then ended up being a waitress.”
Tiena had only been to Shady Oak once as a customer before she joined her brother on the staff.
Charlie became aware of Shady Oak in 1994. He was born in Palatka but had been living in Orlando when he bought some property in Lake County. Charlie would drive up from Orlando after work, do whatever needed doing on the property, knock off around 7 p.m., then stop at Shady Oak for dinner and a beer on his way back to Orlando. He joined the dart league there in 1999. He recalls a cigarette machine in the dining room at that time, as well as a pool table. Eventually he moved onto the property in Lake County.
“Charlie and I got together in 2007,” Tiena said. “But you gotta remember, if I’m in the kitchen you don’t see me. Everett got a job working as a cook through Miss Jean, and that’s how I came into the picture. He’s like — we need help in the kitchen, so I helped in the kitchen and eventually he talked me to going on the floor — I didn’t want to be a waitress . . .”
“They had a dart league back then; that’s how Charlie and I started hanging out. Everett was filling in on practice nights or when someone didn’t show up, and I was his ride to and from home. I would just be hanging out, and then next thing you know I’m filling in on Monday nights too.”
“Yeah, the dart league was on Monday nights,” Charlie added. “Teammate Gary Fareze got me to play, and that’s when I really started hanging out at Shady Oak. I was there every week, sometimes every day, and eventually she came out the kitchen. We started dating in February 2007 and got married in 2012 — five months after we took over the restaurant.”
Disaster struck Shady Oak in January 2017 in the form of an electrical fire. After the fire, no fewer than five structural engineers inspected the building and declared it structurally sound and sturdy, but it still took 13 months to reopen. The restaurant was ready for business at 10 months; they were trying to open by Biketoberfest but they were waiting for the new beer coolers to come in. The coolers were being shipped from up North, but with the impending hurricanes, trucks could no longer come into Florida. “So we could not open before the hurricane,” Charlie recalled. “That hurricane lingered for days, and the restaurant flooded. We couldn’t open again until March 2018.”
But their customers didn’t abandon them during those 13 months. Pat Giumarra, a staunch Friday Night Regular, suggested a way to keep the party going. So every Friday night, the Regulars would gather around the picnic tables in the parking lot.
“We had chicken wings in the freezer and plenty of beer in the outside cooler, so we bought a portable fryer and on Friday nights,” Charlie remembers, he would put beer on ice in a tub and fry up chicken wings and french fries and the Regulars would toss donations in a bucket to cover the costs. When the weather turned cold, there was a firepit and plenty of donated firewood.
Once the power and air conditioning were restored, we could go inside again. Charlie still had to cook outside, but the Regulars were back at the bar. The wood flooring had buckled so much from the storm surge that walking on the floor was like walking on a roller coaster. For me, navigating through the building at that point felt like I had overindulged before I even started. So they had to replace the flooring, again.
In that 13-month span, the parking lot party took place every Friday night but two. One was because of weather and the other was because Chris Rae (son of Friday Night Regular Bruce Rae, and nephew of Frank and Pat Rae Giumarra) got married and the whole gang attended the wedding.
From those donations, Tiena was able to pay the staff for two or three weeks. At that point, other businesses around DeLand stepped up and hired Shady Oak’s employees temporarily until they could reopen and rehire the staff.
After the fire, Charlie contacted lifelong customer Sammie Klug about building a new bar once the burned building had been emptied out and cleaned up. Sammie, who had already retired from his career as a carpenter, hesitated at first but eventually warmed up to the idea. Charlie and Sammie rode up to the sawmill in Astor to check out some hickory logs that were available. Sammie liked what he saw, and he was all in from that point on.
He decided that if he was going to build the bar, he was going to build everything they needed, including the tables. Each table has a numbered and dated certificate of authenticity shellacked to its underside. All the bases of the tables were refurbished by a supporter in Orlando.
And Randy built a new smoking bench, this time using mahogany, salvaged by Randy Long from distressed park benches on Daytona Beach. The original bench had been built with humble 2’ x 6’ pine. After Sammie died in 2020, Randy (Palmer) added an inscription to the bench, honoring his longtime friend.
“Yes,” Tiena recalls, “Our regulars — from day one, from ground zero, they were definitely there for us, helping in every aspect — demolition, cleaning, replacing the air conditioning (Tod Sutherland to the rescue) and the plumbing (Bruce Rae has yet to submit an invoice). We had a lot of generous benefactors.”
Sammie also embedded the names of various people of note, along with a few inspirational sayings, into the bar and tabletops. Whenever you visit, see if you can find them all, without disturbing the customers, of course.
Every year, Sammie would go offshore fishing and catch a bunch of amberjacks. He would bring the fish he smoked to the bar to share on Friday nights. Sometimes he would bring boiled peanuts. I myself enjoyed those treats several times over the years while sitting at “Francine’s Bar,” the small high-top area next to the main bar. Francine, who died in 2016, was Sammie’s wife and Frank Giumarra’s sister.
In 2022, Hurricane Ian shut the restaurant down again, this time for three months. The river water was knee-deep inside. The road out front was underwater. After the water receded, Charlie had to take a circular saw to the floorboards, cutting them down and beating them back into place to get the buckles out.
Randy Palmer refurbished the “smoking bench,” which still sits just outside the front door. When he restored it, he permanently marked the water level on the legs. When cleaning up after this storm, Tiena left the watermark on the old freezer door as a reminder. Check it out next time you’re there.
Shady Oak had been a rough place long ago, populated by crusty old fishermen from another era and not so welcoming to Black folks. There is a small concrete building in the parking lot, now used for dry storage, that was once the ”Blacks Only” restrooms. Back then, Black fishermen would stop and buy bait, but they did not frequent the tavern.
Charlie recalls one Friday night, after the Galls took over in 2012, a woman of color cautiously stood at the front door and asked, “Are we welcome in here?” “Yes, ma’am, you are more than welcome here,” Charlie replied. She returned with her husband and their three grandsons, all of whom had the catfish dinner. Since that point, Black patronage has steadily increased.
But with the construction of the new bridge taking place over the past two years, it has been somewhat of a challenge for patrons to find their way to and from the iconic restaurant. The usual access roads have mostly been closed, and often-changing detours have become the norm. Needless to say, this has put a damper on business, but the Galls are hanging in there, and their committed customers haven’t given up. This traffic disruption is expected to go on for a couple more months, at the least.
Nevertheless, here’s wishing a well-earned happy 70th birthday to Shady Oak! And heartfelt congratulations to the owners, cooks, waitresses, bartenders and loyal patrons who have kept it going for all those years. We can only wonder what the next 70 years will bring . . .
— Wilton is a retired visual-arts educator and currently the president of ACED DeLand’s board of directors.
