Description:
Mayor Jerry L. Demings was born in Orlando, Florida, in 1959. He recounted his upbringing throughout the 1960s and early 1970s in Washington Shores, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Orlando. He recollected memories of his father working as a taxi driver for twelve hours a day, seven days a week, and his mother as a housemaid, all while both of them operated several small businesses within their communities to make ends meet. He described how the larger Civil Rights Movement influenced him personally and impacted his community more broadly, meeting several important civil rights figures when they visited Orlando. Mayor Demings recalled his schooling experience and how he navigated the transition from segregation to integration in Orange County public schools. He attended Jones High School from 1974 to 1977, sharing a particular harrowing incident after a game in a visiting school that expressed objections to Jones High’s racially mixed athletics team. Mayor Demings returned to Orlando in 1980 after graduating from Florida State University. He explained how he ended up in the Orlando Police Department, an institution he proudly served for over twenty years. He explained various initiatives that he created and led during his time serving in the Orlando Police Department, including Orlando’s first bicycle patrol, a Boy Scout Troop program, and others. In 1998, then-mayor of Orlando Glenda E. Hood appointed Demings as Orlando's Chief of Police, making him the first African-American to serve in that position. Demings landed several public positions that made him the first Black person to occupy such titles—including his current status as the Mayor of Orange County—and he discussed the significance of such breakthroughs personally and within a larger racial context, given his background from the Civil Rights Era. Since he has essentially spent his entire life in Orlando and has served in prominent public positions throughout Orange County, Mayor Demings articulated a deep understanding of the area’s social, cultural, and political milieu and how it has changed throughout his life. Lastly, Mayor Demings briefly shared his working book project, tentatively titled “Black in Blue at the Top.”
Transcription:
00;00;03 - 00;00;21
SEBASTIAN GARCIA: This is Sebastian Garcia interviewing Mayor Jerry L Demings on April 21st, 2025, at the Orange County Administration Center in Orlando, Florida, for the Florida Historical Society Oral History Project. Mayor Demings, can you please share where and when you were born?
00;00;21 - 00;00;40
MAYOR JERRY L. DEMINGS: Yes, I can. First, let me just say thank you for the opportunity to be interviewed by the Florida Historical Society. I am a native Floridian, a native Orlandoian, and I was born on June 12th, 1959, right here in Orlando, Florida.
00;00;40 - 00;00;44
SEBASTIAN GARCIA: Can you tell me about your childhood growing up in Orlando?
00;00;44 - 00;02;31
MAYOR JERRY L. DEMINGS: I grew up in a segregated community. When I was born, typically, blacks lived in West Orlando. My family initially lived in the Paramore area, which is a historic African-American community that still exists to this day. And then in the late 50s, my family moved to an area called Washington Shores. And, it is, predominantly African-American community today. And we grew up in an area called Johnson Village within the Washington Shores area. This particular community had a significant number of families who were military families. During the 50s and 60s, there was several military installations here in town. We had an Air Force base—McCoy Air Force Base—the Orlando Navy base, and then there was a large contingency of Army National Guardsmen stationed here, and other contingencies associated with the Army. And so this was really a military town. So the neighborhood that I grew up in, many of the, I'm going to say, men who raised their families within the community, were veterans or were active duty personnel. My father was not. But, you know, I grew up around that type of environment.
00;02;31 - 00;02;33
SEBASTIAN GARCIA: And what did your parents do for a living?
00;02;33 - 00;04;12
MAYOR JERRY L. DEMINGS: My father drove a taxicab for a living. And he was also an entrepreneur. He drove a taxicab 12 hours a day, seven days a week. And by night, he had an interest in a small neighborhood type of dance club, nightclub. He also, at different times, had a small convenience store. My father also owned a fish market where it opened in the afternoon. And my mother cleaned houses for a living. So she was essentially a hired maid. She was a domestic worker who went to the homes of wealthy people here, and she cleaned their homes. She would often catch what we call the city bus, public transit, to go to work. She wore uniform when she went to work. And then when she would get off of work, 2 or 3 in the afternoon, she would open the small fish market that my parents owned. And so as a small child, you know, my family was always working to make ends meet. And we relied on older siblings to help take care of the younger siblings. You know, sometimes, after school.
00;04;12 - 00;04;13
SEBASTIAN GARCIA: And how many siblings did you have?
00;04;14 - 00;05;08
MAYOR JERRY L. DEMINGS: There were five of us. I have a twin brother. His name is Terry. So, Terry and Jerry [himself] were the youngest. And we had an older brother and two older sisters. And today, one of my sisters, the oldest, her birthday, ironically, is today. And she's the oldest in the family. And my brother and another sister are deceased. There's a whole story behind, you know, their lives here within our community. But my twin brother is an entrepreneur here. He owns a catering business that has allowed him to enjoy some financial success as a result of it.
00;05;08 - 00;05;16
SEBASTIAN GARCIA: Were there any particular challenges or triumphs your family faced during this time as a as a child?
00;05;16 - 00;10;20
MAYOR JERRY L. DEMINGS: Well, there were challenges. America was going through a change. I can remember one opportunity prior to President John F Kennedy being assassinated of seeing him with my little kindergarten class. And to be able to glimpse a sitting U.S. president was extraordinary. But it was certainly during a time of the Civil Rights Movement. And that was much going on, nationally and internationally and within our community centered around the Civil Rights Movement. So I would see civil rights leaders like Doctor King and others who I saw on television. I sometimes, as a child, would see members of the civil rights movement attend my local church. I grew up in an African Methodist Episcopal church and my minister, one of my role models, this gentleman by the name of Doctor George Loveless, Champion Senior, he was college educated. He came in. He had advanced degrees. He was quite a theologian, but he was well connected to the Civil Rights Movement. And because of that, growing up, I had opportunity to see many of them come to our community. Persons like Julian Bond. Persons like Reverend Ralph Abernathy. Persons like Reverend Jesse Jackson. As an adult, as a young police officer, I got to meet Rosa Parks at my church. I happened to have been in charge of the security detail. And she came to town. And because of my law enforcement career, I got to meet persons like Reverend Benjamin Hooks, another civil rights icon. I got to meet college civil rights leaders like CK Steel. Reverend CK Steel. That was one of the footsoldiers, if you will, with the SCLC [Southern Christian Leadership Conference]. And he was in Tallahassee, Florida. I went to Florida State University and, sometimes, would attend his church. So I got to see him. Listen to his authentic voice and some others. Got to meet Angela Davis while at Florida State University. The university would bring these iconic figures. I got to meet Muhammad Ali at Florida State University, at the height of his career as a professional boxer. And have one on one conversations with these persons. Because of my law enforcement career, sat in private settings with some of these civil rights leaders and had real conversations, unadulterated conversations with some of them because of my role as a law enforcement officer and being in charge of their details and got to meet all of the presidents going back to Gerald Ford up to the present-day President because of the different public service roles that I served. And so I look back now at all of those experiences that have helped to formulate who I am today and my center of gravity and what is important to me. One of the things that you've heard me talk about is, I attended church. My mother made certain that we went to church. And so we had a strong religious faith upbringing and that helped to inspire us to be who we could be as our best person, our best selves. And so I'm forever grateful for a mother who, you know, was a praying mother who forced us to go to church. And to this day, and we continue to be people of faith.
00;10;20 - 00;10;24
SEBASTIAN GARCIA: You attended the historic Jones High School, correct?
00;10;24 - 00;10;25
MAYOR JERRY L. DEMINGS: Yes.
00;10;25 - 00;10;27
SEBASTIAN GARCIA: What years did you attend?
00;10;27 - 00;11;22
MAYOR JERRY L. DEMINGS: I attended Jones High School from 1974 until 1977. And, Jones, historically had been an all-black high school. However, the desegregation order was signed and implemented here within Orange County in the 1967-1968 period of time. And when I was at Jones High School, there was approximately in my class, 280 students. And out of that class, there was probably about 20 students who identified as being white or Caucasian, at that time.
00;11;22 - 00;11;28
SEBASTIAN GARCIA: And did you have any memorable teachers at Jones High?
00;11;28 - 00;17;49
MAYOR JERRY L. DEMINGS: I had many memorable teachers at Jones High School. Jones High School was a very unique high school. It had been integrated and the integration initially started where Black teachers within the Orange County Public Schools, many of them were reassigned to schools that were white. And white teachers were reassigned to Jones High School. So I had a number of Black and white teachers during my tenure at Jones High School. My older siblings, they all are graduates from Jones High School. And so we were very familiar with the school. For me, elementary school was segregated. There were no white students at my elementary school. It was a predominantly, well it was an all-Black elementary school, Richmond Heights Elementary School, which was opened in the early 60s. And I went to elementary school through sixth grade. And, when I went to junior high school, which was seventh through ninth grade, I was bussed to Memorial Junior High School, which today is Memorial Middle School. But Memorial Junior High School was a predominantly white school, that I was bussed to. So that was the first time, at 12 years old, that I had the opportunity to go to school with someone who was not the same ethnicity or color that I am. So that was different. It was a different era. And there was not a lot—everybody was not happy about that.
I was an athlete. I played football, basketball, and I ran track at Memorial Junior High School. First time I had the opportunity to play sports with the boys of different ethnicities, different backgrounds. We had Black, white and Latino boys who played on different sports teams. When we went to play other schools in this county, some of those schools, their parents were not happy about it and sometimes they objected. You know, and I can remember going to play a football game in Union Park, East Orange County, and when we finished the game and we boarded the bus, our bus was peppered with rocks and bottles, and the coach said to the boys, put on your helmets and get down, okay. And as the bus was leaving after the game, there were all types of racial epithets that were being said, and it sounded like our bus was really being hit by bullets. But they were not bullets. They were rocks and bricks and bottles etc. And so that kind of created some frustration because we were just kids, okay? And we didn't understand what the problem was. But we overcame that.
After junior high school, I was assigned to Jones High School. So I went from an all-Black elementary school to a predominantly white junior high school, and then back to Jones High School that had been integrated, as I said, it was mostly black students, but there were some white students in each grade level. And we wrapped our arms around everybody. We valued the friendships that we had with all of the students and I'm still friends with some of them to this day. We still gather and have class reunions and so I see some of my classmates because of my kind of high profile positions that I've held over time. They see me and sometimes they reach out to me. Some have gone on to do things all over the world, and they will reach back out to me through social media. So I'm privileged in that regard to have kind of made it, made it out of the little neighborhood that I grew up in. I still go back to that neighborhood. We still own my parents’ home, kind of going through a renovation. No one lives in it at this point, we'll decide what we will do with this. But it gives me the opportunity to go back and just kind of reflect. Living in that household at that time was a two bedroom house, working-class, blue collar parents with five children living in a two bedroom house with one bathroom. The house is larger than that now. It has four bedrooms and has two bathrooms. But when I was growing up in it that was not the way it was. It was not air conditioned or any of that. It’s air conditioned now. So that's a little bit about, you know, kind of school and kind of what happened.
00;17;49 - 00;18;05
SEBASTIAN GARCIA: And transitioning to your career life, for the sake of time. So after you graduated from FSU, you moved back to Orlando, to work as an accountant briefly. And then you joined the Orlando Police Department. So just talk to me about that.
00;18;05 - 00;26;35
MAYOR JERRY L. DEMINGS: Yeah, I was privileged. My brother and I were accepted to Florida State University. We were fortunate. We were good students. We made good scores, high scores on all of those standardized entrance exams. One of the role models for me was a local physician, our family doctor, by the name of Doctor James R. Smith. There’s a community center that the city of Orlando owns in West Orlando that is named after Doctor James R. Smith. He was instrumental in creating the first black owned bank here within this community. And he created a whole recreational program. And so with Doctor Smith and people like him, he tutored us in math and science and all of those students who avail themselves of that did well. We were all honor society members at school. So I was fortunate. My twin brother and I were both accepted at Florida State University and several other universities, but we chose to go to Florida State. Ironically, he majored in criminology. I majored in finance and accounting and ultimately graduated with a B.S. in finance.
So after graduation from Florida State, I came back to Orlando, 1980, and started my professional career as an accountant. And I worked for a company doing some extraordinary things, that was associated with the building of Epcot. Epcot at that time was the vision of Walt Disney, and it was an Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow that exists today. It was a $800 million project. If it were built today, it would be a multi-billion dollar project. But it was a $800 million project 45 years ago. And so I worked as an accountant for about a year. But I have been courted while in college by different federal law enforcement agencies that were looking for young men and women to do white collar type of investigations as federal law enforcement. And while I was pursuing perhaps a career as a federal law enforcement officer, one of the recruiters suggested that I get some local law enforcement experience. Hence, I listened to the recruiter. I applied to the Orlando Police Department and, I intended, if they would hire me, to only stay one year. The federal government had gone into a hiring freeze. I was optimistic that after the hiring freeze, I would be selected. I had the opportunity where I was selected, but I chose to continue my career with the Orlando Police Department for a multitude of reasons, but I stayed. I was working in my hometown community, and I had the opportunity to move up and rank fairly quickly within the agency.
When I first went to the Orlando Police Department, it was rare that police officers had college degrees. There was a push to better educate law enforcement across the nation to deal with some of the civil disobedience that was occurring. There were riots here in Orlando in 1980, in the Paramore area caused by some distress associated with the shooting of a young African-American male that many people demonstrated in protest. They thought that he shouldn't have been shot and killed. But in either case, that was the environment. I got hired at the Orlando Police Department in 1981. So, about 44 years ago, I started my law enforcement career. Got to go from street cop, patrol officer, held every rank to being appointed Chief of Police in 1998. Glenda E. Hood was the mayor of Orlando at the time. She's the only woman to have served as mayor of Orlando right up to today in 2025. And she took a risk and appointed me as Chief of Police. I was 39 years old at the time. So, that was 27 years ago, thereabout. And I had a wonderful career at the Orlando Police Department. So I retired from the Orlando Police Department, the City of Orlando, 23 years ago.
The county mayor at the time was Richard T. Crotty. He asked me to come to work for him here at the county as Deputy County Administrator and Director of Public Safety. In 2002, I came here in that role, and I stayed in that role until 2008. In 2008, I ran for Sheriff. I was elected sheriff. I was the 34th Orlando Chief of Police. It's important to note that my wife [Val Demings] was the 36th Orlando Chief of Police. So there was a chief in between us. Then when I was elected sheriff in 2008, I became the 28th elected Sheriff of Orange County, the first African-American to serve as sheriff, the first African-American to serve as chief of police. And I was reelected in 2012 and in 2016. In the middle of my third term, after having been sheriff for a decade, I was elected Mayor of Orange County in August of 2018. I took office on December 4th, 2018. So, on December 4th, 2018, a little known history fact, I was the sheriff for the first 12 hours of that day, and I became the mayor the second 12 hours of the day. So I was finished out so there was no break there. After the swearing in for Mayor, I came here and at 2 p.m., I ran my first Orange County Board of County Commission meeting as mayor. So I wore a uniform in the morning. I changed to suit and tie in the afternoon. And so for the last six and a half years, thereabouts, been serving as the mayor of Orange County.
00;26;35 - 00;26;55
SEBASTIAN GARCIA: And I'm curious, one of my colleagues, Tracy Moore, as I'm sure you know, she provided me some notes. And one of the notes that she said is you started a police Boy Scout troop Program, correct? What year did you create this program and what was its purpose?
00;26;55 - 00;32;48
MAYOR JERRY L. DEMINGS: So, that would have been somewhere around 1986, 86-87. I had the privilege while, I was a police sergeant by then, and I got to do something that was somewhat extraordinary because I was a police sergeant, and I supervised a community center in Parramore. It was a community center where boys and girls who may have been suspended from school rather than stay home during their suspension, they came to school at the Paramore Community Center, the Orlando Police Department Paramount Community Center. And so with this center, it was a gathering spot for the business community within the Parramore area. They held meetings there. These students, these children who mostly were either middle school or high school students, would come to serve out their time for a suspension. There was a full time Orange County School teacher assigned to this community center. But because it was a community center, it was more than any of that. We held job fairs to get people employed. We wrote grants to improve the safety of people's homes in the Parramore area through a grant. I got to supervise all of that. We created Orlando's first bicycle patrol, where police officers patrolled on bicycles. We had police officers assigned to every public housing unit, that a project of development that was managed by the Orlando Housing Authority. There would be two Orlando police officers assigned to those within the city limits, and most were. I supervised officers who were assigned to those areas.
And so, part of what we were doing was “community policing” was the buzzword at that time. That was the best practices around the country for the police to be integrated within the communities, to not be in a situation where it is us against them. No, we were integrated, intertwined in the moral fabric of the community. We wanted people to see us more than just as police officers, but as public servants who were there to help. One of the things that we did, we created a Boy Scout Troop, chartered through the Boy Scouts of America and Cub Scout troops, as well as Girl Scout troops. And they would meet police officers, and even citizens would volunteer their time as the adult leaders for these troops. And we kind of integrated that across the city of Orlando. The police officers were we call them “salt and pepper teams.” They were Black and white. You know, we did not want, let's say just if you were Black, just because you were Black, you'd just patrol Black areas. Or if you were Latino, you know, we mixed it up because there once upon a time, Black police officers could only patrol and police in Black neighborhoods. Black police officers at one point in the city of Orlando, could not arrest anybody who was not Black. That, of course, changed over time. And so we wanted to see this softer, more integrated police force. And it gave us the opportunity to touched the lives of children early in a non-confrontational, non-law enforcement role. And it strengthened relationships. It was great recruiting. Some of those students also became law enforcement officers. Some were not successful. Some got arrested by the police and got involved in bad behaviors. But that was part of my upbringing. My mother made certain that my brother and I were Cub scouts and Boy Scouts and, you know, I've dedicated, essentially, all of my life now to supporting scouting by being Scout masters. [I have] been on the Central Florida Scout Council Board of Directors for decades and raising money for them, trying to make certain that the money assists children who perhaps cannot afford the traditional way of paying for scouting—their parents may not have those means. So we raised money for others to be able to do it.
00;32;48 - 00;33;08
SEBASTIAN GARCIA: Some of my final questions as we're approaching our time. You have spent most of your life in Orlando serving in positions that have allowed you to gain deep insights into the city's political, social and cultural milieu. How has Orlando changed over time?
00;33;08 - 00;37;43
MAYOR JERRY L. DEMINGS: You know, I wouldn't be sitting here today as the Mayor of Orange County. That signifies that there's been change, there’s been progress. But I'm still the first. Okay. So that also suggests that we have not achieved everything that we can achieve. So, I remain optimistic that people won't be saying we're the first this, the first that. But, I have seen change in the political landscape. The first Black person to serve on the Orlando City Council, he lived in my neighborhood—Arthur Pappy Kennedy, Senior. So I knew him. I had a personal relationship with him. The first Black [person] elected to the school board, Katie Adams, I knew her. She lived in my neighborhood. The first Black deputy sheriff in Orange County was a guy by the name of Louis Crooms. He lived in my neighborhood. The first Black Orlando police officers, Belvin Perry, J.H. Jones, and others. I got to meet them. In fact, when I was sworn in as Orlando Chief of Police, some of them were there. When I was sworn in as Sheriff, Louis Combs was at my swearing-in. He's deceased now. I got to speak at his funeral. So, you know these people who have influence on our neighborhood, they influenced me. And so, where I am now, you know, while I spent a good part of my career climbing the ladder, I'm not trying to climb the ladder anymore. My obligation is to create the opportunity for others to climb the ladder. So I'm a ladder builder at this point. And so we need more ladder builders in our community, regardless of whether it's in corporate America, it’s in Orlando, Florida, in the public sector. You need people who look like you who can make certain that you have a level playing field. Okay. We're not here to coddle people and to put them in positions that they're not qualified to do, but by being intentional about exposing them to quality education, quality housing, quality health care, opportunities with good role models, they will be well qualified. And so sitting here in my role as Mayor, I get to make mayoral appointments. And, since I've been Mayor, 76% or better of my appointments have been people of color for women and other minorities, who I will tell you, they're well qualified. They have all the training and knowledge, training and the skills to do the job. But if you don't have people who are at least somewhat sensitive to it, that's when these discriminatory practices can take hold. Because you don't know what you don't know. And those biases that people bring to the table sometimes can become the predominant thing in their decision making process. You bring your biases to the table. We all bring biases to the table. But at least having a seat at the table as a decision maker at least creates the opportunity for the playing field to be more leveled than it once was.
00;37;43 - 00;38;00
SEBASTIAN GARCIA: Absolutely. And to that point of the first, though, you have been the first African-American to serve in several prominent public service positions throughout your career. As a child of Orlando and the Civil Rights era more broadly, what does that mean to you?
00;38;00 - 00;44;17
MAYOR JERRY L. DEMINGS: I won't ever forget my background. And, you know, I've been a student of the Civil Rights Movement, which is a nonviolent movement. As a law enforcement officer, I certainly have stood in opposition to people who use violence to try to accomplish the means to their end. But I know that when we all have an opportunity to participate in the American Dream, we all have the opportunity to thrive and take care of our families. And that's really good crime prevention. If you can on the front end deal with perhaps some of the calamities of being poor, you're able to on the back end, by relationships and direct supervision, coaching, mentoring, you're able to perhaps be the spark that keeps a young person from making a poor decision out of desperation sometimes to steal, to kill. You're changing the moral makeup of a community. One that I believe if you're successful, people make better decisions. They don't decide to devalue human life. They put a value on human life, and they don't get involved in some of these things where I see people getting involved in life of crime, life of violence, sometimes if they're not mentally ill or something else is driving them, they get caught up in their circumstances and they're trapped. So we all have this responsibility, I think, to make sure that we tell the history. History is important. If you don't understand the history and how people found themselves in certain situations and you're doomed to repeat it, okay. We can do better. And so the government, if you will, has to do some things that nobody else would do. People want the government to function like a business, but it's not a business. Because businesses are driven by profit. The government can’t choose who his clients are going to be, his customers, something that's chosen for you. And the costs to deliver the services needed is costly. And I'm proud of Orange County because we have a public policy to address some of those systemic causes of crime and dilapidation of a neighborhood or community. We are proactive, and we spend a lot of time and money on the prevention side with programs that provide quality programing for young people, quality housing, and even mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment. If you can treat some of those underlying illnesses, those who can be functional and avoid the calamities of crime, that's what we want to do. We have cut down on recidivism. We spend much of the taxpayer dollars on prevention and intervention related programs, so that we get a better outcome than if we just spent the money on incarceration. Then you're repairing broken people. We want to prevent people from being broken in the first place. And so it's a community issue, it's a people issue. It's a collective. And so that's the history of—you go back and you study—our communities has grown, continuing to grow, you know, 1.5 million people. We went back to 1997, 2000, we had under 900,000 people here. And so today we, you know, 1.5 million and growing. But we have fewer people incarcerated today in Orange County Jail than we had in 2008, 2009. But our population has grown significantly more. Because we're investing through early intervention types of programs that are working. So I just hope that, you know, while we, I had the opportunity to sit in this seat, that we build a lasting legacy, with the historical data to support, how and why these things that I've been a part of the last 44 years, by working in partnership with the entire community, the public sector, the private sector, we have been highly successful as a community in reducing crime and dealing with all of those issues that we must deal with.
00;44;18 - 00;44;25
SEBASTIAN GARCIA: And, lastly, Tracy will be upset if I don't ask this question but talk to me about the book you're currently writing.
00;44;25 - 00;52;10
MAYOR JERRY L. DEMINGS: So as a young police sergeant, I started working on a book. I did some research on those who have been successful law enforcement executives all over the country and identified them through different professional associations and sent them a survey instrument. And what I found was that there were some common traits that many of them had to move up and rank. And when I first started writing the book, I was still climbing the ladder, so I wanted to understand what was unique about these individuals. And they were all well-educated. Most had advanced degrees. They were good orators. They were very articulate. In other words, they were good communicators in writing and orally. They had diverse backgrounds in terms of their experience within law enforcement. They were readers. And I looked at those common traits and I patterned my maturation as a public servant after what I learned from them. And so this book that I've been working on, I've already titled it, “Black in Blue at the Top.” And so because of what I learned through all of that, you may have heard this said, I don't know who said it first, but “if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail.” So for me, I tried to plan my trajectory based on the history of others who have been successful and created kind of a roadmap for me. When I started writing this book a couple of decades ago, I still haven't finished—the chapters started changing. I got too busy, because, you know, I was climbing the ladder. I had all these things that I was doing. I was raising a family, actively engaged in the community. And so I set the book aside. So now I have to go back and pick it up and tell the story about it actually worked and the proof is in the pudding, right? You know, because I did what I saw others do and they had created this kind of roadmap for me to follow. So I had a plan. So I now teach that to—I had the privilege of teaching part time at Valencia [College] for nine years. And when I was teaching college, you know it was giving back. I felt that I had an opportunity to touch people who wanted to excel and participate in a lot of mentoring types of programs. My passion is working with youth. And, you know, seeing them, you know, I have three sons and two of my sons are twins. And one of my sons is an assistant Fire Chief for Orange County. And the other son, the other twin is a businessman here who is a successful business man. And my youngest son is teaching school—he had been a firefighter as well, but he's teaching school now. As far as I know none of them have ever been arrested, charged with crimes because everybody would know if they had been. But, mentoring those who lived in my own house to see the success that they have and how they raised their family, their children, and that's what I wish for everybody. Everybody could have that kind of success.
Of course, my wife [Val Demings], that's a whole different history lesson there with some of the things that she's done, you know, she's so far the first and only woman to have served as Chief of Police in Orlando. She went on to Congress. Served three terms in Congress. The history books will be written. She was one of seven people who impeached a sitting president that has created a whole host of challenges and opportunities for her. And so she's still very active in national politics, state politics, local politics. So, you know, we'll see where the history books will land with our story, if you will, our families story. But it's a very interesting one, you know. My father lived to almost 101 years old. He died a couple of years ago. He was born in Alabama, in the Deep South. My mother was born in North Florida, in Gadsden County. And they were both born in 1922, all lived to be almost 96. So we had them for a long time. They got to see the kind of fruits of their labor with their children. Some of the stories are not good. You know, I had some siblings who were addicted to drugs, who did not live long lives, like a lot of families, but that's all part of who we are. We can sit here and kind of tell this story perhaps what to do and what not to do. And so, I will finish this book at some point and kind of tell the story as well, kind of where the trajectory has taken me. If you look around over there [his office], you'll see some photographs that I have taken with a few people, some of them presidents and others over time where I had one on one conversations with their rise. I learned some things from them as well. So thanks for the opportunity to kind of share with you a little bit. Hopefully I answered all of your questions.
00;52;10 - 00;52;19
SEBASTIAN GARCIA: Yes. You did. No. Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to speak with me. I really appreciate it. And thank you for your professional service as well.
00;52;19 - 00;52;22
MAYOR JERRY L. DEMINGS: Thank you. My privilege.