Lowell Teal has received the most prestigious honor the Florida Farm Bureau can bestow on a member — the 2020 Distinguished Service Award.

Teal, an Orange County advocate and former executive director of Orange County Farm Bureau, was recognized for his dedicated service to agriculture in the state of Florida and his lasting contributions to the organization. FFB president John L. Hoblick presented the award Oct. 8.

A statement issued by FFB said: “Teal was a tireless advocate for farmers at the local, state and national level. He worked with Orange County elected officials on various agricultural issues, including private property rights and natural resource conservation.”

He also was instrumental in pioneering the microjet irrigation system for Florida citrus growers.

Teal served more than 20 years as executive director of the Orange County Farm Bureau. During his tenure, he developed relationships with government officials, municipal leaders and public agency staff members.

“Lowell Teal has been a Farm Bureau leader, a mentor and an advocate for agriculture for more than 40 years,” a state Farm Bureau official said in a recognition video. “He’s well respected by his peers. Under his tutelage, the local organization has developed excessive groups of leaders that have worked as mentors to others.

“He’s one of those Farm Bureau people who leads by example,” the representative said. “His influence remains a living legacy.”

Teal’s involvement with the Farm Bureau started when a friend, the late Billy Arrington, asked if he would be interested in helping the Orange County bureau.

“What he was interested in was figuring a way to get the directors more involved with what was happening,” Teal said. “My job then was to kind of coalesce the membership and pull them together and take charge of all the meetings.”

He always felt welcomed into the group and felt everyone present was there for the common good, he said, and he left with a sense of accomplishment after those meetings.

“I think when you look back at Orange County’s success and you draw in Lowell Teal into that picture, he could bring consensus among his entire board, he could bring consensus among the county commissioners,” Hoblick said.

“He was a consensus builder,” he said. “He was also the kind of person who — after you had a conversation with him — you felt like he was your best friend.”

Others in the Farm Bureau community were quick to praise Teal for his accomplishments.

Robbie Roberson got to know Teal when he joined the Orange County Farm Bureau.

“Lowell’s influence on Florida agriculture, and certainly Orange County agriculture, has been influential,” he said.

He recalled Teal’s frequent visits to Orange County government meetings and to Tallahassee to defend agriculture issues and stances.

Bobby Beagles, executive director of Orange County’s bureau, said Teal was working with the St. Johns River and South Florida water management districts and traveled to South Africa to research how the country was watering its crops and returned with the plan to use microjets for irrigation.

“It’s been a great relationship with our water districts,” Beagles said. “We have had that for over 35 years I’ve been on the board. … Lowell always made sure we had a meeting once a year with our water district president. It wasn’t a personal issue, it was a company issue.”

Mark Byrd, a board member with the state bureau, said Teal leads and mentors by example.

“He walks beside you, explains what’s going on, but then puts you in the mix; he certainly lets you find your way,” he said.

“Lowell Teal served Farm Bureau with dedication, skill and passion,” Hoblick said. “He was a steadfast leader and a respected mentor to everyone he met. I am pleased to present this award on behalf of our Florida Farm Bureau members.”

A 2020 Distinguished Service Award also was presented to Billy Hester, a Volusia County Farm Bureau leader for nearly 50 years and an executive director for 27 years.

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Amy Quesinberry

Community Editor Amy Quesinberry was born at the old West Orange Memorial Hospital and raised in Winter Garden. Aside from earning her journalism degree from the University of Georgia, she hasn’t strayed too far from her hometown and her three-mile bubble. She grew up reading The Winter Garden Times and knew in the eighth grade she wanted to write for her community newspaper. She has been part of the writing and editing team since 1990.

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A two-year Department of Justice investigation into the Lowell Correctional Institution near Ocala has confirmed what anyone who cared already knew.

America’s largest women’s prison has been a hellhole of sexual abuse and corruption for at least 15 years. But as disgusting as the 34-page report is, the most disturbing thing isn’t the rapes or beatings or cover-ups.

It’s how few people in power cared. And that indifference has left inmates in danger to this day.

“Our investigation found that staff sexually abused women incarcerated at Lowell and that these women remain at substantial risk,” Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband said in a press release.

Remain at substantial risk.

That line should ring like an air raid siren throughout the legislative halls in Tallahassee.

Four female legislators have called for the removal of prison administrators and introduced a bill that would improve treatment of prisoners. That’s a start, but the rot in Florida’s prison system calls for a major reckoning.

It should start at the top. Ron DeSantis has paid scant attention to Lowell’s problems. Of course, neither did Rick Scott, Charlie Crist or Jeb Bush when they served as governor.

Fingers could also be pointed at all the legislators and administrators who should have detected the scandalous stench emanating from the 2,200-prisoner facility.

The Florida Department of Corrections has been aware of the abuse at least since 2006, the DOJ report said. But the department “failed to take timely action to remedy the systemic problems.”

State officials can’t plead ignorance. A Miami Herald investigation in 2015 was based in part on FDOC documents and public records requests.

The Herald also interviewed more than 30 inmates. People like Casey Hodge, who was sentenced to three years in prison on a drug trafficking charge in 2012. She was legally blind and had a glass eye.

When Hodge showed up at Lowell, guards made her remove the prosthetic eye and pretended to vomit. Hodge said a guard threatened to send her to solitary confinement if she didn’t regularly have sex with him.

“I did what he said because I didn’t know what would happen,” she told the Herald. “I didn’t know what he was capable of.”

Other inmates said guards slammed inmates against walls, spat in their faces, ogled them as they used the bathroom and poured coffee or bleach on them.

The Herald’s stories prompted the FDOC to replace Lowell’s warden and hire more than 100 new guards. That didn’t stop the abuse.

The DOJ report said prison authorities did not properly investigate a long list of abuse complaints. The lax atmosphere explains how guards beat inmate Cheryl Weimar in 2019 after she told them a chronic hip problem kept her from scrubbing a toilet as they’d ordered.

Weimar ended up with a broken neck and is a paraplegic. She filed a federal lawsuit that was settled last August, with the state paying Weimar $4.65 million.

You’d think lawmakers would notice such a case. You’d think it might put the fear of God or DeSantis into Lowell officials. But the DOJ report said abuses continued into 2020.

And those were just the complaints prisoners actually filed. There’s no telling how many were coerced into silence over the years. Inmates were even told not to speak openly to the DOJ.

“During the Department’s onsite visits to Lowell, we received information that supervisory staff had threatened prisoners against cooperating with our investigation, and in one case retaliated against a prisoner for providing us with information,” the report said.

The DOJ is threatening to bring a civil rights lawsuit if the prison doesn’t make changes by Feb. 8. The “minimal remedial measures” include educating prisoners on complaint procedures, new training for staff and improved video monitoring.

Those are baby steps. The Lowell travesty calls for drastic measures and a huge dose of accountability.

Of 161 sexual abuse investigations the DOJ reviewed, only eight resulted in the arrest of an officer. The FDOC put out a statement saying it cooperated with the DOJ and will crack down on any employee who violates the law.

“FDC has zero tolerance for staff who act,” Secretary Mark Inch said.

Given the prison system’s history, such assurances mean nothing. Sen. Janet Cruz (D-Tampa) has called for Lowell warden Stephen Rossiter to resign.

Prisoner-rights advocates want a special prosecutor appointed or the state to create an independent agency to oversee Florida’s prisons. From staffing to budgets to policies, the whole system needs a serious overhaul.

Whatever actions are taken, potential crimes are not the only things that need to be investigated. Somebody needs to find out how so much abuse could go on for so long — and why state leaders barely even looked Lowell’s way.

If they had, they’d have seen a sign outside the prison gate. It says, “We Never Walk Alone.”

Tell that to Cheryl Weimar.

Editorials are the opinion of the Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board and are written by one of its members or a designee. The editorial board consists of Opinion Editor Mike Lafferty, Jennifer A. Marcial Ocasio, Jay Reddick, David Whitley and Editor-in-Chief Julie Anderson. Send emails to insight@orlandosentinel.com.

Following allegations of sexual abuse and other misconduct at Florida’s Lowell Correctional Institution, State Sen. Janet Cruz of Hillsborough County is calling for the resignation of prison warden Stephen Rossiter.

“I urge you to act decisively and request the immediate resignation of the current warden,” Cruz wrote in a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this week.

The letter followed a U.S. Department of Justice investigation outlining multiple incidents at the Ocala prison, the oldest women’s prison in Florida – opening in 1956 – and the largest women’s prison in the nation.

“After careful examination of the Department of Justice’s investigation of the Lowell Correctional Institution, it is explicitly clear that our State, the Florida Department of Corrections, and Lowell Correctional Institution are willfully negligent of the women imprisoned therein,” Cruz wrote. “The conditions described within the DOJ report are not only morally bankrupt but violate our nations’ Constitution.”

The Florida Phoenix contacted the Florida Department of Corrections to seek comments about warden Rossiter, and is awaiting a response. The DOC confirmed Tuesday that Rossiter still is in his position as warden.

The federal investigation released Dec. 22 focuses on multiple incidents of sexual abuse by prisoners from a period of 2017-2019, though the conditions have been documented as far back as 2005, according to the report by the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and the United States Attorney’s Office Middle District of Florida.

Many women prisoners at the correctional institution suffered sexual abuse including rape and other sexual misconduct without state officials taking action to remedy the situation, the report found, and the Lowell prison failed to protect prisoners against the abuse of corrections officers and other staff.

“Lowell prisoners have suffered harm from sexual abuse and are at substantial risk of serious harm because existing systems discourage prisoners from reporting sexual abuse and fail to effectively detect and deter sexual abuse,” the report says.

The report documented several recent incidents from 2017 to 2020, where “Lowell sergeants, corrections officers, and other staff have committed notorious acts of sexual abuse, including rape, against prisoners.”

For instance, a sergeant was arrested and charged in July after “he admitted to engaging in oral sex with a prisoner in the maintenance room of a prisoner dormitory as recently as April 2020.”

The report described another incident involving the same sergeant, alleging that he had been accused of sexually abusing another prisoner in 2017, which caused “lesions on the prisoner’s throat from oral sex, and then retaliating against the prisoner when she refused his sexual advances.”

DOJ officials also found that it’s common for Lowell officers “to grope prisoners, including their buttocks and breasts” and bribe them with drugs, food, cigarettes and other items in exchange for sex.

The Florida Phoenix has been covering reports of abuse against inmates in Florida DOC facilities, including Lowell and other prisons.

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FORT MYERS — The interview room at JetBlue Park was packed with media folks yesterday afternoon — writers taking notes, photographers taking pictures, TV folks lining up for one-on-ones.

J.D. Martinez?

Well, no.

The Red Sox’ newest big-bucks free agent acquisition was somewhere else deep inside JetBlue, undergoing a complete head-to-toe from the team’s medical staff. If the Sox liked what they saw, Martinez was going to like what he saw: A five-year, $110 million contract.

This is why former Red Sox third baseman Mike Lowell, and not future Red Sox designated hitter J.D. Martinez, was in the interview room, doing a chatty media session. The Most Valuable Player of the Sox’ four-game sweep of the Colorado Rockies in the 2007 World Series was in town, and in uniform, to provide some spring training tutelage to 21-year-old third baseman Rafael Devers.

But if the timing had worked out a little better, Lowell might also have been able to provide some tutelage to J.D. Martinez, not how to play the game, but how to play in Boston.

You may have read that Sox lefty David Price, who played with Martinez in Detroit, told USA Today he had extended some ABC’s of Boston to his former-and-soon-to-be-new teammate. Among other things, Price talked about “negativity” in Boston and created a make-believe world for Sox icon David Ortiz when he said, “I heard Big Papi booed many times in Fenway.”

Man, man, man. What a shame Martinez couldn’t have been in the back of the room, listening to Mike Lowell bring fresh air to JetBlue Park.

Of Devers, Lowell said, “I don’t think he needs anything to be fixed. I think he needs repetitions. He’s 21 and I kind of put myself where I was at 21 and I’m swinging an aluminum bat for a college team and I’m worried about playing ranked teams.”

This is a splendid example of why Lowell was so good at this stuff: Rather than ladle out a bowl of just-add-water platitudes about Devers, he pointed out that at the same age he was just some wide-eyed college boy. That’s great perspective.

Lowell used self-deprecation to help make a point.

“I tried to keep things simple,” he said. “He is much more athletic than I was. I tried to put myself in a position to be able to make the easiest play for me possible to get the out. We just talked about, say, you have a catcher who doesn’t run well and he hits a chopper, we don’t have to charge in and make the off-balance throw.”

And: “He hits balls off the (left field) wall left-handed the way I tried to do right-handed. He’s got it, man. He’s a special talent.”

He spoke words about Devers that could easily apply to Martinez, despite the nine-year age difference between the rookie third baseman and the veteran outfielder/DH.

“Being 20, thrust into Fenway Park, every part of your game is kind of dissected, is a big adjustment,” he said. “Jokingly, I said, ‘Keep hitting home runs and people (won’t care about defense.)’ ”

He was funny.

Noting that Devers knew who he is, Lowell said, “He was 14 when I retired, so I don’t know if (Red Sox manager) Alex Cora went to Google and Wikipedia and put it on his desk.”

While it’s true Lowell was obtained by the Red Sox via trade, not the free agent supermarket, he does have some commonality with Martinez.

Both men were raised in the Miami area. Both men are of Cuban ancestry. (With Lowell’s clan doing a generational stopover in Puerto Rico before arriving in Florida.) Both men played college ball — Lowell at Florida International, Martinez at Nova Southeastern University.

And if things work out the way the Red Sox hope, by the end of this season we’ll be talking about how Martinez, like Lowell before him, made an easy, graceful transition to The Boston Baseball Experience.

Is it just me or does it only seem like Lowell played his entire career with the Red Sox? The reality is he was drafted by the Yankees and had a cup of joe with the Bombers before being traded to the Florida Marlins, for whom he played seven seasons.

When he joined the Sox in 2006, the big names in the trade were Josh Beckett and Hanley Ramirez. Ramirez and future star pitcher Anibal Sanchez were highly regarded prospects who went to the Marlins in exchange for Beckett, a top-flight pitcher who was expected to bolster the Boston rotation, and did.

Lowell? The Marlins wouldn’t make the deal unless the Sox assumed the two years and $18 million remaining on his contract. So, sure, the expectations weren’t high when Lowell came to Boston, not anywhere close to what they will be for J.D. Martinez.

But, and this is where Martinez needs to pay attention, Lowell adapted to New England as though he had been raised in Lowell. He was a comfortable fit from the day he arrived, not just on the field, not just in the clubhouse, but in the community.

Fans loved him, and he loved them back. More than merely being accessible to the media, he was accountable and anecdotal.

And, man, could he play. In his first season with the Red Sox, he hit .284 with 20 homers and 80 RBI. In the pennant-winning ’07 season he hit .324 with 21 homers and 120 RBI, earning him fifth place in MVP balloting. He hit .400 in the World Series sweep of Colorado.

And the Red Sox, the team that had to take Lowell and the two years and $18 million remaining on his old deal, signed him to a new three-year, $37.5 million deal just a few weeks after the World Series.

Lowell did more than move to Boston. He moved Boston. It can happen, J.D. Martinez, if you let it.

Earlier this month in Ocala the U.S. Department of Justice heard from former inmates and family members about brutal prisoner abuse happening in the Lowell Correctional Institution for women; here’s a WMNF interview with one former inmate.

The former inmates and and family members told the Justice Department stories about rape, assault, verbal attacks and other crimes by officers.

For a first-hand account of what it’s like inside Lowell, WMNF interviewed a former inmate there. Jhody Polk is executive director of the Florida Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. She served time at Lowell from 2007 until 2014 for charges including home invasion and robbery, burglary, grand theft auto, arson and larceny.

In this interview Polk refers to “Y.O.s” – that’s youthful offenders – girls as young as 14 years old in prison at Lowell.

“The physical abuse — especially the Y.O.s. Y.O.s were kept separate from adult incarcerated individuals. So, as a law clerk, I will have the opportunity to spend time with the Y.O.s and that was where I would hear the most physical abuse. One of the things that I did not like about the sexual abuse that is known to happen inside of prisons is that when you have individuals inside that space and then they’re completely cut off from community, cut off from family. We don’t just end up in that space out of convenience. When you don’t have any type of resources and support, it’s the same mindset on the street: how do I use what I do have to be able to get the things that I want. So I feel like even aside from the actual forcing incarcerated people to do things, there is this big attitude and just energy of you had to kind of like use yourself. You had to at some point recognize that you were not human and that you were just a, kind of, tool to either get your need met or someone else’s needs met. And it came — I don’t want to say willful — but it was almost as if we didn’t have a choice.”

Listen to the whole interview here: