A Few of Our Best & Brightest
Polk County Public Schools Hall of Famers
PHOTOS COURTESY OF HIGHLIGHTED INDIVIDUALS
Enter the "wayback machine" with us to take a short and lively trip around the county with men and women who were once the formative minds in PCPS classrooms and who have gone on to make generational impacts through their careers and community service.
The entirety of the Polk County Public Schools Hall of Fame can be accessed at polkschoolsfl.com/halloffame
Grady Judd - Polk County Sheriff
LAKELAND SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
GRADUATING CLASS OF '72
Once upon a time, when young Grady was running around the streets playing cops and robbers, he told his buddies that he would one day be their sheriff. They laughed, telling him, “They're not gonna elect somebody from Combee Road to be sheriff.”
Never one to be lacking confidence, his usual response to them was, “Y’all just watch.”
Sheriff Grady Judd has now served in law enforcement in Polk County for 51 years and he has been Sheriff since 2004. For him, it’s all just part of God’s mission for his life, and he loves that he gets to serve and protect the individuals and families that make up the place that he has forever called home.
He attended Crystal Lake Elementary and Crystal Lake Junior High School before attending Lakeland High School, where he graduated from in 1972.
Known as a man who is very comfortable in front of cameras, and also known for myriad memorable quotes from throughout his career, it’s fitting he can easily recall some of the most impactful quotes from his childhood.
He fondly remembers his 4th-grade teacher, Dora Frost, a veteran of the military, who would march the kids around the campus.
“She would tell us, ‘You cannot be anything you want to be, but you can be anything you work to be.’”
Similarly, his 6th-grade teacher taught him “when the times get tough, people quit buying flowers” as a way to motivate students to find meaningful work to contribute to society.
Judd is widely recognized as a leader of leaders, evident by the fact he is a past president of the Florida Sheriffs Association and the Major County Sheriffs of America. But he said as a pre-teen he really was just like most youngsters who get themselves into a little mischief and find themselves in fisticuffs on occasion.
He laughs when he recalls deciding one day, one his walk home from Crystal Lake Junior High, to cool off with a swim in Crystal Lake.
“My mother was not happy when she found out…she said, ‘You're in your school clothes, you could've drowned.’ I knew how to swim, but that was an unfortunate time for me,” he said with a grin on his face.
Judd says once he got to high school he was all business, although a quick look at his high school yearbook photo shows he probably knew how to have some fun, too.
“I love those pork chopped sideburns, don’t you?,” he says looking at a photo from his senior year. “Don't show it to my deputies who want to have beards!”
He played football in junior high, but a high school coach told him in tryouts that he was “slow and uncoordinated”, which essentially put an end to his athletic career.
At just 16 he started working for the ambulance. Soon after he delivered a baby on the job, he was on the scene of two car crashes where his classmates were killed and he transported one of his teachers to the hospital, where ultimately she succumbed to cancer.
“It created a profound public effect on me, the way I wanted to help people the rest of my life,” he said.
If Judd was a case study for career readiness for PCPS students, the district would pass with flying colors.
He graduated from LHS on a Friday. The next week he started working toward a degree in political science at Polk Community College, and the following month Sheriff Monroe Brannen hired him as a radio operator. That September he married his high school sweetheart Marissa Ogburn, and ever since, Judd has been working tirelessly to protect the citizens of Polk County.
This school year is particularly special to Judd because it marks the beginning of the transition of all PCPS school resource officers over to the Sheriff’s Office.
“I like to share with folks, whenever you deliver your children safe to school in the morning, they become my children,” he said. “So I have 110,000 children all day long until we can deliver them back safely to you.”
Judd and the Sheriff's Office are respected as experienced leaders when it comes to school safety.
After a gunman killed 14 students and three staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Judd was asked to serve on a commission that investigated the massacre.
“They were slaughtered because the sheriff's office failed. The school resource officer there failed. The school system failed. County communications failed,” he said.
The commission worked with then Florida Governor Rick Scott to pass the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act. Judd said the experience serving on that board confirmed to him that security at PCPS has been better than most districts for a long time, and it also motivated him to continue to improve it.
“We can never guarantee that an active shooter won't show up on a campus,” he said. “But I can tell you, we've reduced the probabilities.”
The task of keeping kids safe is deeply personal to him because he has 13 grandchildren and he has thousands of friendships and connections throughout the county. The man who was once a kid growing up off of Combee Road would love to keep serving Polk County constituents for years to come, if the electorate agrees.
“And if one day I die at about 110—I wanna live at least that long, I wanna be sheriff until I'm 100— if they say he looked out for the kids, then that's all I'll ever need…that would be my legacy.”
Gow Fields - Former Mayor of Lakeland (2009-2014) | Current President and CEO of Fields Insurance and Financial
KATHLEEN HIGH SCHOOL
GRADUATING CLASS OF '81
Long before he was the mayor of Lakeland or the President and CEO of Fields Insurance and Financial, Gow Fields was busy perfecting his typewriting skills at Kathleen High School, in spite of the ridicule some of his male classmates gave him for taking a course that was generally reserved for young women who aspired to be secretaries.
Even then, Fields was all business, looking for any advantage he could gain.
One typing teacher told him it would help him develop his off-hand dexterity for basketball, and his high school teacher Peggy Newsome said it would pay off because he would be able to efficiently produce research papers in college.
“She said it would pay off…and sure enough, it did,” said the 60-year old Fields. “Matter of fact, when I was in college, I would type other students' papers for them for a fee. That was a nice gig.”
Fields could write a short book with the number of teachers and school staff within Polk County Public Schools who inspired him, in educational development and athletics.
Fields attended Lakeland Christian from kindergarten through 5th grade, Lime Street Elementary (now Philip O’Brien Elementary) in 6th grade, and Seth McKeel Junior High School in 7th through 9th grade.
The 1981 Kathleen High School grad recalls the impact his 1st grade teacher Ms. Strickland and his 4th grade teacher Ms. Cunningham had on him, and he said his 6th grade teachers Ms. Musgrave and Mr. Dyer-Hurdon helped him develop into a young man.
He also has fond memories of many of his coaches, including Coach Williams and Coach Fullington at Seth McKeel Junior High.
He played basketball and football and ran track at Kathleen, but says he gave up maybe his “best” sport—baseball—after junior high because “it can get boring during batting practice” and he was a sucker for the constant competition of football and basketball.
His appreciation for educational mentors in Polk County runs beyond high school. Fields attended Florida A&M for a semester before returning home and enrolling in Polk State College.
“One of the guidance counselors, Ms. Jan McDougle, encouraged me upon graduation to stay in Central Florida because of the ‘booming opportunities that will be happening here…’” he recalls. “It was being prophetic in the way she described it. And of course she did not oversell it, and that played a key role in me making sure that I paid attention to what was going on here and how that would serve me upon graduation.”
After college, while interviewing for jobs, he was a substitute teacher. In the years that followed, he served as an assistant boys basketball coach at Kathleen, and then had a stint as an assistant for the Red Devils girls basketball team when his daughter played on the team.
He eventually entered into a much bigger local spotlight, serving the city as an elected official for 21 years, including serving as mayor from 2009-2014, becoming Lakeland’s first Black mayor.
Fields attributes a lot of the success he has had from what he learned as a student in PCPS schools.
“Public school education taught me that it better prepares you for the real world that you're gonna go function in, because you've gotta encounter people at varying ability levels and skill and talent levels,” he said. “And if we're going to do well as a country and as a broader community, we have to make sure everyone has a chance to succeed, and that's going to take all of us being willing to be open and accepting that everyone is not gifted or talented the same.”
Perry Blocker - Polk County Public Schools Teacher for 38 years
WINTER HAVEN HIGH SCHOOL
GRADUATING CLASS OF '73
Perry Blocker was a student in Polk County Public Schools when it finally integrated in the late 1960s. After earning a bachelor’s degree in education at the University of Florida she came back home, where she taught nearly every grade from 1st through 8th at Walter Caldwell Elementary, Lake Alfred Elementary, Auburndale Central Elementary and Westwood Middle School.
She always loved unlocking student’s reading abilities and during the course of her career she led multiple reading programs and even garnered grant funding to help provide additional resources to help students become better readers.
Today, following a 38-year teaching career at PCPS, the 1973 Winter Haven High School graduate is as gung-ho as ever about the importance of educating the next generation.
She retired from PCPS in 2015, but you’ll usually find her alongside children or devoting herself to other community endeavors she has long been committed to.
“I just love teaching reading to kids…I just feel awake and ready to go back to it, even though I know I'm retired,” she said energetically, noting that she is a reading tutor through United Way and has also volunteered with PAL in Winter Haven.
She has also worked tirelessly over the years to support programs that combat hunger and homelessness, and she has served with th the Florida Guardian ad Litem program, providing a voice to children in the 10th Circuit Court.
“I just feel like it's one of my purposes in life…to help and encourage others, to build our community to make [it] better.”
She attended Jewett Elementary School in Winter Haven, as well as multiple middle schools, including Denison Middle School when it became integrated.
She credits her high school history teacher Oziemar Woodard for inspiring her to be a teacher.
She admits it was a career choice that ended up bringing her a lot of joy and allowed her to make many fond memories.
Her favorite age to teach was elementary students because the students “come in with their eyes wide open…they're just innocent and they soak in everything.”
The lifelong educator said she is encouraged by how PCPS continues to add more vocational programs and provide high-achieving students opportunities to earn college credits, and even associate degrees, while in high school.
One thing she says she’s glad she didn’t have to grapple with during her years in the classroom is all of the technology.
“That to me is a real challenge for, um, educating students,” she said. “They love it…but we don't get to communicate with them verbally (as much) because of technology.”
Adam Putnam - Former Commissioner of Agriculture | Current CEO of Ducks Unlimited
BARTOW HIGH SCHOOL
GRADUATING CLASS OF '92
When Adam Putnam announced his candidacy for governor of Florida in 2017, he chose to host the press conference on the steps of the old courthouse in Bartow.
The Bartow High School band performed, teachers of Putnam’s from over the years were on hand to cheer him on, and a he was speaking to a crowd filled with local friends and family who would carry signs, wave to cars from street corners and knock on doors for the duration of a campaign that ultimately culminated in Putnam conceded the GOP nomination for governor to Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“I've been so blessed to have just phenomenal support from my hometown and from my home county, including not just classmates, but faculty and administrators who made a difference in my life and stayed involved in my life long after I graduated from Bartow High School,” he said. “I think that's part of the magic of Polk County and it says a lot about the heart and passion of the teachers that I was fortunate enough to learn from.”
Putnam attended Oaks Elementary, Union Academy and Bartow Junior High.
The 49-year-old Putnam, who currently serves as CEO of Ducks Unlimited, a nonprofit conservation organization headquartered in Memphis, Tenn. has lived a life of significance and service.
At 22, he was the youngest person ever elected to the Florida House of Representatives, and he eventually served five terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. He served as Florida’s Commissioner of Agriculture from 2011-2019—a logical fit for the third-generation farmer who owns Putnam Groves Inc. in Bartow.
Putnam and his wife, Melissa, raised their four children in Polk County Public Schools until they relocated to Memphis, and Putnam has a full heart of admiration for the teachers who helped him become who he is today.
He credits Owen Williams for being a “phenomenal English teacher” and said Marnee Cobb was “a fantastic junior high geometry teacher that helped you love something that otherwise could be pretty tough to teach.”
A local leader he admired was Ernie Cooper, who was actually the principal of the school’s Putnam attended in both junior high and high school.
“He was a gift to the community,” Putnam recalls. “He embedded the activities of the school into the larger Bartow community and brought the community into the school.”
In high school, Putnam was involved in 4-H club, school government and was on the yearbook staff. And the record also shows that he was a member of the Yellow Jackets baseball squad.
“I played baseball, I should say, I rode the bench in baseball,” he says with a laugh. “I was never a very good baseball player, but I enjoyed it…everyone was very tolerant to let me put on a uniform.”
He acknowledges that because of the sheer size of Polk County the school district’s leadership has always had the steep challenge of meeting so many unique educational needs of a diverse population, but he believes staff and faculty have regularly risen to the occasion.
He uses the creation of the International Baccalaureate program at Bartow High School as an example.
“The rigor is unbelievable,” he said, recounting the experience of his daughter’s at the school. “I'll never complain about how much homework I had ever again, when I saw the load that they were carrying and the number of big time courses…and still kind of active in clubs and athletics.”