TEMPLE TERRACE — Karl Langefeld’s career with Temple Terrace started as a way to kill a summer. It ends, 33 years later, having shaped who he is as well as shaping what recreation in Temple Terrace looks like today.
Langefeld, the city’s Leisure Services director, announced his retirement effective June 30. But he’s far from done, he says.
Only 57, he is moving with his wife to Kentucky, where he says he hopes to begin his next chapter.
“There’s some moments it doesn’t seem real yet,” he said. “There are times that I am extremely excited about starting the next chapter of my life. There are times that I’m questioning what in the world did I just do. This has essentially been the only job that I’ve had my entire adult life.”
Langefeld’s long tenure and impact on the Temple Terrace recreation scene began almost by accident in the early 1990s.
“I got out of the Navy, and didn’t know what I was going to do with my life,” he said.
He landed in Temple Terrace, with a few stops along the way. He became a lifeguard in Fort Lauderdale and Cape Coral, and while there started paying attention to the people around him who had built actual careers in recreation.
“I worked there for about two years, and the time I spent there, I said, you know… that’s something I think I would really like.”
That led him to the University of South Florida, and during his senior year he landed a part-time lifeguard job at what was a much smaller version of the city’s Family Recreation Center. When the pool was closed for the winter, he did other jobs at the rec center — working in the fitness center, the front desk and with the city programs.
However, that job ended and Langefeld returned home to Fort Lauderdale for a hospital internship.
Midway through it, he received a call from Stacy Jenkins, then the complex’s head lifeguard, asking if he wanted to come back.
“I said yes, because I wanted to move back to this area,” Langefeld said. “But understand, I’m going to come back, but I don’t know how long I’m going to be there, because I’m going to be looking for a real job as soon as I get back.”
That was 33 years ago.
“It’s 33 years later, I’m still trying to find a real job,” Langefeld laughingly told his colleagues.
He credits his former mentors for his success: former director Kevin Dunbar, who he said taught him about vision and loyalty, and current councilmember and former Leisure Service Director James Chambers, who hired him as his assistant and taught him about the inner workings of city government.
“He was fantastic at whatever he did,” Chambers said. “He kept the department moving forward, and he was a real asset to the city.”
Oh, and Langefeld couldn’t resist giving humorous thanks to Ron Swanson, the director of Parks and Recreation on the television show of the same name, who taught him about dealing with people.
Over more than three decades, Langefeld said he watched an entire generation of Temple Terrace grow up around the recreation department’s programs, and he built a staff that he says has been like a family. He choked up remembering all those he attended weddings, births and funerals with.
“So many of my staff violated fraternization policies and are now raising wonderful families of their own, because they got married after they met working at the rec center,” he said.
Under Langefeld’s tenure, the city made tremendous strides in adding recreation opportunities to residents. Langefeld oversaw the $2.6 million expansion of the Recreation Center in 2018 and has also played a large role in the current development of Riverside Park, to name a few of his accomplishments.
But he said adding the Buddy Baseball fields was one of the many highlights in his efforts to provide opportunities for those who might otherwise not have them.
He also said he was proud of relationships with Focus Academy, which spawned the Focus Café at the rec center; with the James Haley VA, with the rec center providing outpatient recreation therapy activities; with Special Olympics; and with Hillsborough County’s Head Start program, which provides swim lessons to children.
“It’s always been a priority of mine to make these facilities available to some of these populations who wouldn’t otherwise have access,” Langefeld said. “Looking back, those are the things that I’m the proudest of.”
Chambers, who is vacationing in Germany, said by phone that he’s sorry he’ll miss his former assistant’s send off this week — but that Langefeld won’t be forgotten.
“He was fantastic at whatever he did,” Chambers said. “He kept the department moving forward, and he was a real asset to the city.”