Alligators were Hermon Brooks’ business back when Florida tourism relied heavily on exotic wildlife.
And despite decades of handling the toothy animals as well as venomous snakes — often in front of crowds at the Gator Jungle tourist attraction he ran on State Road 50 from the 1960s through the 1980s — Brooks lived to the age of 87.
Even weeks before he died Monday, he was pitching in at the family gator farm. He had grown the business from a pen at his house in the tiny town of Christmas to a 10,000-alligator commercial farm that today provides meat for restaurants across the region. His two sons now operate the Brooks Brothers Alligator Farm.
His passion for reptiles was an unusual one. But it allowed a man with an eighth-grade education to make a living and raise a family while teaching others about the creatures he had once traveled the world to acquire.
His wife, Annette Brooks, said he was traveling to South America to catch reptiles in the Amazon jungle even before they met almost 50 years ago.
“I was worried to death he wouldn’t come back,” she said. “But he was going before we were married so you have to let them do their thing.”
Wanda Kight, who has known Brooks since she took a job in the Gator Jungle gift shop almost 40 years ago, remembers watching in amazement as he placed his off-white Stetson hat over a rattlesnake’s head and then grabbed it up with his hand.
“When I was teenager, I thought ‘Oh, my God, this man has lost his mind. But he knew definitely what he was doing,'” said Kight, who, in more recent years, helped clean the town cemetery alongside Brooks as part of the Christmas Cemetery Association.
Born in Alabama Nov, 16, 1922, Brooks was one of nine children reared by Cornelius Brooks and Era Willis Brooks. His family moved to Central Florida when he was 2.
He never finished school. But he pursued a variety of business ventures after he served in the U.S. Navy as a bombardier during World War II.
He worked 13 years in the citrus industry before he opened a fruit-stamping business in west Orlando in 1956. For 12 years, he built and serviced machines designed to stamp individual pieces of fruit with a vendor’s label.
During the late 1960s through the early 1980s, he designed, manufactured and refurbished hand guards for sugar-cane cutters in South Florida.
In 1969, he built Gator Jungle, which he sold in 1986 and is now known as Jungle Adventures Nature Animal Park.
“I wanted to keep the beauty and wildlife of Florida as it is and save it for future generations to see,” Brooks told the Orlando Sentinel in 2005.
Aside from being something of an adventurer, Brooks was a thoughtful man who cared deeply about his community, those who knew him said.
Over the years, he was involved with the Fort Christmas Historical Society, the Christmas Civic Association and American Legion Post 328.
And when someone was in need, he organized huge community barbecues as fundraisers.
Often, the events raised thousands of dollars for families struggling with medical costs, for example, or people who had lost their home in a fire.
Aside from his wife, Brooks is survived by six children: Ronald Brooks of Osteen; Francine Brooks, Shane Brooks and Wayne Brooks of Christmas; Vickie Jude of Titusville and Cathy O’Hare of Orlando. He also is survived by 14 grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren.
