The Good Die Young

Research and Narrative by your neighbor, Lois Gray on Morier Street

Frank Stinson Bozeman 

Born  September 22, 1914  — Died  December 17, 1931 

"The Good Die Young" and "Born Too Soon" are clichés I heard many times from my grandmother and this young man buried in the Historic St. Nicholas Cemetery certainly proves that old sayings can be based on facts.

He died young at just 17 years of age and was born too soon (by only 2 decades) to be cured of the 6000-year-old human disease, tuberculosis, that took his young life. 

The first effective treatment of TB is credited to Selman Waksman who isolated "Streptomycin".  He went on to prove the drug could cure TB when he treated the first human in November 1949.  That patient recovered completely — much too late for young Frank.  

Through subsequent years, other treatments were discovered and it appeared that the disease might be totally eradicated by the 1970s.  However, in the 1980s the scourge reappeared in a more virulent form — now resistant to many of the original treatments drugs.  But thankfully, there has been a gradual decrease in numbers since then. In 2014 there were but 9,557  reported cases in the USA with only 493 deaths. 

A full biography for such a young man is practically impossible.  We know his family, several members of which, are buried in the St. Nicholas Cemetery, and some of them are discussed in "A Genealogical History of Florida" by Kay Ellen Gilmour, M. D., our neighbor.  When she wrote that book, there was no information about Frank except for his birth and death dates. 

More recent research has revealed some facts that help us see him as a real person. The book told us that his mother is Clara Bowden Sloan Bozeman.  His obituary reveals that he was survived by 3 half-siblings (a sister and 2 brothers).   Burns-Naugle Funeral Home provided funeral services for him, and a pastor from a Southside Christian Science Church presided.  Originally,  there was no name listed for his father. By requesting his death certificate, I discovered that his father was Revel J. Bozeman and also learned the cause of Frank's untimely death.  

Checking census data, I discovered that he lived with his mother 350 Hendricks Avenue and deduced from that fact that he attended Landon High School during his last two years of life.  Amazingly, a complete history of that school exists at the Landon High School Memorabilia  Room, located out on Atlantic Boulevard, manned by Mr.  Reed Tillis. He was very helpful in locating pictures of Frank from the yearbooks of 1930 and 1931.  I wondered why he seemed so far behind others his age; he was only in the ninth grade when he died.  But later, when I received his death certificate, I understood that his tuberculosis had spread over his entire body calamitously preventing his attending school regularly enough to advance through the grades. 

What is admirable about this young man is that he persisted in going to school and even participated in at least one extracurricular activity: The Travel Club.  This organization apparently helped students learn about other countries and visit them through books, films, pictures and history.   It is particularly sad to realize that he probably felt miserable most of this last phase of his brief life and could not survive long enough to do any real traveling through a normal life span.  

Take a moment to read the poem under the picture of the Travel Club.  

RIP