"We always hear that sort of thing from people. Do you realize that 92 percent of the people in America live beyond their incomes?"

Ginny allowed as how she'd prefer not to live beyond ours.

Swilley kept at it, though. We were his last chance of the evening. At the other tables-the ones that were still occupied-the "counsellors" seemed to be having just as much difficulty with their prospects. Voices were noticeably rising. A few feet away, Earney was gesturing vigorously at a stubborn guest. Presently, we stood up and told Swilley we weren't signing anything that night, and that was that. Swilley stood up too, and with a deft sliding motion, managed to get himself between us and the door. That led to 10 more minutes of virtual bombardment. It was now 10:30 p.m.

When we still didn't yield, he made an inconspicuous gesture and reinforcements appeared from nowhere in the form of another counsellor. Swilley introduced him as Mr. Frazier.

"What seems to be the difficulty?" inquired Frazier, smiling graciously.

"Oh, nothing much," said Swilley, "They say they don't have the cash, and . . .” "IS THAT all? Did you tell them that 92 percent of the people in America live beyond their incomes? You told them about the money back guarantee, of course? And the exchange privilege . . ."

It looked as though we'd never get out of there. Ginny, saying she had a headache, disappeared for a moment, returned and announced she wanted to go home. "Let's go," I said, but the Swilley-Frazier combine blocked our path.

I was about to try an end run when Frazier, turning to speak to someone, moved a step away. We were able to plunge straight through the line.

As we hurried toward the exit, I looked back and caught a final, memorable glimpse of the two salesmen. There they stood, waving a surprised and reluctant goodby, their obvious disappointment almost completely masked by large, determined smiles.

Frazier fired one parting shot:

"Remember, procrastination is the mother of disappointment."

ITEM 2 TODD B. PERSON EXHIBITS

ORLANDO SENTINEL, Orlando, Fla., July 1, 1966.

Senator HARRISON A. WILLIAMS, Jr.,
Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C.

DEAR SENATOR WILLIAMS: At the request of Mr. Oriol, I am forwarding copies of a series of articles I wrote appearing in the Orlando Sentinel concerning Rocket City.

Also at Mr. Oriol's request, I am including a brief cover letter dealing with impressions of the land development.

The consensus of opinion among men in the business of developing is that, the idea behind Rocket City was basically good-that is to offer for sale land that could be lived on or subdivided as the demand for it grew; to make provision in sales contracts that land purchased in certain areas of the development must be improved and built upon within a certain time, and that an entire city would be born as sales increased and people bought in increasing widening circles around the nucleus development.

Also considered was the potential rapid growth of the area on either side. Orlando to the west was booming, and Cape Kennedy on the east was going begging for land.

Rocket City failed, initially, I believe, because there were men promoting it who had personal dreams of financial riches; had little control over their salesmen. They also took great pains to make the buying public believe that they had much more financial backing that they actually had.

The Orange County Commission and related boards were at first over eager to help the developers; then overly oppressive when things began going bad. State regulating agencies got into the matter too late.

On the land itself, salesmen were selling contracts to cheaper land that shouldn't really have been available until the more expensive lots were sold. There was no enforcement of the building clause. Desperate loan agreements were signed by the principles with a Miami bank that entailed more giving than getting, although I believe the bank now fighting for control of the land is going to help the land purchasers.

66-628-66-22

In conclusion, I believe that Rocket City could have made the grade. A number of similar developments in Florida with less initial working capital were successful.

I think the fault rests mostly with the management of the operation: partly with the county and state regulating bodies for not remembering the '20s boombust and taking a firmer hand in the development, and with the investor who supplies money for these projects without investigating them first.

Hope this will help.

Sincerely,

TODD B. PERSONS,
Court House Editor.

[From the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel, May 29, 1966]

ROCKET CITY-DREAMERS' DILEMMA

(By Todd Persons, Sentinel Staff)

There is very little to stop the wind that gusts across the sand-duned carcass of Rocket City.

Scrub pine offer no resistance and the palmetto and cactus that tuff the mounds of fill dirt bend with the wind.

When you look south from what was to be the main thoroughfare of this multimillion dollar housing project that fizzled, there is nothing but flat monotonous land, sparsely timbered and desolate-looking.

Turn around and face north from where Macon Street abruptly ends, as if a giant knife had sliced the end off, and you can see clumps of houses scattered almost offhandedly around the landscape.

It's easy to see which ones are occupied. They are neat and comfortablelooking-the kind you would like to see in any middle-class neighborhood.

Th empty ones stand out, curtainless, paint-flecked and forlorn, their yards overrun with tough saw grass and spindly wild flowers.

These housed salesmen and executives for All-State Development Corp., the company formed four years ago to promote and develop the vast Florida pasture into a booming city of thousands, bigger than Orlando in area, faster growing than most American cities, and able to bridge exploding Cape Kennedy to the east and the mushrooming Greater Orlando area 17 miles to the west.

Turkey buzzards now wheel lazily over a landscape that three short years ago was bursting with activity.

Quail now whir up from sand pockets where salesmen scurried about pointing out choice lots to elderly customers and extolling the advantages of buying a plot of land that could be subdivided into four home sites when Rocket City zoomed skyward.

Yellow and red wild flowers paint the drab landscape that had been rearranged into mounds and valleys by bulldozers and earthmovers.

A lone and parched fireplug at the pavement's end adds the only other color. There is still activity in and around the houses which are clustered together in small goups like covered wagons bedded down on the prairie.

Children run in "back yards" that stretch for forever. A few cars move on the few paved streets. The hum of a power pole can be heard.

The liveliest place in the 23,000 acres these days is the Rocket City Country Club, a sporty, 18-hole layout that is jammed with golfers on weekends. The clubhouse is a model house. There is a putting green on the front lawn.

The house also headquarters Bankers Life and Casualty Co.'s outpost here. Bankers, a Miami-based financial giant generaled by John D. MacArthur, is the main hope presently in a tug-of-war with All-State Development Corp. to see who owns the 10,000 acres remaining under title.

This is Rocket City 1966.

What happened to the "City of Tomorrow."

Nearly as many theories exist why it failed as there are creditors. All-State had a plan, it sold a promise but couldn't deliver on either. Basically, All State's plan was a "city of 1,000 builders." First, several urban areas were offered for sale. All urban land contracts included provisions requiring buyers to build homes on the site within a specified period of years or give it up to someone who would build.

With the house building ripple widening, Rocket City would also offer suburban areas as part of the nine-year master plan. The suburban lots were bally

hooed as one and one-fourth acre plots that could be subdivided into several building lots. Many were to be on canals, or the winding river All-State planned. A suburban plot owner could soon sell off a lot or two as houses reached the area and that would all but pay for the original purchase.

So what happened? Salesmen were anxious to sell contracts, not careful development plans, and more suburban acreage was sold to the little guy who dreamed of being a Florida land developer.

And those few who bought in the urban section were not held to their building clauses, mainly because Rocket City folded first.

"This thing could have worked. They had more money to work with in the beginning than some developers who hit it rich, but they couldn't control the careful phasing they set for themselves; they didn't control the misleading promises and pitches their salesmen sometimes made, and much of the money was eaten by rich living and unlimited expense accounts."

This was the opinion of one observer close to the operation.

Among the promises written in the wind was a location of the space university at Rocket City, schools, shopping centers, parks, and space oriented businesses that never materialized.

Even the waterfront lots will never be on water. The planned river to feed the canals is about 60 pct. in the optioned area and those options have expired. All-State, in three years, went from dream to disaster. The decline included a $3.4 million loan from Bankers in 1964 for which contracts were pledged; an attempted financial reorganization in federal court that failed, and now the stormy bankruptcy.

What of the little investor swallowed up by the grandiose idea? What is being done to give The City of Tomorrow a genuine future? Was Rocket City a criminal fraud? What's being done to find out? These questions will be answered in the following stories.

[May 30, 1966]

AMONG LOYAL ROCKET CITY RESIDENTS: CIVIC PRIDE PLENTIFUL

(By Todd Persons, Sentinel Staff)

It's ironic that one of the few nice-looking streets in Rocket City is named Majestic.

There's plenty of civic pride on Majestic. The lawns and well-kept home's show attention and care.

The half dozen dwellings that are occupied on Majestic have been plopped like a tiny island in the bulldozed sea of sand and scrub that is now the Rocket City complex.

Laura Quinn had the look of a pioneer as she stood on a dune behind her house. The wind that never ceases out there tugged at her simple dress. Her hair was piled in a bun.

"It's bad just to kick a town when it's down," she said with curious pride. "This could be some nice town someday."

Mrs. Quinn is a "frontierswoman" in this sparsely settled corner of East Orange County. She and a handful of others live in relative seclusion in this shining dream of a city that financial woe and mismanagement tarnished.

Why is Laura Quinn staying even now after the buoyant salesman and real estate executives who sold her the land have left the area? Why is she sticking it out despite a bitter court fight between All-State Corp. and Bankers Life and Casualty Co. to see which owns the 10,000 acres remaining under title and who owns another 13,000 acres when their options have expired?

"Why am I staying? Because we are going to stick along with (Bankers' President John) MacArthur for a while," she said. "Maybe we are kidding ourselves, but he says he can make something of this land. He paved this street at least."

Mrs. Quinn gestured to some empty houses.

"All-State salesmen lived there, and some of their executives," she said. She didn't speak too highly of All-State.

"We neighbors got to stick together now if we stick here at all. I came here from St. Louis and built here. I wouldn't have done it if I'd known, but it all looked so good," Mrs. Quinn explained.

"Me and my daughter live here. She works at the Cape. Life is for the young. I've lived mine."

Despite her mellow philosophy, Mrs. Quinn still is willing to fight for her rights. She's not alone. Some of the 2,700 other persons, many of them retirees who plunked down life savings for a plot of security, also are battling to keep it.

Some are still paying monthly sum's into a special account Bankers has set up for the purpose until the title question is resolved.

There are a few who, according to authorities, are paying money for land they purchased in the optioned area, land they could never get title to if they paid until doomsday.

Others, like Mrs. Quinn, are planning to file creditors' claims with the bankruptcy court. They have until June 28.

They may have been neglected in the past, but these homesteaders are not going to be forgotten.

They won't allow it.

More than 400 of them jammed a circuit courtroom several months ago during one hearing before Tampa Bankruptcy Referee Alexander Paskay.

As of now, the case stands at a crossroad.

All-State failed in an attempt to have federal court approve a plan of reorganization.

Bankers said it was willing to develop Rocket City. It has possession of the contracts in a take-over deal that All-State now claims is invalid.

The question is, who owns the remaining land? The case is in circuit court here, but progress awaits an attempt to have it brought into federal court. So far jurisdiction has not been determined.

Meanwhile, Orlando attorney Jackson Cargill has been appointed trustee in the case by the court. Cargill in turn has hired the legal firm of Waterhouse, Reiss and Shuman to represent him in his investigation of possible All-State assets. Cargill and Bankers are sending out progress reports on the complex case to all contract holders.

That's why Laura Quinn and others like her know so much about the case. If nothing else, they are getting an expensive legal education.

Mrs. Quinn is bitter about the way she and the others were treated. They feel it was a land scheme that went rotten.

But she is fiercely loyal to the near-ghost town in which she lives.

"There's no sense in kicking a town when it's down," she repeated as she brushed some wind-blown grey hair from her face.

"But I'd change the name from Rocket City. It's got a bad ring to it now. Sounds too much like Racket City. But I think this could be a big town, a real

city the way this area is growing. That's what I think." For now, she'll just wait and see what happens.

[May 31, 1966]

HOPE STILL REMAINS IN ROCKET CITY

(By Todd Persons, Sentinel Staff)

"Live joyously. Work happily. Retire contentedly. Invest wisely." The adverbs tossed around in the colorful 1962 ad for Rocket City have an empty ring to about 2,700 families.

As empty as the Starlight Shopping Center that stands like a monument to failure along Florida 520, just across the street from the entrance to the 23,000acre land development that aborted in 1964.

Starlight is bare. The All-State Development Corp. office inside is stripped except for a mute switchboard. Rows and rows of empty trays that once held prospective contracts are rusting. The lavish office furniture has been yanked back by the leasing company.

The records and files were removed by County Solicitor James G. Horrell and are now behind locked doors in the Downtown Orlando Post Office, in custody of a federal grand jury.

Every door of the Starlight has been crudely jimmied, and boards have been hastily nailed up in their place. Even so, many windows were smashed by vandals who found nothing left to pick over.

The sprung doors at the Starlight are not the only acts at Rocket City that violate state law, investigators claim.

Three separate agencies claim there were violations of state and federal laws.

The current probers include the U.S. Postal Department checking for mail fraud and the Florida Installment and Land Sales Board, a body of developers created to regulate their fellow businessmen.

The county solicitor was budgeted $5,000 last August to investigate after he told county commissioners he suspected state law had been violated in the operation.

Horrell said he needed a special investigator to probe the case.

The investigator was never hired, and eight months later, Horrell announced he was dropping the investigation.

The solicitor said he had found violations of the law, but that they were only "minor misdemeanors" and "technical violations."

He said his investigation disclosed evidence of "waste of funds, extravagance, careless accounting methods, extremely high-pressure and questionable methods of salesmanship, and possibly fraud on the public."

Horrell said he spent about $1,000 of the money for some clerical help and for depositions.

He admitted that neither he nor any of his staff ever attended a long series of bankruptcy hearings in federal court last summer, nor did he interview any key All-State executives who testified then.

He said he removed the All-State files from the Starlight without a court order authorizing him to do so, "because I reckoned they had been abandoned. The building was unlocked."

The Federal case is progressing slowly, but it's progressing.

Investigators are hampered by the complexity of the case and by the long series of civil court hearings dealing with the bankruptcy petition filed by AllState and the present squabble with Bankers Life and Casualty Co. over who owns the 10,000 acres of land still under title.

"We won't be completed with our probe for another six months," said a postal inspector who asked to remain anonymous.

"The little people are just as much in the dark as the big ones about the future of this development. A lot of older people who wanted to find a quiet niche in this fast-moving society decided to invest, and they were swept off their feet by a fast and sometimes misleading sales-pitch," said the postal prober.

Testimony at a bankruptcy hearing here revealed over 200 people are still paying for land in the optioned portion of Rocket City-the portion no longer titled to All-State.

The Florida Installment Land Sales Board revoked All-State's license to sell real estate on the grounds it dealt in deceptive and misleading sales practices. At least one suit has been filed by a buyer who claims his contract stated his land was residential when it was zoned for agriculture.

In the latest letter to investors Bankers' president John D. MacArthur urges landowners to continue making payments into a special account Bankers established until court litigation is finally thrashed out.

MacArthur said that creditors may file claims against All-State with bankruptcy referee Alexander Paskay until June 28.

The postal inspector stated that Bankers has adopted a "very liberal attitude" in its dealings with the investors.

"I am more optimistic than I have ever been about the future of Rocket City," MacArthur told investors. "I don't want you to lose your investment and I am sure you won't."

The president's words are reassuring, but a lot must be done to overcome the physical spectre of abandoned buildings, pitted roads, and sand-choked lots that is now Rocket City.

The lights have gone out at the Starlight. Hopefully, they still flicker for the future of Rocket City.

[From Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel, July 2, 1966]

ROCKET CITY ISSUE INVOLVED; FRAUD CHARGED IN STOCK SALE

(By Todd Persons)

A man who allegedly sold stock in Rocket City to Maryland businessmen was charged by a Baltimore grand jury Friday with nine counts of obtaining money under false pretenses and with selling worthless stock.

Rocket City was the huge land development in East Orange County that crumbled under mismanagement in 1964.