Wanda Fulford was born on March 23, 1933, in Cortez, Florida, to Elizabeth and James Jones.  James was a commercial fisherman.  The family moved to Englewood then to Stump Pass for a while so her father could fish for Mullet.  Her mother returned to Cortez with the family shortly, leaving James in Stump Pass.  Wanda had a sister and two brothers.  She left school with a year and a half to go to work.  Wanda worked at various jobs.  She waitressed at the Albion Inn, was a butcher at Margaret Ann Grocery store before it became Winn-Dixies, sectioned fruit for making juice at Tropicana when it was in a tin shed, worked at a government-contracted raft factory.  She married Thomas “Sonny” Fulford and had three children.  Sonny was also a fisherman.  Wanda went on to work at Casa Fernandez for ten years attending merchandise shows and taking orders for imported carved birds.  She would sometimes go fishing with Sonny on his boat.  Wanda and Sonny left Cortez for a few years, then returned to Cortez and settled there.

Scope & Content Note:
Wanda grew up in Cortez, a small Gulf Coast commercial fishing village.  The family lived in a two-bedroom house.  Her grandfather lived in a small house behind theirs.  She didn’t like it when “Granddaddy” would spit tobacco between their toes if they were barefoot.  But other times, he would be fun and play tricks on them.  She was taught to churn butter then she and her sister Shirley would sell the butter and eggs from their chickens.  She and her sister had many chores.  Caring for and milking the cow, cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, even killing and preparing the chickens and turkeys for cooking.  She would shave Ivory soap into boiling water to wash clothes, scrub the clothes on a washboard, and then rinse them with cold water caught in a rain barrel.  She would sometimes help neighbors with their housework.  When she got a little older, Wanda would roll hair and give her mother and neighbors permanents.  Shirley would make clothes for herself and Wanda out of the feed sacks that the cow’s feed would come in; it was a lovely floral print.  The family would scallop.  Some scallops would be used for food, and the others were sold.  The shells would be cleaned and sold to a factory that made dolls.

Wanda grew up with many neighborhood children and played marbles on the dirt driveway.  Before Wanda married, she would sneak out with Sonny, but her mother would whip her if caught.  After marrying Sonny, she would sometimes fish with him on his boat.  Wanda would bring in the nets and gather all the fish with her hands to not lose any.  She enjoyed fishing with Sonny.  Wanda always wanted a goat, so her brother bought her one.  She and Sonny brought it home in the back seat of their car and laughed, watching others see the goat in the car.  Sonny lost his leg in a fishing accident, but Wanda demonstrated her strength by maintaining her composure and never crying in front of others, especially her children.  When Wanda was asked if she felt she had a hard life growing up, she said no, she enjoyed her life.  Wanda still gets together with old friends.  She hopes that Cortez will never change and remain a small, close-knit community like it was when she grew up there.  Her main passion has always been fishing.  She will still sometimes go outside with a pole and throw out a line into the water.