Florence Pettis

Farley Funeral Homes and Crematory - Venice

Altogether<br/>4307 Vineland Road, Suite H-17-19, Orlando, FL 32811<br/>For more information, visit our website at <a href='www.altogetherfuneral.com'>www.altogetherfuneral.com</a><br/>Copyright © 2025 FPG Intermediate Holdco, LLC

Florence was born and grew up in St. Marys, a small town in northwestern Ohio. Her father and grandfather had a small grocery, but it failed during the depression years. So eventually her dad became mayor of the town and then the Postmaster and later a rural route mailman. So the Uetrecht family was known all over town, which was a disadvantage in some ways. During her teen years she worked at the local theater selling popcorn, and the local undertaker sometimes asked her to sing at funerals, for which she received $5.00. 

After graduation she worked as a secretary at the local Goodyear plant, but she always dreamed of going to the big city. In 1946 a government recruiter persuaded her to move to Washington, D.C. to work for Rural Electrification Administration. She lived in a government girl housing project right across the road from Arlington National Cemetery, but the after-work life was so exciting with bus trips to dances at nearby military camps, parties, etc., that it was several months before she toured the cemetery. 

Her future husband also worked for REA but they never would have met in the huge department of Agriculture. Instead they both belonged to an ice-skating club. Since Ray was from Alabama and really couldn’t ice skate, she literally picked him up off the ice. 

They married May 18, 1947. After several months living in small hotels while Ray visited electric co-ops in North Caroline, they moved to Gainesville, Florida where he worked for the Agricultural Extension Service at the University of Florida. Florence settled down to be a housewife in post-war scarce housing with an icebox instead of a refrigerator. They lived in Gainesville 33 years, raising three children in a college town and participating in university life. As a faculty wife, Florence often said that after they retired there would be NO MORE reception lines, NO MORE banquets of rubber chicken and buckshot peas, and NO MORE dean’s tea parties and luncheons. 

When the youngest child reached kindergarten age, she went to work part-time at the university as a typist in the Biochemistry Department where she quickly learned how to spell all those chemical words. She also typed destinations for graduate students long before the days of computers. Then each page had to be error-free. After some years, she transferred to the Florida State Museum as an Assistant Editor for “The Auk”, and ornithology journal. She worked for the state’s leading ornithologist. She enjoyed preparing submitted manuscripts for the printer, reading galleys, and proofing final copy, along with general secretarial work. 

All through working years Florence was active in her local church and in United Methodist Women, serving as a district and state officer, and chairing various meetings, planning workshops, and teaching mission studies to adults. 

When Ray and Florence retired in 1997, they took fifteen short-term mission trips to various parts of the worldï¿½many in the states but also in Asia, Africa, and South America. They went to a number of Elderhostels and had many guided tours and individual trips, visiting all 50 states and six continentsï¿½skipping Antarctica. 

They moved to Venice in 1980 and Ray realized his dream of growing citrus. Florence became interested in theater work, which she started in Gainesville, catching the theater bug when she played the lead in a University of Florida summer production.

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Florence Pettis Obituary | Altogether