Pastor Ricky Hawkins stood in the pulpit before the congregation of the First Baptist Church of Key Largo. He clenched his fist and shook it.
“Mr. Mitchell understood his reason for being here on Earth,” he shouted.
The crowd, packed shoulder to shoulder on the benches, shouted their agreement.
“Amen!” said an assistant. “Hallelujah,” said another.
“This man spent his time well on this earth,” Hawkins said, his voice in song. “If God decided to take him, he made a good choice.”
A drummer on stage behind the pastor softly played a cymbal. The crowd erupted, clapping and shouting “Amen” once more.
This gathering, held on November 11, was a celebration for Enoch “Enos” Mitchell, who died in Key Largo on October 31 of natural causes at the age of 93. As Hawkins eulogized, Mitchell had devoted his life to his family, friends. , church and community, literally building the foundations of Key Largo from the ground up.
Known as “The Powder Man,” he had used dynamite to help cut Adams Cut out of the land, as well as many other canals and boat basins. Along the way, he realized his talent was useful in installing septic tanks, and so he built a business, Enos Mitchell Septic Tank Corp., that thrived for decades.
“He was a good man, a good man,” one man told Keys Weekly after the service. He shook his head as he watched the hearse and limousines slowly pull out of the church parking lot in procession. “I worked for him for 30 years. He was in the business for 57 years and everybody knew him.”
While many of us are happy to put in a good day’s work, dust ourselves off and call it a day, Mitchell spent his free time helping others.
“He did the heavy lifting,” said longtime Upper Keys Rotary member Joe Miklas. He noted that Mitchell and his son, Willie, contributed a combined 41 years of service to the organization.
The family participated in the Rotary’s annual seafood festival in the 1980s, and Mitchell hauled in deep fryers to make conch fritters.
“And he was a good cook on top of everything else,” Miklas said with a laugh.
“Everything else” included becoming a deacon at Key Largo Covenant Community Church and a board member of First State Bank and the nonprofit Center for Independent Living in the Keys.
Mitchell and his wife, Ora Lee, were married for 67 years and raised five children in the Keys. (One of his sons, Enos Jr., predeceased him.) The couple moved to Key Largo in 1956, according to a short biography the family wrote about their patriarch.
“It was horrible living in the Keys back then,” he said in the paper. “The mosquitoes killed a lot of people down here. You know where the Burger King is? There used to be a little bar there. They used to get drunk there and stagger outside, fall over, pass out, and the mosquitoes used to get them.”
But Mitchell probably didn’t mind a mosquito or two.
As family friend Joyce Riley said at the service, “he was no stranger to hard work, picking cotton at a very early age, farming, horse breaker, bricklayer, backhoe driver, concrete pavers . . .”
Mitchell, one of 11 children, was born in Arkansas to Mollie and Willie Mitchell. He dropped out of school after first grade to help the family.
“I used to pick cotton,” he said. “I broke everything doing this, my knees and my back; I was a little kid, 12 years old, carrying 150 pounds on my back.”
As a youngster, Mitchell looked for work year-round and tried Detroit. He didn’t like life in big cities, so he found his way to Homestead, lived there for seven years, and learned to operate heavy equipment and clear land. This led to the dynamite jobs in Key Largo – making $1.50 an hour.
But if Mitchell resented his judgments, he didn’t let it show. As a successful businessman later in life, he was able to purchase land in his neighborhood of Hibiscus Park. He deeded one of those lots to Monroe County to build Friendship Park and helped create the 305 OneWay Hibiscus Park community, through which he offered Easter egg hunts and gave out Thanksgiving baskets.
And yet Mitchell was a down-to-earth man who enjoyed simple pleasures. His son-in-law, Willie Wamble, said he liked nothing more than to hang out and talk politics.
“I’d see him sitting in the yard, leaning back and smiling, and saying, ‘Hi, man,'” Wamble said.
He paused for a long moment. He revealed that he intends to name Mitchell Street in Hibiscus Park after him.
“You wonder, who will take his place?” said Wamble. “What living person will do what he did? Will we continue to be a close-knit community? That’s what we’re concerned about.”
