This year's 2004 Sugar Festival is dedicated to Karl Emil Larsen, sugar cane farmer in Glades and Palm Beach counties, and a life long resident of Clewiston.

The sugar industry was developing fast in the Everglades when Shawnee Farms was established in Glades County near the Hendry County line. In the early 1930s, Ralph Kurtz became interested in sugar cane farming while practicing law in Moore Haven and joined the Tiedke family of Toledo, Ohio to produce sugar cane on 4,500 acres on the west shore of Lake Okeechobee.

The Kurtz family had met a young man, Otto Larsen, who left his native Denmark to escape the political and military upheavals in Western Europe at that time. Mr. Larsen was a well educated young man with experience in agriculture and Mr. Kurtz employed him as overseer of Shawnee Farms, a position he held until his retirement. The Tiedkes still own Shawnee Farms although there have been many changes in its operation through the years.

In those days sugar cane farming required a large labor force to do the harvesting by hand and to keep the black birds away from the tender cane sprouts. The latter job was done with a shotgun but no successful solution was ever found to eradicate them. At that time Shawnee Farms included housing for the workers and their families, a commissary, equipment sheds and a repair shop. According to local legend, there was also a "jook" joint in the compound as well as church services for the residents.

Mr. Larsen sent for his fiancee in Denmark and the couple was married at the Presbyterian Church in Clewiston with Daisy and Ralph Kurtz as their sponsors. When Ellen and Otto Larsen were expecting a baby Ellen went to Fort Myers to stay with the Kurtz family to await the birth which took place at Lee Memorial Hospital. They had a pleasant surprise-two boys, Karl and his brother, Erik, were born October 12, 1940 and according to a long-time family friend, Frances Nall, when she visited the twins when they were a few days old, one was sleeping in a bureau drawer until a crib could be purchased.

During Otto's tenure as general manager of Shawnee Farms he grew specimen roses and was generous in sharing them. He also tried new varieties of sugar cane through the years and sought more efficient methods of handling and harvesting the cane crops.

Karl grew up in the sugar cane industry but studied economics and received his degree from Vanderbilt University after graduating from Baylor High School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After long hard thought he decided he did not relish the idea of life in the fast track of big city finance and chose to stay in Clewiston and go into sugar cane production with his father and followed in his father's footsteps as general manager of Shawnee Farms as well as managing a thousand acre sugar cane he and his twin brother, Erik, owns near Belle Glade.

Karl has been active in almost every local community and school endeavor and contributes time and money to many charities and sports affairs in three counties. He is active in sports and a member of the Elks Lodge in Belle Glade and Tiger Boosters and Rotary Club in Clewiston. He is a member of the boards of the Boles Drainage District and the Disston Drainage District and serves on the Clewiston Museum Board of Directors, the Hendry County Economic Council and is part of a local group acting in an advisory capacity for a Department of Transportation grant for landscaping at the east and west entries to Clewiston.

Karl said his favorite charity is the Salvation Army because it spends so little of its gifts for overhead and returns 80 percent of the donations locally. He also is active in the Palm Beach County Season for Share, which contributes to the welfare of immigrant farm workers around the lake. The organization also sponsors a gleaning of crops using volunteer help to harvest the leftover crops in the fields to help feed needy people.

He belongs at the top of the list of unsung heroes, a modest, unassuming gentleman who commits himself to every project he undertakes.

Karl is an avid golfer, shooting in the low eighties, and is an enthusiastic and excellent bridge player, playing in a foursome each week. He and his wife, Joy, who is a practicing psychologist, are the parents of a son, Bradley, who lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a daughter, Holly Cummings, who makes her home in Nashville, Tennessee.