State Road 73 north renamed as Governor Mixson Highway in 2014

Debbie Roney Smith on

Six-term Florida legislator and former Lt. Gov. Wayne Mixson passed earlier this month at the age of 98.

Mixson had adopted Jackson County as his home ground as a young adult, when he’d moved here from his native Alabama home and embraced the local community as his own. He married a local girl with deep roots in Jackson County’s history. His bride was Margie Grace. The town of Graceville was named for her forebears. The two met when she was 14 and he was 19. He had graduated high school by then and was off to the Navy soon after. They kept up a courtship by correspondence for the endurance of his military term, which included service in World War II. They married in 1947, the year he graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in business. They moved to Campbellton, where they bought a small farm and eventually expanded it to some 2,000 acres focused on peanuts, grain and cattle.

His success in the political world began in 1967, when he was first elected to the Florida House of Representatives. Mixson had served a decade in the House when, in his sixth consecutive term there, gubernatorial candidate Bob Graham selected him as his running mate. The two would win that bid for office, and served together in their respective roles from Jan.1979 to Jan.1987. Mixson also served as Graham’s Secretary of Commerce. Mixson had also served a role in politics for President Jimmy Carter, appointed by him as a special ambassador to Ecuador in 1979.

And for three days that last year with Graham, Lt. Gov. Mixson stood in as governor when Graham necessarily stepped from that high office to be sworn in as a newly elected U.S. Senator. That three-day term of service as the transitional figure ahead of Bob Martinez taking office would assure him a place in the annals of history as the governor with the shortest term on record. And, 27 years later, it would also be further cemented in the formal renaming of a local road. In 2014, the Florida Senate designated State Road 73 north as Governor Mixson Highway. It stretches from Calhoun County and extends through Jackson County to U.S. 231 near the Florida-Alabama line. It’s known as Jefferson Street in Marianna, CR 167 in the unincorporated areas of Jackson County, and Florida calls it State Road 73.

The gesture was meant to recognize Mixson’s career-long advocacy of the farm community by naming a designated farm-to-market artery in his honor. Once he moved to Florida, Mixson put his hand and mind to work for his adopted state and he has often been referred to as Florida’s “favorite son.”

“I had no idea it was being proposed until it happened. It was a real thrill. They picked the right road, if they were going to name one after me. I think the system of farm-to-market roads is so important. I reckon that to be equivalent to the advance of electricity because these are the roads that connect producers to the markets in town.”
Mixson was here for that 2014 road-naming ceremony, and spoke briefly, saying he was honored by it. “They must have known all about me and where I lived,” Mixson said at the time in an interview with the Floridan. “I took that road many many times, going to the farm, going fishing, and going to the beach. If I left the house, I was going to be on that road pretty soon. I appreciated the thought,” he said of the plan to name the road after him. “It just fit so well,” he said in 2014. “If they were going to name anything for me, it ought to have something to do with bringing agriculture out of the dark ages. I’m old enough to have plowed mules in Coffee County (Alabama), but I joined the mechanized age as soon as I could.”

Mixson also said at that time that he was the only “true dirt farmer” in the legislature during his six-year term. His roots in agriculture and his childhood years in the pre-WWII Depression would inform and serve him well during those years.

Mixson also mentored nephew Jason Shoaf, sharing his wisdom in the political arena. Shoaf is currently a seated state District 7 Representative from Port St. Joe and serves Calhoun, Franklin, Gulf, Jefferson, Lafayette, Madison, Taylor, parts of Leon and Wakulla counties.