Charles Van Zant, AIA

by Heather Livingston
Contributing Editor

Summary: Charles Van Zant, AIA, is an architect, minister, and legislator in the Florida House of Representatives. Van Zant is the owner of Van Zant Associates, where he primarily focuses on design work for charities, including orphanages, churches, homeless shelters, seminaries, and other projects throughout the world. He has served as a pastor of several churches and has led missions and humanitarian aid efforts in five continents. In 2007, Florida Governor Charlie Crist appointed Van Zant to serve on the Clay County School Board. He was elected to represent Florida’s 21st District in November 2008.

Education
I have a bachelor’s in architecture from the University of Florida and a master of divinity from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville. I received my doctorate of theology from the Western Baptist Theological Seminary in Havana, Cuba. As far as I know, I’m the only American to hold a post-graduate degree in theology from a communist country.

From design to evangelism to a doctorate
I flew back and forth to Cuba over a period of about four years to earn my doctorate of theology from the seminary. When Castro took over, he also took over much of the property, including the seminary, which comprised six or eight city blocks. He allowed them to keep one block and took the remainder of their land and turned it into communist housing, which still stands today. He also imprisoned the seminary president, who’s a very good friend of mine, along with about 40 other faculty members. Some of them stayed in prison for years. The president stayed in prison for about six years, but the seminary never closed down. They always kept the lights on. They were burning dimly for a few years, but they kept it going.

I was asked in the mid-90s if I could help them design a men’s dormitory for the seminary. When I got there, I saw the situation and believed that the biggest thing I could do for them was to design a master plan for them to develop the small amount of land that they had remaining. I did that and designed a men’s dormitory as the first building in that master plan.

Consequently, through that period of time, I also wrote a book entitled How to Become the Person God Created You to Be to be used on the street in Havana. My secretary was from Chile, and we translated the book into Spanish as well. Part of what I did was to develop a plan for the seminary to begin evangelizing the entire nation of Cuba—much of which is Catholic, some of which is atheist. The Castro government gave me a special permit to preach the Gospel.

I went down and held a large evangelistic crusade at the seminary. During that week, we had about 450 people accept Christ and consecrate their lives to the Lord. We actually had some members of the Communist party come and attend those services and, when I checked with the pastor about a year after that, two of them were still regularly attending church.

Hobbies
I enjoy flying, shooting, and woodworking—furniture making of my own design.

Becoming an architect
When I was a child, I had an uncle who was a builder in Jacksonville. He was probably the largest homebuilder up there, Barney Van Zant. I was always interested in what he was doing and wanted to be like him, so I designed my first house when I was 15. I found out what the word “architect” meant and began learning how to draw. I entered into Stetson University in their pre-engineering school and soon found out that all the engineers who work with buildings actually work under architects—or did at that time—and so I decided that I really wanted to become an architect because I wanted to design as well as build, and I transferred to the University of Florida.

Career path
When I graduated from the University of Florida, I went to a firm called Bruce McCarty Associates in Knoxville. They were doing most of the big design work in Tennessee, and I was responsible for doing the new City of Knoxville Knox County Library. It comprised a city block, was four stories, and had a very unusual museum in the top floor that had to be under special humidification because of the artifacts that were housed there. That was my first project out of school. I went from there to a $6 million redesign of a HUD area. We tore down a lot of old tenement and row housing and built a new civic center. Bruce McCarty Associates had already built the new Civic Auditorium, so I did a number of parking garages and designed a lot of exterior work, the fountain, and the connecting bridge over to a new Hyatt Regency hotel on the Tennessee River that was part of that complex.

From there, I moved back to Florida to the Tampa office of Reynolds Smith and Hill. The projects I had involvement with were the Tampa International Airport, what was then the CNA Tower in Orlando, the Underground at Disney World, an addition to the St. Joseph‘s Hospital in Tampa, a nursing home in St. Petersburg, and some other smaller projects.

A calling to do more
It was during that time that I felt called to the ministry. I was living in Zephyrhills, which was about 45 minutes from my office, and every day, back and forth to the office, I would pray. The Lord kept hammering on me and I kept arguing with Him that He was picking the wrong boy to preach the Gospel. I felt that this wasn’t really what I was called to do, but He kept hammering away on me, and I finally submitted to Him. When the governor cut the ribbon on the airport, I gave my resignation to the vice president of the company and went to seminary.

An early challenge
I was born with spina bifida, a congenital spinal defect. I was a sophomore in high school when I found out. I was running on the cross country team—we took the state championship—but every afternoon I would come home and be in such pain it wasn’t bearable. I wouldn’t even eat my supper. I would just go to bed and get a little something at breakfast the next morning. After a lot of those days, my dad said one morning: “Son, you’re not going to school today. You’re going to see an orthopedic doctor.” The doctor X-rayed me and discovered that I was born missing one vertebra and part of another. According to the doctors, I should never have been able to walk from birth, but I felt like the good Lord had a hand in all of that because I was doing far more than walking. I water skied and did all manner of things.

When I was born, my great aunts and grandmothers noted that there was a hollow place in my spine and some people said I would never live, but I did and thrived and became healthy. I was always a very short child and didn’t start growing until high school. That’s when all this started showing up; when my vertebrae started separating a little bit. Then the pain came, and I realized what was going on, but up until that time I think the good Lord just protected me. I don’t know how else to explain that. I don’t have any medical explanation.

I went ahead and started college, but in my second year it got so that I couldn’t walk very well and getting out of bed in the morning was a big chore. It became worse just trying to walk to class and my grades were falling, so I finally got checked out by a doctor and they said I had to be operated on. This wasn’t going away.

At that time (this was 1964), there were only six hospitals in the southeastern United States that did spinal fusions, which is what I needed. I wrote to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and flew up there to have my spine operated on. I recovered from it and went on back to college. I had to lay out for about 15 months and, during that time, I taught mathematics and algebra at the high school I graduated from. I enjoyed that year, but I had a brace with a steel plate up my spine. I wore a coat and tie all the time so nobody knew unless they patted me on the back. The next year I went back to college.

Getting into politics
My son, who flies Medevac helicopters, Charles Jr., has been deployed two times to the Iraq War. In 2007, his second deployment was initiated and it was 16 months. One Thursday afternoon I got a phone call from him and he said: “Dad, Congress has passed a law that if you’re deployed more than 270 days, you have to either resign your elected post or take a leave of absence. What I want to know is would you occupy my school board seat until I get home, if the governor will appoint you?”

I’ve never been in politics. When I was in school I wouldn’t run for class president—or class dog catcher, for that matter. I was always into athletics, but I wasn’t interested in politics or student government. Even in later life, I’ve stayed clear of getting involved in political races. I was always supportive of Charlie in his school board races (he was in his third term as an elected school board member) so I didn’t want to turn him down, but I said: “Charlie, let me pray about that.” That was on Thursday afternoon. Sunday night my phone rang again, and he said: “Dad I’m in Kuwait. I have to e-mail the governor by the morning. Have you prayed about this long enough?” I said: “Yes, son. I’ll serve for you.”

While I was on the school board, I began praying in my office. I’ve always traveled the world, preached the Gospel, designed my churches, and stayed out of the political arena. I asked: “Is there some other way you want me to serve the people here?” The Lord showed me very carefully. The Lord said: “Yes, I want you to get in the fight against abortion politically.” He then began showing me the other needs of our legislative district, which is huge. It’s about 5,000 square miles and comprises six counties in Florida that are rural and poor. I agreed to run, but I didn’t know how I was going to tell Charlie. I was sitting in his school board seat and had agreed with the Lord to run for the Florida House of Representatives. I didn’t know how I was going to explain that to him because I’ve never stepped in front of any of my children’s careers. I hadn’t told anybody but my wife, so we were praying about it together.

In an interesting twist to that story, Charlie came home and took a couple weeks off to visit some friends. One night, I got a call from him at the home of former North Carolina Legislator Mark Crawford. Charlie said: “Mark and I were here talking. I told Mark that this would never work, but I did promise him that I would at least give you a call. Mark and I both believe that you should run for Florida’s House of Representatives.”

I was floored because I hadn’t told anybody but Katherine. I said: “Charlie, you have no idea what you just said. I’ve already agreed with the Lord to run.” So, that’s how I got into politics.

Priorities in office
I believe that the Lord put me in the race for his purposes and there was a message to proclaim. I didn’t know if I would win, but I knew I had to get out the message. Everybody thought the idea of abortion was a dead issue politically, especially on a state level, but Florida has certain right to life laws and I wanted to see those strengthened, so I went everywhere proclaiming my message when I was running for office.

I’ve already filed several bills on a variety of issues that are I think going to be worth fighting for:

• Early ultrasound for expectant mothers
• Being able to use Florida prepaid college funds for schools outside Florida
• Controlling foreign defamation claims in American courts
• Having an elected official to the water management district and removing restrictions on water use for agriculture
• Easing restrictions on nuclear power permitting and off-shore drilling.

You’ve said that you want to “lighten the burden on architects, engineers, and builders.” How do you plan to do that?
I discovered that doctors and dentists are alleviated from their continuing education requirements and some registration fees if they do pro bono work every year. I know that architects and engineers do a lot of pro bono, so I think we should enjoy the same latitude to be able to substitute pro bono work for some continuing education requirements, and maybe even have our fees waived for re-registration.

In addition, we must get Florida’s construction going again. We have a big engine in Florida that does construction. The commercial side of Florida’s construction effort is still intact and still going, although they’re not booming like they once were. However, the housing side of Florida’s construction industry is flat. At any given time, on average, there are about 50,000 homes for sale across the state. Right now, there are approximately 350,000 homes for sale. That tells you that we’ve got a long way to go to recover. In order for this to turn around, those housing units are going to have to be absorbed in large measure, but we have to write some legislation to lighten the burden on Florida’s construction industry to help them get going again. I’m intending to sponsor legislation that will do that.