LIVING HISTORY
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The Discovery ’68 show appearing on ABC TV featuring Cow Creek Ranch
was entitled Florida: Cowboys, Coconuts and Cattle.
taken a ranch that was a good ranch for three generations and
made it a better ranch.’’
The show opens with the cowboys sitting at a picnic table
being served breakfast by Ethel before heading out for a
cattle roundup.
The show centers mostly on Tommy’s running of the ranch,
with Jo Ann in a supporting role. Kathy and Debra, 14 and 13
at the time, were also prominently featured. In addition to a
cattle roundup, the show features a segment on the ranch’s
dipping and vaccination program to prevent disease.
“Behind all this — all the ingenuity, all the devices, all the
inventions — are the men and woman who have a solid attachment
to the land,’’ Gibson says in one segment. “Added
to that, they have a gift for living alongside the animals with
whom they share it.’’
ENDING THE DECADE
Tommy’s publicity outreach doesn’t end with the airing
of a national television program depicting him as a model
rancher. He soon hosts outdoor writers and editors in a tour
to watch ranch operations.
After the Discovery ‘68 airing, he also works with the Florida
Department of Agriculture, hosting several events at the ranch
and at home for Puerto Rican ranchers visiting Florida.
The interaction with the ranchers leads to a deal between
them and Tommy to ship Brahma- and Hereford-cross
yearlings to Puerto Rico, beginning in 1969 from Vero Beach
Municipal Airport. Some are replacement heifers to be bred
as cows and others are steers that will be raised for slaughter.
Tommy has an even wider international reach in 1969
when he hosts Thai government official Siriwat Sarobo, who
observes cattle breeding, feeding and cattle management at
Cow Creek so he could help improve ranch production there.
Also in 1969, a new ranchhand arrives at Cow Creek. He’s
Don Robertson, who just finished a degree in animal husbandry
from Texas Christian University. Arriving with him
are his fetching red-haired wife, Diane, and their three young
children, Robin, Donnie and Darren.
Don and Diane met at Miami Edison High School — she
was a majorette and he was a football player — and married
young. At Cow Creek, they live in one of the ranch-hand
houses, and their arrival brings new energy and dynamic to
the ranch.
“We went hog hunting almost every Sunday afternoon,’’
recalls Robin, whose last name is now Longstreet.
Added to the mix is a young cowboy named Jimmy Percy,
who worked at the ranch as a teen and had met the Sloans
through their friend Dr. John Browning’s daughter, Cathy. >>
Kathy Sloan unsaddles her horse.
Tommy and Jo Ann as they appeared on the Discovery ‘68 show on national television. Debra Sloan rides across the television screen.