Submitted by Donna Digennaro
Everyone can agree that the weather lately has been crazy! It can be 80 degrees one day and cold and rainy the next. But even that cannot dampen the enthusiasm of Historical Society volunteer, Domenick Molinaro. Domenick is on hand most Fridays and Saturdays to welcome visitors to Clermont’s Historic Village. He especially enjoys conducting tours of the Quonset Hut. Although he was a little too young to enlist to fight in World War II (dad said, “No!”), he did work in a factory producing airplanes for the war effort (dad said, “Yes!”) and he loves sharing information about that time in our history with young visitors to the Village.
The Village is located at 490 West Ave. on the shores of beautiful Lake Minneola, adjacent to Victory Pointe and just a short walk for Clermont’s historic shopping district and is a joint effort between the South Lake County Historical Society and the City of Clermont designed to provide area residents and visitors with a window into life in Central Florida from the late 1800’s until the end of World War. The seven structures at the Village range from a stately two-story home built in the early 1880’s to Clermont’s original 1914 Cooper Memorial Library to a replica of an outhouse and more.
The Village is open every Friday from 1 pm to 3 pm and every Saturday & Sunday from 1 pm to 4 pm. Admission to the Village is always free but a $2.00 donation per person is requested. Volunteers are on hand to provide guided tours of the buildings or you can casually walk through the buildings listening to recorded information. Bring your children and let them vie for prizes with a historical scavenger hunt. After your visit, please like us on Facebook or mention us on Yelp.
If you are interested in history in general or the history of Lake County in particular, contact the South Lake County Historical Society by going to our website, ClermontVillage.org; by calling our manager, Roxanne Brown, at 352-432-3496 or by attending our membership meetings which are held on the second Monday of every month at 7 pm in the Train Depot in the Historic Village.
The next meeting is April 8th.
