Espy on Lake Iamonia

JJ Espy standing

 

excerpt from Espy's obituary (Nov. 1934)

Besides all these other things, as has already been intimated, Mr. Espy was a liberal man, not only with respect to his beliefs but as to his mode of living.  He didn’t subscribe to the belief that life must be a stern and unremitting grind without its bright intervals.  As well as any man, he liked the wholesome pleasures, within the bounds of temperance, that this life offers.  Not an active sportsman, nevertheless he liked to go off to the fishing camps with a group of friends or to appear in the woods at suppertime where the day’s catch or kill was being prepared.  Up to two years ago, he had never caught “more than two fish at one sitting.”  Last Summer, on Lake Iamonia, a spot of which he became very fond, some friends put him in a place where, to his considerable surprise, he caught fish after fish, until he had a long string.  “One has to know how to do this thing,” he remarked as he casually landed a fine bream.  Another man drove the car to the lake shore, and a winding and devious road it was; but that night, long after dark, when the party began their return to Headland, Mr. Espy took the wheel and drove five miles out of the swamp and into the highway without question as to direction or roads to travel.

 

1 h 47 m, 96.3 miles

Lake Iamonia is in Tallahassee, FL