Newt Perry honored on Walk of Fame in Ocala

Delee Perry, right, helps unveil the Walk of Fame plaque for her father, Newt Perry, as Jessica Fieldhouse, left, and Adam Sines, second from left, of Ocala Main Street, look on with other people during the unveiling of the Newt Perry Walk of Fame plaque in front of the Marion Theatre in Ocala, Fla. on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. [Bruce Ackerman/Ocala Gazette] 2026.

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Posted February 24, 2026 | By Susan Smiley-Height / Photos by Bruce Ackerman

After a frigid morning warmed up nicely under blue skies and a bright sun, the dedication for Newton A. “Newt” Perry’s bronze plaque on the Walk of Fame in front of the historic Marion Theatre went off swimmingly.

And front and center for the ceremony, slide show, film screening and plaque, or “star” unveiling, was Delee Perry, Newt’s daughter, and other family members, including her daughter Tasha Perry Singleton and granddaughter Gracee Singleton, who traveled to Ocala from Kentucky for the occasion.

The event was organized under the auspices of the nonprofit Ocala Main Street organization. Executive Director Jessica Fieldhouse and volunteer Adam Sines played a key role in helping organize the drive to fund the bronze plaque and to put the ceremony together.

Many local luminaries were in attendance, including renowned cinematographer Mark Emery, who has been honored with a plaque on the Walk of Fame, and a few of his fellow members of the Silver Springs Professional Dive Team, which is led by Joe Wallace.

Several members of the Marion County Historical Commission were on hand, including educator and journalist Cynthia Wilson Graham, local historian Judy Hill Delk and Courtland Richards, who also is a board member of Ocala Main Street.

Newt was a graduate of Ocala High School, as was his daughter as well as Richards, who recalled taking scuba diving lessons from Newt in the early 1960s. Richards, who has a lengthy career as a professional videographer and photographer, has been doing a living history video project and has done extensive interviews with Delee.

“I started the living history video project in 2024 and the first person I contacted was Delee Perry because I knew her from high school and I knew both of her parents. She mentioned to me, ‘Did you know my Dad won an Academy Award? In fact, two Academy Awards,’” Richards noted.

“He worked with some Hollywood producers, and they named him technical director for two of their short films. They were Grantland Rice pictures. When they needed underwater stuff, they would come to Newt. When she told me about the awards, I immediately started trying to figure out how to get him a plaque on the Walk of Fame. I ran into a dead end and then Adam Sines was able to get in touch with Delee and move forward with it,” Richards explained.

Delee was the driving force behind raising the more than $4,000 to purchase the plaque, according to Sines.

Newt is renowned for his swimming and other aquatic activities, working on motion pictures and for creating the Weeki Wachee mermaid attraction, which remains one of Florida’s most beloved tourist destinations.

He was born in 1908 in southern Georgia. After his family moved to the Tampa area, lifeguards taught him to be an even better swimmer than he already was. When he and his family moved to Ocala in 1922, he was enthralled with Silver Springs and would walk six miles nearly every day to swim there. He soon was teaching others to swim and came to the attention of short movie producer Grantland Rice, who made features about Newt, whom he dubbed “The Human Fish,” and enlisted him in producing his films.

At 16, Newt was Ocala High School’s swim coach and star swimmer. He achieved All-America status in football, swimming and diving. In 1931, he received the University of Florida’s first ever swimming scholarship.

When movie producers began making “Tarzan” movies at Silver Springs, from about 1932 to 1942, Newt’s aquatic prowess made him an integral part of the process. In 1939, when he was managing Wakulla Springs just south of Tallahassee, he promoted it as a filming location and several films were shot there, including “Tarzan’s Secret Treasure.”

“Another thing that happened while Daddy was at Wakulla was that the United States got into World War II,” Delee reminisced in a 2023 feature article in the “Gazette’s” sister publication, “Ocala Style” magazine. “Omar Bradley, who was a general, came to my dad and said they were developing a very secretive group of men and ‘We want you to be one of the instructors.’ That was the frogmen, later known as Navy SEALS, and Daddy is in the SEALS hall of fame in Fort Pierce.”

After Newt opened Weeki Wachee Springs and became a member of the Florida Attractions Association, he was at a convention in Miami when he saw a striking high diver named Dorothy “Dot” Roederer, who was training for the 1948 Olympics. She became his second wife and is Delee’s mother.

When Dot barely missed the cut for the Olympic team, Newt had a medallion inscribed with “To Dot from Newt” on one side and “Champ” on the other.

On Tuesday, as Delee fingered that medallion, which was hanging from a chain around her neck, she said softly, “I feel like they are right here with me.”

“This is just great. It’s absolutely wonderful,” she said just minutes before the ceremony began.

“When Mark Emery got his star, I started thinking, my Dad needs a star down there. And my Mother had a saying, ‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.’ And I never could figure out who to contact. And then when I was working with Adam on the new historical museum in Tuscawilla Park, I said to him, ‘I wish knew someone who could help me get my Dad’s plaque in front of the Marion Theatre,” she recalled.

“He said, ‘I can do that,’” she said. “And the next thing I knew, he said, ‘We have to get signatures,’ and I got about 200 signatures within about four days. It was approved immediately. We started a fundraising campaign, and I had over $4,000 raised in just about six weeks. Adam was just shocked and so they ordered the star.”

Initial plans were to unveil the plaque on Jan. 6, which was Newt’s birthday, but the artwork cracked and had to be recast, which delayed delivery to Ocala by a few weeks.

Ocala Ben Marciano, did however, present Delee with a proclamation on Jan. 6, proclaiming it Newt Perry Day in Ocala. On Tuesday, Delee was holding the framed document in her lap during part of the ceremony.

“I’ve just been so excited,” she said. “I think I only got three or four hours of sleep last night because I kept waking up thinking about it.”

Delee, who recalls having a Coke and some cookies in Esther William’s trailer on a movie set at the age of 10, continues to run Perry’s Swim School in Ocala, teaching young and old alike, as her father did back in 1923.

Tasha Perry Singleton is a swimming and diving coach at Centre College in Kentucky. She was 7 when her grandfather passed away but said she has many cherished memories through her mother and some gained by attending events such as the 75^th anniversary of Weeki Wachee.

“And Gracie got to attend, and it was great meeting people whose lives he touched, the former mermaids, and hearing about his legacy,” she said.

And, Singleton continued, Gracee is now also teaching swimming lessons, which means the Perry aquatic “gene” is alive and well.

“It turned out better than I could ever imagine,” Sines said after the plaque was unveiled and before a program and movie screening took place inside the theatre. “With the weather, I was afraid it would be too cold, but with the sun out, it’s a beautiful day and I felt like Newt was here. It was just that special.”

He said when Delee introduced the plaque idea to him, he didn’t know where to turn as the Ocala Film Foundation, which launched the Walk of Fame, was no longer involved in the endeavor.

“I talked with some people at the city of Ocala and they let the process be up to us. So now we have an application process for the plaques. It’s more structured. It’s reviewed by us with Ocala Main Street and some folks from the Reilly Arts Center, which manages the theater,” he shared.

Before the screening of the film “Distance Drums,” in which Newt played at least three parts, Fieldhouse presented a framed document to Delee.

“This certificate of distinction is presented with honor to Delee Perry in recognition of her father being the inaugural recipient of the Ocala Main Street Outstanding Citizen Award, acknowledging his remarkable contributions to our community and for continuing his legacy of selfless service in keeping us safe,” Fieldhouse read.

In addition to the plaque honoring Emery, the Walk of Fame also contains plaques dedicated to Bruce Mozert, the photographer whose creative underwater images put a major spotlight on Silver Springs; noted musical producer Bruce Swedien; underwater cinematographer Jordan Klein Sr.; and James Melton, one of America’s most famous tenors, who was a movie, radio, TV, concert and opera star, and pioneer in car collecting.

To learn more, go to ocalamainstreet.org