A to Z Challenge On the Move: F is for Florida

In the 20th century, members of both sides of my family -- the Packards (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Canada, Illinois, California) and the Reeds (Ohio and Indiana) -- have ended up in Florida.

My mother, born in Detroit, ended up in Florida as a child in 1920, and was raised here.  Her adoptive father was a railroad freight agent in Pensacola.  My father came to Florida after graduating from the Naval Academy and service on aircraft carriers, for flight training in 1937.  He was born in California.

They married here, and their oldest child, my sister, was born here in 1938.  My brother was born here in 1942, when my father came back to Florida, stationed in Miami.  

We spent time here as a family in the early 1950s, as my father took various engineering jobs in Jacksonville and in Pensacola.  Then we went back to California, as my father's family was there.

Finally, my mother brought my sister, my brother, and me back to Florida after Dad died, to be with her adoptive mom and sister for help with raising us.   That was in 1954.  Mom's biological sister and brother also lived in Florida.  Later, a Packard aunt and uncle also relocated to Florida.

Though I was born in California, I have lived most of my life here, and now I consider myself "Floridated."

Within Florida, my husband and I have taken our family from Jacksonville, where he was born and raised, and where our older daughter was born, to St. Petersburg, where our younger daughter was born while my husband was stationed there in the Coast Guard.

After he was released from active duty, we returned to Jacksonville.  We lived there several years, then made a short migration to the county just south-southwest of Jacksonville, where we live now.  

During our time in our present home, we have separately spent time outside of Florida.  My husband took a special assignment in the Coast Guard that had him living in New Orleans for a year, then he spent almost another year in Washington, D.C., in connection with that same special assignment.  I spent a month in Seville, Spain and almost two years back in St. Petersburg, earning a master's degree at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

Our older daughter married a man who was also born in Jacksonville, and their son was also born there.  After all our peregrinations, we've become a Florida family.