FORT PIERCE FOLKS
The REVITALIZATION
ANTHONY INSWASTY PHOTOS
COORDINATOR
Caleta Scott sees community gardens, such as this one on North 9th Street in Fort Pierce, as a much more practical way to provide fresh fruits and vegetables
to neighborhood residents who have limited access to large supermarkets.
BY JANIE GOULD
Fort Pierce native Caleta Scott grew up in Miami and
50
worked in Atlanta for several years after college, but
now she’s back in her hometown working on behalf
of the Lincoln Park neighborhood she loves.
Scott, 40, serves as Lincoln Park revitalization coordinator
with the City of Fort Pierce grants administration division. She’s
helping city officials find grants to boost the economy of the
historic African-American community in northwest Fort Pierce.
Even though Scott and her parents, Karen and Ronald
Scott, moved to Miami after she was born in 1978, she has
deep roots in Lincoln Park. Her great-grandmother, Bernice
Jenkins, worked as the first cafeteria manager at the old
Lincoln Park High School, starting in 1950. Scott lives in the
house Jenkins built in the 1950s.
“I live in the heart of Lincoln Park, off Avenue D at 29th
Street,” she says.
When Scott was a child, she often visited relatives in Fort
Pierce during the summer and has fond memories of those
early years, when she always had sand in her shoes.
“I was at the beach as much as I could be,” she remembers.
“There was also a little summer camp that I went to every
day. I went to vacation Bible school that my aunt taught. It
was paradise!”
When she was in high school in Miami, she says her parents
threatened to move her back to Fort Pierce. They had
graduated from Fort Pierce Central High School, so Scott
countered by saying she would have to attend arch-rival
Westwood High School, and that settled that. >>