{"id":8982,"date":"2021-05-20T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wfsu.org\/local-routes-2\/?post=miss-nancys-store"},"modified":"2021-05-27T14:32:42","modified_gmt":"2021-05-27T18:32:42","slug":"miss-nancys-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wfsu.org\/local-routes\/2021-05-20\/miss-nancys-store\/","title":{"rendered":"Miss Nancy’s Store – One Of WFSU’s First Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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From 1966 to 1967, WFSU produced a children’s television program called Miss Nancy’s Store, starring educator Nancy Tribble Benda. Local Routes takes a look at the life led by Benda, who performed as a Weeki Wachi mermaid as a teenager, appeared on television in the 60s as Miss Nancy, and later in life worked for the Florida Department of Education as the Director of Equal Opportunity Programs.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It might be hard to believe, but there was once a time before classic television shows like Mr. Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood and Sesame Street. Children\u2019s programming, like the content aired by PBS KIDS<\/a> today, was not always prevalent. Up until the late 1960s, there were only a handful of shows made for kids. But one day in 1966, children across the State of Florida turned on their TV sets and tuned into Miss Nancy\u2019s Store, broadcast live from WFSU-TV in Tallahassee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of these children was Michael Martinez, now a writer and theorist. \u201cMy earliest memory of Miss Nancy is of one of my friends suddenly saying at about 4:30 or 5 in the afternoon, \u2018I\u2019ve gotta go home and watch Miss Nancy!\u2019 Well I said, \u2018What\u2019s Miss Nancy?\u2019\u201d Martinez reminisces. A few days later, Martinez says he flipped to channel 2 from his home in Miami and soon started watching the show every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The banner from Michael Martinez’s blog post titled “Miss Nancy’s Story: In Search of History on the Internet” originally written in 2015 and last updated in 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If you search for \u201cMiss Nancy\u2019s Store<\/em>\u201d on the Internet in 2021, chances are you will come across a prolific blog post by Michael Martinez that is six years in the making. When Local Routes was approached to pursue the story of the program by WFSU Education Manager Tasha Weinstein, Martinez\u2019s blog was one of a few strong Internet sources for information on the show. Up until the production of this segment, it was one of the only places to find an account of someone with lived memories of the program. Fortunately, Weinstein had been hot on the trail of Miss Nancy\u2019s Store for years before production began, and her research guided Local Routes to a wealth of resources for this story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weinstein contacted the Zonta Club of Tallahassee, the local chapter of women\u2019s rights organization Zonta International, which Nancy had been a member of until her passing in 2015. It was through Tasha that Local Routes contacted a couple of Nancy\u2019s fellow Zontians as well as her younger sister for interviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n