Maybe it was the time in 1996 when Daisy Henry went to see Shirley Chisholmn, the nation’s first Black Congresswoman, speak at the Flagler County courthouse and urge more minorities to run for local office: before long, Henry had been elected to the Bunnell City Commission, where she served with few interruptions for a decade and a half, losing by four votes in 2013.
On or off the commission, her voice seemed only to get heard more with the years as her advocacy for South Bunnell, for children’s programs–the AIM summer camp–for a Bunnell library and especially for Carver Gym, which became the Carver Center, making her the “matriarch of Bunnell,” as Ralph Lightfoot described her today.
“Her passion of course was Carver Gym,” Lightfoot, an elected member of the East Flagler Mosquito Control District and a long-time advocate of his own in local politics and social justice circles, said. “She’d go to any length to preserve the historic value of that gym because it was the last remnant of the past, where she went to school, and it’s a place where the community can gather, and for the youths it’s the only thing they have there.”
Daisy Mae Henry died Friday after recent health difficulties. She was 77.
“The sudden loss of Ms. Daisy Henry leaves a void in our community that will be deeply felt by
everyone whose lives she touched,” Bonita Robinson, a former Bunnell city commissioner and the current director of the Carver Center, said in a statement. “As we reflect on her remarkable life and contributions, let us honor her memory by continuing her work with the same passion and dedication that she exemplified every day.”
Henry was a child of Bunnell. She’d gone to school at what was then the segregated George Washington Carver High School, where she was a basketball player, and became a pastor, founding Spirit of Truth Outreach Holiness Church in Bunnell. Her service on the commission often seemed like an extension of her advocacy–and her preaching.
Her tenure on the commission straddled numerous controversies for the city, which went through a spate of years when it had trouble keeping a police chief or a city manager. In 2013 she operated her own shuttle service on election day, driving voter after voter to the old coquina-built City Hall, but lost by four votes in what was a seminal election that brought Bill Baxley to the commission, completing a majority then-Commissioner Elbert Tucker had been working on for three elections. John Rogers had been elected in the previous election. The Tucker-Rogers-Baxley majority would wrest control of the city away from Robinson, at least for a while, and point the commission in a different direction.
She last ran for a commission seat in 2019, when the departure of John Sowell set up a special election for a one-year term-completion. Henry fell short by two votes, to Jan Reeger (98-96). Bexley and Tucker have since stepped down. Rogers remains on the commission.
“Daisy Henry was more than a colleague,” Rogers said. “She was a beacon of integrity and dedication during her tenure on the Bunnell City Commission. Her passing leaves a void in our community, but her legacy of compassion and service will forever inspire us.”
She’d mobilized South Bunnell in 2010 after the Flagler County Commission had voted to close Carver Gym, leading the commission to reverse course and establish a foundation and a new funding arrangement that involved the county, Bunnell and the School Board. Henry was again frequently before all three governments in the last two years when she felt the governorship of the Carver Center was losing its way–or when she claimed that the Sheriff’s Office was muscling into Carver Center with its Police Athletic League programs.
The Sheriff’s Office and other parties to the agreement governing Carver Center strongly rejected the claim. That new agreement went into effect in January, only to draw a lawsuit from Eric Josey, who’d battled it alongside Henry.
“I am deeply saddened by the passing of Daisy Henry. She is an iconic warrior advocate for her Bunnell community,” Josey said. He’d met her 18 years ago when she contacted him in his capacity at the time as the First Vice President of the Flagler County NAACP. “She complained that her community did not receive postal mail delivery service to their homes and were forced to pay excessive mailbox fees. I subsequently restored their mail delivery service and work with the Flagler County Habitat for Humanity to install over 190 mailboxes.”
Josey said it was Henry who urged him to file suit against the Carver Center joint agreement.
Shelley Ragsdale of the NAACP said he’d met Henry when she was concerned that the library at Carver Center was being dismantled. “Well, we worked together and the outcome was to Pastor Henry’s liking,” Ragsdale said. “Pastor Henry asked me to represent the folks of Carver Center when an outside group began to inquire about taking space within the building. I asked Daisey, why me and not her or another member from Carver Center, and she said to me ‘Mr. Ragsdale you have what it takes to make our voices heard and they will listen to You.” Ragsdale is more of a conciliator than a firebrand, and he eventually went along with the new joint agreement, often referred to as a “interlocal agreement,” or ILA.
“The Flagler ILA document became our legacy as a team effort,” Ragsdale said. Henry, he said, “was a feisty person with a passion for helping people and wanting nothing in return.”
Barbara Revels, as both a county commissioner and a member of the Carver Center board, and Cheryl Massaro, as a school board member and a former director of the Carver Center, were among those who’d worked closest and most often with Henry.
“Daisy was always the first to volunteer and the last to leave,” Revels said. “She was steadfastly dedicated to her community and particularly the children. She was a woman of great faith and lived her life by that faith. This will be a great loss for our community.”
Massaro, who’d worked with Henry for 20 years, took a moment to speak about Henry Saturday morning as she had the difficult task of announcing news of her passing to numerous members of the community. Massaro’s voice at times broke as she spoke.
“She just believed in that facility. She believed in that area,” Massaro said of Carver Center and South Bunnell. “She’s worked with her family and their children as she’s matured, and it’s always been pivotal to her to make sure that was the best it could possibly be in South Bunnell.”
Of course, Massaro said, she sometimes made people uncomfortable with her forthrightness, remembering many arguments over the years. “She came at us directly, myself included when she thought we were doing the wrong thing,” Massaro said. “She let us know that and those are the kinds of community members that you want, those that stand up for what they believe in, for what they’ve been. Her whole life is based in South Bunnell and everything she did, I mean, she breathed that every day.” Massaro could not think of a comparable voice for that part of the city right now, other than, perhaps, Elijah Emmanuel, who’d also run Carver Gym at times, or Marian Irvin, though both are now Palm Coast residents.
