| TRAVELS OF DURSMIRG VOLUME IV THE ROGUES OF ST. AUGUSTINE AND OTHER SOCIAL MISFITS Chapter 62 |
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YACHTERS, GOOD, BAD AND UGLY; BUBBA, LINDA AND ART
Bubba (Hugo) and Linda Schill; and their yacht Jaeger; they signed our log book aboard the Dursmirg
December 15, 1972 at St. Augustine.
They were our very first Florida visitors and they went on to become some of our very best lifelong friends.
That evening of our first encounter we invited everybody from the entire St. Augustine anchorage over to our boat
to get acquainted and for tap beer. We had a 16 gallon keg of beer in our bilge and the tap was in our galley and
ready for action.
As I recall, when all of the neighboring boaters were aboard that evening I counted more than ten dinghies off the
stern of Dursmirg.
This was a memorable evening and we met some very interesting, outlandish and eccentric boaters who all
happened to be rogues or social misfits of beer-drinking story-telling varying degrees.
We all had one thing in common, a common thread that drew us all together and that was that each and every one
of us was a societal drop-out.
Many of that night’s group went on to become our life long friends and especially Bubba and Linda, two very special
and unique individuals that were living the best of lives that life could offer to anyone, free spirits freely living.
Over the coming years Jane and I would be drawn together with Bubba and Linda at Miami, Marathon, and at their
riverfront property over on the St. Johns River at Orangedale in remote western St. John’s County.
Orangedale was where after they had all the saltwater cruising swinging at anchor that they cared to do, they settled
in, built their own nature Garden of Eden and dock and then tied their now aging Nova Scotia sailing schooner
Jaeger in the front yard of their back-to-the-earth sanctuary to kick back and continue perpetuating their ongoing
party routine.
Our first evening in St. Augustine, the very first friendly person that we met at the City Yacht Pier was a man named
Dr. Jensen who himself was a sailor and a want-to-be drop-out. In his fifties at the time Dr. Jensen told us that he too
was a sail boater and that we were going to like St. Augustine.
The good Dr. Jensen had a recommendation that we must meet one of the other boaters anchored out in the harbor
around Bubba Schillon his sailing schooner Jaeger.
We looked out into the harbor and saw this old salty seasoned Nova Scotia sailing schooner with its distinctively
raked back masts and salty seagoing hull and knew that anyone intentionally living onboard such a vessel had to be
an eccentric social misfit and someone we would really enjoy knowing…our kind of personalities.
We thanked the good Dr. Jensen who just happened to be the father of Linda Schill, Bubba’s wife and sailing
companion, for his information.
We cranked our engine and left the dock to take our place out at anchor amongst the floating hodge-podge of
motley contrivances that made homes to the drop-out drop-anchor live-aboard sailors that made up St. Augustine’s
yachting community in the bay front harbor.
Once anchored, our first visitors were Bubba and Linda from the Nova Scotia Sailing schooner Jaeger. Bubba told
us that he bought his boat that had been sunken and lying derelict on the bottom for three hundred dollars, as is,
where is.
This man pumped the foundered Jaeger out at low tide and floated the resurrected old hulk out of its watery grave,
patched it, cleaned it, painted it and made it into his floating home. Bubba Schill dreamed the impossible dream.
Linda took care of all of the details and even got the shop manual for the antique diesel engine and completely
rebuilt and tuned it to factory specs, polished the brass fittings and gave it a bright new paint job and had it purring
like a kitten.
That memorable night…our first anchored in Florida waters, we invited everybody aboard and poured them all beer.
This motley mix of the St. Augustine anchorage thirstily drank from our beer tap situated in the galley.
Bubba and Linda were the first visitors to sign our guest book in Florida and Bubba’s comment to us was that our
beer was too warm. Bubba along with the rest of St. Augustine anchored out boating community didn’t leave our
boat until we had pumped the last drop out of our keg late that night…even if it was too warm.
Linda’s monumentally memorable comment was; “I make the living, but Bubba makes life worth living”.
All of our first evening’s visitors were interesting eccentrics and very friendly self made individuals who chose this
last frontier of the sea escape.
They all made Jane and I look like real arch conservatives compared to this motley and eccentric dropout group of
social misfits and misplaced rogues.
Linda and Bubba aboard their resurrected restored yacht Jaeger.
When Jane and I lived back in Superior, Wisconsin we had been among the most eccentric people in town, building
our boat and sailing away but here in St. Augustine we appeared to be clean shaven, short haired straight-arrow
conformist conservatives of the button down collar group.
What and where you are is only relative!
Bubba told us that there was good news and bad news; the bad news was that St. Augustine was an open-air insane
asylum, but the good news was that we had all been accepted!
I turned out that was a truthful statement of fact judging by the American standard of the 1970s.
Bubba also gave us some boating advice that we didn’t need and that was that we should anchor fore and aft, which
we did.
By the time the sun brightened the bleak northern sky the following morning a relentlessly raging fall storm had
slammed North Florida with a wild screaming wind storm.
Our vessel Dursmirg strained at its stressed anchor lines unmercifully caught in the torrentially wind driven strong
ebb tides currents being unable to swing with the tidal flow because of our fore and aft anchors.
I was disadvantaged by a broken shoulder and was at the mercy of these overpowering elements that Mother Nature
bestows upon sailors from time to time just to remind them who is really in charge.
This powerful wind storm that had the palm fronds wildly flapping, torn to tatters and frapping violently streaming on
the downwind side of the trees also sent two offshore shrimp trawlers to their watery grave and only broken
fragments of them washed ashore that frightfully brutal north Florida morning.
A brief historical re-play of convoluted Bubba’s life;
Bubba Schill didn’t start life as a rogue or social misfit; in fact he had been a model of the all American family man.
After spending five years of his young life in the U. S. Navy fighting the Germans in the North Atlantic he married,
had three children and a loving wife with a happy stable home.
Then tragedy struck when his cherished young wife tragically died in her mid-thirties.
Bubba just couldn’t cope with his tragic loss and slipped out of the mainstream of society just in time to fall in with the
spaced-out drop-out pot-smoking hippie generation of the 1960s.
Bubba was no wallflower when it came to escaping his mental turmoil and moved with the extreme elements of the
times.
He flowed with the outlandish radical movement out to California in America’s drop-out years and his kids suffered
not only the loss of their mother but the total destruction of their home life.
Ultimately Bubba’s daughter was taken away from him and raised by a relative.
The drug scene led Bubba into another realm of societal existence of living on the strung-out edge of reality.
Drop-out strung-out Bubba naturally happened to be a very talented artist doing oil paintings that got exhibited in
several prestigious galleries including Coconut Grove.
This man was endowed with extraordinary abilities, he was deeply emotional and profoundly compassionate, but he
was now a lost soul.
I don’t know all the sordid details of what happened exactly but next there was a drug bust and the net upshot of it all
was that Bubba’s best friend Sanders was going to be sent off to prison.
Bubba stepped up to the plate and “took a fall” or took the rap for his good buddy Sanders and did eighteen months
hard time at the penitentiary in his friends place.
Sanders was well endowed with enormous amounts of money he made from his international rare book business
and he never forgot his best-in-a-lifetime friend that made a phenomenal sacrifice for him.
Thereafter Sanders made sure that whatever it took to make Bubba happy he would do and he gave fall-guy Bubba
a no questions asked credit card and showered him with meaningful gifts.
I still can’t understand what led poor Sanders to fall-in with the dropout drug group especially with his good
business, huge bank roll and lovely waterfront home. Whatever it was he soon suffered from a tragically broken
home.
Sanders case was completely different than Bubbas.
Sanders lost his wife when she ran off and married a sixteen year old boy who was younger than Sanders own
youngest son.
Well, Bubba got a second chance in life when he met Linda and she gave up everything in her life to sail off with the
love of her life.
Linda was a “Daughter of the Confederacy” and Bubba’s old St. Augustine grandfather, a Mickler, was a member of
the Confederate army.
Bubba and Linda were actually a part of the group and rented confederate outfits then attended CSA (Confederate
States of America) reunions.
Bubbas family goes way back in the history of the St. Augustine area and Bubba used to boast that his uncle was
the first white man ever hanged in Volusia County, Florida.
Bubba and Linda ultimately after many very happy and adventuresome years of sailing and living aboard their
schooner Jaeger bought a lovely water front piece of property in St. Johns County at Orangedale over on the St.
John’s River.
This is where the river was at its widest.
I still can remember one lovely afternoon after one of Bubba’s special extravagant Down-South rice dishes spiced
with datil-pepper sauce, we all adjourned to the hot tub for a tranquil repose. Linda asked me what they could do to
get rid of the green algae that had started to form in their hot tub water. I told her that copper sulfate was very
effective but just adding copper was usually enough.
Bubba didn’t bat an eye and went off returning in a couple of minutes with another drink and their penny bank and
he proceeded to empty its contents directly into the hot tub…what a sight, pennies went everywhere, and that was
the end of their algae problem.
Bubba next began raising rabbits and his production soon got totally out of hand, literally running away from him.
They had their freezer full of rabbit meat and every time we stopped over to visit with Bubba he was always trying to
feed us some of his prolific over production that everybody was beginning to be fed up with.
In spite of his creative culinary capabilities with these over productive over zealous breeding crazy creatures,
enough rabbit rapidly became far too much.
Well, everybody quickly got supersaturated with Bubba’s various variations on cooking methods for preparing rabbit.
Overkill hardly described our appetite super saturation for the meat of the hare. Like our old friend George Tappin
used to say about his hard times youth and eating wild bear meat; “The more you chew the bigger it got!”
Bubba’s old hippie Mother Earth News back-to-nature projects were evident everywhere around the premises and
organic gardening made the scene complete.
Enthusiastic gardening Bubba just was not going to stoop to pulling weeds; he mulched compost between his
garden vegetables and made grand claims about the ecological impact of his bio-agriculture while he laid back in
the shade sipping his iced booze concoction.
Bubba was not going to mow the lawn either especially after the lawn mower died. He logically and shamelessly
rationalized that problem away simply stating that; “lawn mowing was just a Yankee conspiracy anyway”.
Bubba did manage to stay thoroughly liquored up most of his adult life but now he made it into a daily routine. The
liquor store was just an easy walk from his property so Bubba would stroll over and became a faithful day after day
drop-in patron.
Bubba had quit smoking some years earlier while living aboard their boat Jaeger down in Dinner Key at Miami. I still
remember his nicotine stained yellow fingers and mustache and Bubba’s rational of finally getting rid of those filthy
weeds…”a fire on one end and a fool on the other”.
To improve Bubba’s health Linda got him to quit drinking for a while and the improvement was amazing and almost
immediate.
Jane and I were there when Bubba went on the wagon and was reduced to sipping his Red Zinger tea in place of his
daily doses of booze and we heard a sober Bubba exclaiming; “this stuff just doesn’t taste right!”
Linda thought for a moment then slipped Bubba a Valium. That’s right, a drink without feeling high just wasn’t
right…now his Red Zinger had some momentum and Bubba was happily back in his element.
Bubba loved and lived for his high times and I will never forget a remark he made after returning from a St. Patrick’s
Day celebration in Savannah, Georgia where the beer flows with limitless profusion; “Savannah is an alcoholic’s
dream come true!”
Linda took a school teaching job and made Bubba happy. As Linda earlier stated; she made the living but Bubba
made life worth living.
Eventually their property began to become developed through a process of creeping expansion that always
managed to be grandfathered in.
Bubba bought a 40 foot freight cargo container that he first used for a storage shed. Next with his ingenious
conniving mind he began a long string of expansions that in the end made it impossible for anybody to uncover his
original freight container.
Bubba first cut some windows in it. Then in went his lawn furniture and it became a covered garden retreat. A porch
was added. It was then put up on pilings and a bedroom extension came next. Then a bathroom, and another
bedroom and electric and water were added.
This house began life as a 40 foot freight container and then evolution took over.
This is the view looking out over the St. John’s River from the porch of Bubba and Linda’s Orangedale
home. Anchored off shore is our vessel Dursmirg and tied to the dock is the Jaeger. In the foreground is a large
wine cask that became their hot-tub Jacuzzi.
Jane and I frequently came over with our camper van and parked at their beautifully wooded back-to-nature
waterfront property spending the night.
On one occasion we spent two days getting Bubba’s creeping conundrum of non-complying nightmare electric
service to comply with the southern building code.
Bubba’s mishmash of nightmare wiring was a shockingly unbelievable hodge-podge of non-complying calamities just
waiting for an electrifying accident to strike.
We thought that if a building inspector should ever come to visit at least the structure should measure up to the
Southern building code.
Two months later, after we had completely rewired Bubba’s entire premises Jane and I returned to find to our
disappointment that the electric service was in the rapid process of regressing rapidly back to a dire dismal state of
non-compliance.
The situation was just positively hopeless and we discovered that we were the only ones that gave a damn about
this discouraging state of affairs.
Bubba was blissfully happy and what’s more he didn’t even give a good-god-damn!
If it wasn’t important to them, and it wasn’t, why should we care?
Bubba proudly and personally took credit for all of his Rube Goldberg land development innovations.
A special visit to our home in St. Augustine; from left; Bubba Schill, son Chris, wife Linda, daughter in
law Daphne, my wife Jane, grandson Bubba Lee and son Wade, 1983.
Bubba’s son Chris and his nephew Danny were arrested at Morgan City, Louisiana for smuggling drugs and they
were implicated with the famous NASA race car driver John Paul.
An interesting chain of events began to unfold around peacenik Bubba’s tranquil waterfront slice of paradise when
all this was going on.
The place was rapidly becoming an armed camp with high-powered automatic weaponry backed up with enough
ammunition to hold off the state militia.
We even got demonstrations in how to make home made silencers out of stuff available off the shelf at the local
hardware store.
Our back-to-the-earth peacenik eco-guy Bubba rapidly became a armed-to-the-teeth militiaman.
This was a big story because of all of the other drug related business that the famous race car driver John Paul was
involved in. He had an underground pot growing business in Atlanta that was actually located in an underground
building complete with special growing lights.
John Paul was picked up along with Bubba’s nephew, Danny Schill by federal agents in Switzerland while they were
attempting to do clandestine banking. It was off to prison for both of them.
John Paul Jr. went to jail for racketeering, while his father John Paul Sr. was given a 25-year sentence after pleading
guilty to importing marijuana, tax evasion, possession of a false passport and shooting a federal witness.
(This was for sure the big league of the elicit drug business!)
As I mentioned earlier; Paul was on the run for several years and was eventually arrested in Geneva, Switzerland,
along with Bubba’s nephew Danny.
John Paul Jr. had been missing from auto racing since 1985, when he started serving a 28-month sentence for his
participation in a marijuana smuggling business run by his Dad.
A brief history of John Paul Sr.; He emigrated to the U.S. with his family from Holland in 1954 and earned an MBA
from Harvard and made a few million in the stock market when his racing career hit its heights in the 1970s. John
Paul Sr. went on to win the Trans-Am series title in 1979 and the World Endurance Championship in 1978 and '80.
He paid for this with money he made smuggling drugs in from Venezuela and Colombia.
Paul's financing wasn't common knowledge then but, as it turned out he was not the only one turning a buck that
way. Paul was competing in the Motor Sports Camel GT car series. This is a very high-budget and low-return event
regarded as the playground of rich playboys. This made a perfect setting in which to launder his ill-gotten loot.
Paul's first brush with the authorities was in January 1979 when he and his son John Jr. along with two others got
arrested on charges of possession and the intent to distribute three-quarters of a ton of pot. They entered guilty
pleas and received three-year suspended sentences plus three years of probation and $15,000 fines. Young John
Paul Jr. was just 18 years old.
Later, Paul Jr. said he got involved in the smuggling business when he was just 15 years old because he thought it
was a way to please his father.
Paul Jr. started racing in the IMSA series in 1980. In 1982 he won nine races.
In 1983 John Paul Jr. drove and won a 500-mile race at Michigan. In January 1985, he signed with the Domino's
Pizza team.
Three days later, Paul Jr. and his father plus six others got indicted in Florida for drug smuggling and said goodbye
to big-time racing.
At the time of his indictment John Paul had been on the run and spent 18 months as a fugitive. He was charged with
attempted murder after shooting a witness, who was a former member of the smuggling ring.
Arrested in Geneva, Switzerland Paul stood trial in August 1987 and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Paul Jr.
got out of prison in 1988, after 28 months. The elder Paul served 15 years.
While all of this was going on around peacenik Bubba’s waterfront slice of paradise Jane and I gave the place a wide
berth for a number of reasons; First and foremost we didn’t have any desire of getting in the middle of any kind of a
shoot-out and another was that we didn’t want to be guilty by association.
As far as we are concerned anybody that wants to blow their brains out with drugs should be free to do so as long
as they are not wrecking other people’s lives in the process.
Well, the dust did finally settle and peace and tranquility finally did return to peacenik Bubba’s waterfront slice of
paradise.
Here our dear and long time friends Linda and her clean shaven Bubba are visiting our home in St.
Augustine, 1982.
Jane and I met this incredible character who became one of our very best friends and a huge part of our lives on
December 15, 1972 when he signed the guest book aboard our sailing vessel Dursmirg while anchored at St.
Augustine.
Over the years we sailed and rendezvoused and always shared incredibly fun adventures. We shared countless
mutual memories of the very best times of our lives when living was simple, free and easy.
As long as we live, Bubba will live on in our fondest memories.
Bubba was totally outrageous;
Here meet his little brother who definitely without doubt came out of the very same social misfit mold;
Enter; Art Schill…brother to Bubba Schill and unquestionably the Ancient City’s most outlandish eccentric extrovert
and confident self made man. Truly a one-of-a-kind marching to his very own drum beat…nobody ever came close
to this mans outlandish eccentricity.
Jane and I first saw this strange and interesting character curiously out of place and time resolutely riding his
distinctively classic black WWII German motor cycle complete with sidecar.
Art had a meticulous attention to detail unmatched in its realistic character with his Nazi era attire that was bone
chillingly authentic.
The first time Jane and I laid eyes on this eccentric we did a double take and asked ourselves could this be true?
Were we really seeing what we saw?
Art was sporting a long white silk neck scarf that trailed off in the breeze as he cruised along U.S. Highway 1 with an
arrogant air of elite superiority.
His black leather WWII German aviators cap topped with round pilots goggles matched his meticulously outlandish
military outfit of black leather flight jacket, pants and gloves and when he stopped at the stop sign on King Street
the scarf still stood straight out like it was still flapping in the breeze…authentic Art had a wire in his scarf so that it
was held out streaming straight like he was still in motion…attention to detail!!!
Yah, this social misfit was a guy that defiantly marched to the tune of a different drummer, his own and went far
beyond your common garden variety average eccentric. You would have to classify Art as an eccentric’s eccentric.
On warm summers evenings exhibitionist Art Schill would be seen parading around the Old City’s downtown streets
in his classic 1800s prim and proper little impeccably kept vintage open horse cart. Art and his cart were
intentionally one hundred years out of step with the rest of the world along with his wife and their little daughter
named “O” in their period costumes.
Art and family would always be dressed in their special 18th century period costumes with his outlandish exhibitionist
attention to detail that was meticulous in every minute detail.
Art also did the most off-color verbally vulgar down south stand-up comic routine, had a jug-band and would perform
at the local gin mill named the Trade Winds; he also had appeared on the Johnny Carson TV late night talk show
program…taming down his outrageous routine for national TV.
Quick witted Art with his glib tongue had a well earned reputation and was notoriously known for his outlandish
cynically witty outspoken off-colored verbally free flowing trashy rubbish.
Artistic Art had an off-beat second hand store stocked with antiques of questionable authenticity over on West King
Street where he indulged himself in eccentric relics of quasi questionable historical significance and spent his idle
time whittling ingenious little curiosities of wood.
One afternoon when Jane and I paid Art a visit in his off-beat King Street second hand store he proudly displayed a
wooden piece he had just finished whittling the finishing touches on. It was an oversized light bulb with an inset relief
that had the word “Idea” neatly carved into it.
This was cleverly innovative and conjured up childhood recollections of old comic strip characters with captions
depicting the light bulb coming on and “idea” appearing overhead.
By God, this guy went the extra mile when it came to taking figurative speech literally. Audacious, daring and bold
Art had inherited a piece of land over on the North Beach along with all of the Mickler grandchildren and low and
behold built a real castle for a home. Yes, Art’s home was his castle.
This effort wasn’t just your standard home building project. Art somehow toted in huge blocks of coquina stone, he
sawed it, he shaped it and he fitted these gigantic stones together into a real castle…his home a lasting monument
to a man that was not a copycat but an independent minded do-your-own-thing individual.
A social misfit? …I guess so!
Without a doubt!
But then this Old City’s one-of-a-kind Art Schill never did march to someone else’s drum beat.
And so in St. Augustine’s 400 plus years Art Schill came along but once and we were there to appreciate and
remember this guy that independently made an impact in a beautiful free-spirited kind of way never more to be
duplicated.
Before he scaled down his musical career, he appeared on stage and was good friends with entertainer Jimmy
Buffett and with the late Gamble Rogers.
"They were at the Tradewinds (a longtime St. Augustine nightspot) at the same time" Becker explained of Rogers,
Buffett and Schill. "They were close."
The Folksters broke up in early 1963 after a date at the Hungry Eye in California. Pickering and Hodges went on to
become part of Spanky and Our Gang.
"He had so many pulls," Becker said of Schill. "He was both a musician and an artist. He would like to be known as a
stone cutter. He sculpted in coquina, which was very rare, but he was an entertainer and never got away from that
the rest of his life -- whether it was for one or 100, he was on stage."
He and his wife were together from 1989 and exchanged wedding vows in April 2000, met on a blind date.
It was an instant attraction, said his wife. "We got in a friend's car" en route to a restaurant and he brought along his
little ukulele." He began playing "some crazy little songs, and I knew all the words to them."
At the restaurant they held hands under the table. "After that ride in the car and with him playing that little ukulele,
we knew I was going to be his woman."
The Schills divided their time between his home on Vilano Beach and his wife's home in Jacksonville.
Schill was also a veteran of the U.S. Navy Blimp Squadron.
In addition to his wife, survivors include one daughter, O Lancing Schill and son-in-law, Eddie Lambert, St.
Augustine; sisters Ora May Cagle, Agnita Williams (Cal), Rose Mary Rini, Dottie Barbarito (Ed), all of Jacksonville; a
brother, Richard Schill, Miami; granddaughters O'Hara Lynn Kuba, Madison Elle Lambert, St. Augustine; and many
nieces, nephews and cousins.
next chapter
Bubba (Hugo) and Linda Schill; and their yacht Jaeger; they signed our log book aboard the Dursmirg
December 15, 1972 at St. Augustine.
They were our very first Florida visitors and they went on to become some of our very best lifelong friends.
That evening of our first encounter we invited everybody from the entire St. Augustine anchorage over to our boat
to get acquainted and for tap beer. We had a 16 gallon keg of beer in our bilge and the tap was in our galley and
ready for action.
As I recall, when all of the neighboring boaters were aboard that evening I counted more than ten dinghies off the
stern of Dursmirg.
This was a memorable evening and we met some very interesting, outlandish and eccentric boaters who all
happened to be rogues or social misfits of beer-drinking story-telling varying degrees.
We all had one thing in common, a common thread that drew us all together and that was that each and every one
of us was a societal drop-out.
Many of that night’s group went on to become our life long friends and especially Bubba and Linda, two very special
and unique individuals that were living the best of lives that life could offer to anyone, free spirits freely living.
Over the coming years Jane and I would be drawn together with Bubba and Linda at Miami, Marathon, and at their
riverfront property over on the St. Johns River at Orangedale in remote western St. John’s County.
Orangedale was where after they had all the saltwater cruising swinging at anchor that they cared to do, they settled
in, built their own nature Garden of Eden and dock and then tied their now aging Nova Scotia sailing schooner
Jaeger in the front yard of their back-to-the-earth sanctuary to kick back and continue perpetuating their ongoing
party routine.
Our first evening in St. Augustine, the very first friendly person that we met at the City Yacht Pier was a man named
Dr. Jensen who himself was a sailor and a want-to-be drop-out. In his fifties at the time Dr. Jensen told us that he too
was a sail boater and that we were going to like St. Augustine.
The good Dr. Jensen had a recommendation that we must meet one of the other boaters anchored out in the harbor
around Bubba Schillon his sailing schooner Jaeger.
We looked out into the harbor and saw this old salty seasoned Nova Scotia sailing schooner with its distinctively
raked back masts and salty seagoing hull and knew that anyone intentionally living onboard such a vessel had to be
an eccentric social misfit and someone we would really enjoy knowing…our kind of personalities.
We thanked the good Dr. Jensen who just happened to be the father of Linda Schill, Bubba’s wife and sailing
companion, for his information.
We cranked our engine and left the dock to take our place out at anchor amongst the floating hodge-podge of
motley contrivances that made homes to the drop-out drop-anchor live-aboard sailors that made up St. Augustine’s
yachting community in the bay front harbor.
Once anchored, our first visitors were Bubba and Linda from the Nova Scotia Sailing schooner Jaeger. Bubba told
us that he bought his boat that had been sunken and lying derelict on the bottom for three hundred dollars, as is,
where is.
This man pumped the foundered Jaeger out at low tide and floated the resurrected old hulk out of its watery grave,
patched it, cleaned it, painted it and made it into his floating home. Bubba Schill dreamed the impossible dream.
Linda took care of all of the details and even got the shop manual for the antique diesel engine and completely
rebuilt and tuned it to factory specs, polished the brass fittings and gave it a bright new paint job and had it purring
like a kitten.
That memorable night…our first anchored in Florida waters, we invited everybody aboard and poured them all beer.
This motley mix of the St. Augustine anchorage thirstily drank from our beer tap situated in the galley.
Bubba and Linda were the first visitors to sign our guest book in Florida and Bubba’s comment to us was that our
beer was too warm. Bubba along with the rest of St. Augustine anchored out boating community didn’t leave our
boat until we had pumped the last drop out of our keg late that night…even if it was too warm.
Linda’s monumentally memorable comment was; “I make the living, but Bubba makes life worth living”.
All of our first evening’s visitors were interesting eccentrics and very friendly self made individuals who chose this
last frontier of the sea escape.
They all made Jane and I look like real arch conservatives compared to this motley and eccentric dropout group of
social misfits and misplaced rogues.
Linda and Bubba aboard their resurrected restored yacht Jaeger.
When Jane and I lived back in Superior, Wisconsin we had been among the most eccentric people in town, building
our boat and sailing away but here in St. Augustine we appeared to be clean shaven, short haired straight-arrow
conformist conservatives of the button down collar group.
What and where you are is only relative!
Bubba told us that there was good news and bad news; the bad news was that St. Augustine was an open-air insane
asylum, but the good news was that we had all been accepted!
I turned out that was a truthful statement of fact judging by the American standard of the 1970s.
Bubba also gave us some boating advice that we didn’t need and that was that we should anchor fore and aft, which
we did.
By the time the sun brightened the bleak northern sky the following morning a relentlessly raging fall storm had
slammed North Florida with a wild screaming wind storm.
Our vessel Dursmirg strained at its stressed anchor lines unmercifully caught in the torrentially wind driven strong
ebb tides currents being unable to swing with the tidal flow because of our fore and aft anchors.
I was disadvantaged by a broken shoulder and was at the mercy of these overpowering elements that Mother Nature
bestows upon sailors from time to time just to remind them who is really in charge.
This powerful wind storm that had the palm fronds wildly flapping, torn to tatters and frapping violently streaming on
the downwind side of the trees also sent two offshore shrimp trawlers to their watery grave and only broken
fragments of them washed ashore that frightfully brutal north Florida morning.
A brief historical re-play of convoluted Bubba’s life;
Bubba Schill didn’t start life as a rogue or social misfit; in fact he had been a model of the all American family man.
After spending five years of his young life in the U. S. Navy fighting the Germans in the North Atlantic he married,
had three children and a loving wife with a happy stable home.
Then tragedy struck when his cherished young wife tragically died in her mid-thirties.
Bubba just couldn’t cope with his tragic loss and slipped out of the mainstream of society just in time to fall in with the
spaced-out drop-out pot-smoking hippie generation of the 1960s.
Bubba was no wallflower when it came to escaping his mental turmoil and moved with the extreme elements of the
times.
He flowed with the outlandish radical movement out to California in America’s drop-out years and his kids suffered
not only the loss of their mother but the total destruction of their home life.
Ultimately Bubba’s daughter was taken away from him and raised by a relative.
The drug scene led Bubba into another realm of societal existence of living on the strung-out edge of reality.
Drop-out strung-out Bubba naturally happened to be a very talented artist doing oil paintings that got exhibited in
several prestigious galleries including Coconut Grove.
This man was endowed with extraordinary abilities, he was deeply emotional and profoundly compassionate, but he
was now a lost soul.
I don’t know all the sordid details of what happened exactly but next there was a drug bust and the net upshot of it all
was that Bubba’s best friend Sanders was going to be sent off to prison.
Bubba stepped up to the plate and “took a fall” or took the rap for his good buddy Sanders and did eighteen months
hard time at the penitentiary in his friends place.
Sanders was well endowed with enormous amounts of money he made from his international rare book business
and he never forgot his best-in-a-lifetime friend that made a phenomenal sacrifice for him.
Thereafter Sanders made sure that whatever it took to make Bubba happy he would do and he gave fall-guy Bubba
a no questions asked credit card and showered him with meaningful gifts.
I still can’t understand what led poor Sanders to fall-in with the dropout drug group especially with his good
business, huge bank roll and lovely waterfront home. Whatever it was he soon suffered from a tragically broken
home.
Sanders case was completely different than Bubbas.
Sanders lost his wife when she ran off and married a sixteen year old boy who was younger than Sanders own
youngest son.
Well, Bubba got a second chance in life when he met Linda and she gave up everything in her life to sail off with the
love of her life.
Linda was a “Daughter of the Confederacy” and Bubba’s old St. Augustine grandfather, a Mickler, was a member of
the Confederate army.
Bubba and Linda were actually a part of the group and rented confederate outfits then attended CSA (Confederate
States of America) reunions.
Bubbas family goes way back in the history of the St. Augustine area and Bubba used to boast that his uncle was
the first white man ever hanged in Volusia County, Florida.
Bubba and Linda ultimately after many very happy and adventuresome years of sailing and living aboard their
schooner Jaeger bought a lovely water front piece of property in St. Johns County at Orangedale over on the St.
John’s River.
This is where the river was at its widest.
I still can remember one lovely afternoon after one of Bubba’s special extravagant Down-South rice dishes spiced
with datil-pepper sauce, we all adjourned to the hot tub for a tranquil repose. Linda asked me what they could do to
get rid of the green algae that had started to form in their hot tub water. I told her that copper sulfate was very
effective but just adding copper was usually enough.
Bubba didn’t bat an eye and went off returning in a couple of minutes with another drink and their penny bank and
he proceeded to empty its contents directly into the hot tub…what a sight, pennies went everywhere, and that was
the end of their algae problem.
Bubba next began raising rabbits and his production soon got totally out of hand, literally running away from him.
They had their freezer full of rabbit meat and every time we stopped over to visit with Bubba he was always trying to
feed us some of his prolific over production that everybody was beginning to be fed up with.
In spite of his creative culinary capabilities with these over productive over zealous breeding crazy creatures,
enough rabbit rapidly became far too much.
Well, everybody quickly got supersaturated with Bubba’s various variations on cooking methods for preparing rabbit.
Overkill hardly described our appetite super saturation for the meat of the hare. Like our old friend George Tappin
used to say about his hard times youth and eating wild bear meat; “The more you chew the bigger it got!”
Bubba’s old hippie Mother Earth News back-to-nature projects were evident everywhere around the premises and
organic gardening made the scene complete.
Enthusiastic gardening Bubba just was not going to stoop to pulling weeds; he mulched compost between his
garden vegetables and made grand claims about the ecological impact of his bio-agriculture while he laid back in
the shade sipping his iced booze concoction.
Bubba was not going to mow the lawn either especially after the lawn mower died. He logically and shamelessly
rationalized that problem away simply stating that; “lawn mowing was just a Yankee conspiracy anyway”.
Bubba did manage to stay thoroughly liquored up most of his adult life but now he made it into a daily routine. The
liquor store was just an easy walk from his property so Bubba would stroll over and became a faithful day after day
drop-in patron.
Bubba had quit smoking some years earlier while living aboard their boat Jaeger down in Dinner Key at Miami. I still
remember his nicotine stained yellow fingers and mustache and Bubba’s rational of finally getting rid of those filthy
weeds…”a fire on one end and a fool on the other”.
To improve Bubba’s health Linda got him to quit drinking for a while and the improvement was amazing and almost
immediate.
Jane and I were there when Bubba went on the wagon and was reduced to sipping his Red Zinger tea in place of his
daily doses of booze and we heard a sober Bubba exclaiming; “this stuff just doesn’t taste right!”
Linda thought for a moment then slipped Bubba a Valium. That’s right, a drink without feeling high just wasn’t
right…now his Red Zinger had some momentum and Bubba was happily back in his element.
Bubba loved and lived for his high times and I will never forget a remark he made after returning from a St. Patrick’s
Day celebration in Savannah, Georgia where the beer flows with limitless profusion; “Savannah is an alcoholic’s
dream come true!”
Linda took a school teaching job and made Bubba happy. As Linda earlier stated; she made the living but Bubba
made life worth living.
Eventually their property began to become developed through a process of creeping expansion that always
managed to be grandfathered in.
Bubba bought a 40 foot freight cargo container that he first used for a storage shed. Next with his ingenious
conniving mind he began a long string of expansions that in the end made it impossible for anybody to uncover his
original freight container.
Bubba first cut some windows in it. Then in went his lawn furniture and it became a covered garden retreat. A porch
was added. It was then put up on pilings and a bedroom extension came next. Then a bathroom, and another
bedroom and electric and water were added.
This house began life as a 40 foot freight container and then evolution took over.
This is the view looking out over the St. John’s River from the porch of Bubba and Linda’s Orangedale
home. Anchored off shore is our vessel Dursmirg and tied to the dock is the Jaeger. In the foreground is a large
wine cask that became their hot-tub Jacuzzi.
Jane and I frequently came over with our camper van and parked at their beautifully wooded back-to-nature
waterfront property spending the night.
On one occasion we spent two days getting Bubba’s creeping conundrum of non-complying nightmare electric
service to comply with the southern building code.
Bubba’s mishmash of nightmare wiring was a shockingly unbelievable hodge-podge of non-complying calamities just
waiting for an electrifying accident to strike.
We thought that if a building inspector should ever come to visit at least the structure should measure up to the
Southern building code.
Two months later, after we had completely rewired Bubba’s entire premises Jane and I returned to find to our
disappointment that the electric service was in the rapid process of regressing rapidly back to a dire dismal state of
non-compliance.
The situation was just positively hopeless and we discovered that we were the only ones that gave a damn about
this discouraging state of affairs.
Bubba was blissfully happy and what’s more he didn’t even give a good-god-damn!
If it wasn’t important to them, and it wasn’t, why should we care?
Bubba proudly and personally took credit for all of his Rube Goldberg land development innovations.
A special visit to our home in St. Augustine; from left; Bubba Schill, son Chris, wife Linda, daughter in
law Daphne, my wife Jane, grandson Bubba Lee and son Wade, 1983.
Bubba’s son Chris and his nephew Danny were arrested at Morgan City, Louisiana for smuggling drugs and they
were implicated with the famous NASA race car driver John Paul.
An interesting chain of events began to unfold around peacenik Bubba’s tranquil waterfront slice of paradise when
all this was going on.
The place was rapidly becoming an armed camp with high-powered automatic weaponry backed up with enough
ammunition to hold off the state militia.
We even got demonstrations in how to make home made silencers out of stuff available off the shelf at the local
hardware store.
Our back-to-the-earth peacenik eco-guy Bubba rapidly became a armed-to-the-teeth militiaman.
This was a big story because of all of the other drug related business that the famous race car driver John Paul was
involved in. He had an underground pot growing business in Atlanta that was actually located in an underground
building complete with special growing lights.
John Paul was picked up along with Bubba’s nephew, Danny Schill by federal agents in Switzerland while they were
attempting to do clandestine banking. It was off to prison for both of them.
John Paul Jr. went to jail for racketeering, while his father John Paul Sr. was given a 25-year sentence after pleading
guilty to importing marijuana, tax evasion, possession of a false passport and shooting a federal witness.
(This was for sure the big league of the elicit drug business!)
As I mentioned earlier; Paul was on the run for several years and was eventually arrested in Geneva, Switzerland,
along with Bubba’s nephew Danny.
John Paul Jr. had been missing from auto racing since 1985, when he started serving a 28-month sentence for his
participation in a marijuana smuggling business run by his Dad.
A brief history of John Paul Sr.; He emigrated to the U.S. with his family from Holland in 1954 and earned an MBA
from Harvard and made a few million in the stock market when his racing career hit its heights in the 1970s. John
Paul Sr. went on to win the Trans-Am series title in 1979 and the World Endurance Championship in 1978 and '80.
He paid for this with money he made smuggling drugs in from Venezuela and Colombia.
Paul's financing wasn't common knowledge then but, as it turned out he was not the only one turning a buck that
way. Paul was competing in the Motor Sports Camel GT car series. This is a very high-budget and low-return event
regarded as the playground of rich playboys. This made a perfect setting in which to launder his ill-gotten loot.
Paul's first brush with the authorities was in January 1979 when he and his son John Jr. along with two others got
arrested on charges of possession and the intent to distribute three-quarters of a ton of pot. They entered guilty
pleas and received three-year suspended sentences plus three years of probation and $15,000 fines. Young John
Paul Jr. was just 18 years old.
Later, Paul Jr. said he got involved in the smuggling business when he was just 15 years old because he thought it
was a way to please his father.
Paul Jr. started racing in the IMSA series in 1980. In 1982 he won nine races.
In 1983 John Paul Jr. drove and won a 500-mile race at Michigan. In January 1985, he signed with the Domino's
Pizza team.
Three days later, Paul Jr. and his father plus six others got indicted in Florida for drug smuggling and said goodbye
to big-time racing.
At the time of his indictment John Paul had been on the run and spent 18 months as a fugitive. He was charged with
attempted murder after shooting a witness, who was a former member of the smuggling ring.
Arrested in Geneva, Switzerland Paul stood trial in August 1987 and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Paul Jr.
got out of prison in 1988, after 28 months. The elder Paul served 15 years.
While all of this was going on around peacenik Bubba’s waterfront slice of paradise Jane and I gave the place a wide
berth for a number of reasons; First and foremost we didn’t have any desire of getting in the middle of any kind of a
shoot-out and another was that we didn’t want to be guilty by association.
As far as we are concerned anybody that wants to blow their brains out with drugs should be free to do so as long
as they are not wrecking other people’s lives in the process.
Well, the dust did finally settle and peace and tranquility finally did return to peacenik Bubba’s waterfront slice of
paradise.
Here our dear and long time friends Linda and her clean shaven Bubba are visiting our home in St.
Augustine, 1982.
Jane and I met this incredible character who became one of our very best friends and a huge part of our lives on
December 15, 1972 when he signed the guest book aboard our sailing vessel Dursmirg while anchored at St.
Augustine.
Over the years we sailed and rendezvoused and always shared incredibly fun adventures. We shared countless
mutual memories of the very best times of our lives when living was simple, free and easy.
As long as we live, Bubba will live on in our fondest memories.
Bubba was totally outrageous;
Here meet his little brother who definitely without doubt came out of the very same social misfit mold;
Enter; Art Schill…brother to Bubba Schill and unquestionably the Ancient City’s most outlandish eccentric extrovert
and confident self made man. Truly a one-of-a-kind marching to his very own drum beat…nobody ever came close
to this mans outlandish eccentricity.
Jane and I first saw this strange and interesting character curiously out of place and time resolutely riding his
distinctively classic black WWII German motor cycle complete with sidecar.
Art had a meticulous attention to detail unmatched in its realistic character with his Nazi era attire that was bone
chillingly authentic.
The first time Jane and I laid eyes on this eccentric we did a double take and asked ourselves could this be true?
Were we really seeing what we saw?
Art was sporting a long white silk neck scarf that trailed off in the breeze as he cruised along U.S. Highway 1 with an
arrogant air of elite superiority.
His black leather WWII German aviators cap topped with round pilots goggles matched his meticulously outlandish
military outfit of black leather flight jacket, pants and gloves and when he stopped at the stop sign on King Street
the scarf still stood straight out like it was still flapping in the breeze…authentic Art had a wire in his scarf so that it
was held out streaming straight like he was still in motion…attention to detail!!!
Yah, this social misfit was a guy that defiantly marched to the tune of a different drummer, his own and went far
beyond your common garden variety average eccentric. You would have to classify Art as an eccentric’s eccentric.
On warm summers evenings exhibitionist Art Schill would be seen parading around the Old City’s downtown streets
in his classic 1800s prim and proper little impeccably kept vintage open horse cart. Art and his cart were
intentionally one hundred years out of step with the rest of the world along with his wife and their little daughter
named “O” in their period costumes.
Art and family would always be dressed in their special 18th century period costumes with his outlandish exhibitionist
attention to detail that was meticulous in every minute detail.
Art also did the most off-color verbally vulgar down south stand-up comic routine, had a jug-band and would perform
at the local gin mill named the Trade Winds; he also had appeared on the Johnny Carson TV late night talk show
program…taming down his outrageous routine for national TV.
Quick witted Art with his glib tongue had a well earned reputation and was notoriously known for his outlandish
cynically witty outspoken off-colored verbally free flowing trashy rubbish.
Artistic Art had an off-beat second hand store stocked with antiques of questionable authenticity over on West King
Street where he indulged himself in eccentric relics of quasi questionable historical significance and spent his idle
time whittling ingenious little curiosities of wood.
One afternoon when Jane and I paid Art a visit in his off-beat King Street second hand store he proudly displayed a
wooden piece he had just finished whittling the finishing touches on. It was an oversized light bulb with an inset relief
that had the word “Idea” neatly carved into it.
This was cleverly innovative and conjured up childhood recollections of old comic strip characters with captions
depicting the light bulb coming on and “idea” appearing overhead.
By God, this guy went the extra mile when it came to taking figurative speech literally. Audacious, daring and bold
Art had inherited a piece of land over on the North Beach along with all of the Mickler grandchildren and low and
behold built a real castle for a home. Yes, Art’s home was his castle.
This effort wasn’t just your standard home building project. Art somehow toted in huge blocks of coquina stone, he
sawed it, he shaped it and he fitted these gigantic stones together into a real castle…his home a lasting monument
to a man that was not a copycat but an independent minded do-your-own-thing individual.
A social misfit? …I guess so!
Without a doubt!
But then this Old City’s one-of-a-kind Art Schill never did march to someone else’s drum beat.
And so in St. Augustine’s 400 plus years Art Schill came along but once and we were there to appreciate and
remember this guy that independently made an impact in a beautiful free-spirited kind of way never more to be
duplicated.
Before he scaled down his musical career, he appeared on stage and was good friends with entertainer Jimmy
Buffett and with the late Gamble Rogers.
"They were at the Tradewinds (a longtime St. Augustine nightspot) at the same time" Becker explained of Rogers,
Buffett and Schill. "They were close."
The Folksters broke up in early 1963 after a date at the Hungry Eye in California. Pickering and Hodges went on to
become part of Spanky and Our Gang.
"He had so many pulls," Becker said of Schill. "He was both a musician and an artist. He would like to be known as a
stone cutter. He sculpted in coquina, which was very rare, but he was an entertainer and never got away from that
the rest of his life -- whether it was for one or 100, he was on stage."
He and his wife were together from 1989 and exchanged wedding vows in April 2000, met on a blind date.
It was an instant attraction, said his wife. "We got in a friend's car" en route to a restaurant and he brought along his
little ukulele." He began playing "some crazy little songs, and I knew all the words to them."
At the restaurant they held hands under the table. "After that ride in the car and with him playing that little ukulele,
we knew I was going to be his woman."
The Schills divided their time between his home on Vilano Beach and his wife's home in Jacksonville.
Schill was also a veteran of the U.S. Navy Blimp Squadron.
In addition to his wife, survivors include one daughter, O Lancing Schill and son-in-law, Eddie Lambert, St.
Augustine; sisters Ora May Cagle, Agnita Williams (Cal), Rose Mary Rini, Dottie Barbarito (Ed), all of Jacksonville; a
brother, Richard Schill, Miami; granddaughters O'Hara Lynn Kuba, Madison Elle Lambert, St. Augustine; and many
nieces, nephews and cousins.
next chapter
The Jaeger in front of Bubba and Linda’s
waterfront home on the St. John’s River
at Orangedale, Florida where it lay as a
reminder of their beautiful memories
fulfilled.
They built their own dock for their cruising
sailboat home Jaeger that they had lived
aboard for many happy years; (Read about
their boating adventures in volumes 1 and 3 of
Travels of Dursmirg)
Shore side, they next built a cooking shack
that was phase one of their land based
compound that was in an ongoing state of
continuous evolution.
Then a gazebo was built in its own greenhouse
looking building that was all glass and had a
commanding view from their hot tub of this very
wide stretch of the St. Johns River.
The hot tub was made out of half of a sawed
off gigantic old wine making barrel that could
easily hold six people at a time.
Bubba and Linda had their pleasure priorities
in proper prospective.
waterfront home on the St. John’s River
at Orangedale, Florida where it lay as a
reminder of their beautiful memories
fulfilled.
They built their own dock for their cruising
sailboat home Jaeger that they had lived
aboard for many happy years; (Read about
their boating adventures in volumes 1 and 3 of
Travels of Dursmirg)
Shore side, they next built a cooking shack
that was phase one of their land based
compound that was in an ongoing state of
continuous evolution.
Then a gazebo was built in its own greenhouse
looking building that was all glass and had a
commanding view from their hot tub of this very
wide stretch of the St. Johns River.
The hot tub was made out of half of a sawed
off gigantic old wine making barrel that could
easily hold six people at a time.
Bubba and Linda had their pleasure priorities
in proper prospective.
The obituary of;
Hugo Peter “Bubba” Schill passed away on June 15, 2006. Born
on Thacker Ave., in the town of South Jacksonville, in 1923, Bubba
was a life long artist and sailor. He joined the United States Navy in
1940 at 17 years of age, serving with honor in the North Atlantic with
the Naval Guard. Returning to Jacksonville at the end of World War
II, he married Jean Haley and raised a family. Jean passed away in
1967 and Mr. Schill returned to his love of the sea. Living aboard his
sailboat, the “Jaeger”, he spent the next part of his life with Linda
Jensen doing what pleased him, working hard and having fun. He
came home to the birthplace of his father, Orangedale, Florida, and
built a house, painting portraits of sons, a daughter, brothers, wives
and friends in oil. We will always remember his talent and love of life.
He will be buried at Samson Cemetery. The family will have a
memorial service at a later date.
Hugo Peter “Bubba” Schill passed away on June 15, 2006. Born
on Thacker Ave., in the town of South Jacksonville, in 1923, Bubba
was a life long artist and sailor. He joined the United States Navy in
1940 at 17 years of age, serving with honor in the North Atlantic with
the Naval Guard. Returning to Jacksonville at the end of World War
II, he married Jean Haley and raised a family. Jean passed away in
1967 and Mr. Schill returned to his love of the sea. Living aboard his
sailboat, the “Jaeger”, he spent the next part of his life with Linda
Jensen doing what pleased him, working hard and having fun. He
came home to the birthplace of his father, Orangedale, Florida, and
built a house, painting portraits of sons, a daughter, brothers, wives
and friends in oil. We will always remember his talent and love of life.
He will be buried at Samson Cemetery. The family will have a
memorial service at a later date.
From the obituary of Art Schill by ANNE HEYMEN of the St.
Augustine Record January 25th 2007
He was a musician, an artist, a stone cutter -- and he was a free
spirit.
Arthur Bonaventure "Art" Schill, part of the 1960s folk group the
Folksters, died Monday in Jacksonville at the age of 72.
Born July 14, 1934 in Jacksonville, he lived most of his life in St.
Augustine.
He died as he lived said his wife, Barbara Anne Potter-Schill,
"peacefully, so quick and so peacefully."
Her husband "lived a big, fast life," she said. When he died "I said,
'Good for you, Art. Good for you, honey. No suffering.'"
Although an autopsy was not performed, his family believes that
death was caused by complications from a broken arm he
suffered just before Thanksgiving.
Born to Gus and Emma Frances Mickler Schill, Art Schill rose to
the top ranks of folk music as part of the group The Folksters.
The other two members were Nigel Pickering and Kenny Hodges.
Before the group split in early 1963, they'd performed on Late
Night with Johnny Carson and released a record through Mercury.
"Art Schill was like no other person that I met," said Jacksonville
resident John Becker, who managed The Folksters. "He was both,
at once, dominating and caring. He was a magnetic personality on
stage. He should have gone further than he did, but he got tired
of it and he quit."
Augustine Record January 25th 2007
He was a musician, an artist, a stone cutter -- and he was a free
spirit.
Arthur Bonaventure "Art" Schill, part of the 1960s folk group the
Folksters, died Monday in Jacksonville at the age of 72.
Born July 14, 1934 in Jacksonville, he lived most of his life in St.
Augustine.
He died as he lived said his wife, Barbara Anne Potter-Schill,
"peacefully, so quick and so peacefully."
Her husband "lived a big, fast life," she said. When he died "I said,
'Good for you, Art. Good for you, honey. No suffering.'"
Although an autopsy was not performed, his family believes that
death was caused by complications from a broken arm he
suffered just before Thanksgiving.
Born to Gus and Emma Frances Mickler Schill, Art Schill rose to
the top ranks of folk music as part of the group The Folksters.
The other two members were Nigel Pickering and Kenny Hodges.
Before the group split in early 1963, they'd performed on Late
Night with Johnny Carson and released a record through Mercury.
"Art Schill was like no other person that I met," said Jacksonville
resident John Becker, who managed The Folksters. "He was both,
at once, dominating and caring. He was a magnetic personality on
stage. He should have gone further than he did, but he got tired
of it and he quit."