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After More Than 100 Years, Growers Association To Close

    Umatilla’s longest-serving citrus organization is closing its doors.  The Umatilla Citrus Growers Association, founded in 1909, has been in continuous operations since a first group of growers joined forces to create the firm but is set to wrap up operations with the end of this past season.
    “It’s just sad,” said Doris Mabry this week while continuing the process of whittling down the association’s operations.  Mabry has been with the firm since 1972, witnessed the highest highs and lowest lows as the association managed killing freezes, financial struggles and more.  None were too much to overcome until greening arrived on the scene just over a decade ago, decimated the Florida Citrus industry with a killing bacterial disease.
    “It just kept going down and down,” Mabry said.  “It used to be passed down from one generation to the next, but not anymore.”
    Umatilla Citrus Growers was founded in 1909 with a host of local names of lore included among its first members.  Names like Collins, Austin, Osborne, and Kennedy.  By 1914, the organization was fully up and running and purchased a packing house at the corner of SR 19 and West Ocala Street on land that now houses a convenience store and small retail plaza.  That first season just under 41,000 boxes would be packed, a mere fraction of the 728,000 boxes the association would produce at its peak in 2003-04. 
    The association would persevere through Great Depression, when it at times served as a banker for members in need of support, and at times would be known to pay water bills, funerals, and more.
    “One time, they bought a  cow for an employee,” Mabry says.  “And he paid them back a dollar a week.  That’s the way things were done back then.”
    The firm’s long ties to the Citrus World/Florida’s Natural cooperative date back to the 1930’s, when the association purchased a $13,000 stake in Citrus World, becoming one of roughly a dozen suppliers/owners of the firm that was bringing frozen concentrate to the forefront of the association’s interests. However, this season, member growers have not sent their fruit to Citrus World, according to Mabry.  All that is left is for the association to collect two remaining payments from last season.  Those transactions will be the association’s final activity.
    Killing freezes were a fact of life in nearly every decade of the association’s life, and none were more devastating than in 1983 and 1985, just when the firm had built a new packing facility south of Umatilla where Phillips Manufacturing now resides.
    Mabry saw much of the association’s later history, joining the office in 1972 under the management C.B. Hipson, who served as the association’s manager from 1943 to 1972.  She joined the company shortly after moving to Umatilla from West Virginia.  Her uncle was friends with the late Umatilla fixture Wilson Parrish from their war days, and he was living along with her grandmother upstairs at the Umatilla Hotel, which stood just south of Guerrant Street along SR 19 where today a parking lot serves downtown businesses.
    “I had a lot of learning to do,” she says recounting of hearing of ‘goats’ in the groves and not understanding that was the term for citrus equipment, not actually the use of goats in citrus groves.
    Along the way she served with another Umatilla legend, John Westervelt, who served as the association’s board president from 1965 until his death in 2020. 
    “He was a great boss,” Mabry said of Westervelt, who since his passing has seen the Umatilla High School football field named in his honor.  “He really treated people well.”
    The association had a local focus, for sure, but had members in the Orlando area and even points south.  Those growers supplied fruit throughout the country, at times on the colorful labels that identified brands in the last century.  In later years, the fruit went to Citrus World to become part of the Florida’s Natural marketed brand.
    But now, it will all be over.  Freezes, war, or economic downturns couldn’t kill off the association, but citrus greening the prices paid for fruit have combined to deliver a death blow to what is believed to be Umatilla’s longest running commercial operation.
    “It’s hard to believe, but it’s true,” Mabry said.  “It really is sad.”