Part Two

Special | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions

Learn how Pensacola celebrates Bernardo de Gálvez and commemorates the Siege of Pensacola each May.

Learn how Pensacola celebrates the city’s Revolutionary War hero, Bernardo de Gálvez, and commemorates the Spanish military leader’s Siege of Pensacola on Gálvez Day each May.

11/13/2025

Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback

Remembering Galvez and the Battle of Pensacola is a local public television program presented by WSRE PBS

Part Two

Special | 26m 46sVideo has Closed Captions

Learn how Pensacola celebrates the city’s Revolutionary War hero, Bernardo de Gálvez, and commemorates the Spanish military leader’s Siege of Pensacola on Gálvez Day each May.

11/13/2025

Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback

Genre

History

Share This Video

Embed Video
Remembering Galvez and the Battle of Pensacola
Part Two
SNaN EpNaN
Fixed iFrame
Width: in pixelsHeight: in pixels
Responsive iFrame

How to Watch Remembering Galvez and the Battle of Pensacola

Remembering Galvez and the Battle of Pensacola is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.

Open in new tab

Pensacola is a city rich with history. In fact, the city, as well as a young Spaniard named Bernardo de Galvez, played a huge role in the American Revolution, a topic on so many people's hearts and minds as we enter our nation's 250th anniversary celebration. Joining me on part two of our special broadcasts, Remembering Galvez and the Battle of Pensacola. Two longtime Pensacola fans with strong histories themselves of preserving and sharing Pensacola's abundant history. Many of you will know Nancy Fetterman. Nancy is an author and historian and is presently co-chair of the City of Pensacola Cultural Affairs Committee. Nancy was instrumental in securing honorary U.S. citizenship for this. By all accounts, brave and enlightened Spaniard Bernardo de Galvez, and with Nancy David Richbourg, a fourth generation Pensacola man who is very involved in our community. Past president of the Pensacola Heritage Foundation on the boards of the Pensacola Symphony Orchestra, the Pensacola Opera and Sunday's Child. David is co-chairing the City of Pensacola Cultural Affairs Committee with Nancy Fetterman. Together, they plan to execute and plan all of the Galveston celebration events. And we are so honored and blessed and fortunate to have both of you joining us on this program. Welcome. Thank you.

We're delighted to be here. We're so happy you're here now. Nancy, this kind of started with Maria Davis. Let's just call it the way it is. It really did.

As far as I know. It started with Maria Davis, who came here and became just the Spanish person in charge of lots of things. And one of the things she did was continued to bring in the Spanish ship El Camino. And, her her claim to fame is one of the, the best of queens. Married one of those men from and and that that later became she later became the one who called me and said, we think you should make Galvez an honorary citizen. She put together so many trips for so many people in this community. In fact, I was fortunate enough to go with you and Maria and, Mayor Hayward and so many people that Judge Vincent and and Ellen and just so many people that would take the whole broadcast to name, but that was 2012. And you got calls after that, is that correct? Yes, I got well, I call I got called in, 2027 and was it 2007, 2007? And somebody called me and I answered the phone and they said, Mrs. Fetterman.

And it was a Spanish, person. And, they said, yours is the lady. And I said, yes, I do. I do know Maria Davis. And she said, well, he's he said, well, we want you to make Galvez an honorary citizen of America. And I said, who did you say you were? Oh, how do we do this? So anyway, that's how it started. That. And, and then lots of people helped me do it. I mean, Margo was part of that, and there was a group of people that the mayor got together, and we started writing, a request to have an honorary citizenship for Galvez. Wow, that is so amazing. Because, David, they're, what, eight honorary citizen? Eight and it was Jeff Miller, our congressman, that took what Nancy wrote to Congress. It took a long time, though I must say that it was it was very hard for me to get in touch with him, and it took a while until he was convinced of it. And once they did a portrait, in the, in the Capitol building, they he took it more seriously of Galvez. Of Galvez.

Yes. And he did contribute so much to Pensacola and the Unites United States history. So let's talk about how Mayor Hayward turned May 8th into a special day. Yes, he did. And after going to Spain he appreciated it. But before that, when after you got the eighth honorary citizenship, I was at Nancy's house having a glass of wine and we said, you know, with what he did for Pensacola, with what he did for for America, we really need to we need to we need to erect a monument and it needs to be a significant monument. So before we finish the second bottle of wine, we decided to do it. And so when it gets done, get the job. Rasmussen previously on some island, some sculptures. And he was a neighbor of Nancy. So, Bob said, well, I've never done a horse, but I'd love to. Do you know what, Bernardo de Galvez? And so, he said, but my studio is not large enough to do a horse. And Nancy said, but your garage is.

Yeah. He said, well, it's hot in the garage. He said, well, we'll get you a fan. So before we left, he had agreed to do it and he enlisted the help of his daughter, Katherine. And Nancy actually went to Madrid and took close up pictures of the uniforms in the museums so that Bob would have. And Catherine would know exactly how to make the braids and the buttons out of clay to put on the uniform. So it was our obligation or our task to to develop a committee to raise the half $1 million that it was going to take for this monument.

So, as past president of the Heritage Foundation, we had done the concerts in Seville for years to bring attention to the downtown, and we had raised money and removed Barclay House and da House and all these other houses that were getting ready to fall in just to save them. But the Heritage Foundation needed another project because the because we saved all the buildings. Right. So I approached the board of the Heritage Foundation because we needed a 500 and C3 to raise the money for this monument, and it was something they needed to participate in, so they agreed to be a part of it. So Jim Green, who was on their board at the time, we made, chairman of our monument committee, and we went out and the committee and the community and tugged on people's sleeves and put a wonderful committee together. And we started doing fundraisers, and we raised a half $1 million. And there you go, quite a story. And we we took some markets, we made some markets and whoever bought the market for whatever it was we were charging got to keep that smaller horse. That was just exactly like the big one. Yes.

Just a memory in Atlanta made us, markets and people that donated 25,000 and above received one. So there's several people in Pensacola that have very replicas of that monument at home in bronze. Well, and some of us have small little plaques there. On the monument, we do what we can, but, it's quite, we're talking about the monument that is downtown. And where is it? It's at Fox and.

Right. And Ashton said to us, he said, well, you know, it's city property. Where do you want. They said, they want it. They he said to me, this is where do you want to put it? I went, well, I really like this piece of property because you got it. So but he said, I don't wanted them to do that. I want you and that's to go to the city council and ask them to do it. So we went to the city council with the Clay Bank and told him what we wanted to do. And of course they voted for us to have that location. It took about, eight months, ten months. So it was 2015 when we formed the committee, and it was 2018 when we dedicated the monument. Yeah. It's a we've got some pictures that we're showing as we're discussing this now. This is at the corner of Right Street and Palafox. It's on the way to the the old fort. Right. It's a very north and a Martin Luther King Plaza. And we thought that the, the the person of Galvez should be saying, you know, I'm leading us up to the fort and that's kind of what the, the feel you get. You see it?

You sure that's why he has his hat in his hand and he's going to have my boys. The British had surrendered and they were going up to take the British flag down, down at Fort and Fort George, across from the First Baptist Church. Don't you think every great city has some great monuments? I mean, what you've done for this city is truly phenomenal, and we're all very pleased with that. Thank you. But don't you think that's a true statement? It is.

We're very proud. We're very proud of it. We think it's it's a very appropriate statue for especially for the man himself. Yeah. And it was important when we started raising the money, not only did we get people in the community to donate and get excited about doing it, but we went to Grover Robinson and got the county commissioners on board. And of course, Ashton was on board. And then we went to the city council and asked for that specific location. So we had government with us right before we even raised much of the money. Well, speaking of government, you've had a lot of support from all of the mayors. And recently at the last, May 8th event, the Galvez Day celebration, I think it was on May 9th, actually, and did do it. Well, we did do it one day later. That's right.

Yes.

Joseph Rain.

Right. But he we've got a sound bite from the weather doesn't always come up. Isn't that the truth for Mayor Reeves, who talks a little bit about our, relations with the sister city that we have in Spain, and we'll talk about that after we hear from Mayor Reeves. It's a population of 500, and there was more than 500 people at this event celebrating the 4th of July. And it's the largest celebration of the 4th of July outside of the United States. And it was really, really cool to see how important this event was and how important their history, our shared history, is to folks that thousands of miles away in a city that many of the people in Pensacola and the United States has never even heard of, that they celebrate, what a victory that was. And that one of their hometown, people, hometown families, was the reason for all of that history. That was Pensacola mayor DC Reeves. He's been very supportive, as have the mayors who have all been involved. He's talking about our sister city. Tell us about that, Nancy. It's called Match Arabia. And, Maria and and probably Wesley Odom, got us involved in it. And what they do every year for the 4th of July is they celebrate Chavez's victories in Pensacola. So this small little town in Mojave Air, just outside of Malaga put together. They they all have costumes. Everyone in this city has costumes, and they march to this big amphitheater, and they tell the story, and they have these magnificent people that live there who tell the story. One is a king, one is a queen that is just recently died, tells a story. It's just remarkable what they can do. It's heartwarming to see all of the people in that small town honoring the United States, absolutely honoring their native son, Galvez. And they love this so much here that they've come many times and they're eating hot dogs and hamburgers.

Isn't that fun? And they and the church made a big, sacrifice also.

Yes. I don't know when Galvez needed money. Oh, that. That's what I was going to tell you. That that was a wonderful story. There was a church in Monrovia and in Malaga that they call the one armed lady, because when Galvez was still in New Orleans, he needed some more money to support his cause. And, he phoned home, he called back and they sent money to him. They took all the money that they were saving to build this second bell tower and send it here for the American efforts.

Wow. So what a sack. And so they never built this. They never built that second. But there's a the sons of the American Revolution have given them money, and they have a big, big sign inside the church that this does not have a bell tower, because, of course, we supported this effort in Pensacola, Florida and Pensacola, Florida, so long ago. How did they know that it was such an important place? How the how did they know all across the Gulf Coast was important to their stance? It's just incredible. And our area has really embraced, our sister city. Absolutely. And, just created these relationships. Well, mayor Campus comes every year for Galvez Day, and we always have some people from Spain here. We had a lot of people here for the dedication 2018. But this year, because of the 250th, we have perhaps 20. There's about 2020 coming from Spain to help us celebrate this. And we'll talk a little bit later about the things that the city is doing, that our committee is working on now. For that whole week, actually, it's quite, a, quite a celebration that they have there and that we have here. And, Trevor Odom was the emcee of last year's Galvez Day celebration. And it's good to see young people like themselves. And he's wonderful. Wonderful. Well, let's have a listen to what he had to say about the festivities. Every year it's going bigger and bigger. And and next year, especially with the 250th anniversary of, you know, July 4th, we're playing a huge week and we're expecting between 3 to 500 people. And this just this 20 minute statue celebration alone. And so it's it really is nice in Pensacola. And with the city's support especially supporting Galvez in telling people the history, because we all know George Washington, we all know John Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, but very few people know who Bernardo de Galvez is. This is our small way of, you know, saying, putting him on the map, putting Pensacola on the map. Because the more we do that, the more Americans will know, you know, our true history. I'm going to be Iowa's Galvez, his birthplace and being able to have that connection. And they send delegates over almost every year. Next year is going to be the big one. We're expecting 40 different people from all across Spain to come for our Galvez Day celebrations. And it really is so important that even the King and Queen of Spain, King Juan Carlos and Sophia, back in 2009, they came and laid a wreath at Galvez, a statue, and he spoke in front of the public at Fernando Plaza. So, I mean, it's really the Spain is really put a lot into Galvez, and it's becoming more and more known across history. And he's really transcending the history of both continents. We were just hearing from Trevor Odom, who is the governor of the Grenada cross. He in Pensacola. What is that? That's these soldiers of Galvez and they, the soldiers and the ladies of Galvez and there's a great huge portion of them along the Gulf Coast states, because those are the states that those forts were, that, Galvez repatriated. So these groups get together. They're actually coming together in Galvez week. They'll be here for a convention about 250 of them, I believe they're coming from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi. Out.

Will.

Luke, I don't know. I don't know about Arkansas. And no, not I don't think it's just the ones along the Gulf Coast that were all British. And, Galvez, found that rid of them. Yeah.

So. So they will all be here for their convention and they'll be participating and all the events during governor's week. And there are going to be a number of those. There are other groups that participate in this as well. We have the daughters of the American Revolution, the sons of the American Revolution. Chapters are coming from all over the South. We've got, descendants of Williamsburg coming. There are people coming very, very far distances to help participate in this this year. So how did it come about that the two of you were put together? I know you've done so much with the statue and with the having Galvez become a an honorary citizen, I mean, it's obvious that you two are the ones. But you talked to the mayor and he said, let's continue this on in a more official way, or. Yes.

Well, since then, the Heritage Foundation, Pensacola, his foundation was a big part of of building the monument. They had they were spearheading the the celebration this year. But Mayor Reeves wanted to make it a city function, city wide function. And now the Pensacola Heritage Foundation function. So he asked us to head the committee and to bring in a Sister cities, granite years and everybody we brought in West Florida Historic Trust, Pensacola State College, University of West Florida. And we want this to be a city wide group of people celebrating this. It's just wonderful. And it's not just for people in those groups. This is for the community. It's for the kids. Absolutely.

It's all for the community. And so and it's so exciting to see people really getting in there and working, you know, because we've we've worked so hard to get this going. But it it's really once, once you explain to people how important Galvez was to the American Revolution, the film that we just saw was just fabulous. And this this is, is, is more than the rest of the story. So speaking of the film, the American Revolution, the Ken Burns documentary that that everybody is going to be seeing, we got an early screening. What are your thoughts on that? As did a lot of members of the community. It was it was packed.

It was really Pam. I learned a lot in high school and in college in history. This film is so much more in depth. It encompasses so much more information. I learned things that I had never heard just in what we saw the other night. And I hadn't even seen the whole film. You know, they're just teeny bits and pieces. Yeah. So many people have said that for our lives growing up as youngsters, we didn't hear about the Battle of Pensacola. Never.

No, never. Even in Pensacola. You know, we didn't hear about it. And so it just was resurrected and people realized it. It had happened. Well, I don't know exactly how it happened, but people, I think more and more, educators started looking into what what happened along the coast. They knew about Galvez, and they knew his importance along the Gulf Coast. They just didn't know it. It just affects us, you know? But it also affected the whole American Revolution. Had it not been for this very independent gentleman that talked to all these people, different colors, different flavors of people, to say we need to save this, this area and, and take it away from the English. It was just magic. Really a brilliant strategist. I hear. And also I've heard Galvez described as a man of enlightenment. What would the two of you take? Take turns? I would, I would say that, yes, I would say I forgive me for interrupting you. Absolutely. He was the man of the enlightenment. He already he already was a wonderful reader. He studied what was happening in Europe. He knew the enlightenment period was going on. He, he, he was just he got people from every factor of life and, brought them together and said, we're going to do this. And he did it. We're going to take Pensacola. We're going to take pin, take. He put himself in on many, many different levels, whether it was the American Indians, whether it was black people, brown people, white people, poor people, rich people, he was very good at it, talking to all these various groups and convincing him that he needed all of their help to accomplish this. And he did.

And he did it.

7000. Yes, yes, yes. Just incredible in those times. And you think about not having iPads and iPhones and ways to reach people to accomplish things. I know, and the Indians who were helping the, English that were here and, along the Gulf Coast finally understood that he was going to win. And so they started packing up and leaving. So really, the the English didn't have a chance against Galvez. That's because of the group that Galvez assimilated. And you got him to be an honorary citizen of the United States. Several of us, along with who are the other, there are a couple other, names we might recall. Well, Margo Stringfield was she was together with me. There were several people that he, the mayor, put together, and I just happened to know all the senators and congressmen, and, so that's how I got into it. And I ended up writing, finishing writing it. And so that man that called me was from Los Angeles, one time and as, as it's going through Congress and he said, I'm with the Los Angeles Times. I said, why are you calling me? He said, I want to know about this guy, this guy. He said, I, I just I can't believe that they're going to make him an honorary citizen. Why should I care? And what did you tell him. Oh I, I told him all of this, I said how long do you have to. Right.

Right. But certainly the activities we have planned around the week of Galvez day in May, first week of May is for our public is for our city. We have chapters of Da and SA are coming and they'll be in full costume and they'll start at Fort George on the morning of the eighth, which is Galvez day, and they will proceed down Palafox Street. It'll be closed. It's beautiful to watch it all come down from there to the monument. Once we get to the monument, we'll have a service. The children from Escambia, I mean from Episcopal Day School, come out and do a song and a dance in Spanish. And then we proceed down the street to Saint Michael's, which is all open to the public. We hope that you will come and join us. And the reason we go to Saint Michael's Catholic Church is, well, my Catholic friend. Well, yes. Why do we proceed from Fort George down? Really? Because, the English had closed the Catholic Church, and so the Spanish came in and, reopened it. So that's the reason we go to the Catholic Church to have a vigil and and to, talk to the bishop. And the bishop welcomes the, the visitors. And it's it's really appropriate that we go there and our bishop is bilingual. So the service and it's a short service, but it's wonderful. And the Spanish people feel included because they're sitting there in that beautiful building being talked to in Spanish. And then we'll be going to Pensacola Yacht Club for a luncheon with all the Spanish and all the guests. And that is open to the public. You'll be able to check on the city's website. You can buy tickets to that luncheon through West Florida Historic Trust, and we hope that everybody will come join us. It's going to be a wonderful, wonderful event. When you talk about going to the website, which website are we talking to? The City of Pensacola website. There will be a special section for the Galvez Week Galvez celebration, and it will have all of the activities and times listed, and people should check into that a little bit later. Is that the first of the year after the 1st of January is what our committee has been working on getting all of these events scheduled and and restaurants reserved and things done. But now we're we're making great progress quite a lot as we near our time together. Coming to a close, I'd like to have some of your final thoughts on why Pensacola cares so much about the Battle of Pensacola. Galvez They take turns, if you would, to go first. I think that I think that our Pensacola people, we have such a melt.ing pot with the military and the universities and everything else that goes on here. It's not just Pensacola natives. We welcome people when they move here. This is a very welcoming community. And when they get here and realize this is truly America's first settlement. 1559 this is a big deal. And we're standing here at where America was first settled, and then you go through the history of what's happened with the British and the Spanish, and then you think about Galvez coming here and this Battle of Pensacola being the longest battle, the siege of Pensacola of the Revolutionary War. If you're at all interested in history and if you love your city, you can't help but get involved and infuse. It's exciting. Nancy, your thoughts?

We've got about a minute. You also wanted to mention this wonderful book. I just wanted to say that, because we all saw the film bits and pieces of it. This woman that wrote this, Kathleen Duvall, she is a, an established historian. This is one of the best books I've ever read about Galvez and about the American Revolution. And I think when people see this film, they're just going to feel so good about it because it's it's just a remarkable study for Americans. As Duvall was here for the early screening and, and the book was rereleased, if you want to turn the book where the camera can get a shot of it, I know our audiences, would love to read this. What I'm struck by on that, and we're just about out of time is how she she really personalizes it and brings it. She does. People that were involved, well, she's a Pulitzer Prize winner, and she her writing is terrific. It is so she and and and it's all, you know. Yeah.

Accomplished.

And it's factual. You two are the best. Thank you so much. Looking forward to the upcoming Galvez Day celebrations. And as we wrap up our special program, Remembering Galvez and the Battle of Pensacola, Part two, I'd like to especially thank Nancy Fetterman and David Richbourg for joining us on this journey and for all of their help making Galvez Day in Pensacola what it is today. I'm sure humming House wakes. We'll see you next time on WSRE.